How to Build a Heart

by Maria Padian

  Because unlike Sam, I guard my secrets.

  13

  I have to hand it to Mami: she plays dirty in the nicest ways.

  She and Jack were reading together when I returned. He jumped off the Scrouch, upending Piggie Pie, and cheered when he saw me remove not a snack- but a big-size Cheetos from the grocery store bag. Followed by the box of tampons. Which I might have plunked on the counter a bit loudly.

  “You’ve been gone ages!” he exclaimed, snatching the Cheetos.

  “You’re welcome?” I said.

  Mami followed him into the kitchen. She seemed unimpressed with the “evidence” of my grocery store run. She also seemed rather pleased. With a side of sneaky. Like someone who’s been given the answer sheet to the pop quiz.

  Which should have been my first warning.

  “Did you get lost?” she asked.

  “I ran into someone I know,” I told her. “We got talking.”

  Not a lie. “Ran into” is first cousin to “Met up with.”

  “Who was that?” she asked.

  “This guy named Sam. His sister goes to St. V’s.”

  Jack squeezed the Cheetos bag open with a loud pop that made us all jump.

  “We thought you might’ve had an accident or something!” he said. He plunged his hand into the Cheetos, pulled out a fistful, and crammed them into his mouth.

  “Jack, use a bowl,” Mami warned.

  I grabbed one from the cabinet and slid it across the counter to him.

  “Ms. Betts called while you were out.”

  It took me a second to remember who that was. The “Ms.” threw me. “What did Grouchy Grandma want?” I asked.

  “Ha! Grouchy Grandma!” Jack repeated. He already had a ring of orange powder circling his lips.

  Mami passed him a paper napkin. “She is making window boxes. I told her you would be happy to help her. She will pick you up after Mass tomorrow.”

  Such a “nice” sneak attack. Because it smelled like generosity (Isabella is so nice to help Ms. Betts!) but tasted like punishment. Mami knew damn well I’d been up to something, because who takes an hour and a half to complete a ten-minute errand? But she didn’t know what, and yelling at me never achieves her desired result.

  “Sure. Sounds great,” I replied.

  We smiled at each other between clenched teeth.

  Which is how I find myself exiting Mass immediately after communion today, and climbing into Betts’s rusty pickup. It coughs greasy fumes and sags beneath the weight of a massive truck-bed tool chest. She’s idling in the handicapped spot right outside the entrance.

  “Good morning, Isabella,” she croaks as I climb in and slam the door shut.

  I glance at her rearview mirror: there’s no blue-and-white paper tag with the universal wheelchair symbol. “You are the least handicapped person I know,” I reply.

  Betts throws the truck into reverse. “Thanks. Nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

  “That was a handicapped spot,” I tell her.

  She nods in agreement. “Yup. But I wasn’t parked. I would’ve moved if someone with a walker needed this space. Here’s what you should know about me if we’re going to work together.”

  If? I have a choice?

  “I’m not big on rules,” Betts says. “I think of them as helpful suggestions.”

  Great. This should be interesting.

  It turns out Betts lives twenty minutes outside Clayton in this little town called Alder. As we drive along State Route Whatever through hilly countryside toward her house, she tells me she grew up here. Went to school out here, kinder­garten through twelfth grade.

  In a horse and buggy? I manage to not say.

  “It’s pretty,” I comment instead.

  Betts looks skeptical. “Used to be,” she says. “Used to be mostly farms and country. Now it’s all apartment developments and cul-de-sacs full of creepy cookie-cutter houses. You know, they look so perfect they creep you out? Like they’re not real homes with actual people, but movie sets filled with actors?”

  I smile, although I have no idea what she’s talking about. My definition of “creepy” runs more along the lines of falling down in disrepair, and people like Shawn who are, unfortunately, real.

  “Del Monte used to have a tomato-processing plant out here,” she continues. “That’s where a lot of people used to work.”

  “‘Used to,’” I repeat. “So what do they do now?”

