My Heart and Other Black Holes

by Jasmine Warga

  Depression is like a heaviness that you can’t ever escape. It crushes down on you, making even the smallest things like tying your shoes or chewing on toast seem like a twenty-mile hike uphill. Depression is a part of you; it’s in your bones and your blood. If I know anything about it, this is what I know: It’s impossible to escape.

  And I’m pretty sure I know a lot more than any of my classmates. Listening to them talk about it makes my skin crawl. So for me, English class is like watching a group of blind squirrels try to find nuts. Mrs. Marks will say, “Let’s take a look at this line. Here the poet John Berryman says, ‘Life, friends, is boring.’ What do you think he meant by that?” My classmates all clamor, shouting out ridiculous things like “He didn’t have anyone to hang out with on Saturday night” or “Football season was over so there was nothing good to watch on TV.”

  It takes all the restraint in the world not to stand up and scream, “He was fucking sad. That’s it. That’s the point. He knows that life is never going to get any different for him. That there’s no fixing him. It’s always going to be the same monotonous depressing bullshit. Boring, sad, boring, sad. He just wants it to be over.” But that would require me to talk in class, which would violate one of my personal rules. I don’t participate. Why? Because I’m fucking sad. Mrs. Marks sometimes gives me this look, like she knows that I know what John Berryman meant, but she never calls on me.

  At least in physics my classmates aren’t desperately trying to make uncomplicated shit complicated. Nope, in physics, we’re all trying to make complicated things uncomplicated.

  Mr. Scott writes an equation on the board. We’re learning about projectile motion. We’re studying the properties of an object in motion that’s under the influence of gravity only. There are all these variables like the angle the object is launched from and the initial velocity.

  My eyes gloss over. Too many numbers. I start to daydream about gravity. Sometimes I wonder if gravity is the problem. It keeps us all grounded, gives us this false sense of stability when really we’re all just bodies in motion. Gravity keeps us from floating up into space, it keeps us from involuntarily crashing into one another. It saves the human race from being a big hot mess.

  I wish gravity would go away and just let us all be a big mess.

  Unfortunately, that’s not the answer to the question Mr. Scott is asking.

  “Aysel, can you tell me the highest point the football reaches?”

  I didn’t even know the object in the problem was a football. I give him a blank stare.

  “Aysel,” Mr. Scott prompts. He pronounces my name in the accent he probably cultivated about a billion years ago when he took high school Spanish. The problem is my name isn’t a Latina one. It’s Turkish. You’d think Mr. Scott would’ve connected the dots by now.

  “Uh,” I mumble.

  “‘Uh’? Miss Seran, ‘uh’ is not a numerical answer.” Mr. Scott leans back against the whiteboard.

  This makes the class laugh. Mr. Scott clears his throat, but it’s no use. He’s already lost control. I can hear their whispered insults, but it all sounds like a mumble of hisses to me. And no matter what it is that they’re saying, it can’t be worse than what I imagine at night when I lie in bed wondering if it’s physically possible to claw away your own genetics.

  The bell rings. Mr. Scott fumbles to assign us homework. Most everyone in the class leaves before they can write down the assignment. I stay seated and carefully jot it in my notebook. Mr. Scott gives me a sad smile and I wonder if he’s going to miss me when I’m gone.

  Once the classroom is empty, I get up and leave. I walk down the hallway, my eyes glued to the dirty tiled floor. I force myself to pick up speed. The only thing worse than going to gym is being late for gym—I’m not really in the mood to run extra laps. Coach Summers is always talking about how running will strengthen our hearts so we can live longer. No extra laps for me, please.

  This is my least favorite part of the day. And it’s not because I’m anticipating the horrors of sit-ups and dodge ball. No, I hate this part of the day because I have to pass by the memorial—the monolithic testament to my father’s crime.

