Searching for Rose

by Dana Becker

  And the next morning, April emerged from this river of tears, newly born.

  * * *

  The next week, April made her way to the address that the strange guy at the bus stop had told her about—Cappy was his name, she now remembered, as she approached the building on South 4th Street. He’d told her that someone in this building knew where Rose might be. April found that hard to believe. It was more likely that this Cappy character was full of it. Or worse: this was some kind of trap. Or some effort by Ricky to spy on her or intimidate her.

  She’d thought of bringing Joseph on this mission but decided against it. She didn’t want him involved in this. And didn’t want to anger whomever this person was.

  April followed the strange directions that Cappy had given her. She buzzed apartment 4D three times in rapid succession. Then she stepped away from the building—to where she could be seen from above—looked up the side of the building and waved twice. She did this and got no response. She waited for a minute. Then two, then five. She went through the process again. Twice. Nothing. After almost half an hour of waiting, she left.

  * * *

  Rose could tell that something had changed with her captors. They were now nervous all the time. Less talkative with her. More suspicious. And suddenly, angry. At first, they seemed generally angry. Then it became clear that they were angry at her.

  Earlier, they had been mostly cordial, businesslike. Some were even friendly. There was some sense that she was just a pawn in some larger game. But that had all changed. Now they were blaming her. It was as if they’d discovered something new, something that completely altered their view of her.

  “We know everything,” one of them had said to her one morning as he dropped a dog bowl of water for her to drink from. “Everything.”

  She had no idea what they could be talking about. But whatever it was, it was bad.

  Earlier, they’d shackle and blindfold her only when she was being transported somewhere, but in her cell she’d be free. Now, they’d often leave her for hours, shackled and blindfolded in her cell. For no reason but malice. They’d talk about her, in front of her, as if she didn’t exist and couldn’t hear them. They never used to skip feedings or bathroom breaks. Now, they’d routinely “forget” her for hours. Whatever routine had previously existed was now null and void: everything was unpredictable.

  Once, one of the men came in to drop off her dog bowl of water, and then kicked it over as he walked out. She could hear the laughter from the other side of the door as she dragged herself over to the puddle of water on the floor and licked it clean.

  Every moment brought new fears. She had no idea what was coming next. Or worse: she had a deepening certainty that she knew exactly what was coming. With each missed meal and each long stretch without any sign of life outside that heavy, locked door, Rose couldn’t help but wonder if this was . . . it. Whether, this time, they were not coming back with food. Whether they’d moved on for good this time and left her here to die in this windowless room. She was honestly surprised every time they did show up again.

  Hunger and thirst deepened. It was the thirst that was most brutal, leaving her to suck on the concrete wall for any moisture. Reality began to blur again, as it had when she’d first landed in the concrete room. When one of the men entered the cell, he wouldn’t seem real to her. But then she would convince herself that he was, of course, real. But later, she wasn’t sure. And she would recall things that were said but later wasn’t sure whether it was all entirely in her imagination. She distinctly remembered one of the men saying to another, We’ll be done with her soon.

  Had he really said that? She closed her eyes to recall the whole scene. They’d come in to clean the cell. They were disgusted by her. And they let her know that by the grossed-out sounds they made. They blamed her for the conditions they’d put her in. One of the men became angry. And the other had said to him, Don’t worry, we’ll be done with her soon.

  He’d definitely said that, Rose thought.

  The thought didn’t scare her, though. Not anymore. She’d begun to deeply desire death. On another day—was it the next day, or a week later?—she lay curled up on the ground as one of the men came in to drop off the water bowl.

  Kill me, she whispered.

  The man ignored her. She said it again. Again, he ignored her. She said it again. Finally, he said, “Shut up. Boss wants you alive for another couple days.”

  Chapter Six

  Carmen could tell that something had changed between April and Joseph. In the days after Joseph and April had returned from their excursion to the cabin, a palpable electricity had overtaken their relationship. You could almost see the currents running between April and Joseph when they were within feet of each other. April hadn’t told Carmen about the cabin, but she didn’t need to. It was, to Carmen, completely obvious.

