April by Naomi Baker

Here’s April. She’s ten. She’s resting in a claw-foot bathtub at the end of the orchard. Her long blond hair is framing her face in a white fan. She’s squinting up at the sky, watching the clouds sweep across the blue awning. When her mother was first married to Daddy, he piped water all along the orchard, just so her mother could have a hot bath in the open air. Daddy says her mother thought it was the closest thing to paradise. April wonders what paradise is like and if her mother’s there. When she closes her eyes, she can hear the crackling of the river that runs along the back of the orchard. It’s a small river, maybe even a stream, but April still isn’t allowed to go near it.
            She wonders how long she can sit here until Daddy begins to worry. He can’t get out of bed because he had a hip operation two days ago. He’d been limping for years, even though he was only forty-seven. The Doctor said that sometimes hips just get tired, and they don’t want to do their job anymore.  Daddy was supposed to stay in the hospital until he could walk, but he refused. He wanted to come home to the orchard. He didn’t like the way the light looked in the hospital. April knew what he meant. In the orchard, the light was pastel, like a watercolor paining. Everywhere outside the orchard, the light made the world seem too real. April was glad he came home early from the hospital because she was sick of her best friend Genine, who she was staying with until her daddy got better. Yesterday, April bent Genine’s pinky finger back until tears came to her eyes.
            “Hey April,” Genine said.
            “Yeah what?” April said, distracted, because they were making pottery by mixing dirt with hosepipe water and baking their creations on bricks in the sun. April was wearing jean shorts and her skinny legs stuck out of them, tanned from late spring.
            “You know your mom? Did you ever think that maybe she killed herself? Like maybe she put lots of rocks in her pockets, or tied her boots together or something?” Genine was freckled and curious, and wrinkled her nose whenever she was waiting for an answer.
            Genine mom was pruning the ivy that hemmed in the back yard. She was wearing jeans and a white tank top that was stained a pale yellow under the arms. 
            “Genine!” I told you not to talk about that,” Genine’s mom said, staring at her daughter like she’d betrayed her. Daddy always said Genine’s mom was a gossip.
            Genine shrugged, turning down her lips.
            Her mother sighed, pulled off her gardening gloves and went back into the house.
            “It was an accident Genine. Sometimes you’re really stupid, you know that? April said, smoothing her mud bowl into perfection. April’s hair that was caked with gray mud shielded her face.
            Genine threw a rock at her bowl. The side collapsed pathetically.
            April had lunged for her, grabbed her hand and yelled, “She was wearing a purple dress the day she died, and it didn’t have no pockets, and no one wears boots with a dress!”
            Genine hadn’t screamed. She just blinked tears, wide-eyed at something she couldn’t understand.
April knew what really happened. April was one year and one month when her mother died. She drowned in a river on the first picnic of that spring. She had slipped away quietly, down to the river bank, while Daddy was distracted with April. On her float down the river, a man saw her, her dress streaming around her, violet and soft. He held out a stick, she clasped it, it snapped. By the time Daddy had noticed she was gone, she was already a corpse, drifting down the river in a purple current.
 
“April!” It’s distant, a voice filtering through the apple blossom. The water’s cooled, so April climbs out of the tub and grabs her towel off the chair that stays there all year long, its legs rooted in the ground like one of the trees in the orchard. Her towel is crisp from hanging in the sun. That’s the only way she likes the towels. She cringes at the thought of a too soft towel that makes her skin feel coarse by comparison.
“I’m coming!” she yells, pulling her cotton frock over her head.  She starts running barefoot through the straight lines of trees, until she’s reached the house. The house is made of wooden shingles, like a house made of overlapping graham crackers, April thinks.  The hous is tiny,  just two bedrooms and a kitchen attached to a living room. April’s bare feet trail mud over the wooden floors.
            Daddy’s laying flat on his back, looking up at the ceiling. He looks older than April’s ever seen him look before.  Pale skin that should be tan, blue circles under his big brown eyes.  April climbs on to the empty side of the bed and kisses him on the cheek.
            “Oww. Your face is scratchy.” April says.
            “Your hair’s wet,” Daddy croaks.
            April doesn’t mind. She buries her face into the pillow.
            “Does it hurt?” April says after a while, sitting up in bed.
            “Nope.”
            Daddy had already shown April his scar: a six inch incision laced with black stitches, surrounded by yellow flesh dyed with iodine.
“But my feet are cold. Want to put on my socks?” Daddy says.
            April goes and fetches a pair of woolen socks from his drawer.
            “Daddy, don’t you remember what the nurse said? You’re supposed to try and put your sock on by yourself.”
            “Oh all right.”
            April hands him the long metal claw-like device that is lying at the foot of the bed.
            Daddy sits up in bed, and pulls the lever on the claw. It grips the edge of the sock, and Daddy clumsily lifts the sock that April holds out of her hand.
            April claps.
            “Now you have to put it on your foot.”
            “Easier said than done,” daddy says, panting a little bit as he tries to lift his foot and get his toes through the opening of the sock.
            “Almost,” April says encouragingly, although it isn’t really very close. The sock is bunched around the toes, feebly drooping to the floor.
            April finishes putting on his socks, and Daddy wiggles his toes in thanks.
“Come here missy. Tell me about our apple trees,” Daddy says adjusting the pillow behind his back.
