Green Heart

by Alice Hoffman

  Oh, she said. How beautiful.

  I thought about how jealous I’d been of her. She’d been one of the prettiest girls in school. By now we could hear music from the forgetting shack. We could smell the billows of smoke.

  I’m late, Heather said.

  You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.

  It was as polite as I had ever been, and this was as good an invitation as I could manage, but Heather just laughed. She was unsteady on her feet. When you looked closely, you could see that her features were fine. So close to her, I could smell liquor and dirt.

  Don’t you hear? Heather insisted when I let her know she could stay. They’re waiting for me.

  Heather ran off with the blue dress, and there was nothing I could do about it. She thought they were waiting for her. She thought she could dance her sorrow away. She must have believed she could forget that her mother and father had also gone into the city that day.

  I went inside to mash the worms into a paste. My hands were even uglier now from digging, from cleaning the old woman’s floors, from chopping wood. I hardly recognized them as my own. I wondered if I was only a black cloud, a spray of mist, a stone, and nothing more. I studied the black roses ringed with thorns that I had inked onto my skin. I was Ash, and these were my hands.

  But when I fed the worm paste to the baby sparrows they didn’t care if my hands were ugly, that my burning eyes could hardly see, that my long, black hair was hacked off, lying in a pile in a corner. When I patted the dogs, they didn’t care if my boots were old, if there was dirt under my nails, if there were thorns in my clothes, sharp as knives. When I swept my neighbor’s floor, she had not cared that I was covered with ashes.

  Every day I baked two loaves of bread, one to share with the dogs and the sparrows, one for my neighbor on the other side of the hill. My days were divided into tasks. I collected chestnuts in the morning, baked at noon, and late in the day I visited the piles of remembrance stones in the woods, white and black and silver. In the evenings, I took out my pins. I was covered now, my feet were covered with thorns, my legs with black vines, my arms with dozens of black roses. There were two ravens on my shoulders, and after propping up a mirror, I’d managed a bat at the nape of my neck. Every now and then I found room for a black leaf or an inky bud about to bloom.

  As I worked, the sparrows nested in the pile of hair in the corner. A sparrow wasn’t a sparrow unless it could rise into the sky, even I knew that. Soon enough the fledglings’ singed feathers had fallen out, but I didn’t guess how strong their wings had become until they began to flit around the house. I didn’t know what they had been busy weaving in their nest until they presented me with their gift — a fishing net made from the strands of my own black hair.

  I went down to the river that very night, as far away from the forgetting shack as I could. The moon was full. Streams of silver light reminded me of my sister. She would often dance while the rest of us worked in the garden. I used to tease her for being lazy. I used to call her names and tell her she’d never amount to anything if she didn’t pay attention and work harder. Now I understood that she was working hard at dancing, at laughing, at being moonlight. She wasn’t like poor Heather, forgetting with every step she took. My sister was learning the world as she danced. She was understanding the earth, the air, the fire of her own blood, the falling rain that made her laugh and dance even more wildly.

  My vision was so bad, it didn’t matter if I went fishing in the day or the night. In fact, my weak eyes preferred the moonlight. Night was better, colder, lonelier. But I was hardly alone. The dogs had followed me and the sparrows had fluttered behind, enjoying their first flight beyond the confines of the house.

  Perhaps the fish would be more likely to drift into my net while they slept. I dipped my fingers into the cool water. I could feel the currents and the dreams of the fish, fluid and silver, like my own dreams had once been. I had tried to go fishing several times and had always failed at the task. But this time was different. It was the net that must have called the fish, dark and floating in the water, a broken part of me.

  I caught three fish and placed them in a bucket of river water. I wrung out the black net and folded it into my pocket. The dogs followed me, the sparrows flew above me, the shining fish swam in the bucket I carried home. I cooked one fish for the dogs and the sparrows and me, another for my neighbor, and the third I kept in the bucket on my porch, where it swam in river water like a fallen star.

