Akanni’s chest heaved and her eyes burned, but no tears came.
I am stone.
Her palms grew hot as the flames around her intensified.
I am the mountain.
She lifted her hands toward the camp.
“The Goddess provides.”
HEARTS TURNED TO ASH
By Dhonielle Clayton
Jackson broke up with Etta on a Thursday night, and her heart started to disintegrate on Friday right before dawn.
Hearts can do that. According to Ms. Mildred, Etta’s grandmother who doesn’t want to be called a grandmother, and who Etta always thought was wrong about everything. Soul mates aren’t supposed to break up. Not when worried mamas had the conjure woman cast the stars, tie a fortune string made of the universe from one heart to another. Not when fates had been written.
But Etta didn’t know that was the reason for her pain.
Not yet.
Etta sat straight up in bed. The moon winked in her window, tiny pearls of light scattering across her new diorama of the Eiffel Tower on her nightstand.
Heat seared in her chest like a lit firecracker. She rushed to the bathroom. Her breath tangled in her throat, a pink flush fighting to push through the brown of her cheeks. She pulled down the collar of her nightgown. Beneath her skin, she could see her heart: a smoldering coal. Her veins illuminated like snakes desperate to escape the destruction.
The blood vessels in her eyes left red spiderwebs across the white. Her pupils dilated, the black swallowing the hazel. Jackson used to tell Etta that her eyes were his favorite thing about her face. He’d goad her into closing them, then he’d trace his deep-brown fingers across the lid and down over the eyelashes until his soft fingertips rested at the corners. He’d count the few freckles she had on them, little dark stars.
“Open your eyes,” he’d say. “Let me see you.”
And she always did.
Then he’d let his hands, strong from lifting lumber and building fences on his grandfather’s land, knead the shape of her shoulders, and rest his palm on her chest. He’d thump his thick fingers to the thudding rhythm of her heart, excited from his scent, anticipating the taste of his mouth.
Etta’s hand found that spot.
His spot.
But now, her heartbeat was almost gone.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
“Don’t ever give your heart away, Etta.” Ms. Mildred’s words puttered out between puffs of a clove cigarette.
Etta was only around seven years old when her grandmother issued this warning.
They’d been headed into town for something that Etta couldn’t remember anymore. She’d been stuffed into Ms. Mildred’s blue Cadillac, her little-girl limbs looking for space among the antiques in the back seat. A stuffed robin in a wire birdcage stared down with glassy eyes, piles of striped hatboxes slid back and forth, and the sounds of clattering teacups became a melody underscoring her grandmother’s words.
“Your heart is the core. Where you house how you really feel about things. It’s precious. It’s to be protected like a pearl.”
The car swayed like they were in a boat and trapped in some storm of Ms. Mildred’s own creation as she barreled down the long stretch of road that connected their house to the outside world. Or at least it always felt like that to Etta. They were the only family aside from Jackson’s who lived so far away from town. Far enough so white folks couldn’t meddle and the Black ones felt it was too much trouble to turn down their gravel driveway and travel the two miles to the Big House to be nosy.
Dust and gravel pummeled the windows. Ms. Mildred cursed before looking up at Etta in the rearview mirror. Etta felt like her grandmother was the most beautiful woman in the whole world, even more beautiful than her mama. Not a single wrinkle marred the brown of her grandmother’s skin, and Etta had always thought that it would smell of maple syrup and roasted pecans if she ever let Etta get close enough to sniff it. She wasn’t the kissy type of grandmother. She had the same freckles Etta had, but they’d been expertly placed so that when she smiled—which was rare—they took the shape of a scattered heart. She always wore a deep shade of red lipstick and told Etta that it let everyone know she would bite until she got blood.
“Did you hear what I said?” she’d asked Etta.
“Yes, ma’am,” Etta replied.
“What did I say?”
“Never give your heart away.”
Ms. Mildred nodded, then blew smoke rings, the white clouds smelling like Christmas. “Don’t let nobody take the center of you.” She beat her chest so hard Etta thought her fist might pierce her own skin. “But do you really understand what I mean?”
“What about love?” Etta asked.
“What about it?” she replied.
“Aren’t I supposed to get married?”
Ms. Mildred burst with laughter, the cackle escaping from deep down in her belly. “Love ain’t got nothing to do with marriage, honey.”
“Do you love Granddaddy?”
Ms. Mildred almost bit down on her cigarette. “I like him fine. But I didn’t have to give my heart away to have your mama with him. And I had children with other men, too.”
“Uncle James, and Aunt Peggy.”
“And I liked their daddies just fine,” she said. “I just see these little girls running around here with no sense. Nose wide open. Brain full of rocks. Distracted ’cause some boy told them they were pretty. There are so many other things to do is all I’m saying. Don’t be no fool, Etta.” Ms. Mildred’s eyes found Etta in the back seat, and she watched as her grandmother’s forehead creased, fold upon fold, an accordion of thought and feeling and memory trapped in brown skin. Ms. Mildred launched into more fussing: “Don’t let love take you too high, ’cause you’ll be a kite without a tail, and before you know it, caught in a storm cloud. And lightning ain’t kind. Love ain’t worth being electrocuted for. Or your heart turned to ash.”
One of the things Etta remembered the most about this conversation was the lightning, how she wanted to be that kite or one of the rods her daddy had installed on the roof of their house right before he left them and never came back. She wanted to feel that electricity. She needed to know how it felt.
“What if I gave my heart to a girl instead?” Etta asked.
“That would be better. Women are much better about taking care of hearts. But the point still stands.”
“I love you, Ms. Mildred,” she’d squeaked out.
“And I love you, too, Cookie.”