The Heart is Not a Size

by Beth Kephart

  “Our first task,” Mr. Thom continued, “is digging. We’ll need a foundation for the bathroom’s concrete pad. We’ll also need the six-by-six-by-eight-foot hole that will be the septic tank. I want the guys on the tank hole. I want the girls for the foundation. I want everyone paired up in teams. Partners, head over and see Roberto. He’s got your bucket and shovel. He’ll show you where you’re tossing the sand.”

  Mr. Thom stopped talking, and Sophie grabbed Riley before I could. “Thanks a whole lot,” I said to Riley with my eyes.

  “You want bucket duty or shovel duty?” I asked Catherine as she fitted a baseball cap down on the curl cascade of her head.

  “Bucket, I guess,” she mumbled.

  “Bucket it is.” I grabbed the shovel.

  We waited then, watched and waited, while Mr. Thom and the other adults except for Lupe drew out lines in the sand. I glanced over at Sophie and Riley, who were standing against the farthest wall in the thinnest strip of shade, laughing at something, Riley shaking her head so that her earrings clattered, all thirteen against one another. I drew my camera to my eye and snapped a photograph. I went around the circle taking photos—portraits for later. So that whatever happened here would be real, wouldn’t be erased by time. Could go home with me, to my family.

  We broke for lunch shortly before noon—filed into Lupe’s kitchen, which had been steaming all morning long with smells of poultry and spice. There were women with Lupe whom I hadn’t seen before—two older ones, and one young and pretty. They had lined up vats and trays and jugs of things; there were paper plates and plastic forks. We stood in line and we got served; and though the oven heat had made it hotter in that kitchen than it was outside, there was the shade of the roof, and there was Riley, saving me a seat on a splintering bench. I held my plate high and climbed in beside her. My shirt was sweat-glued to my back.

  “Girl shovels a mean bucket of sand,” Sophie said, nodding Riley’s way.

  “You should have seen Georgia,” Catherine said, for she had swung her legs in next to mine. We’d gotten along after all, Catherine being the kind of person, I’d discovered, who likes to get things done: a forward in soccer, the president of Big Buddies Club—stuff she’d told me as we worked. “Let’s get it over with” is what she’d said at first, out there in the sun; and it didn’t matter how many shovelfuls of sand I’d come up with, she could carry the heaping bucket all the way around back and return with it empty in no time.

  “Georgia does everything well,” Riley said. She puckered up and blew me an air kiss, then threw her skinny arm across my back. I forgave her right then for teaming with Sophie. It wasn’t her fault, after all, that she was so completely likable.

  “Glad I’m not on septic tank duty,” Sophie said, rolling her eyes. “Did you see the size of that hole?”

  “Puhl-lease,” Riley said, pushing away her plate. “Can we talk about something else at lunchtime?” She hadn’t eaten a thing and she was making like she was done—talking about the holes and the heat and the González family and their community bathroom dream. Everyone else was passing their plates for more, and the din around us grew. A big, complicated conversation had begun at our table’s end. In that tumult, I leaned in close to Riley.

  “Yo,” I said. “Lunch. Have some.”

  “Would rather not.” She wrinkled her nose.

  “You have to eat something, you nut.”

  “I had breakfast.”

  “Yeah, and that was, like, ten days ago.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Georgia.”

  “Don’t worry about it?”

  “Yeah. Like, what’s it to you, anyway?”

  I could have gone with that. I could have paid attention—pulled up, backed off, joked the line away, retreated. I could have acquiesced, let Riley rule like Riley always ruled; but I’d reached the end of my rope with my best friend’s charade. I hung suspended, undecided, before I barreled through. Crossed a line that we had, between us and for all of time, honored. From best friendship to something else. In but an instant. Just like that.

  Do the right thing, you risk ruin.

  Choose responsibility, and don’t think that makes you someone’s hero.

  “Too late, Riley. I am worried.” I sat close, spoke softly. I touched her toothpick arm with my epic hand, and that was it: She snapped. Leveled me with her sapphire eyes. Snatched her hand away.

