It started at the dinner table. I was eating my cream of mushroom soup (Jenny had cooked that night) listening to Mom saying how maybe she couldn't go to France with us that summer because school started at the exact time we had to be there. She taught chemistry part-time at Mount San Antonio College. Suddenly I looked up, interrupting Mom right in the middle of a word.
"How did this shape," I traced two curves in the air with each of my index fingers, "get to be thought of as this?" I curved my left hand into a fist and hit my breast just below my left collar bone with a thump. In other words, how did the shape of a heart become known as a heart?
Mom started to answer me, then frowned. "I don't know, sweetheart," she said.
"I know! I know!" said Jenny, waving her hand in the air and speaking like a three-year-old. She got that from me. She was really thirteen, but sometimes we just couldn't resist irritating our mother.
"OK, Jenny, tell me why," I challenged.
"Because it is, that's why." Did I forget to mention that speaking isn't the only way we imitate a much younger person?
I shrugged at her and grabbed a scrap of paper to jot the question down so I could look it up later.
A few minute later, I looked up again. "Mom, what would you do if I turned you into a hummingbird?"
Mom looked at me furiously. "Amy, it's not going to happen, so why do you ask such ridiculous questions?"
I compressed my lips. "Why can't it happen?" I demanded rebelliously, then paused, and then switched tactics. "I'm only doing research for my books. I need psychologically accurate information if I am ever going to succeed in this capitalistically oriented society as a novelist." I hesitated, then stood up. "All right, Mother. We do not approve of each others' worlds. Good night." I stalked away from the cream of mushroom soup.
I had already taken my bath and was all ready for bed when I suddenly remembered the hearts. I hit my forehead in exasperation. Rushing out of my room and away from looking at the mouse cage, I grabbed the biggest dictionary in the house, a giant gray one that was falling apart at the seams, and I flipped through the pages. Hearsay . . . hearse . . . Hearst . . . heart. It had an amazing forty-four definitions, starting with:
heart (härt), n. 1. a hollow, muscular organ which by rhythmic contractions and relaxations keeps the blood in circulation throughout the body.
It went on to:
44. Archaic. to encourage.
Other definitions mentioned the shape, the suit of hearts in cards, as the middle of something, and a whole mess of clichés using the term 'heart'. But not one explanation of how 'heart' got to mean both the organ and: 10. a conventional shape with rounded sides meeting in a point at the bottom and curving inward to a cusp at the top.
Drat.
I also looked up cross, because the definition of 'cross one's heart' intrigued me and I wanted to learn more. The definition told me to look under heart.
Drat again.
In order to relieve my frustration, I snapped the computer on, waited impatiently for it boot up, and got into the word processor, calling up one of my books. I had hundreds of books. I had millions of words. There was even one series, which involved two completed novels and twenty-something more in progress. That series was my favorite. I wrote feverishly until midnight, past my mother reminding me twice that it was time to hit the hay. I concocted spells that I would never be able to initiate outside of writing. I spun threads of story and wove them into a tapestry of meaning. I wished up things that my mother would never accept as real and embedded them in the memory of my computer's technology.
"So, there," I whispered. "It's real, Mom, and you can't take it away from me."
I did not sleep very well that night. It was summer, and summer school was over, and so was the family reunion. The next day, I would be getting my cat. I was already responsible for Saffron, our yellow queen tabby, so there would be nearly no new work for me. Jenny did not know it, and I did not intend to tell her, but I had already decided to name my new pet in honor of her.
Jenny was the Oathbreaker, for she had promised to play imagination games with me and now refused. I could not remember the Norse gods of lies and of truth, so my tom cat would be Hermes-Apollo.
A further irony was that I chose a black cat with grey underfur. I wonder what the god of light thinks about having his namesake nicknamed the Darkling?
Comment to encourage me to write more!