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The Most Heartbreaking Thing



Days Earlier…

Nick

A little better than 500 days.

That’s how long my marriage with Lauren had lasted before the day I woke up and found her side of the bed cold.

I told myself at first that she was testing me, that she was gonna be back by lunch… by bedtime… by the next day… by the end of the week… but when she didn’t show up, I started to feel afraid. I sat in the living room, staring at the clock, listening to it tick, my head organizing things and trying to come up with a solid plan of What the Fuck I Was Going to Do. The word pre-nup kept echoing in my head and I grabbed one of the sofa cushions and clutched it to my chest, rocking myself a little, thinking about how truly awfully she could potentially be about to fuck me over.

She left on a Tuesday and I didn’t have the balls to try calling her until Sunday, afraid she wouldn’t answer, or, worse, that she would answer and would tell me she was through with me. I wrote down a whole pros and cons list for reasons why she should stay with me and even in my own handwriting the list weighed against me. I rubbed my eyes and paced and finally sat on the deck with the cell phone and a beer and called her.

“Took you long enough,” she accused by way of answering the call.

I leaned down and stared at my bare feet on the weathered wood. “Sorry.”

She was quiet a moment. “Well?” she prompted.

“Come home,” I said flatly.

“Why?” she challenged.

“Because… I miss you.”

“And?”

“I love you.”

She sighed. “I love you, too, Nick.”

“So come home, then,” I replied.

Lauren was quiet. “What have you been doing?”

“Wandering around the house like a fucking zombie,” I replied. “I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. I haven’t showered. I haven’t left the god damned house. I can’t focus on music or movies or TV. I ain’t even watched the Bucs, babe. I can’t see straight when you ain’t here.”

Again, complete silence rang through the phone.

“Lauren, please. I need you,” I begged.

“You need me,” she said. “You, you, you, you, you. And more you.”

“What?” I asked, confused by the tone and the repeating of the word.

“Everything you’ve said since getting on the phone has been you-centered, Nick. This is exactly what I’m talking about, exactly why I needed a break. It’s all about you. All the time. You haven’t even asked me where I am, if I’m okay --”

“Where are you?” I asked quickly.

“Nick.”

“I wanna know.”

Lauren’s voice wobbled, “If you did, you would have asked me.”

“I did ask you,” I said, “I just asked you.”

“Before I reminded you to ask me,” she added.

“Of course I wanna know where you are, though,” I questioned, “You know I do, why can’t you just tell me shit when you know I wanna know? Why do I gotta remember to ask?”

“Because you will remember to ask if you really want to know.”

“I won’t, I forget everything,” I said.

Lauren’s voice was breaking even more as she spoke. “Two weeks ago, we were in the car and you were driving and you wanted to know if cows could sit like dogs do. You remembered to ask Siri at the next stop light. Are you saying that finding out whether cows can sit like dogs do is more important to you than finding out where I am or how I am doing?”

“No,” I said.

“Nick,” Lauren said gently, “I just need you to think about other people sometimes.”

“I think about other people all the time,” I said. Nacho was sitting at my feet, staring up at me. He licked my hand. I closed my eyes again.

“It’s ten o’clock at night, Nick,” she said. “Did you think about whether I’d be asleep when you called? Or did you just pick up your phone and a beer and call?”

How did she know I had a beer? I wondered.

“That’s what I thought.” Her voice was heavy. “I gotta go, Nick.”

“Wait. When are you coming home?” I asked her before she could hang up, my voice panicked.

“When the world stops revolving around you, Nick,” she answered.

I put the phone down on the table I was sitting next to. I ran my hand through my hair and stared out at the water moving slowly, at the moon reflecting off the surface. I felt like shit. I drained the beer and put it on the table, too, then stood up and shooshed Nacho back into the house, locking the sliding door behind me. I dropped the bottle on the kitchen counter and went upstairs, stepping over the laundry that was collecting on the floor in front of the hamper and threw myself onto the bed, face-down, breathing in the fading scent of Lauren’s shampoo.