  That night I dreamed of Aurora, but she didn’t recognize me.

  Where is my sister? she called out. What have you done with her?

  Aurora still didn’t know me by my new name. She backed away from the thorns and the nails and the black roses. I tried to run to her, but the vines around my legs pulled me down. I tried to reach out to her, but the thorns on my skin pinned me to the wall.

  I heard someone crying, and when I awoke the cry was in my own mouth.

  I went to the window to see if there were any stars. Out on the porch, something was studying the bucket where the last fish swam. It was a hawk that perched on the rim of the bucket, ash-covered, starving. The hawk hadn’t been able to hunt because his beak had been burned. I wondered how long it had been since he’d eaten. We had always chased hawks from our gardens; we called them thieves and didn’t like the way they scooped up the quiet rabbits and preyed upon the field mice who burrowed near the fences.

  Now, I didn’t drive the hawk away. I let him make a dinner of the third fish, down to the eyes and the bones. I wished the hawk well, certain he’d soon be on his way.

  But in the morning, the hawk was still on the porch, cleaning his feathers. I dressed and went outside. Without my leather jacket, I might have been afraid of his sharp talons, but I reached out my arm and the hawk hopped on. I treated his beak with lavender oil, which my mother always said could heal nearly any burn. I knew, after all, that a hawk is not a hawk unless he can hunt.

  But for now he seemed happy to perch on my shoulder. So close to me, he felt like the wind, like the highest reaches of the sky. When we went into the woods to where the old trees grew, the hawk shook so many chestnuts from the trees, I could hardly carry them all home.

  That day I had enough to bake six loaves of bread. One for me and the sparrows, one for the dogs, one for my neighbor, one for the hawk, one for Heather Jones, who had taken to sleeping under the old bridge where the weeds were as tall as trees.

  I realized that there was one extra loaf of bread. I wondered why I had baked the sixth loaf, not knowing the reason until I heard footsteps out in my yard. They were quiet steps, not the looters, but the steps of someone who traveled alone.

  I put on my leather jacket, my nail-rimmed boots, my thorn-edged leggings, then went to open the door. He was so very still I might have easily slammed the door shut without ever knowing he was there. I might have thought it was only the night outside, only the stars and the moon. But I could feel him out there, even though he was dressed all in black, his hood drawn low so he could hide in the ashes and no one could see his face. Just a profile. Just quiet.

  Some other girl might have slammed the door and put the bolt on. She might have shouted for the stranger to go away or set the dogs on him. But I wasn’t just any girl. I was the one with a talent for gauging truth from dishonesty, copper from gold, green tea from black, a friend from an enemy.

  Though I could barely see his face, I knew this boy was a diamond. I could tell who he was when I touched his arm. I could tell from his boots coated with mud, from his black-hooded coat. I understood how alone he was and how tired he was of running. He seemed unable to speak, but the first thing he showed me was a small portrait of his mother that he’d painted. He carried the painting close to his heart.

  The boy motioned that he’d been in the city, that he and his mother had been separated when the fire began. He had already crossed the river and walked a hundred miles to look for her. Now he was too exhausted to go on. His backpack w
as empty except for a box of paints and a sheaf of white paper, burned at the edges.

  Another girl might have been afraid of a boy who arrived with so little, who refused to show his face, who could not speak a word. But I had my armor, I had my thorns, I’d already lost everyone I’d ever loved. I offered the boy the sixth loaf of bread. I felt I had baked it for him even before he had walked into the yard. I could tell he was starving from the way he ate, huddled against the wind, his back to me. He wasn’t about to let down his guard. He smelled like smoke and city streets.

  I wasn’t sure whether this boy had lost the ability to speak or whether he had simply chosen silence. Perhaps he spoke another language entirely. One I couldn’t be expected to understand. That was fine with me. In silence there was truth.