  “I think you should mind your own business, Georgia,” she said, her voice whisper fierce. “Do I watch what you eat? Do I tell you to cut back? Do I say, ‘Hey, you’d be so much cuter if you just didn’t eat so much’?”

  “I’m not shrinking,” I said, glaring back, feeling my face turn red. “I’m not risking my health to disprove a mother’s theory. I’m not starving myself so that I won’t be average, because you know you’re not, Riley. That’s stupid. That’s you being stupid for listening to her.” I was talking under my breath, under the spitting clamor of the crowded room. Riley sat acting violated. Pissed off. Unrelenting.

  “You’re also not my mother,” she warned. “Okay?”

  “I know what you’re doing, Ri. Jesus, look at yourself. You’re like a walking advertisement for anorexia.”

  Her eyes were a cold burn, stalactite ice. “That’s nice, Georgia. That’s real nice. I’ll try not to forget that you said that. Like, ever.”

  “Trying to help,” I said, lowering my voice to a true whisper, pleading with her now, not just to hear me but to listen. To stop walking away. To come back. Please, Riley. Come back.

  “News flash, AP Queen. I happen to know what I’m doing. When I want your help, I’ll ask for it. And I don’t really see that happening. Not in a long time. Not in probably forever.”

  She threw another look my way—knives in my gut. Then she smiled, pushed back, stood up, called out to Sophie, said, “I’ve got something to show you.” So that now the two of them were going off somewhere, knotted together like best friends.

  Others were clearing plates and forks. I gathered Riley’s things with mine, dumped the mess of everything in the trash, and went outside and handed Catherine the shovel. Across the courtyard stood Sophie and Riley, Riley showing off the bracelets that she wore, twisting every last one around on the skinny twig of her arm, as if jewelry were her secret.

  “I’ll take bucket duty,” I told Catherine; and together we walked back to the job, me slipping gracelessly in that sand—me too big, too wide footed, too hurt and angry to navigate anything gracefully.

  We worked, silent but effective, all afternoon long. With the heat on our backs, with the sun in our eyes, beneath no rescuing shade, we shoveled and carried, dug out our fraction of the foundation pad. There wasn’t time or reason for chatter, no time to seek an apology from Riley. No reason to expect one.

  Finally it was time to drive the fifty minutes back to Manuel’s compound—back to the crooked stairs and the dog named Lobo and the men on the roof in their chairs. I sat beside Catherine, in a window seat. I took photos of every last thing I saw.

  “You an artist now?” Riley asked from the backseat.

  I turned and gave her a funny stare. “For prosperity,” I said.

  She scowled. She met my eyes and stared straight through them. Then she set her jaw and turned.

  four

  Back at the compound, after dinner, Mack told a story. Dead tired, we sat slumped at our picnic benches—showered and fed but still grimed by sand, the close-to-the-noseness of the sewage. Mack sat in a fold-up chair before us. There hadn’t been a cloud all day, and now the sun was falling, a last gasp of orange in the sky. Lobo was sprawled out at Mack’s feet, hoping for some leftover salsa guacamole, maybe, or just a touch of a hand, someone to scratch away the fleas.

  Riley was sitting with Sophie; I sat as far from them as I could. My choice. Me snubbing Riley so that she couldn’t get her own snubs in.

  You can’t help people who won’t help themselves.

  You can’t chase vanishing acts.


  You can’t go around acting as hurt as you feel. People will notice. They’ll say things.

  “By now you have all formed your first impressions of Anapra,” Mack had begun, unknotting a battered bandana and combing his blonded hair back with one hand. He looked tired, full of ache. He wore no ring on any finger, just one gold earring in one lobe. “That makes you one of many in a movement. Some of the pallet houses you see in Anapra have been built by high schoolers from Arizona. Some of the straw bale homes were put there, in part, by a team of American architects. Those Afghan pine and Italian stone pine trees you saw growing were planted with the help of Texans. Just two weeks ago, the church across the way from Roberto’s chapel was painted by a team that came from Denver. You are officially part of something bigger than yourselves; and I know you’re tired, and I know it’s hot, and I know that you’re a long way from home. But today was the beginning of two weeks that will transform you. Keep your eyes open, and your hearts.”