On the TV that hung over our dresser, I could hear a woman’s voice echoing from the speakers. “This is the most heartbreaking thing I’ve seen in my life,” she said.

I knew she was talking about the tsunami in Kenya, but it felt like she had a window into my room and was commentating on my life.





Kat

It took me 5,000 Shillings and two days, but I made it to Kiwayuu. The night I got there was the night that they were to bury Tamal. After my long walk through the broken path in the forest, I emerged in devastated square of the village to find Tamal laying on a bed of woven leaves, the women of the village crying over his body and Taji standing on the hill, his hands covering his face as Azizi stood beside him, stone faced and fire-eyed.

“Paka,” whispered Azizi when he saw me. He turned to Taji, “Paka is here, look.”

“Paka,” cried Taji, turning to me. Tears soaked his face and he clutched me, pressing his face into my shoulder. He shook as I pressed my palms to his back. “Paka, it is my brother. And Msaidizi Clay.”

The words stung like he’d thrown ice water into my face, or directly down my spine. Clay was a twenty-six year old boy from a small town in Oklahoma that had volunteered less than two years ago for Wild Heartland. Tamal was one of the strongest leaders of the village - had they a formal government, Tamal would have been the leader of the people.

I could see Nanny laying across the body as the villagers took turns approaching and laying aloe leaves around the bodies. Normally, they would be in the home of the deceased, laying on a mat, but there were no homes left. The village was flat and desolate.

“The livestock is gone as well,” Azizi told me, as though reading my mind about the houses. He stared up at me for a moment. “All of our sheep and goats, all of our oxen. We found only one goat in the woods and he’s to be sacrificed to help guide the souls of Clay and Tamal straight to Heaven.” He looked somber.

“Tamal needs no guide,” choked Taji. “He will lead Msaidizi Clay and the goat to Heaven himself.” He turned his head against my shoulder to stare down at the procession of villagers below.

“That’s true, Taji,” I whispered, and I patted his back softly.

Nanny was sobbing and she fell forward, her face pressing to her dead son’s chest. “I must go to her,” whispered Taji, and he broke away from me and started down the hill, leaving Azizi and I alone.

“We found him on the shore,” Azizi informed me. He looked up at me. “Me and Taji and Sefu. We went searching for the people we were missing. He tried to save the motor boat.”

My throat burned.

The people were laying on the ground now, in a wide circle around Tamal’s body, where Nanny and now Taji were gathered. I realized that as they laid down, the people were going to bed, the only roof they had was the stars. In the morning, they would bury Tamal, at an hour when the sorcerers of the night were back in their beds and Nanny had shared her last night with her son.

I walked down the hill with Azizi to the desolation. He left me at the edge of the circle the people were forming to go and join his mother. I gingerly stepped around them as a general whisper broke around the circle that Paka had come, and walked to where Clay laid on the ground. His biological family was half a globe away. I knelt beside him instead and ran my palm over his forehead, smoothing his hair back. Clay normally wore glasses, but they'd been lost in the wave.

Nanny looked up at me, the dead between us, and her glistening eyes were the saddest I had ever seen. The tears she cried were flooding the deep wrinkles on her face. I reached a hand out over the bodies and she reached out hers as well and we touched fingertips for a moment. Then she withdrew and returned her gaze to Tamal.

We spent the night there in the center of the village, under the stars, sitting beside Tamal and Clay. I struggled to stay awake. The symbolism of the act was that we were protecting their souls from the devil until morning, when the bodies would be buried. Taji sat holding his mother, whose eyes were glassy and far away, as though remembering Tamal's entire life.

I didn't know Clay as much as I should have. I knew only that he had grown up on a farm and had come to show the people how to farm and preserve the food they sowed. They had grown beans and corn and a funny kind of squash in the acres beyond the village. He laughed boldly and told great ghost stories with a flashlight beneath his chin. The children loved him, except for Azizi, who trusted no one. Clay had joined Wild Heartland as part of a student loan repayment program, fallen in love with Kiwayuu, and just never left.

I thought about those things and about how much the tsunami had taken away until the sun came up.