A Heart Divided (25 page)

P
ORTIA
P
RIDE
(
Sixth-Grade Student
)

Portia is twelve, a sixth grader at Redford West Middle School. She has long brown hair, enormous brown eyes, and dimples and is extremely articulate. She is my sister. It is three months after the shooting. We’re in a small room on the first floor of our house. It was probably once a maid’s room, but now it’s hers, so that she doesn’t have to climb stairs. She walks in with the aid of two metal canes with supports that wrap around her wrists. She has an apple in her mouth that she just got from the kitchen. She settles on her bed, the canes next to her, and chomps on the apple as we talk.

T
HIS
M
AGIC
8 B
ALL

A long time ago Lillith told me—
Wait.
Are they going to know who Lillith is?
You should say
she’s your best friend from Englecliff
so it’ll make sense.
Okay—anyway—so.
Lillith had this Magic 8 Ball—
like a fortune-telling thingie?
You shake it up and your fortune appears.
So she told me
every person’s fortune was in there.
Which isn’t even logical.

For one thing,
what language would the fortunes be in?
I was only—really little—because I kind of believed her.
Not really, but kind of?
I asked when I would get my first boyfriend.
So she shook it up
but she didn’t let me see what it said.
But
she
said it said:
“You will get your first boyfriend when you are twenty-seven.”
That didn’t seem right.
Twenty-seven is
old.
So I asked you
and
you
said she was definitely wrong
and you were absolutely certain
I’d have boyfriends sooner than twenty-seven.
Like probably around fourteen.

Then it turned out
I didn’t have to wait that long
because I was only twelve
when I started liking Barney
and he started liking me back.
Wait.
You need to say that I’m twelve and a half now.
Am I messing this up?
Could you say that
even though Barney has a stupid name
he’s nice and cute and smart and
looks like a boy who would have a cool name
like Trevor or something?
Okay. So.
Me and Cassidy and
Alan and Barney
were going to the football game.
Last time I sat between Cassidy and her mom?
But I didn’t know what to do this time.
I wanted to ask you
how we should sit.
Like
should we sit girl-girl-boy-boy,
or boy-girl-boy-girl?
But you weren’t home
so I couldn’t ask you.
So then we got to the game.
I sat between Barney and Cassidy,
so it turned out we were boy-girl-girl-boy.
And all I was thinking about was
if we were sitting right.
I don’t remember after that.
Like
the getting shot part.
And I don’t remember
the first few days at the hospital, either.
Everyone there was nice.
I liked all the flowers and presents.

At first I didn’t like physical therapy
because it hurt
but then it got better.
Sometimes it still hurts but not too much.

What else?
Being in a wheelchair was bad.
Not being able to walk—that was bad.
But then after my other surgery
I tried and tried and
then I could kind of walk with these canes,
which is
much
better.
Um … not being upstairs
in my real bedroom is bad, too.
Also it was very difficult
trying to catch back up
with my class at school,
but I did it.
None of my friends stopped being my friends.
That was a good thing.
Oh, wait, the
best
thing is
Barney already invited me
to the spring dance
even though it’s still
a month and a half away.
I am
soooo
excited
because it’ll be my first dance.
The doctors say if I work
really really hard
I could be down to one cane by then,
which is
excellent!
You’ll take me dress shopping, right?
Because
when you’re not wearing jeans
you have excellent taste in clothes.
And um … did I say enough
or do you need more?

J
ACK
R
EDFORD
(
R.H.S. Student
)

(
as before
)

T
HE
F
AMILY
B
IBLE

Once, Nikki said to me:
“In this town, the name Redford
is almost as powerful as that flag.”
Meaning—from her point of view—
that I needed to step up to the plate.
That I had a certain responsibility
which I had been unwilling to accept.

At the hospital—
when your sister was in surgery—
I was thinking about that and
I felt—
I wondered if things
might’ve been different
if I’d tried to find a solution.
Instead of just,
you know,
rationalizing why
I was above the fray
or whatever.