  Lobo yawned, stood, walked a circle, and lay back down. Looking through the square windows of the kitchen, I could see Leonor and Concha working at the sink—one of them washing our dishes, one of them drying, a bare yellow lightbulb hanging above their heads. Leonor wore a checkerboard towel across one shoulder; as she talked, Concha laughed, as if washing dishes were the best part of their day. I thought about home and all my complaining when I had to load the dishwasher, and I stole a look at Riley, whose mother had a rule against doing any kitchen work herself. The sun had burned the mist across her nose. She was charming the hell out of Sophie.

  “Now I know, because I hear you talking, that you minded doing battle with the dust,” Mack went on. “And I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I like it myself. Anapra was desert before it was a colonia. It wasn’t a place that people chose to live until the maquiladoras—the assembly plants—went up along the border. Good for the economy, maybe. Bad for the environment and for the people who need to find a place to live somewhere close to their employment. The aquifer that Juárez shares with El Paso is drying up. Tuberculosis and malaria and hepatitis are constants.

  “So the dust is bad; it’s devastating. But more than that, for people who aren’t blessed like you and I have been blessed, it kills. Not long ago in Anapra, a seven-month-old boy choked to death on it. His lungs were thick with the stuff; his house had been open to the wind. He was a baby, and the air killed him. And this is life as thousands know it in Anapra.”

  I saw Drake close his enormous eyes. I saw Mrs. K. reach to touch Catherine’s hand. Jon crossed his arms, and Corey did, then Sam and Neil crossed their arms, too, as if they could protect themselves from the news they’d heard, or from the heartache of Anapra. I wouldn’t look at Riley to see how she felt. I didn’t need to know.

  “It’s one thing to come to Juárez and be reminded of your own good fortune,” Mack continued. “But the question is: Will that be enough? Is simply knowing that you are better off going to define you?”

  He left the question hanging. He stood up, and Lobo stood with him, the dog’s nose high and hopeful, as if Mack had some treat stashed in a pocket. Manuel appeared from out of the shadows. The lightbulb had gone off above Leonor and Concha.

  “The day is getting on,” Mrs. K. said.

  We sat there, still. Riley had turned and was looking my way—one quick, small glance. Hurt eyes. I shrugged. Made like I didn’t care.

  In Cities of the Plain, McCarthy’s book, John Grady is a cowboy who loves whatever he finds so much that he makes it his business to protect it. He loves the horses on the ranch where he works with his best friend, Billy. He loves the pup whose brother dies, loves the epileptic prostitute whom he finds in a whorehouse in Juárez. He takes the whole throb of life upon his shoulders, and he’s a hero, but he’s also doomed—you can just feel it; you know he’s not going to survive the excess of his self-inflicted caring. You grow up being told that responsibility is a good word, that you should step forward first, that you should manage. But the truth is: Too much responsibility gets you into trouble. It boxes you in, divides you into two very different, separate people. Your responsible, solid version is what everybody comments on: Georgia’s reliable. Georgia will do it. Georgia always knows what she is doing. She will come through. Your private, hidden self, meanwhile, would shout a different story.

  That night, after Mack’s talk, I told myself that I didn’t need Riley, that I could do without her, that she was wrong, dead wrong, and apologizing was her business. That I’d wait for her to come to me—wait her out, ignore her so bad that in the end she could no longer afford to ignore me. I sat alone as if I didn’t mind the alone. Studied the photos I’d taken that day—spinning them backward and forward on that little, glassy screen. Riley before the fight. Anapra afterward. Before and after. After and before. The sun went down to a certain place and then held off sinking farther. The next time I looked up, I saw that dark-haired girl. Standing at the gate alone, peering in and up.

  She had on a different dress—a sun-faded yellow that seemed as if it had been worn for years by various sisters, neighbors, strangers. Lobo trotted to her first. Manuel called out to her and waved. Somebody had taken care with the young girl’s hair, fixing it with bows. She wasn’t wearing any shoes. I lifted the camera and zoomed the lens. She was missing her front teeth.