  I could tell who my guest was without one syllable. A boy who ran from the fire. A boy in search of his mother. When Ghost curled up at the boy’s feet, when Onion didn’t growl, when the sparrows ate crumbs from his hands, when the hawk perched on his shoulder, I knew I could let him stay.

  I told him he could sleep in the barn. I brought out blankets and pillows. He could drink the water from the well. He could eat from the tins of food I had traded for in exchange for silver and gold and share the soup made from asparagus. He could look at the stars with me whenever he liked.

  When I told him my name was Ash, he nodded as though the word was a gift. Because he couldn’t tell me his name in return, I called him Diamond. He seemed to like that name as well. Something inside him shone through the dark even though he kept his face hidden, hood pulled down. When he’d gone off across the yard to sleep, I thought perhaps I dreamed him up. A hallucination made out of loneliness, black ink, sorrow. Perhaps he’d never existed in the first place. But even when he’d gone and was already sleeping, I could see something bright everywhere he’d walked. It was almost like having moonlight again.

  Rain

  This is what I lost

  Diamond didn’t speak and I could hardly see; maybe that was why we got along so well. I, who preferred stones to flesh and blood, who kept away from people, could not spend enough time with Diamond. I knew him in a way I couldn’t explain, the way I knew silver from gold, the way I knew the weather. When we listened to the wind together, we understood exactly what it was saying. When we sat close in the dark, we could feel each other’s broken hearts beating.

  Together, we stopped being hungry. We ate the bread I baked. Diamond fixed a soup out of beans and rice, simple but filling and tasty. Once, I asked him if his mother had taught him the recipe. Although he didn’t speak, I could tell that the answer was yes. He took out the little painting of her, so carefully rendered in watercolors, and he didn’t need to say more.

  I knew he was thinking of her every time I heard him hum a certain tune, a lullaby she’d surely taught him. I hoped for his sake that his mother had managed to find safety when the fire began.

  There was only one thing we didn’t agree on. Diamond believed that the garden would grow. The topsoil was ashy and gray, and I told him not to bother with it, but Diamond wouldn’t listen. All winter long, he carted the bad soil away. He spent hours picking out stones, which I brought to the piles in the darkest woods. Black for my mother, silver for my father, white as snow for my sister, a pile of moonstones.

  You shouldn’t even try, I told him each time he set to work. Nothing will ever grow here.

  I showed him the looters’ tracks, the broken fences, the pumpkin seeds left by the birds, the rock-hard earth. He just kept at it. I could hear him raking at night, as if he could work away his grief. For some reason I slept easier when I heard him. The sound of his working became as familiar as the wind, as rainfall, as the beat of a heart.

  I still looked for Heather Jones. I worried that she would disappear, but it was easy enough to find her. During the daylight hours she was usually asleep under the bridge, her skin mottled from too much gin, the braids in her hair undone, her clothes dank from rainwater. I left pots of Diamond’s stew for her, along with bottles of clean well-water. I knew Heather had been drinking from the ashy shallows of the river. She’d been eating mud just to fill her stomach.

  Heather laughed sometimes when she recognized me, but it was the kind of laughter that sounded like a cry.

  I could tell that she’d danced too close to the fire at the forgetting shack because she’d singed the hem of my mother’s blue dress. She didn’t seem to notice, and I didn’t mention it. She was in a haze, trapped in the foggy ground between forgetting and living.

  Still, we understood each other. If the world had been a different place, we might have been friends.

  One day, Heather stared at me and grinned. She almost looked pretty. Something’s changed, she declared. You don’t look the same.

  It was still me, my black tattoos, my leather jacket, my thorns, but Heather was right. I could feel a change inside, one I didn’t yet comprehend.

  When I went to my neighbor’s to take her fresh water and fish I had caught with my net, I asked if she thought I seemed the same, the girl with ink on her skin.