  “Grow grapes and hops. Make expensive beer. Vineyards, wineries, and breweries are all the rage around here now. Although you wouldn’t catch me drinking that micro-swill. Here’s one rule I do follow—anything that goes in a pie should never go in a beer.”

  “So no Oktoberfest pumpkin ale for you?” I tease her.

  She releases one hand from the steering wheel and pretends to stick a finger down her throat and gag. I can’t help it: I laugh.

  “We do still make fantastic pizza,” she tells me. “Ever eat at Pie in the Sky?”

  “Never heard of it,” I tell her.

  She nods like some venerable Buddha about to impart wisdom. “It’s been here longer than me. One of the few things that hasn’t been gentrified in Alder.”

  Her little ranch house is at the end of a long, unpaved driveway, and as we bump up to it, a mournful-looking hound dog unfolds itself from where it’s been sleeping on the front porch. The dog takes a few stiff steps toward the approaching truck, then tilts its head back and bays at the treetops. Betts grimaces.

  “That’s Posey,” she informs me, shifting the truck into park. “She’s even older than me. In dog years.” As we climb out, Posey howls again.

  “Shut up, you big lunkhead!” Betts orders. She walks over to Posey and scratches her between the eyes, massaging the loose skin on the dog’s skull until she whops her tail on the ground in delight and gazes at Betts in adoration. “Poor thing is deaf as a post,” Betts informs me. “But she’s gentle. C’mon in.”

  The living room looks like thieves ransacked the place and didn’t find what they were looking for. It smells like just-baked bread and some sort of soup. There are piles of books and newspapers everywhere. The only “clear” space is the far end of the couch, which sags in a shape roughly approximating Betts’s.

  “You want something to eat?” she asks, striding into the kitchen. I follow close behind. “I made Brunswick stew.” She lifts the lid off a cast-iron pot, releasing a cloud of steam. I peer inside. Shredded chicken swims thickly in a tomatoey broth alongside mystery vegetables. I see corn. Something green. My stomach roars in appreciation.

  “I’ve never had Brunswick stew,” I tell her.

  Which Betts takes as a yes. She instructs me to fill water glasses and dig silverware from her cluttered drawers as she ladles bowls full. She also slides a platter of biscuits on the table alongside a brick of butter.

  The biscuits are warm; the stew scalding. I start with the biscuits.

  “D’you make these yourself?” I ask, smearing a healthy portion of butter on one half. Betts nods.

  “You betcha. I’m all about that slow food life.”

  “‘Slow food’?”

  “As opposed to fast,” she explains. “Cooked from scratch. Nothing instant or prepackaged. No microwave in this kitchen.”

  I fill my mouth with butter-soaked carbs. If a bear hug was a taste, this would be it.

  “I don’t think we could survive without a microwave,” I tell her.

  “Your mother is a busy woman. I can’t imagine doing all she does without a few shortcuts.”

  I blow on a spoonful of stew and sip. “Okay that’s incredible.”

  Betts can’t hide a smug smile. “I make it the way my grandmother did, and she was from the Tidewater,” Betts says. “Okra, to thicken it. Lima beans. Chicken. Grams sometimes made it w
ith rabbit. But most Virginians generally use chicken. I can’t believe you’ve never had it, coming from the South.”

  “Living in the South and coming from the South are two different things,” I tell her.

  Betts purses her lips and nods grudgingly, as if she’s surprised but willing to give me credit for at least one intelligent insight.

  “Mami doesn’t cook Southern. We mostly eat the foods she grew up with.”

  “Like tacos and burritos?” Betts asks.

  I practically spit out my stew. “Oh my god. No! What’s with everyone thinking all people who speak Spanish are Mexican?” I can’t tell if Betts is teasing me or is truly that uninformed.

  “They aren’t?” she asks. I see a sly smile. She’s egging me on.

  “Mami’s from Puerto Rico. Think islands. Mangoes and coconuts and plantains. Guava. We don’t do all those chiles and tortillas.”

