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All The Broken Pieces
Chapter 1
Hovering over my grade book, I lean hard with both elbows on the countertop and thread my fingers through my hair. The cotton balls that were contained to my throat have manage to claw their way into my mouth. My lips feel like they were doused with sand. The little black brick of a computer sits in front of me, between my elbows. Case closed. Normally, I wouldn’t care so much. I wouldn’t feel this noose around my neck tightening as the clock on the wall ticks down the minutes until the bell rings and students fill the hallways.
Dread bloats within me, leaving a rancid taste in my mouth. If my stomach wasn’t tied like a right knot maybe I could think. Or breathe. This part never gets easier. It doesn’t matter how many months pass or how much interest I take in work. It doesn’t matter how much I sleep. How much I exercise. How much I drink. How much I regret. How much I forgive. Nothing helps.
Sighing deeply, I glance at the classroom. The afternoon sun floods through the window slicing the art room in half. Half desks and chairs, half cabinets filled with supplies, sinks, and student’s artwork. Some of the cabinets are mine. Budget cuts. I don’t know a single teacher who hasn’t supplemented their class budget with their own money. It’s just the way it is here.
The gray silk blouse I donned this morning to keep me cool clings to my body like wet toilet paper. Sweat drips between my breasts and down small of my back where its sponged up by my pants. My hair is twisted up on top of my head and stabbed with a 6B pencil. Despite holding the tresses off my neck, it’s still slick with sweat. A few wayward strands curl tightly hovering just above my damp skin. Thank God this isn’t a freshman class or it’d be full of bodies making the room warmer. It’s the end of the school year and the heat is overly oppressive. Since my school district isn’t loaded, there’s no AC. Not even in the teacher’s lounge.
On any given day with the heat index at 98 and hundreds of bodies trapped inside a cinderblock building, it would be the reason why I feel this way—lethargic and frantic to the point that I could be sick at any moment. A ripple moves from my clavicle at the base of my throat up towards my mouth. My skin is covered in tingles and I shiver. Hesitate. I have a few moments. I rest my palms on the laptop, lid shut.
Glancing around, I admire my students. Their diligence. Determination. Two things I once possessed. Two things completely foreign to me now. There was a time when I was passionate about art, love, and life. Those embers died. Maybe petrified and turned to stone despite the taste in my mouth.
The kids worked hard this year. I see their potential even if mine was washed away. If I had it to do all over again, I’d probably make the same mistakes. I relive that damn day every hour, but on days like this when the temperature is high, my tolerance to keep the memories at bay is low. If I catch the scent of lilies there’s no way to stop the torrent of memories that appear so vividly that it feels like I’m there, reliving that horror. My mind won’t stay on track and it won’t until I get this done with. Open the laptop and do it. I breathe in.
Exhale.
My eyes water as my gaze fixates on the students, clustered together at the far end of the room, pad on the sill, and a pencil in the other. They are all off to one side trying to sit in a splotch of cool shadow. They talk about the beach, summer plans, and unrealized hopes that pop up like spring daisies. Guard your heart. I want to warn them, but I haven’t a clue how to do it. I’ve been living on autopilot for years, waiting for my motherboard to fry or come back online. Remember the first version of AOL where you’d sit there listening to the screech of the modem while waiting for something to happen? To connect or get rejected. By a fictional blue man trying to outrun a triangle. Needless to say, I don’t relate to normal things anymore. The truth is, I’m a horrible person. I did something hideous. It’d be different if I couldn’t live with myself and cried my eyes out, but I don’t cry. Sand. My head, eyes, throat, and mouth are constantly cotton balled. Maybe I have no soul. I don’t think I’m a sociopath, but how would I know? It’s not like people raise their hands to get tested for that sort of thing.
My eyes shift to the side again as I throw my gaze onto my laptop. At some point, I straightened my back and started wringing my hands. They’re slick. My fingertips have turned white. Damn. Just do it. Stop being such an ass. What’s the worst thing that could happen?