  The old woman didn’t say a word. Instead, she led me to the staircase, where there were the ashy portraits I’d cleaned. Now my neighbor told me to try to guess which one she was. I studied the portraits carefully, but I had no idea which she might be. They looked familiar, but one girl was too pretty, one was too sad, one was too silly to be my neighbor.

  Guess, my neighbor insisted. Go on. Which one do you think I am?

  Still, I could not tell.

  Look closely, she said, but even when I did, I had no idea.

  At last I gave up. Who are you? I asked.

  Each and every one, my neighbor told me. She shook her head as though I were a child rather than a girl about to turn sixteen. Did you think nothing ever changed?

  Was it Diamond’s arrival that had made the difference? Did it make it easier to listen to the wind with someone beside me? Wasn’t the wind just as cold and harsh? Why would I feel any less abandoned? Wasn’t I still alone in my thoughts? I already had the company of Onion and Ghost and the sparrows and the hawk and my neighbor on the other side of the hill. What did I need with this boy, who ate more than his fair share and filled the air with clouds of dust as he worked in the garden?

  It was a puzzle I couldn’t solve. After a while I stopped trying. Diamond was there, like the white dog and the sparrows and the hawk. A guest in my house, nothing more. He was there, like the wind and the stars up above.

  I didn’t understand for the longest time why I let Diamond stay. I watched him painting with the few watercolors he had left, and I felt as if something inside me was part of that paint, that white, singed paper, that paintbrush.

  I didn’t understand until one day when I went into the woods to search for chestnuts. That was when I realized I was singing. My voice sounded thin and unfamiliar to my own ears.

  The next afternoon, I was wringing out the wash to hang on the line when I realized I was dancing. My feet seemed too graceful to belong to me, even in my father’s old boots.

  The following evening, while I was polishing the last of the silver to trade, I happened to gaze into the platter my mother always used on holidays. Even I could see there was a smile on my face.

  Something had indeed happened to me. This was not the way I ordinarily behaved. I was not someone who danced and sang and smiled at her own reflection. I was Ash, the girl with thorns on her clothes, the one who preferred stones to people.

  When I next went to my neighbor’s house I took along a pot of the stew Diamond had made. The old woman uncovered the pot and breathed in the scent of beans and rice. Then she told me to sit down.

  She ladled out a bowlful for herself and one for me.

  Did the boy cook this? she asked after she took one bite.

  When I nodded, she looked at me closely, considering my face. The old woman had boiled a cup of tea for me, brewed from the stinging nettles that grew outside her door. I
would have guessed the tea would be too bitter to drink, but the taste was perfect. It quenched my thirst completely.

  You say your name is Ash, the old woman said thoughtfully.

  I say it because it’s true, I told her.

  I had a tickle in the back of my throat. The feeling that some people get when they tell a lie. Quickly, I drank more nettle tea.

  Is it?

  My neighbor laughed then, as if she knew something I didn’t know. She had already told me that everything changes. Now she wanted me to know more. She brought out a magnifying glass. When I peered through the glass I could see that one of the black vines tattooed around my ankle had turned green. It was the green of apple trees when they were first in leaf.

  In my mouth, there was the taste of apples, sweet and sharp.

  What do you think has happened? the old woman asked me. Think hard.

  It’s a trick of the ink, I told her. Nothing more.

  All the same, I walked home slowly. I tried to figure out the puzzle I had become. I carefully tied the scarf of thorns around my neck. I kicked at the dust with my heavy, nail-studded boots. I didn’t sing or dance or smile. I spat on the ground. I was Ash, after all.

  But the taste of apples stayed with me.

  In the evenings, after supper, Diamond sat at the table and painted. He hummed while he worked, and the sound made me think of what I had lost. I wished my sister could have danced to the song Diamond’s mother had taught him. I wished when I closed my eyes, she was still with me.

  I had no idea that Diamond was working on a portrait of me until he gave me the painting. At first I didn’t know who it was. The girl I saw didn’t look like me. There were no thorns, no nails, no bats, no vines, no black roses.