  Though her friendship with Carmen was strong, April had long ago realized that confiding in Carmen about Joseph was not a good idea for anyone. It left them both feeling upset, and nothing good seemed to come of it. They both observed an unstated agreement not to bring the relationship up as a topic of conversation. Carmen was trying to honor April’s decision, as an adult, to pursue this thing with Joseph, and April appreciated Carmen’s effort. It was April’s life, after all, and wasn’t she entitled to make the mistakes of youth? Wasn’t this how Carmen herself had learned about life?

  Deep down, Carmen could admit that part of her unease with Joseph was simply that she felt jealous because he got to spend more time with April. Each time April ripped off her apron and threw it on the hook next to the counter and almost literally ran to Joseph, Carmen felt a small but distinct pang of rejection. Did April ever throw everything aside and run to see her? Did April even like her? Carmen was sensible enough to know that these feelings were unreasonable and yet, she was honest enough with herself to recognize them as very real feelings to her.

  * * *

  Joseph and April were finding more ways to spend private time together. Joseph was coming up with more excuses to “make repairs” to the cabin, and he’d bring April with him. And, by spinning a few stories to his relatives—making one group of cousins think that he was staying at the other’s, and vice versa—Joseph was occasionally even able to stay, undetected, at April’s apartment in South Philly for the night. He hated lying to his family, especially because they were so trusting. Despite his obvious closeness with the strange girl from the bakery, Joseph’s family would never have suspected that he was staying at her house. The idea seemed crazy and inconceivable even to Joseph himself.

  April’s roommates—two scruffy guys who just happened to be named Bill and Ted—looked on in amazement at the tall, handsome Amish man who occasionally materialized in their hallway.

  April liked watching Joseph interact with her roommates. Because they were often alone, she hadn’t had much experience seeing him interact with people. She observed him closely. She saw how gentle he was with these two dumb boys who shared her apartment. He seemed amused by them, but without any judgment. He was kind. He listened, with real curiosity, to every inane thing that came out of their mouths and responded as though it weren’t. He seemed much older than they were, even though he wasn’t.

  Joseph naturally gravitated toward the kitchen. Without being asked, he’d begun preparing food. He’d rooted through the slime of their refrigerator and the chaos of their cupboards, somehow digging up some food items that he could creatively mix into a meal. After quickly and meticulously washing some potatoes, and setting them to boil, he carefully removed the piles of junk that covered the table and set places for each person.

  “We gonna eat . . . dinner?” Ted said. “Like, together?”

  “Yup,” Joseph said, smiling at the look on Bill’s face, as he stood in the doorway, watching in mute confusion. “Family supper,” Joseph said.

  April caught Joseph peeking at her when he said the word family and she returned his gaze with a crooked and skeptica
l look. But her heart also jumped a bit. And she had to work to unbend a little smile that crept onto her face.

  She noticed that Joseph, between his preparations and his listening to the boys’ banter, was a bit preoccupied. She could tell that his mind was wandering elsewhere. At one point, she leaned in and whispered, “You okay?”

  He replied, “Yup.”

  April had given him a look that Joseph, to his credit, immediately and correctly interpreted as “Don’t you dare ‘yup’ me, mister,” and then he said, “I just . . . want to tell you something.”

  “So go ahead and tell me,” she said.

  “Not here,” he said, motioning his head over to Bill, who was tormenting Ted by throwing pieces of popcorn into Ted’s mouth as he tried to tell a story about how drunk he’d gotten last weekend.

  Joseph stopped chopping, wiped his hands on his pants, and turned to April. He looked at her, giving her his full green-eyed attention. That look that always caught her a bit by surprise, made her feel both self-conscious and also, confusingly, like dancing without any self-consciousness at all. Under that look, she always had to remind herself: Breathe.

  “What! What is it?” April said, finally. “Why are you staring at me with that crazy hunk thing you do! Just tell me what’s on your mind.”

  Joseph again nodded toward Bill and Ted.