  I always try not to look, telling myself to keep my head down and turn the corner. But I can’t help it, I glance up and take it in. I feel my breath catch in my throat. There it is, the gleaming silver plaque, dedicated in memory of Timothy Jackson, former state champion in the 400-meter dash. The plaque is the size of a large serving dish, and it hangs on the wall right outside the gym, reminding everyone that Timothy Jackson was going to be the first person from Langston to make the Olympics, but he died tragically at the age of eighteen.

  What the plaque doesn’t say, but might as well, is that my father is the reason Timothy Jackson is dead. Yup, my dad is the stellar individual who slashed the Olympic dreams of the whole town. Every year on Timothy’s birthday, the news runs a special just to make sure no one forgets about him. It’s been three years since Timothy died, and believe me, no one is close to forgetting about it. Especially now, since Brian Jackson is about to qualify for the 400-meter dash. Yes, the exact same event. Brian’s trying to fulfill the dream his older brother was never able to attain—the local media can’t get enough of the story, my school’s hallways can’t get enough of the story.

  I force my feet to move past the plaque and I walk into the gym, curling my hands into fists at my sides. As the sun glints off the polished wooden court, I wonder what my classmates are going to do with all their hate and anger and fear once they don’t have me here anymore.

  I can’t wait until they don’t have me here anymore.

  WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13

  25 days left

  When I get home from school, I see Mom seated at the kitchen table. Our kitchen is narrow and tiny, and if I were to spread my arms out, I could touch each mint-colored side wall with the palms of my hands. Mom’s thumbing through bills, her neck craned in concentration, but when she hears the door, she turns to look at me. And there it is. The same facial expression she’s greeted me with for the past three years. It’s a cross between a wince and a frown.

  Until three years ago, I used to spend the weeks with my dad and the weekends with my mom. But then after my dad got locked away, Mom had no choice but to let me live with her and Steve.

  Before my father’s crime, my mother used to look at me with a combination of love and longing, like I was a mirror into her past life, a bittersweet memory. Her dark almond eyes would glaze over, she’d tilt her head forward and her straight light brown hair would fall over her thin shoulders, and she’d squeeze my hands tightly, like if she gripped me hard enough, I’d transport her back in time. It was almost like I was her permanent bruise. Not a painful bruise, but a tender one made of melancholy memories.

  I didn’t mind that. I secretly relished being the vehicle to her past life, her connection to Turkey and my father and her youth.

  That all changed three years ago. Everything did. Now I live with her, Steve, Georgia, and Mike. She’d never say it, but I am an intruder in their happy home. An infestation. I’ve gone from being a bruise to an open festering wound. Evolution isn’t always a positive thing.

  “You’re home early,” she finally says. Every day, her accent becomes less and less Turkish and more and more southern. Actually, “southern” would be the wrong word for it. People in Kentucky don’t have southern accents. They have bluegrass accents. Their accents are distinctly less charming than southern accents. Think less Gone with the Wind, more Colonel Sanders. I’ve worked hard not to develop one. But now I wonder—if I’m never going to turn seventeen—what was even the point of mastering how to speak normally.

  “I don’t have to work today.” I don’t mention that I was told not to come in because I would make the customers “uncomfortable.” Mr. Palmer is nothing if not the king of euphemisms. He and my mother would probably get along splendidly, considering my mother refers to what happened with my father as “that unfortunate inc
ident.” Or used to refer to it that way. Recently, she’s been pretending like it never happened. As if simply not talking about something makes it disappear. Newsflash: It doesn’t.

  Georgia marches into the kitchen. She drops her pom-poms on the scratched wooden table. Her honey-colored hair is slicked back in a high ponytail. “You’re going to be at the game tonight, right?”

  She’s asking Mom, not me. I’m invisible.

  Georgia is my half sister. We have the same mom, but you’d never know it from looking at us.

  “I’m going to try my best to make it,” Mom says. Translation: Hell will freeze over before Mom isn’t at the game. Georgia’s only a freshman, but she’s on the varsity cheer squad. Apparently, that’s a big deal. Though it seems to me that unlike other sports where JV and varsity are determined by skill level, in cheerleading, JV and varsity are determined by cup size.

