Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Kristen McCullough
Christina Robertson
4.22.11
Where Is My Heart?
Home is where the Halloween decorations hang year round. I smile back at the orange
“Hey.” My dad appears. “I’ve got Tangled.” I whoop and throw myself at him,
abandoning my paper. I chase him, our feet crashing down the wood stairs. I grab the movie
from the kitchen counter as he heads to the living room to alert Mom.
Dad throws me a blanket and I allow the couch to consume my body. As the Disney
commercials fly by, my parents comment on what they love best about the movie: my dad loves
Maximus, the horse. My mom likes the scenery. I enjoy Rapunzel’s indecision after leaving the
My memories of leaving for college are interrupted by a whisper in the back of my mind;
What is home?
I pick at the electric blanket. I imagine what my own home will look like some day. I see
myself plucking weeds from the soil in a strawberry and pumpkin patch, dirt rolling through my
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fingers and bunching under my nails, worms sliding over my knuckles. Treated cherry wood
flooring and cabinets. One of those armchairs, dark green and big enough to swallow me whole.
A king size bed to dominate the small bedroom. A Keurig coffee maker to waft the smell of life
throughout the house. A John Deere walk behind mower so I can immerse myself in fresh cut
Laughter erupts from the room. I mistake it for my niece and look toward the kitchen. My
heart stops drumming when I realize the noise came from the movie.
Jade. My eleven month old niece. I plant her in the enormous chair in my imagined home
***
I glance across the back seat of the suburban to my best friend. Her hands are clasped in
her lap, her legs jumping up and down—a perfect mirror of my own posture. I jump when Dad’s
phone rings. He turns the stereo down. Mom launches up and flips the phone open.
“Hello?” She sounds breathless, like we have run the last seventy miles instead of riding
in comfort, to Bemidji. After a moment she squeals and cries, “It’s a girl!”
I smile and lean back, listening to Mom tell my brother we will be at the hospital in
twenty minutes. I wonder if my niece will have the McCullough nose. Mom hangs up, chattering
Seconds later, my phone buzzes. It almost slides from my lap to the floor in my shock.
“Hel--”
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“It’s a girl,” my brother yells. My speaker crackles and I turn the volume down. I hear a
I feel tears burn my eyes, but chew on the inside of my cheek until my voice returns to
“Her name is Jade Taylor McCullough and she is seven pounds, eleven ounces! I can’t
wait for you to hold her!” My brother’s voice cracks in excitement; he draws a deep breath.
“For God’s sake, you’re juggling the baby and the phone?”
“You just dropped one of them. I’m hanging up now. See you in twenty.” I relay Jade’s
weight to the rest of the car. I only notice I’m picking my sweatshirt apart when we step out of
All too soon our party is standing outside my niece’s room. I bend to hug and kiss my
The dark circles under Nilda’s eyes, her sweat-soaked hair, and strewn hospital gown
clued me into her struggle, her victory, her exhaustion. I stay behind my family, peeking at Jade.
A white hat covers a head of black hair. Swaddled in a faded white blanket, she looks like a
burrito. I giggle, thinking of her half-Mexican heritage. Kenzie glances at me, confused, but gets
distracted by the emergence of Jade’s baby fingers stretching toward my brother’s goatee. The
tiny baby fingernails fascinate me. My heart pounds an uneven beat in my chest.
“Kris, come hold Jade!” Marc smiles at me—the new aunt. It is the moment I have been
dreading. I start to refuse, but like Moses parting water, my family clears the way. Marc pushes
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her against my chest, waiting for me to extend my arms. I break into a cold sweat as I feel my
arms circle around the baby burrito. I hear my heart pounding in my ears like a raging hurricane.
I consider passing out. Marc re-positions Jade’s head before letting go. I see spots as the last of
Dontdropherdontdropherdontdropherdontdropher. . . supportthenecksupporttheneck. . .
I wish I had pulled my hair into a pony tail. I wish I had sat down first. I wish. . .