When my mother
came to the hospital—
that took guts.
She had to know
your mom
wouldn’t want to see her.
But she came anyway
because it was
the right thing to do.

You know how sometimes
in a crisis
you pick up on something completely irrelevant?
Well, for some reason
I noticed
the emergency room nurse’s little plastic—
(
he touches his chest near his heart)
you know, name plate.
Brenda Partridge.
And the trauma unit social worker’s
little name plate.
Samantha Evans.
Everyone who worked there wore them.
But this maintenance worker—
janitor—
I went to the vending machines
and he was emptying the trash and
he had one of those little name plates
but his just said
Roland.
And this orderly pushing a laundry cart—
his just said
Marvin.
I don’t know why it struck me.
But it did.

Hours later, Portia got out of surgery
but they wouldn’t let us into intensive care.
You and I decided to go to my house
to shower and eat.
Our family Bible
was on the kitchen counter,
which was odd.
It was open to Matthew, chapter five—
“Blessed are the peacemakers,”
which I later found out
was because my mother
had been praying for your sister.
But it was almost like it was meant to be.

On some level
I was—I guess I was thinking about—
you know—
those hospital name plates.
Because I opened to the back of the Bible,
where we keep the family genealogy.

And there were all these
old bills of purchase.
1855.
Amanda. Age 38. Black in complexion.
Samuel. Her son. Age 4.
1856.
Ginny.
1857.
Frankie.
Big Joe.
Louis. Of a hearty constitution.
Amanda. Excellent for breeding.
And what struck me—
what took my breath away was:
None of them had a last name.

But it wasn’t like the—
the low-level hospital workers
because
at least their full names were known.
These people that my family
owned
—
their Africans names
had been
ripped
from them.
Their freedom
and their heritage
stolen.
And we talk about
how people trample on
our
heritage
and look what we do—what we did—
to theirs.
We even took away their names.

So you know what happened next.
But if you want a chronology—
I guess I better
or this will make no damn sense.
So. I called Nikki.
It was—what—
four in the morning?
Her father answered.
I had to assure him
it wasn’t bad news about Portia.
And he said:
“Then why in the Sam Hill
are you calling my home
at four in the morning?”
We—I think it was you—
asked Nikki to come over.
Said it was important.
When she showed up it reminded me that
when we were kids she came over a lot
and
I really couldn’t recall
when she’d stopped.

So I showed Nikki my family Bible.
The bills of sale.
The single names.
And I told her my idea—
what I wanted to do.

N
IKKI
R
OBERTS
(
R.H.S. Student
)

(
As before
)

A
S
I
F
G
OD
W
AS
H
OLDING
H
IS
B
REATH

Jackson’s big idea?
I was standing there with
the two of you and
I remembered thinking how
Jackson’s house used to be
“my friend’s house”
instead of
“Redford House,”
and how the only black feet
that had stepped through the front door
in years
probably belonged to the help,
and here it was,
four-whatever in the morning,
and the only reason I was there
was because
this boy
was so
thick-headed
and
self-involved
that
he
thought
I should get
my
ass out of bed
and run over to
his
damn house
in the middle of the night because
he’d finally had an epiphany about the evils of slavery?

Please.

Honestly, Kate.
If it hadn’t been for you
I would have said—
I just would have gone off on him.
But there was so much pain
in your eyes,
and you two had been at the hospital
all night.
Plus, I knew he was well-intentioned.
So that’s why I went along
with what Jack wanted to do.

The three of us wrote down
the names
of every slave
owned by Major General Redford
at the time of the Civil War.
Thick black letters on
big white file cards.
Then we went to the monument
in the courthouse square.
And we taped
all those slave names to it.

Fifty-seven of them.
(
she has a faraway look, as if seeing this in her mind’s eye)
That monument.
Floodlit against the streaks of dawn.
That shimmering checkerboard of
gray granite squares
etched with the names
of Union and Confederate soldiers,
and white paper ones
with our handwritten names of slaves
that weren’t really their names at all.
It was so quiet.
As if God was holding His breath.