  “It’s the play-offs,” Georgia reminds her. Her tone is calm, the tone of someone who is used to being in control, used to getting what she wants. Georgia’s good at that. She’s always been a schemer. When everything went down with my dad, some of the heat fell on her too, but she somehow managed to use it to her advantage.

  I remember one day, a few months after my dad was officially convicted and locked away, I saw Georgia talking with a boy in the hallway. I hid around the corner so I could spy on them. I was ready to intervene if she needed my help, but the thing about Georgia is she’s never needed my help.

  “Yeah,” Georgia answered the boy’s question, which I’d been too late to overhear. She nervously fingered the shell necklace I’d given her for her birthday two years ago. “Aysel’s my sister, but he’s not my dad.”

  “But did you ever meet him?” the boy asked Georgia, his voice eager. I stared at the back of his head, tufts of light corn-colored hair, and guessed it was probably Todd Robertson, a boy from my grade who everyone thought resembled the leading actor in that summer’s popular vampire romance movie. Georgia was in sixth grade at this time, but from the way her eyes glossed over as she stared up at Todd, I guessed she knew exactly who he was.

  I watched Georgia wrinkle her nose as she considered his question. “Yeah, a couple of times.”

  “You did?” Todd pressed, clearly hopeful that Georgia had some kind of inside scoop.

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “He was basically family.” Todd leaned closer to her.

  “I can tell you some crazy stories if you want,” she added, in a flirtatious promise.

  I remember being furious that she was willing to trade our family “secrets” for popularity, but I’ve finally learned to let it go. Georgia is Georgia, I know what to expect. Anyway, you can’t really blame someone for surviving.

  The same can be said for my former friends, not that I ever had that many. Most of the ones I did have scattered as fast as they could once the news of my dad’s crime traveled through the halls of school, but some of them actually tried to stick by me. Especially Anna Stevens, my former best friend. When everything happened, Anna tried her best to comfort me, but I pushed her away. I knew it would be the best thing for her to disassociate herself from me, even if she didn’t. I like to think I did her a favor in the end.

  Georgia sashays around the kitchen table and takes a seat. “I think we have a really good chance of winning tonight. Could be historic. You have to come, Mom!”

  There’s a long pause in the conversation. Mom takes a deep breath and then says, “Why don’t you come with me?”

  I look behind me, certain that Mike, my younger half brother, must have walked in, but it’s unlike Mike not to make his presence known. He’s always bouncing his basketball inside, even though Mom has repeatedly told him to stop. I don’t mind it, though.

  “Are you talking to me?” I ask with perfect seriousness.

  Georgia doesn’t say anything, but I can see her face twist up like she just chugged rotten milk. She’d never insult me in front of Mom, but she’s doing everything she can to signal that she doesn’t want me to come. What can I say? I have a gold-star rating in the embarrassment department.

  “Yes, I’m talking to you,” Mom says, and I detect a slight quiver. Sometimes I’m convinced even my own mother is afraid of me.

  “Thanks for the invite, but I have a lot of homework.” I walk over to the cupboard and grab a chocolate-chip granola bar. It’s weird, I know. But sometimes, I’m ravenous. It’s almost as if I want to eat as much as I can to fill up the empty void inside of me. Other days, I can barely bring myself to nibble on a piece of toast.

  But even if today I can muster an appetite, I’m mostly taking the granola bar for show. I don’t want to give my mom more reasons to worry about me. I know she’s not-so-sneakily studying me for signs, searching for any clues to my questionable mental state. I’m doing my best to hide it all from her. Once I’m gone, I don’t want her to feel guilty thinking there was something she could have done.

  “Good luck tonight.” I give Georgia a fake wave and then head up the stairs to my room. Well, our room. But since she’ll be at the game, it’s my room for tonight. Once I get to our room, I crawl into my bed. I pull the charcoal-gray comforter over my head and pretend like I’m in the middle of the ocean, waves crashing over me, my lungs filling up with water, the whole world turning black. I try to imagine my potential energy turning into kinetic energy turning into nothing. As I hum Mozart’s requiem, I wonder what it will feel like when all the lights go off and everything is quiet forever. I don’t know if it will be painful, if in those last moments I’ll be scared, but all I can hope is that it will be over fast. That it will be peaceful. That it will be permanent.

