let me tell you about my heart

my heart is a quiet brick house at the end of a long road of trees surrounded by a cornfield.

216 West Cunningham Rd., Winnebago, IL.  the “bagel house”, my sister abby, then 3, called it before we move in.

we sleep on the kitchen floor on mattresses for a year after moving in.  the five of us smushed in one tiny room.  during the day, the mattresses live stacked up against the radiator in the kitchen. we cook around them and eat around them and talk and laugh around them and play computer games around them; as if this room wasn’t also our bedroom.

then at night, we quietly take them down and place two pillows on each.  we get into our jammies and lay right next to each other, abby and i on one mattress, my parents on another, and anders on his own, as my dad reads the next chapter of harry potter to us.

early one sunday morning, it is raining the best kind of rain with no thunder or lightning.  my brother, sister, and i streak out to the backyard, naked and yelling. anders looks proud and brave and abby looks like her cheeks could explode from happiness.

we move into what was the study and will later become the dining room when the house is finished.  my brother on the top bunk and my sister and i sharing the double bed on bottom. there is nothing else in the room, but old, stained carpet that was probably white some years ago. abby and i exhaust ourselves to sleep by holding hands and sitting up and smashing ourselves back on the pillows over and over with such force that we get dizzy and our heads hurt after too much.

our house feels so alone and quiet at night that i am certain someone is going to break in and hurt us.  there are many nights i don’t fall asleep until the sun comes up.  i think maybe if i fall asleep i will die.  i feel certain of this.  it is so quiet and so still that you wonder if you could already be dead.

we each get our own bedrooms on the second floor.  abby and i still sleep in the same bed at night though.  we mostly sleep in my room since i am older and bossier. but sometimes we sleep in abby’s room.  i am 11 now and sometimes i feel nervous that this isn’t normal.  that there’s something wrong with me.  i brave it alone a few nights a week and see abby’s face shatter when i do.

some nights i say to abby, “are you scared?  if you’re scared, i’ll sleep in your room.”  she always says yes.  even when I can tell she isn’t.

i am leaving for boarding school in michigan.  abby cries and cries.  i roll my eyes.

i sleep on the tiny twin bed bottom bunk.  my roommate is a voice major who never sleeps under her blankets and watches oceans 11 on repeat for two months when she falls asleep. she is very quiet and we rarely talk.

i move to new jersey where i attend college.  my roommate is a business major who watches fran drescher’s “the nanny” on repeat while she falls asleep.  she is very quiet and we rarely talk.

in college, i ask my boyfriend if i can move into his house.  he says no and we fight.  i move most of my clothes in anyway and sleep in his bed every night.

when i come home from college, i slip into abby’s room still to sleep.  i pretend that i’m not scared.  She doesn’t say anything. we fight more now.

i graduate from college and move to new york city.  i live in a railroad apartment with a friend from college.  my room can barely fit my tiny twin bed and a dresser.  There is nothing else in the room and the dresser drawers open into the bed.  I assure myself that no one is going to climb through the fire escape.  I exhaust myself to sleep by crying.

I live in three different apartments in three years.  I fall in love.  he doesn’t like anything playing while we fall asleep.  he is very loud and we talk all the time.

when i come home now, the house is empty.  abby is not home.  she is studying abroad in belgium or new zealand or france or learning a new language.  she has studied six, by the way.

coming from new york city, the silence of the country hits you in the stomach and suddenly you’re staring straight into the abyss.  when you live in the country for good, you train yourself to be comfortable with it.  to live with it.  you can know it’s there and choose when to let it in.  in the city, there is so much noise and bodies and smell that you have no defense against it when you come back to it.

i lay in my childhood bed, brass with an antique quilt on it that never quite keeps you warm enough. and i stare at the ceiling.  i keep my desk light on for those first few nights always. i think about how easy it would be for someone to attack this small town, In Cold Blood style. we didn’t even lock our doors until a few years ago.

i find myself in abby’s room, picking the knick knacks up off her desk and just staring at them. the glass penguins she’s collected.  the little water basketball game she collected from my grandparent’s house after they died.  The bowl i gave her for her birthday. sometimes i’ll find myself an hour later, having gone through her drawers and her closet, having covered the entire room, remembering her as an adorable little girl with chubby cheeks in soccer shorts and old t-shirts every single day, then her first foray into tween fashion when she wasn’t a little girl but also not quite a teenager, and finally her turn into someone who knows far more about style and grace than i do.  each article of clothing carefully maintained and folded.  She would hate to know I am even touching them.

i sit on the floor of her room and I wish I could take it all back.  But even that, fully wishing, that would hurt too much and so I sit in this in-between place of regretting and loving and hurting.  I think of abby’s little cheeks in the rain and the look on her face of knowing no greater joy than this; running naked with her siblings through the grass and I let the abyss overtake me.