I stop wishing as Jade’s eyes travel from her father to me. I almost drop her in shock. Her
eyes are like midnight; darkness broken only by the light of life pinpointed on my face. She even
has a red splotch on her forehead in the shape of an arrow pointing toward her eyes. All signs
point to life, I think. The raging storm in my head calms as she glares up at me, so accusing. Her
eyelids are swollen, like waking up from a really long nap. I want to apologize for something.
I promise. As long as you are alive, I will never leave you. Okay? God, you look like a
Satisfied and unperturbed by my racist comment, her eyes break from mine to look up at
***
The movie over, I lay back in bed. My jack-o-lanterns continue to smile at me; my
Johnny Depp poster smolders at me in the orange glow. I think of my upcoming trip to Oregon,
aching in longing for the mossy forests, the hiking trails, the mountains, the ocean; even the
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dunes have a grassy tint to them: The Emerald City. I put my imaginary home just outside
I sigh, looking to my cuckoo clock; it is later than I thought. I blink, my eyelids drifting
shut. I scoot further under the blankets and push my pillow beneath my head.
***
I dig around the tree for a present that isn’t for Jade. My hair catches on some pine
needles as I find one for my dad. I detangle myself from the crooked evergreen and spot a few
more presents for my sister-in-law. After distributing the gifts I kneel next to my dad in the arm
chair, smoothing my hair back down. He pats my shoulder and I twist to smile at him.
Jade’s first Christmas showers her with gifts from Santa and family members alike; she is
having a blast tearing the wrapping paper apart with her teeth. Everyone but my dad and I roar
with laughter as she wrangles her way around the paper, stopping only to accept a kiss from our
Pomeranian, Nikki. For a moment, it feels like time slows. A bubble encases my corner of the
living room, Dad sitting behind me, smiling at the spectacle before us. I bask in the warmth that
can only come from excessive body heat. For the first year ever, we have a full house. What with
my dad’s family on the west coast and my mom’s family almost non-existent, Christmas is
usually a small affair including only my parents, my brother, my mom’s parents, and I. This
year, not only did my grandparents join us, but my new sister-in-law, her mother, and my niece
added an extra spark of heat to the room. I secretly found this better than going to Las Vegas to
celebrate Christmas. Light-bulb-heat is nowhere near as comforting as that which radiates from a
I jolt back to life as a tiny hand travels up my leg to my knee. Looking down, I see a pair
of dark chocolate eyes staring at me, her lips twitching into a coy smile. Her arrow shaped birth
mark is glowing red from the exertion of chasing Nikki around the room. All signs point to life, I
think. I accept her hand, swinging her into the air superman-style. Her hands fly to her mouth,
eyes scrunching with her grin. I fly her once around the house before landing her in her mom’s
lap. Jade twists around to look at me, her hands still at her mouth. In the chaos of everyone’s
laughter, we share a look. She smiles once more before I go back to kneel next to my dad.
***
I lay in bed picking at the corner of my notebook, twirling my pencil in the other hand.
Frustration builds in my mind. The only sentence on the top of the page is cliché and crossed out.
That’s not specific enough, I frown. Where is my heart? In Oregon, with the mossy
forests? In Europe, with the Alps and sprawling green countryside? Is it where my thoughts
remain, so far from my physical being? Does it reside within people? What about my memories?
What about the fact that I’ve lived in one place since the age of three, dreaming of traveling far
My pencil scrawls across the page, slow and uncertain. As the questions spill out, I throw
the curtains open inside my imaginary living room. The one with the body-eating chair, the one
with the dark cherry wood fireplace, the one with a flat screen TV and book shelves devouring
the walls; books pinched and rammed into any space they can fit. The one so far away. As light
pours into the room I hear a faint sigh. I spin around and am greeted by tiny sausage fingers
Picking Jade up, I twirl her around and run with her outside into the sunshine of my
imaginary home; her fists shoved to her mouth, suppressing a flood of giggles.