It wasn’t enough.
It wasn’t nearly enough.
But it was
something.

K
ATE
P
RIDE
(
R.H.S. Student
)

I made important changes to this monologue on the same day that
A Heart Divided
was to be performed at the Redford Cinema. The actress was kind enough to incorporate these last-minute revisions. I recorded both the original monologue and the late changes while sitting on the window seat in my room.

A H
EART
D
IVIDED

“A house divided against itself
cannot stand.
I believe this government
cannot endure permanently
half slave
and half free.”

In case you slept through American history,
Abraham Lincoln said that.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot
about a
heart
divided.
How the heart of Redford
was so divided
by that monument
and the high school
so divided
by the Confederate flag.

The funny thing is,
I’ve been thinking
that it’s okay.
Mostly.
I mean, it’s the people who only want one opinion—
their
opinion—
that we have to worry about.
And then one day
an innocent girl
ends up in the line of fire.
And no one saw who did it.
And both sides blame each other.

Well, I figure the crazies on both sides did it.
Hate was responsible.

Life can be just so—
so random.
I mean, what sin was my sister paying for?
There’s no logic.
No fairness to it.
Terrible things happen to wonderful people.
The only way
I can deal with
the horror of random
bad
is to see that—from it—
we can choose purposeful good.
And we did.
Choose.

Redford High
voted
to change the school emblem
to the Liberty Bell,
and our team name to the Liberty.
The Redford city council
voted to add the names
of all the slaves
who resided in Redford County
at the start of the Civil War
to the town square monument.
Four thousand three hundred and eighty-four slave names
now etched
forever
in the granite,
alongside the names of soldiers from both sides.
The single slave names—
AMANDA
SAMUEL
BIG JOE—
help remind us of all
that was taken from them.
All that they lost.
And today,
the American flag
at that monument
flies three feet above
the Confederate battle flag.
To remind us.
It’s not a perfect solution.
But I’m pretty sure that perfect doesn’t exist.

This morning,
I noticed the
tulips in our yard
are in full bloom.
Spring is here.
The school year is almost over.
And when it is,
my family will move back to New Jersey.
My amazing little sister
will be in a rehab program
at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.
She had her third—and hopefully last—
surgery ten days ago.
Then, yesterday, she spiked a fever.
Her doctors said it isn’t serious,
but they wouldn’t let her out of the hospital
for this performance, and
if you know Portia
you know how mad that made her.

We’re making her a videotape.
She said she plans
to interview people
and make her own play
from the patient’s point of view.
Knowing her, she’ll do it, too.

Strange to think that
soon I’ll be back at my old high school.
Back with my old friends.
Old house.
Old life.

You’d think I’d be
happy
to leave Redford.
And I
am
happy to leave some of it.
I’m happy to leave the football stadium,
where I still see Portia’s blood.
And I’m happy to leave
the person who signed my name to a play full of hate,
and the people who were so eager to believe I was the author.
I confronted the girl who was responsible.
She denied she’d written it,
said I didn’t have any proof.
But I could see the truth in her eyes,
and she knew I knew.
Word got around.
It was a subtle thing,
but people began moving away from her.
She wasn’t even nominated for prom queen.

All that—
I will be happy
to leave behind.

But then I recall
how the Tennessee breeze
smells after a thunderstorm.
The view of lush, rolling hills
from the water tower.
The taste of hot cobbler
with cold ice cream.
The hoot of a whippoorwill.
The kindness of strangers
after Portia was shot—
how they kept on being there
for weeks and
months and
as long as we needed them.
In my mind
I hear the voices of
the people who welcomed me—
the kids at Warren Elementary.
The volunteers at the Peace Inn.
Birdie
and
Mr. Derry
and
Reverend Roberts.
The amazing Mrs. Augustus
And Nikki,
who, that very first day,
put her hand out
to a know-it-all
Jersey girl
with a bad attitude.