Pictures. Photos can’t hurt me.
Just get it over with. I shift my weight, perched on a tall stool, leaving one of my ballet flats on the floor with the other hooked over the lowest rim of the footrest. Pressing my cracked lips together, I smooth my shirt. There’s a V of sweat down the front of my once pristine blouse. The idea was to dress retro. Not the way kids do, but with a classic Audrey Hepburn look. Dark hair pulled back, slim capris nearly to the ankle, ballet shoe, topped off with a silk blouse with a sash at the waist. It looked amazing when it wasn’t soaking with sweat.
The plastic of the computer case feels cold to the touch. I slip my index finger under the rim and flip open the lid. The screen lights up and a web browser opens. I type in the letters. Pull up the website. Facebook. Every forty-year-old woman’s dream. A stream of consciousness from the past and the present colliding all in one place, coupled with ads, haters, over sharers, trolls, and fake news. Years ago, it was fun. Now? Not so much. But everything was exciting once. The memories of me laughing so hard it hurt has faded to nothing. I don’t remember what it feels like to smile anymore. The tightness of my mouth hints at a severe issue with RBF (resting bitch face). I’ve been called worse.
Why am I sporting the social media albatross? Somehow communicating with parents via social media has become normal—expected. For normal people, it’s not a problem. I mean, think about it. Facebook is the social media equivalent of a labradoodle on pixie sticks. It’s excited to see you. So much so that it licks you with memories, photos, and ads of everything all at once, tail wagging, eyes wide with no regard for your past. For the pain. It’s a robodog. How could it possibly know I’d rather shove this pencil through my eye than log into my account? It doesn’t because normal people like to see all this stuff.
I’m not normal. I don’t want to see it. But I’ve learned to take the hits life throws my way. I get knocked on my ass, lose a few years of my life, and get back up. When I was younger, I thought bouncing back meant full mental and emotional recovery. Ready to tinkle toes and grin again—laugh life in the face and say you can’t get me. The truth is no one recovers. Every human over the age of twenty-nine is a patchwork of pain, suffering, and antidepressants. The idea of cheer flew away and all comprehension of what joy felt like is now a shadow. But we press on because what else would we do? Waste hundreds of hours on social media, crying out into the vastness, hoping for an echo of peace that never comes? Nah, not me. I only login to this beast when absolutely necessary.
Brace for impact. My teeth tap together as my jaw clenches. The little muscle at the bottom, back by my ear, twitches. Facebook blasts me with pictures from my past. I see them before I can click away to post the message for the student art show. It’s not easy to click away when you’ve packed up every part of this old life. I haven’t looked at these old pictures since the last term. I fall for it every time. It’s like passing by a car wreck without looking. So, I look.
There, at the top of the page is Zach’s beautiful smiling face—that angular jaw dusted in dark stubble with piercing blue eyes. Those lips tipped up in one corner with a boyish smile that promises everything. Memories not posted on any website flash behind my eyes. His voice. His lips on my neck, the heat of his kiss on my skin as our bodies tangled together. The way he yelled. How nastily we fought.
It happens so fast. One picture conjures so many memories and a myriad of emotions. But that life is gone. I flip past it, bracing myself and chasing away the remnant phantom feelings caressing my skin. Love and hate mingle—they feel near identical.
As I scroll to get to the parent’s group on the left, my newsfeed wags its tail trying to get my attention. When it fills with Game of Throne fails, amazing leg make-up, and sure-fire diet ads, but then the bitch gets personal.
REMEMBER WHEN? It asks me. The words pop up with me and Zara in a canoe. My arm around my best friend’s shoulder standing on the sandy shore of the lake. Her dark eyes looking out at me as if she were still here. Just around the corner, in the classroom down the hall.
The sweat rolling down my back increases. It has nothing to do with the weather. Anger is flickering to life. Guilt. Grief.
