Now that we’ve moved, Mom and Dad whisper a lot. Dad comes home from the bank in suits and ties, his hair is short now above the shirt collars, and they whisper in the kitchen before dinner. And we don’t pray “God is great, God is good . . .” Dad prays quietly thanking God for things like “sovereignty” and “strength.” After dinner, Dad sits in the living room with papers from the bank and Mom does dishes in the dark kitchen and tells us to go play in one of the bedrooms. I ask why. Mom says, “Daddy needs some quiet.” Mindy says, “Why?” Mom says, “Sometimes it’s hard for Daddy to be at work.” Megan says, “Why?” Mom says, “It’s hard for Daddy to work with Grandpa at the bank right now.” Grandpa didn’t come to Christmas this winter.
I heard there was an emergency at the bank and Grandma had to call Grandpa when he was away. She started calling all the hotels to find him at his conference. But when the hotel people found his number, a lady answered the phone.
Grandma and Grandpa went to court over the bank. The court said Grandma gets it, and Dad’s still going to work there. I wondered at my birthday if that was why Grandpa didn’t send a present. I asked Mom if that meant Grandpa didn’t love me anymore.
Before she answered, Dad yelled from the corner of the table: “Moo-oo-ooo-Wah-Ah-Ah-Ah!” and Meg and Mindy ran away screaming, “April, run!” “The Monster will get you!” Dad belted the monster laugh again and I ran from my chair to Meg and Mindy. We tore around the house hiding in closets by the sleeping bags or squishing behind the doors. Mindy and I peered through the hinges while Dad stomped up to the door. “Where are those little girls?” he said in Monster voice. We peeked too hard and he caught us through the crack. “I see you! Moo-oo-ooo—Ah-Ah-Ah-Ah!” We were trapped and he caught us and put us in the jail in the entryway. Before he walked away we yelled to Megan: “Megan! Come save us! We’re in jail!” We warned her he was coming upstairs to get her. She slid down the stairs on her butt, we heard the thump-thump-thump, then her sharp eyes ran toward us and she tagged our hands.
After our game that night we had birthday cake. It was shaped like an owl with coconut and licorice eyes. Dad said a prayer before I had my wish. He said, “Heavenly Father, thank you for April and how special she is to us. Help her to know that nothing will ever change how much we love her.”
I can see the moon out my window tonight. It makes the tops of the cars glow as they drive by. Mom and Dad are saying prayers with Megan and Mindy in their bunk beds. We danced in the living room tonight when Dad got home so Meg and Mindy got to stay up past their bedtime. I came up to put my pajamas on and to crawl under the covers. After Mom and Dad tuck me in, sometimes I get up and turn on the light again so I can write. I keep a notebook with light purple paper and a pencil behind the little sliding door at the top of my bed.
Sometimes it’s hard to fall asleep at night. Dad has the same problem. When he sneaks me popcorn after bedtime, he’s never surprised I’m still awake. I tell Mom that my body is tired but my mind just keeps going. She asks what I think about but Dad never does. I think he knows that the thoughts are usually big to fit into words and sometimes they feel like things it would be bad to ask.
Even when my mind is quieter, I never know how to lay. I like to lay on my side or my stomach, but neither of those work. On one side, I have my back to the door, and that makes me afraid because I can’t see if there was a scary noise and I needed to know if someone was there. On the other side, I have my back to my stuffed animals and I can tell from their eyes that they are a little sad already and putting my back to them would make them more sad. My stomach is most comfortable, but I can’t do that because then my back’s to God and you should never turn your back on God. So the only thing to do is lay on my back because the devil’s down there. It’s hard for me to fall asleep on my back, but at least I know it’s okay to put my back to the devil. He can get as mad and he wants and that won’t change anything. I think.
Lately, I’ve had a lot of questions for God so before I go to sleep I write them on the purple paper and make sure they have a question mark at the end. I just write one question each night and then I put the pencil and the paper on top of my headboard. I don’t understand why God answers some prayers and not others. Like, how I got my Kangaroo shoe out of the storm drain when my leg slipped in, but how we had to move from the farm or how Grandpa doesn’t talk to Dad.
Right now I write little, curious questions. Like “What is heaven like?” and “Are there cats there?” Then in the morning I check to see if God wrote an answer there. He hasn’t yet, so I don’t write any big questions. Questions like, “Do you love me?” I wonder that. Because God loves everybody just because he’s God, but I wonder if he loves me all alone. Because even though Dad and Grandpa love each other, Mom says so, Grandpa doesn’t love Dad all alone, he just loves him the way he has to.
I just don’t think I could write the love me question. Because I don’t know what would happen if I already prayed to love God and then he didn’t answer.
Last night Mindy came to my room in the middle of the night. She had a bad dream so she ran up the stairs. Most the time we go in Mom and Dad’s room when we have bad dreams, but it’s scary to wake up mom because she jumps so high. I always sneak across the hall and as soon as I cross the line on the carpet I whisper “mahhom?”
Their room is darker than mine and the shadows change as soon as I cross the line on the carpet. When they are sleeping, their room is scarier than mine is. My room has light spots and dark spots, but Mom and Dad’s room has lots of grey, nothing is just bright or dark. When Mom doesn’t move, I step closer and then check behind me. “Mahhom?” Nothing. Then when I’m right next to her I touch her arm, “mahhom?” “—HHU?—WHAT?” She’s sitting up and loud and her eyes aren’t even open. She can’t see without her glasses so she reaches for my face to feel if it’s me or Megan or Mindy before she opens her eyes. “It’s okay mom I just had a bad dream I just had a bad dream it’s okay it’s okay” “Alright Sweetie, shh. Grab the blanket on the end of the bed and you can sleep here on the floor, but be quiet so we don’t wake up Dad.” Someday I’ll tell her that she’s the one who’s so loud.
So, when Mindy came to my room I heard her run up the stairs so I was awake when she came in. I gave her the pink afghan and told her she could sleep on the floor. I should have two blankets because my carpet is crunchy to lay on and it makes pokey marks on your arms and cheek. I was scared too when I heard her coming up the stairs—I looked past her when she was in the doorway to be sure no one was following her. When she was laying down I tried to make sure she didn’t see me checking the door. But her scaredness made me less scared. I told her it was okay. “It’s okay, Mindy.” She believed me.
When I woke up this morning one of the corners in my room had grey in it. It made me wonder if Mom and Dad and God lie sometimes too, to make things more simple, to make us feel better. I wonder if that’s okay. And I wonder if lying is something different if you do it because you love someone or because you feel like you have to.
Sons
The sun wrapped around her slim wrist as it rocked over the heads of red geraniums, forward and back, her thin tanned fingers grasping the spent blooms and popping them from the plant. The green, cracking smell of the stems baked off the broken heads and seeped onto Betsy’s warm skin. Standing next to my best friend, I bent my shoulders over a white geranium and began plucking too. Two high schoolers, we circled the temporary fence around the seasonal greenhouse unburdening plants of their dead parts. Betsy slipped the crisped buds into her palm until it was full then bent closer to the radiating asphalt and shook them into the base of the pot over moist black soil.
Picking up an obvious metaphor from our surroundings, we talked about what we always talked about: love.
“It
