Broken Heart, and: Year of the Locust, and: That Bird, and: Pearl Street

Broken Heart

For Nick

The Broken Heart Calculator multiplies the number of months you spent with a loved one by the average number of days per week you were together (divided by 2) & shows you how many months it will take to heal. You think that your heart is broken, but it’s not. It beats 100,000 times a day, while also pumping 6 quarts of blood that travels 12,000 miles every 24 hours. That’s like taking 4 trips from the East to the West Coast. It is true that when someone leaves you (or points a .44 Magnum at your head), the heart briefly suffers surges of adrenaline & stress hormones that can cause a calcium overload that stuns the heart. This is known as broken heart syndrome. It looks as if you’re undergoing cardiac arrest, but you won’t have elevated enzyme levels or artery blockages. If this happens to you, don’t worry. After the thoughts stop— about why your loved one left (or why a .44 Magnum was pointed at you)—your heart will speak its familiar language again & tell you that you’re o.k. lubdub, lubdub, lubdub.

Year of the Locust

My oldest brother pushed me & I landed on a rake that sank its iron teeth into my kneecap. My father came running. He scooped me up, packed my leg w/ ice in a rag, and we sped past cars stopped at red lights. I was 7 & sobbing. Yet the rag seemed to be bleeding instead of me. I woke up the next day, in a hip cast, facing the ceiling & cracks that looked exactly like a rabbit eating a carrot. I told the doctors that. My mother whispered to my brother, nudging him, & he stepped forward w/ his head down All summer, I sat on the beach w/ my cast wrapped in plastic. Hermit crabs buried themselves in sand as the tide went out, and after the inked signatures on my cast faded, my father, a surgeon, said it was time to saw it off. Soon we moved & I could run again. That fall, I had my Casper the Friendly Ghost lunch box, a new Hula-hoop, a yo-yo, and a rickety German shepherd who jogged w/ me to school. Everything felt new to me—acorns dropping from trees, horse chestnuts & ragged red/orange leaves. 17-year locust shells clung to trees & I noticed it was the skin from the legs & tiny feet that caused the shells to stick. After I’d wondered what it was like to grow up as a locust, wait 17 years, then slough off your old skin & free yourself, emerging wet & green, my brother invented the bicycle game. I was IT & he and his friends chased me on bikes. My heart pumped hard in my throat as I tore down the block, but then I stopped. I’d seen them practice the basketball back foot pivot. I whirled left, then right & dashed up steps to somebody’s porch as the bikes whizzed by. My brother said rats. I laughed. They tried again & when I hurtled a low fence, they all swerved— except for my brother who shouted that’s it, you’re dead just before he hit— & sailed, headfirst, over the handlebars & fence, into the grass— That’s when I cast off my fears like skin, emerging as Marcia, the Invincible, 7-Year-Old Human Locust.

That Bird

My brother unlatched the rails of my crib to see if I’d fall out & I did. I don’t know why he disliked me so much. Years later, numb inside, I landed in the hospital. In therapy, a man said, “I can tell my mind’s not right when I look out a window, see a bird, & think I hate that bird.” He got up, his voice rising, & stood by the window, shaking his fist— I hate that bird. Maybe my brother’s dislike for me was arbitrary, which meant that I was blameless & shouldn’t care. I pictured myself [End Page 115...