Fuck. Type faster. The shiver runs over my skin and before I can click away, I find myself staring at her oval face and olive skin. No one could do make-up like Zara. She made it look so effortless. Echoes of laughter and warm vanilla fills my mind. Her perfume. The scent isn’t here but I could swear I smell it.
Scolding myself, I strengthen my resolve and press my palm to my forearm, and smooth the pebbled slick skin. Erasing the ghosts. There’s a point where memories become so real, so inexplicably tangible, that it’s as if those horrible events never happened. But they did. In rapid succession, my life ended because the two people who consumed it were suddenly gone.
If Zara lived maybe there’d be a whisp of my former self left. A tiny ribbon, stretched thin, and threadbare—but she’d anchor me. Pull me back.
Zach is another story. He’s the reason I can’t remember to breathe. Everything between us was burned to the ground. Passion has two sides. Love and hate. I couldn’t make our marriage work anymore. It turned to cinders in my hands. I didn’t know why he became what he was. Why he drank himself to oblivion. Why I let him. I thought he’d right himself and we’d rebound. But after Zara died, there was no rebound for either of us. He lost his twin sister and I lost my best friend. I didn’t think it could get worse, but it did. We fought. I didn’t hold back. I said words that cut deeply, trying to make him feel something—react somehow. Until one day I realized I believed what I was saying. Zach and I were done. Anyone could see it. His mother told me weekly.
When she was nice, she’d say stuff like, “If you hold onto something so precious too tightly for too long, you’ll smother it.”
On a bad day, which was most days for her, she’d come in sharper, not holding back. Blame and anger painted every word she uttered. There was a time I was welcome at her house. A time I was loved. Not now. I reek of death, she says. It doesn’t keep me away. When Zach’s brother is out of town, I check in on her—despite her protests. She’s a battleax, all brute force when it comes to her mouth, but frailness and age have taken their toll on her body. I have no soul. What she says is almost true, minus some of the racial slurs, so it doesn’t bother me. Besides, she’s the only mother I’ve had for over twenty-five years. We’re family, like it or not.
This is my life now. Impossibly fake. And terrifyingly real. An invisible hand holds my barely beating heart in its frozen grip, while I plaster a plastic smile on my lips. Faking, pretending my way through the rest of my life. Because I have no clue how to move forward and I can’t go
back.
My fingers hover over the keys of the laptop, ready to strike. Facebook is a graveyard where the dead still lives. The family didn’t want to delete their pages after their passing, which is understandable. Albeit painful for me. I’d never visit this site again if I had my way. But that’s not the way the world works. So, Facebook pops Zach up in my feed as if nothing happened. As if he were alive and we were still in love. As if he’s still alive and breathing. As if I didn’t tell him I hated him. As if those weren’t my final words to the man I loved for twenty years of my life.
The weight in the center of my chest is close to collapsing on itself. A black hole will take the place of my heart. I wish I was numb. Didn’t care. But there were things I never should have said to him. And confessions I should have made with Zara. But it’s especially hard with Zach. We were so broken by the time we got to that day. The promise of more time was a lie. I thought we had more time to fix things. More time to make up. More time to laugh and move on with our lives. Separate or together, but there would be more time with him. Turns out that wasn’t true. Time is a thief and I was robbed blind.
If only one of them died, then I could have handled things better. But losing both? Within twelve months. It was too much. I didn’t realize I had a soul until it tore in half.
Now, I walk amongst the living but I’m dead inside. Hollowed out. I’ve figured out how to function this way. Don’t feel sorry for me. I envy the people who thrive living like this. They can make snap decisions without the emotional hangover that follows me like a stray cat. Always there, begging, jumping out of the shadows when least expected.
Zara died first. She passed away about a year before Zach. His twin. I met him because of her. A hint of a smile tugs at my lips but I force it down. Lock it away. She was my college roommate. My best friend. He was her devastatingly beautiful brother. Now they’re both ashes.