            “What do you want to know?” April comes to the side of his bed, hands on her hips.
            “Tell me, what was Louis the XIII favorite apple,” Daddy says raising his eyebrows.
            “Calville Blanc d’Hiver. You always do that one. Give me a hard one!” April says, slapping the top of his hand that’s lying lifeless on the quilt. She traces his veins from his wrists to his fingers—like rivers marked on a creased map.   
            “Here’s a tough one. What country produces the most apples?”
            “I dunno. What’s the answer?”
            “China,” Daddy says, closing his eyes and resting his head against the bed board.
            “Daddy, you look tired. You should get some rest.” April says, pulling the quilt up to his chest.
“The physical therapist is coming soon. So you’ll have to listen out for the door.”
            “Okay.” April says. She watches him fall asleep, raking her hands through her hair. She doesn’t like having long hair. Everyone at school wants to play with it. But Daddy doesn’t want her to cut it. He tells her it’s like Rapunzel’s, and every morning he brushes it, holding the hair at the top of her head.  He brushes it so gently that April doesn’t even know if she has a knot in her hair. April knows that he likes it so much because it’s like her mother’s hair. Daddy has curly black hair.
            When the physical therapist comes, April shows her to daddy’s room
            “All right Honey. Are you ready to see your Daddy walk?” says the physical therapist, whose name is Sally. Sally has fake blond hair and is peppy and out of place in the house.
            Daddy rolls his eyes.
            April lets out a giggle.
            She pulls the covers back and helps Daddy swivel so his legs are touching the carpet.
            “Really you should be doing this in the hospital, but you were naughty, you wanted to come home, didn’t you?” She says in a singsong voice. “Okay, we’re going to get you to lean on what we call the “assisted walking device.” She pushes the walker so it’s facing Daddy. “Here we go!” says Sally.
            Daddy falls forward, resting his weight on the walker.
Sally’s silent, caught in the moment like a mother watching her child take his first steps. His face matches the red flannel nightgown he is wearing. His thighs are exposed, black hair coiling over his pale flesh. He doesn’t say anything; he’s concentrating at a spot a few feet in front of the walker. Each step is jilting, his breathing heavy, his strong back bent over like an old man’s.
April wonders why the physical therapist didn’t send her away. She shouldn’t be watching this. April slips out the bedroom. The kitchen’s a mess. It’s full of dirty casserole dishes that the neighbors have brought over. There’s a trail of ants along the counter, a spider web strung from the refrigerator to the sink. The spider’s gone on vacation, but it’s left it’s victim. In the center of the nest, where it becomes the most intricate, is a black insect. It’s wrapped, incapable of movement, in layers of white strands.
April walks into the living room. There’s old leather couches, a bookshelf, a TV, her mother’s chest of drawers. It’s dark mahogany, ingrained with a spiraling, light wood pattern. April opens the top draw and reaches to the very back. Inside the small box are the scissors, wrapped in red tissue paper. They’re gold plaited, in the shape of a bird. The scissors are dainty, like the picture of her mother on top of the chest of drawers. April opens the scissors, and the pointed beak opens in a scream. She slides the scissors into the waistband of her underwear.
On her way down to the river, she thinks, “If I fall, the beak will pierce me,” until she reaches the water.
The water’s freezing, unsympathetic. It’s so cold it feels like her foot is cracking from her big toe to her heel. She’s wading in, the hem of her dress soaking up water to her waist. The sun is setting, and the trees have become ominous, shadowy against the pink sky. She’s reached the middle now. The current’s stronger than she thought it would be. April locks her knees against its steady push.
The scissors fit smoothly into her little hand. Her eyes strain to see the first cut, parallel to her right eye. Snip. April holds up the chunk of hair to inspect. It billows beneath her fingers, already straining to escape, already something that doesn’t belonged to her. It never belonged to her. She sets it down across the water, and it slides capriciously away. Snip snip snip…snip snip snip. And then it’s all off. The current streams white with her hair, and then runs clear, the strands disappearing into the darkening water.
April is light, feeling the air where hair once was.
Then suddenly, she hears Daddy’s voice, stretched and worried, “April? April? Aaaaaapril…”
April stands frozen. She thinks for a moment of diving into the water, of letting the current take her away from Daddy.  And then she turns and clambers towards the bank on numb legs. The water’s knee deep when she slips, her arms catching her beneath the water, her knees smashing into the rocks of the river bed. The current pushes April to the side, dunking her head under the water. She comes up, inhaling for air that doesn’t come fast enough. April climbs out of the water, panting.
“AAAAPRIL!”
April suddenly wonders how he is out of the house. He must’ve walked out by himself. The physical therapist would’ve left a long time ago. He walked out by himself just for me, April thinks.
For a moment April stands at the end of the trees, dripping water, dripping blood from her knees. April stares down the lane that the apple trees make, under the tunnel of blossom. The  blossom is like clouds of eiderdown, petals falling like skin white as snow in the whisper of a breeze.  He’s a shadow leaning against his crutches, bent out of shape like an old silver spoon. Then she runs toward him, the wind shrieking in her ears, rippling in her short wet hair. She doesn’t stop till she’s in his arms, still solid and strong around her. He lets go of the crutches, and holds on to April instead. Daddy ruffles the top of her hair, and April starts to cry. Daddy wipes her tears away with the back of his blue streamed hands.