Home is Where the Heart Breaks

Silently she waited for a bus that had come once, long ago. This time, she would not miss it.

The bench of lacquered wood was hard beneath her gangly legs. She gazed intently at the canvas bag holding her meager possessions. She had purchased it from an Army surplus store and it was fraying at the seams. It had been all over the world, she imagined, held countless stories of adventure, romance, and intrigue. What a marvelous life.

Restless hands picked at a tattered sweatshirt hiding a lean frame, in search of imperfections long forgotten. Shadowy corridors housed her thoughts, and it was down these halls she now walked.

The daughter of a retired laborer, she was the youngest of seven children. Her mother had died when she was a child; time had all but erased every memory. Her voice, however, had haunted her over the years. The dream was always the same—she lay across her mother’s chest, the hum of a lullaby easing her to sleep. There was never any singing. It was a lullaby without words, a mirthless tune. The anthem of her life.

Approaching footsteps rang against the stones, jolting her back to reality. She thrust her hands into the pockets of her sweatshirt, lowering her gaze to the thinning denim stretched across her legs.

This was a posture she knew so well; she’d spent countless hours in it, lectured about unending disappointment and the consummate failure that was her life.

You disappoint me.

You’re an embarrassment to this family.

You’re lucky your mother is dead - she’d hate you for this.

Those tears had dried up after just a few years. She learned to tune out, waiting for release. Later, she would lie awake dreaming of The Day. When it came, she would board a bus bound for Anywhere, leaving everything behind.

Anywhere was the perfect destination, particularly because it changed. Often.

Sometimes, it was the west coast, creating things of beauty that people would notice. Occasionally, it was the seductive whisper of the mountains that wooed her. Nature was beauty—even if she didn’t create it, she could experience it. On the darkest nights – when dreams could stave off much worse than bruises – she’d imagine herself in the bustle of some metropolis, lost in blissful anonymity. Most nights, though, it was the angry tears, the secret tears, that she longed to escape.

His damaging words eventually became damaging fists, and her misery could no longer be hidden from questioning glances and judgmental eyes. In reality, more than her face had been broken, though it had taken him years to do so. She had never been beautiful, but the battered reflection she saw was no longer her own. It was a stranger’s face, twisted and grotesque, and now echoed what her spirit had become: fragmented.

From the muddy fog, several yard away, emerged the silhouette of a man. Broad shoulders were draped in a heavy coat that hung to the street. It masked a body corded with wiry muscle, though time and hard labor had stooped his once-straight back. Her gaze fell with involuntary habit; in her peripheral vision, she could feel the tension, an impatience she knew so well. He wanted her to see him, and would wait until she did. A muted anxiety settled on her shoulders as she struggled to regain control.

There were many faces she wanted to remember, but only this one she needed to forget. She bowed her head again, the anxiety painfully birthing the dread she felt for this man, stealing the breath from her body. My mind is playing tricks on me. The fog…the fog is making me see things. But she wasn’t seeing things, and she knew it. She knew it with the same certainty a rape victim feels coming face-to-face with an attacker she has never really met, yet knows in an intimate way.

Grotesquely intimate.

The world began to swim around her, and she thrust out her arm to steady herself on the concrete wall beside her. The cold cement, rough-hewn and pockmarked from decades of exposure, was wet beneath her fingers. It was solid, unmoving, lending her support as she waited for the world to right itself.

She fought desperately to regain control of herself, determined not to crumble again. Not here, not now, she told herself. Not in front of him. Steeling herself against the torrent of emotions, she drew several deep breaths, letting the air course in and out of her body, the dampness washing away her feelings of desperation and strengthening her resolve.

Slowly, deliberately, she lifted her face to her father, who stood some fifteen feet away. His grizzled features looked ghastly in the pale neon light of the corner liquor store. Time came to a gasping halt, collapsing on the slick asphalt.

The silence that stood between them hung there, weathered by age but strengthened by time. Her father opened his mouth, as if to say something. Just then, the roar of an approaching engine encroached upon them, straining the tension like a kite on a very long string, threatening to drift away into oblivion.

The bus ground to a stop, idling on the corner. The soft whisk of the opening doors signaled a reprieve, long overdue. The lone traffic light, clinging to a steel cable stretched across the abandoned intersection, flickered from red to green. A seagull cried, circling high above, stifled in the damp gloom. An overhead lamp sputtered, leaving the intersection in intermittent darkness. She gazed at her father, searching his face for some clue, some reason to his presence here. Staring mutely back at her, he offered no explanation. His face was unreadable, a mask of angry stone.

Slowly she stood to her feet, slinging her duffel over her shoulder and turning her back to him. Her foot was on the first step of the bus when she heard him.

“You’ll be back.” She froze on the step, heart pounding.

Hot tears streamed down her misshapen cheeks, anger bubbling to surface. Its scalding breath filled her lungs, and she wanted to scream. A thousand jagged memories shattered on the surface of her heart, and in one terrifying moment, she almost believed him.

Almost.

The string finally snapped, and for the first time, she thought she could be free of him. No. She knew she could. She would be free.

“No,” she whispered. It didn’t matter if he could hear her, because she could hear her. Her frail body trembled, but her heart would not retreat. Gathering herself, she spoke more forcefully.

“I’ll never come back.” His legacy of silent torment was over, and she’d never again suffer in chains of shame.

Without another word, she boarded the waiting bus, the doors whisking shut behind her. Gradually it crawled away, leaving the intersection in complete silence once again.