April Snow
The festival is in full swing. Nobody is in their homes. Nobody is sleeping. Except for my family. We are in Canada. It’s 2002. This is the story of how my sister died.
Before:
We are swinging, playing in the sandbox. She has a cold. I can see that it is something much worse, but I don’t question her, because she is older. We each make a sand castle. Mother is calling from across the street to us. I run, but my sister limps. I go to steady her, and she merely pushes me away, telling me, “Go ahead. I’ll catch up.”
She didn’t.
Now:
I am lying at her bed, and I am playing with what is left of her hair. She is reading one of her books. Mother is standing in the doorway, sobbing. I don’t know what to do. I’ve never seen my mother cry, and I am scared. I can tell that my sister is scared too, by the way that her hand shakes. Suddenly I am crying, and I don’t want anyone to know. So I slowly and carefully tell my sister that I am done and that I have to use the bathroom. She nods. I leave. In the bathroom, I cry. When I am back at my sister’s room, I see my mother and my sister hugging each other and crying. My sister asks mother if she is going to die. I run, because I don’t want to know.
Before:
Aunts, uncles, cousins. They come and spend time at our house. Each brings flowers, expensive toys, medicines. I can tell something is wrong. I can tell. Every day new people are here. And I feel old. Old like my grandmother, who watches me with sad, wise eyes. Gran hasn’t left. She came weeks ago, and she hasn’t left. Like me, Gran spends many hours and days by my sister’s bed.
My sister is whispering to me.
“You know that I’m sick, Ashlee. You don’t know how sick.”
She is right. Relatives brush me off when I ask what is wrong with my sister. They tell me nothing. They are wrong.
“How sick are you, April? Please tell me. I don’t know what to do.”
Suddenly Gran is there, and she’s pulling me away. I am helpless. I wrench free, and hug my sister. I get up and leave. I had wondered to the kitchen. Mother is there, and she’s hugging me, and kissing me and telling me that everything is going to be okay. I can only hope that she is right.
Now:
We are celebrating. My aunt had a healthy baby boy. He is very small. Even April is out of bed, holding him. Even as we are in the middle of our happy façade, every one looks sad. The babe’s mother comes and takes him from April. She is carried back to her room. I go too. We sit together, and read books. We talk as if nothing has happened. Then she told me that she was leaving. I told her that I wouldn’t let her go.
“You don’t have a choice Ash. I have to go. I don’t have a choice.”
My seven year old mind doesn’t grasp that she means that she is dying. We go back to reading her books. After a while, she gets tired. So I take her book from where she left off and read it too her until she is asleep. Soon, I fall asleep too.
I dream that I am my grandmother, and April is Gran’s twin sister. We are very young, almost fifteen. We are running down a street, laughing. I am carried to another time, when Gran is sixteen, and she is sitting in front of her sister’s bed, like I often do for April. Gran asks her twin if she is going to die. I know that she is, by looking in her eyes. But it’s a lot different when Gran’s sister says it out loud. Gran’s sister is talking again, and I can barely hear her, she is so quiet and tired.