  Betts laughs. She gets up from the table and refills my bowl without asking. I let her.

  “But your dad was a Southern boy, right?”

  “Daddy was from North Carolina.”

  Betts places the full bowl before me. She plucks another biscuit from the platter and rips it in half for herself. “How did the two of them meet?” she asks.

  “Daddy was visiting a friend, my ‘uncle’ Dickie, who was stationed at Fort Buchanan in San Juan. One night they went to a house party thrown by my Tía Blanca, who was friends with Dickie. Mami was there and according to everyone who retells the story, it was like lightning striking. For both of them.”

  “Love at first sight?” Betts teases.

  “You laugh, but it’s true! Dickie says he barely saw my dad for the rest of his leave—he was totally whipped. A few months later Mami got herself a job at a hospital in Norfolk. They married within a year, and I was born nine and a half months after that. And yes, I counted.”

  Betts gathers our now-empty bowls and places them on the floor, and Posey licks them clean. I can tell Betts is interested in my little family tale, and I have to admit: it slipped right out. Maybe too easily. As I scoop up the knives and spoons and empty glasses, it occurs to me that this is the second time in the past twenty-four hours that someone I scarcely know has wheedled information out of me.

  “I’ll wash these later,” she says as we dump everything in the sink. “Ready to get to work?”

  Posey and I follow her out back. Separate from the house is this two-story, not-quite-a-shed, not-quite-a-barn building. There’s a round window up high, tucked between the sharp angles of the roof. The front-facing wall is a single sliding door, which Betts hauls open.

  Light from the gable window streams in, and there’s a familiar, church-like hush. Unlike the messy living room, everything is orderly. Tools gleam. Wood is stacked. The floor is swept clean. Instead of warm bread, it smells like fresh lumber and paint.

  Even Posey has a place. She eases herself onto a pad in one corner with a little groan, her old doggie bones collapsing around her like sticks.

  “This is cool,” I say. Betts watches me out of the corner of one eye as I stroll the perimeter, checking out all the dangerous-looking machines she’s got stored in here. “Is it weird that I like the smell of paint?”

  She’s flipped on overhead lights to reveal a long table heaped with boards cut into rectangles and squares. “Nothing weird about it,” she assures me. “Paint is the smell I always associate with something clean and fresh. It’s right up there with New Car Smell.”

  “I once saw a can of that! Seriously, it was called New Car Smell.”

  “I should get some for the truck. C’mon over here.”

  As she buckles a brown leather belt around me (it has pockets for nails and loops for tools), Betts explains what we’re doing. She’s already measured and cut the pieces for four window boxes that are destined for a Habitat house in downtown Clayton. All we have to do is assemble and paint them.

  “You ever work with a drill before?” she asks as she shakes out a long extension cord and plugs it into the wall. She drapes a pair of plastic safety glasses around her neck and hands me a pair as well.

  “Nope,” I tell her.

  She plugs the other end of the cord into a gunmetal-gray tool that looks like a hair dryer but has a swirly bit at one end. “Get ready for some big fun then,” she says. “Glasses on. Safety rules are not suggestions.”

  Betts has marked each board with a little circle wherever we need to drill a hole—the “weep” holes at the bases where water will drain and the screw holes where we’ll attach the pieces—like a kit all set up for me. She demonstrates, applying gentle pressure until the bit pops through on the other side, then hands me the drill.

  There’s something hugely satisfying about boring into wood. Not to mention gluing. Twisting screws and patching their holes. I don’t know how much time passes; it could be fifteen minutes, it could be two hours. But before I’ve even considered checking my watch, we’ve got . . . window boxes.

  I don’t know why that surprises me.

  As Betts sets us up for the last part—sanding and painting—she asks, “So whatever happened to Uncle Dickie?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “He just went on being Dickie.”

  “But he’s not your father’s real brother?”

