Walking Along the Edge of Heaven

Walking Along the Edge of Heaven

By Heather Ann Martinez

Can you keep a secret? I never could. I always felt like I was catapult across the stage whenever my great aunts interrogated me about something they knew I had a hand in. They knew I broke the vase in the sunroom, cracked the ceramic cookie jar and ate all of my grandmother’s strudel in one sitting. I would tell my friends in school I was trustworthy and loyal to their well-hidden stories, but I was not. The minute our teacher asked if I saw or heard something, I confessed albeit very dramatically. One of my friends said I always looked as if someone had beaten the truth out of me. All anyone had to do was ask me a question. I could not lie. I wanted to. My great aunts said my eyes gave me away. They said a lot of things about me over the years. The neighbors said I was thin and tall. No one ever said I was a beauty queen or had silky hair like the movie stars. Everyone in town knew how I enjoyed looking through gossip magazines. My great aunts gave me money to but them cigarettes and their prescriptions from the pharmacy every other Tuesday. Their prescriptions had to be refrigerated so I really did not have time to doddle like the other kids my age. I had to be home within an hour so the prescriptions didn’t spoil. I always thought our pharmacist was being overly cautious. After all, what could a few extra minutes hurt?

The following Tuesday, I arrived at the pharmacy fifteen minutes later than I usually did. I clenched the dollar bills my great aunts gave me and dusted donut powder from my other hand furiously against the back of my coat. The jeweler’s grandmother usually treated me to donuts after school. I was the only one who would sit with her and let her rattle my ears off about her childhood in Denmark. She would often talk in Danish too but that did not bother me. I didn’t have to understand every word to know what her heart wanted to say. The jeweler said I was the only one who patiently listened to her. No one else gave her the time. We all never know how much of that we have. That particular Tuesday, I wanted to doddle. I listened to the jeweler’s grandmother for an extra ten minutes and had three donuts instead of two. 

White dust fell off my coat as I made my way to the pharmacist’s counter. He told me I was late. I said I didn’t realize I had a schedule to keep. He laughed and pulled the prescriptions out of the fridge. I set the money on the counter and asked for the cigarettes. Then, it caught my eye. I found a gossip magazine detailing the death of a beautiful princess in an automobile accident. The front cover had a photograph of the princess wearing a diamond tiara and a silver evening gown. How I wanted to look like that as I wiped jelly off my bottom lip with the back of my hand. The pharmacist cleared his throat and shook the bag. He reminded me I now had thirty-five minutes to get them in the fridge at home. It took me almost that long to walk home from the edge of town.

With the pharmacist’s prodding, I grabbed the bags on the counter and added a red cherry licorice stick from the jar. After I took the bags, everything became blurry. I was struck from behind with the barrel of the gun. I heard the wind chimes on the door but failed to realize that meant they were coming in.

It still bothers me, even now. I never got to take a really good look at them. I didn’t smell them. I could not tell them from anyone else I had ever met before. They were not foreign. They were not familiar. They looked like everyone else in town. I could have passed by them several times that day and that week. Yet somehow, they got to be my jury and judge. The pharmacist told the police he jumped over the counter to protect me after the first one hit me. In reality, the pharmacist cowered behind the counter and pressed a security button. He would later tell the neighbors how he defended me from my attackers. He went on and on about how late I was that day. He told the police if I had left on time none of this would have happened. The police knew he meant well but couldn’t be further from the truth as my body lay on the floor. Somehow, I was still alive. The paramedics arrived. They took my bruised and beaten body into the ambulance. My fingers and toes moved involuntarily. I lost a shoe on the way to the ambulance.

It was winter when I struck on the head. It was spring when I became aware although I could not tell the difference between the seasons. The doctors put me into a coma. In essence, they trapped me here. My body was so badly bruised and broken when I came in. They wanted to spare me the pain or at least some of it so they put me in this deep sleep. I had tubes in my throat and in my stomach. I can’t scream. I can’t tell anyone I want to die. My great aunts visited me daily expecting my condition to change. They did not want anyone to utter the words brain dead. They were quick to point out that I moved or coughed or moaned on my own. The truth is I was much closer to walking along the edge of heaven than occupying my fragile, porcelain looking body. I just couldn’t seem to get my intentions across until my heart stopped beating one day. My great aunts buried me in the family plot by my mother and grandmother. The pharmacist was buried next to my mother a few months later. I never knew he and my mother were married a long time ago. He tried everything to save my mother from the illness that eventually took her from me when I was an infant.  I suppose no one told me because I was never good at keeping secrets. Now the three of us are walking along the edge of heaven holding hands.