  April 7, I think to myself. Soon enough.

  Sometimes I’m convinced it’s a sign of my own insanity that I still feel comforted by classical music when it was my father who first introduced me to it. He loved it. Bach, Mozart, you name it. The clunky cassette tapes were among the few things he brought with him when he came to America. When I was younger, he used to pop a tape into his old boom box that he kept on the counter at his convenience store and would tell me a story of his childhood, playing chess with his father on a smooth board made of alabaster stone or measuring people’s feet at the shoe store his uncle ran. While he talked, I would dance around the store, moving clumsily as the notes rose and fell with the tempo.

  Then one day he forced me to sit. “Really listen, Aysel,” he urged, his dark eyes wide and focused. “All the answers are in this music. Do you hear them?”

  So I’d listened and listened. Straining my ears in an attempt to memorize every note. I never really heard the answers, but I nodded like I did. I didn’t want my dad to get mad and turn the music off, or lock himself in his bedroom for hours like he sometimes did. With my dad, you always had to tread lightly, like you were walking on icy pavement—it was so fun when you were gliding, but it was very easy to slip.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and force that memory out of my mind. I roll around in bed, humming Mozart’s requiem over and over again, and I’m able to find only one answer in the notes: April 7.

  The walls of our old frame house are thin, and I can hear Mom and Georgia rattling around in the kitchen. I imagine them hugging. Georgia wrapping her arms around Mom’s thin waist and Mom running her fingers through Georgia’s shiny ponytail. The two of them fitting, interlocking, like mothers and daughters are supposed to. Fitting in a way that I never have. My edges have always been too sharp, my grooves too deep.

  That’s what they should write on my tombstone: Aysel Leyla Seran, the Girl Who Never Fit.

  And since I’ve never fit, not really before my dad lost it, and certainly not after, Mom’s life will be so much better without me. When I’m gone, she won’t have to be reminded of my dad every time she sees my angular nose or curly black hair. Or my round cheeks and dimples. I know it’s my dimples that get to her the most. Luckily, they’re only really noticeable when I smile, and it’s not like I’ve been doing a lot of that lately.


  Without me, my mom won’t have to stay up at night, worrying that the criminal gene, the murderer gene, was passed to me and that any day now, I’m going to blow up the school or something awful like that. I know she can’t live through it all again—the police, the media, the gossip. I know she doesn’t want to think about it, but deep down, I can see her struggling with her fear and her doubt. Her sideways glances and cautious probing questions are all her way of determining just how much of a mental case I am.

  I want to say that I know for sure that I’m different from my dad. That my heart beats in a different rhythm, my blood pulses at a different speed. But I’m not sure. Maybe the sadness comes just before the insanity. Maybe he and I share the same potential energy.

  All I know is that I’m not going to stick around and find out if I become a monster like my dad. I can’t do that to my mom.

  I can’t do that to the world.

  WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13

  25 days left

  The only good thing about Georgia cheering at the basketball game is that I have the house to myself, which means I can use the computer. Normally, I can’t ever use the computer. Or at least I can’t use it without unwanted supervision. Our household has only one computer and it’s from the Ice Age. It runs slower than a three-legged dog and its keyboard is sticky from all of the fruit punch Mike has spilled on it.

  Though Mom thinks Steve is the man of her dreams—wealthy, successful, honest businessman—the truth is Steve works on the line down at the Sparkle toothpaste factory. Sparkle, manufacturer of second-rate toothpaste and mouthwash, basically keeps Langston’s economy running. Sure, Steve’s gig on the line is an honest living and he has so far managed to keep himself out of prison, which is more than you can say for my dad. But it doesn’t mean that Steve can afford to buy all of us our own laptops, so we’re stuck with this clunker.