A Heart Divided

by Cherie Bennett

pissant Joe-dirt white-trash redneck, right?

  My word don’t mean diddly

  Cuz you know that’s just how they do.

  PETE PRIDE (Automotive Design Engineer)

  Mr. Pride is forty-five. He is of medium height; his brown hair is thinning. He has kind eyes. This interview takes place a month after the shooting. We’re in the family room. He’s sitting in his favorite chair, a Barcalounger, with the leg rest raised. He grew up in New Jersey and sounds like it. He’s my father.

  I REMEMBER

  Your mom and I

  had gone to see a French film

  in Nashville that night.

  Things were kind of crazy at home.

  I remember

  you were having a really rough time, Kit-Kat.

  Someone had written a vile play

  and stuck your name on it

  and people believed you had written it.

  I remember you got

  death threats.

  I wanted to—

  I felt like I should—

  A dad is supposed

  to protect his daughter.

  Daughters.

  So your mom and I talked and

  we decided you could go home

  to Englecliff to finish your junior year.

  So that was the plan.

  I remember

  your little sister—

  A friend’s mom was shlepping these kids

  to the football game, and

  I remember

  before Porsche left we were talking—

  She didn’t want you to leave

  because she’d miss you too much.

  But she didn’t want you to stay

  and suffer either, which is just so …

  (he stops and rubs his face)

  Thank God I forgot to turn off my cell in the movie.

  You called and I walked outside and

  you told me that Portia had been—

  That something terrible had happened

  at the football game.

  And I had to tell your mom

  and we had to get to the hospital.

  I don’t remember driving.

  I mean I must have,

  but I don’t remember.

  You and Jack

  were in the waiting room.

  Someone came out to tell us—

  to say Portia was in surgery and

  it was serious and

  the bullet had shattered.

  I remember

  the hospital—

  They were really good about

  keeping the media and everyone away from us,

  but they let in Sally Redford.

  She came with the best of intentions—

  that was clear to me—

  to ask what she could do to help.

  And your mom got right in her face

  and said—

  I remember this exactly—

  she said: “Your town did this. Your town.”

  (he stops, looks off, sighs)

  The night before,

  Porsche had a nightmare.

  She asked me to check her room for monsters.

  She still did that sometimes.

  So I checked—you know—

  under her bed and in her closet

  just like when she was a little girl.

  And I remember

  sitting at the hospital thinking that

  she’d never again believe that her daddy

  could keep away the monsters.

  DR. KARLA EPSTEIN (Trauma Surgeon)

  Dr. Epstein is a trauma surgeon at Williamson-Redford County Medical Center. We meet in the noisy hospital cafeteria. Dr. Epstein is forty-eight, with a full face free of cosmetics, surrounded by curly dark hair tied at the nape of her neck. She wears hospital scrubs, drinks black coffee, and speaks matter-of-factly. Her beeper goes off many times during our talk.

  WOUND BALLISTICS

  I specialize in wound ballistics,

  which is the science

  of the motion of projectiles.

  Your sister was struck by a nine-millimeter round

  fired from a Smith & Wesson

  standard-issue law-enforcement sidearm.

  How badly you are hurt by a gunshot

  has to do with the mathematics

  of wound ballistics.

  Um. For example.

  Low-velocity bullets,

  like those from handguns,

  do their damage by

  crushing tissue.

  Your sister was shot at a distance of approximately fifty yards—

  we’re able to ascertain that by

  examination of the scene, the bullet’s trajectory,

  and the wound itself—

  which allowed much of the kinetic

  energy of the bullet to dissipate.

  She was fortunate

  in that her body was

  turned toward the boy next to her

  (she illustrates by sliding sideways in the chair)

  at the moment of the bullet’s impact,

  so the bullet entered this way,

  (she uses her right hand to gesture to her right side, then swivels back to me)

  which is what probably saved her life.

  When the round fragmented

  inside her body,

  a fairly large piece

  lodged against upper lumbar disc L-3,

  causing it to bruise,

  putting pressure on her spinal cord,

  and resulting in significant

  spinal cord injury.

  I was able to fix the internal damage

  from the passage of the bullet.

  But where the fragment had lodged,

  cutting could do more harm than good.

  So that’s why I didn’t remove it.

  Which is why we didn’t know

  if your sister would ever walk again.

  PORTIA PRIDE (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.

  THIS MAGIC 8 BALL

  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?

  JACK REDFORD (R.H.S. Student)

  (as before)

  THE FAMILY BIBLE

  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.
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  NIKKI ROBERTS (R.H.S. Student)

  (As before)

  AS IF GOD WAS HOLDING HIS BREATH

  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)