The Story of April Winters
by: Rachael Carmine
You know that one weird girl who sits at the back of class with her head down doodling on the front of her note book with a black sharpie; that girl who never says anything and looks like she could have stepped out of a horror film (and not have been the damsel in distress). Yeah, that’s me. It’s not that I’m putting myself down or anything, I’m just telling the truth. This is my truth. My name is April Winters and this is the story of how I lost my sanity.
When I was a toddler, my parents said, I was odd. They said that I was born with what they called an “old soul.” They said that I would say and do things that were beyond my years. But what was also strange was that I would just start randomly laughing. Whenever they would ask me what was so funny, I would stop laughing, look at them and say nothing. I stopped doing that after a while so my parents assumed that I was just going through a phase.
I grew up in a low/lower middle class town; actually it was more like a village. My mother, Karen, was a teacher and my father, Sam, worked nights in a factory where they made engines. I was their first born and for the first 15 months of my life, their only child. Then my brother, Nickolas, came along. They said I loved him the moment I laid eyes on him. My parents said that I would take a washcloth to Nick’s face anytime it was dirty and wash his face until it was clean and then I would kiss him. Our family was normal but we were also unique. My whole family was really into music. My dad played guitar, drums, and sang. My mother played piano and also sang. I vaguely remember my brother and I dancing on top of the table in our cramped kitchen to Grand Funk Railroad’s “Some Kind of Wonderful.”
Those early days, were interesting. We had good days, but we had a lot more bad days. Mom was young Christian woman who dutifully brought her two young babes to the tiny country Christian church that was in the center of our historic town. My father, on the other hand, grew up Lutheran but in his teens abandoned that church and began worshiping drugs and alcohol until he enlisted in the army. I can only guess at how crazy that detox must have made him. My father was on leave when he met my mother, he was clean at that point, but still had a slight drinking problem. Mom loved him though and within a year, they were married. Not even a year after that, they had me. I was what they called a “happy accident.” But mom would sit in church every Sunday and pray that my dad would find his way to God. I remember dad coming home after work, often, with a six-pack of cheep beer. He would sit down in the tattered recliner in our living room in front of the T.V. and fall asleep after chugging two cans and have a third one open in his hand. Mom and Dad fought a lot back then. I remember Mom crying often because of something Dad said or did. It was either my brother or I who would run and get a roll of toilet paper for mom to wipe her tears away. Never once did my Dad hit my mom; never once, until I was about six years old. Don’t ask me how I remember this, because I don’t know. This one terrible event has been ingrained in my memory.
My brother had woken up in the middle of the night to the sound of our parents down stairs in the living room at it again. Nick crept into my room and woke me up, like he normally did. I heard my mom use her normal threats that she would pack me and my brother up and take us away somewhere that Dad couldn't follow. But there was something different about that night. Something was off and it made me scared, but brave. I got out of bed and put my little pink slippers on and left my bedroom. I never did that, especially when Mom and Dad were screaming at each other. Our living room was situated to where the dining room was between the stairs to the second floor and it. I was easily able to creep down the stairs and listen without being noticed. Nick started to follow me but I gave him a warning gesture to not follow me. That’s when I heard it, that deafening crack of a hand against flesh. I don’t know if my father was stunned at what he just did or God forced him to be still, but my mother grabbed the phone and dialed 911. I remember her crying into the phone for the police to come to our house right away. Scared to death, I sprinted noiselessly up the stairs, grabbed Nick, and we hid in my bedroom. I remember he fell asleep with his head in my lap and I sat up and heard sirens and saw flashing red and blue lights bounce off my bedroom walls. I heard them take my Dad away. Dad was gone for just two days and during that time my brother and I missed him. I knew better though, not to ask where Dad was. We were happy when he finally came home. I’m sure we had a ton of questions that didn't get answered truthfully. I hope to high Heaven that my parents don’t know, eight years later, I still remember that night.
It was sometime after that, that my Dad started coming to church with Mom. I wasn’t sure if he did it out of guilt or what but by the time that I turned ten years old, my mother’s prayers were answered and my father was an immersed believer in Christ. Almost right away he started working with the youth from our church. The kids of our neighborhood were from families like mine had started out to be, but I am so glad that God stepped in and my Dad’s heart changed for the better. Our family seemed stronger after that. Yeah we still had some hard times, like when Dad was laid off from work for over a year and bounced from job to job just so we could have hot dogs, toast, and peppered flour gravy for dinner, a poor man’s meal. I still love the stuff though. It was during that time that I was baptized and my family had joined the church’s Big Brother-Big Sister program. That’s when my older brother came into our lives. His name was Adam.
Adam was four years older than I was. I remember the first time I saw him. He had short black hair and deep green eyes that I could get lost in forever. His head was very square with an angled jaw and chiseled chin. His arms were folded across his barreled chest. It seemed like he wasn't really sure about us. Adam came over to our house a lot for one reason or another. I wasn't really sure about his life in those days. I remember that Adam would talk with my mom a lot and they became close. She and Dad talked a lot about Adam with us. They said that he would be staying with us for a while because where he lived wasn't safe for him. So Dad found a roll away bed and put it in Nick’s room. It was soon after that Adam came to stay with us. I remember Nick and I getting up early in the mornings to watch Pokémon with Adam before he left to catch the high school bus. That was the beginning of the rest of my life; I just didn't know it yet. The school year came and went. Summer was the best; we would play games in the back yard, rode bikes around our small town, played card games, and went on vacation together. We became a very close family. It was during those late summer nights that Adam and I would stay up and talk. He was so easy to talk to. We talked about our fears, our hopes, and our dreams. That was when I chose to love him and call him my brother. As I got older, Adam and I became very close. It was last year, when I was 13 that I first dreamed of Adam. I realized then that I was in love with him and I knew at once I had to put it out of my mind. But how do you do that? When you realize that you're in love with someone, it's like waking up and realizing that you're a whole person. How do you suppress something like this?
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