  We were to go nowhere by ourselves in Juárez, yet here was a child out alone at dusk. In fifteen minutes the sun would drop, and the goose across the street was still, and the old woman had left her post—must have been asleep already inside her house that could not have been more than the length of her short body wide. The men on the neighboring roof had settled into their spectator chairs, and over at another table, a game of travel chess was going.

  Meanwhile, Riley and Sophie were playing hangman, Riley drawing her stick figures with such high-fashion detail that soon Sophie called Mariselle and Catherine to see, and soon it wasn’t even hangman anymore but a game in which a style—punk modern, runway chic, debutante ball, grunge—was being blurted out and Riley was asked to draw it. It was as if they couldn’t trip her up. Whatever she drew they loved; they called it perfect. They’d struck at the vein of Riley’s talent in hardly more than a day—all it had taken was a game of hangman. I’d known Riley almost forever; but here she’d been discovered, and I could see the glow working on her, convincing her of something she couldn’t find at home and taking her further and further from her need to talk to me.

  Sometimes color is all there is; and as the sun now fell fast, I photographed its dying pink until the moon was higher than the sun and it was shadows I saw through my camera’s eye—blues leaning into blacks and blacks spattered through with the violet. The shapes of men on the roof. The bulge of a mountain range beyond. The old cross that rose from the chapel’s roof, which was a rusty color.

  The men in their folding chairs lit cigarettes. I sat there watching them, watching the last of the daylight fall across the balcony, until that’s what I wanted—that balcony, that light. I walked toward the steps and climbed them. They creaked beneath my weight. Then I stood there looking out, taking photos that would never mean a thing. They mattered only in the present tense, gave my solitude a purpose.

  It was then, from up there, that I noticed Drake pushing back from the game of chess and walking toward the gate. He had his hand on Lobo’s head, and now he was kneeling down, talking to the girl who stood peering in. Taking something from her outstretched hand, turning to admire it, then slipping whatever it was back through the gate. It was as if the girl had known Drake for a long time. As if one can make a friend that quickly, which, it seems, some people can.

  “Riley’s walking runway,” I heard Sophie call.

  And then I watched as below me Riley pretended to model the clothes that she’d just drawn.

  In the bunk beneath Riley, I couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t stop hoping, stupidly hoping, that she’d turn and whisper, “Good night, Georgia. Love you.” Turn an
d say she understood, that she’d get help, that she’d stop starving herself, that she was grateful. But the space above my bed was silent. Riley didn’t so much as rustle her sheets. I couldn’t tell if she was sleeping, couldn’t know what she was thinking, couldn’t confront her, because this is a fact: Silence defeats like nothing else does. There is no fighting it.

  “You an artist now?” she’d sneered. I remembered freshman year, when Riley’s watercolors had taken first place at districts. It was a pretty big deal, and Rennert High was throwing a reception in the lobby bordered by admin and the cafeteria. I’d driven with her and her mother, worn a sorry shade of peach—a dress that I had bought too small, hoping it would fit me. By the time we’d arrived, the lobby was packed and Riley’s watercolors were already strung up on movable boards. She’d given crazy titles to each one—random mind bursts, she’d confided to me the day before, when she was telling me what to expect at the show. “The titles just occurred,” she said, titles such as “Believe Me I Tell You” and “What Are Mirrors For?”. I knew that they meant more than that. I knew, but I didn’t insist that she come right out and say it, because that was back then, when I left her boundaries sacred. When I chose friendship over truth.

  In the lobby, the art teachers had gathered and the principal, too, and there were kids we ate lunch with, kids from Riley’s art class, a couple of Mrs. Marksmen’s friends. Somebody started clapping, and then other people did, and soon the crowd divided in regular Red Sea fashion so that Riley could pass through and stand in the space between the principal and her teachers. She was to be commended, it was said. She had set a new art standard.

  “Riley Marksmen has graced Rennert High with her talent,” the principal declared, and I will never forget the expression on my best friend’s face when she looked toward her mom. It was as if none of the rest of us mattered that night, as if none of the rest of us had come. The point for Riley was that Mrs. Marksmen see that her only daughter was growing up to be someone.