  “No, he’s a friend. Right after Daddy died we saw a lot of him because they were both stationed out of Norfolk. But not so much now. I think Mami hears from him at Christmas. He got married. They have kids.”

  “What about your dad’s people in North Carolina?”

  I feel a tightening in my chest. As if my ribs are guitar strings and someone just tuned me too high.

  “It’s been a long time since we saw any of them,” I tell her. I hear how casually I say this awful thing.

  Betts hands me this little brick of wood wrapped in fine-grit sandpaper. She shows me how to sand, in a circular motion, to make everything nice and smooth.

  She doesn’t say anything about the Crawfords. It occurs to me that maybe my awful thing might not be so unfamiliar to her.

  “When Daddy was alive,” I continue, even though she hasn’t asked, “we’d spend Christmas in Puerto Rico with Mami’s family and do the Crawfords in the spring. They have this big family reunion every year. They live just outside Gastonia. They raise hogs.”

  “Hogs?” That gets her attention.

  “Yup. That’s what Grandma and Grandpa Crawford did. Started up a hog farm, passed it along to their kids. Except my dad didn’t want anything to do with hogs. So he joined the Marines instead.”

  Betts stops sanding for a moment. “I was on a hog farm once,” she tells me. “On a hot summer day. The stench damn near killed me.”

  “Well, being a Marine killed him.”

  I’m being glib. I don’t think I’m actually as bitter as that came out. Or as upset. I’m not at all upset with Betts. As a matter of fact, I’m surprised by how not-upsetting this whole window boxes thing has been. It’s been fun.

  But she looks stricken. “I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “No, it’s not fine. I really am very sorry.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “It’s okay to say how you feel, Isabella. It’s okay to—”

  “Jesus!” I throw the little sandpaper brick across the room. It lands near Posey. She raises her head like a drunk who’s been woken from a stupor, blinks curiously at the brick, then flops back onto her pad. “If I was mad, I’d say it!”

  Betts arches her eyebrows in surprise but doesn’t comment. She returns to her sanding. I retrieve my brick and do the same. After a few minutes of this, the only sound the soft sushing of gritty paper on wood, I surrender. I slam the brick down on the table.

  “You know what? You’re right. I’m mad. But not at you.”

  Betts keeps
sanding. “Then who?”

  “Mami,” I tell her.

  She looks surprised and annoyed at the same time. As if we’d been talking politics and she just learned I’d voted for the other guy.

  “She hasn’t taken us to North Carolina to see the family since Daddy died. The last time was his funeral. Jack has never met them!”

  Betts lays her brick down. “Have any of them come to see you?”

  “They never came to see us. Even when Daddy was alive. Crawfords generally don’t stray far from Queen’s Mountain. My father was the exception.”

  Betts pulls out a couple of soft rags and hands me one. We carefully wipe all traces of wood dust from the boxes.

  “Staying in touch cuts both ways,” she says. “And it’s not all that hard. What with all this social media hoo-ha.”

  “I know,” I tell her. “Listen, it’s not a total blackout. We do Christmas cards with some of them. And once in a while Mami calls Aunt Carrie. She’s married to Daddy’s brother, DeWitt. They have a bunch of boys, all a lot older than me except for one. My cousin Mark.” I pause. I’m this close to telling Betts my nickname for him: Devil Spawn.

  But in truth, I don’t want to get started on Mark. There’s too much to say. Back when we were younger we followed each other on Facebook, but one year he just disappeared. Deactivated.

  Which sort of describes my relationship with all the Crawfords.

  “I just don’t get why Mami doesn’t take us to see the only family we have within driving distance! I Google-mapped Queen’s Mountain the other day? It’s only five hours from here.”

  Betts pops a can of white primer and mixes it in a slow circle. She fixes her concentration on the flat wooden stirrer going round and round, as if she’s watching clothes revolve in a front-loading dryer.

  “You did that just the other day?” she asks.

  “After that meeting when you were all talking about sweat equity,” I tell her.

  Betts nods. I don’t have to explain. She gets it.