  “Later,” he said.

  She glared at him.

  “I promise.”

  * * *

  As April and Joseph lay down to sleep—April in her bed, Joseph on the floor, as usual—Joseph grew very quiet.

  “So . . . what’re you thinking about?” April said.

  Joseph stared upward, directly at the ceiling, and said, “I love you.”

  But he blurted it out in this odd, strained way—so it sounded slightly strangled and took on a tone that didn’t sound like his normal voice. It sounded like some kind of movie alien had taken over his voice box.

  April burst out laughing, and leaned over the bed to look at him. The wounded expression on his face only made her laugh more.

  “Why are you laughing?” he said.

  “Because,” April replied. “Because I love you, too. Weirdo.”

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, from somewhere deep under the blankets, April’s muffled voice said, “Tell me a scary story.”

  Joseph paused for a long moment.

  “I don’t know any,” he said, finally.

  From under the blankets, an exasperated sigh.

  “Uhhh. Don’t be boring,” April said, popping her head out of the blankets. “Tell me a scary story or it’s over between us!”

  “Hmm, sounds tempting,” Joseph replied.

  April pushed a pillow into his face.

  “Okay,” he said. “I got one.”

  “Good,” April said, and dove back under the covers, disappearing again. “That’s more like it.”

  “This story is real: it happened.”

  “Really?” April said.

  “Really. It happened. Years ago, but not that many. It happened in my family.”

  “For real?”

  “For real.”

  “Whoa. Okay. What happened?”

  Joseph told her a story he’d never before told—a story that, until this moment, he’d never thought of as a story. In his mind, it wasn’t a story, but a hazy memory that lingered in the background of his mind like an old creepy portrait of a long-ago ancestor, a person without a name but with a strangely familiar face, that hung in your family’s house, and whose presence was undeniable, even if it was never discussed.

  “Hefsibah,” Joseph said, into the air, after a moment. “That was her name.”

  “Hefsibah,” April repeated, slowly and gravely, as though reciting an incantation. She’d never heard of the name.

  “Joseph, do I want to hear this?”

  But Joseph was already telling the story, as much for himself as for April.

  Hefsibah was the second youngest of twelve siblings, originally from Wayne County. The only younger child was a boy, who arrived maybe a year after she was born. One afternoon, when Hefsibah was twelve or thirteen, she collapsed during her chores. No warning. She just fell to the ground. She’d been hauling a pail to the barn, to replenish the goats’ water supply. And the next second, she was lying flat on her face, with the overturned bucket beside her, spilling out its contents all over her dress.

  Nothing would revive her. Not smelling salts, not cold water. As luck would have it, the family happened to know that a community doctor was nearby that day, making a house call at a neighbor’s. So one of the young men in the house jumped on a horse and went to fetch the doctor immediately.

  But the doctor, too, could not revive poor Hefsibah. It wasn’t long until he determined that it was too late. She was dead. There was no pulse.

  In those days, the Amish of this area rarely used the local hospitals. Usually they went to the hospital only for serious chronic illness or for surgeries. For most other cases, they used home remedies and their own doctors. In Hefsibah’s case, they would have rushed her to the hospital, but sadly, there was no need: the girl was dead.

  Hefsibah was buried in the family plot, behind the barn of the original family farm, which was down Stony Creek Road, only a short ride from where Hefsibah had lived with her family. Her extended family was almost too shocked to mourn. And, anyway, Christian modesty and decorum were tenets of their community—every member of the family, following the lead of the parents, was committed to accepting this terrible loss as the will of God. Everyone but Gabriel.

  Gabriel was the youngest of the Hornung family, the only sibling who was younger than Hefsibah herself. Only a shade over a year older than he, Hefsibah had been his best friend and closest ally in the world. Little Gabriel was inconsolable upon her death. He denounced, as a traitor, anyone who tried to console him. Worse, he cursed God. He would not accept the simple fact that his sister was gone forever. Someone was lying to him. And he wasn’t having it.

  After Hefsibah was buried, Gabriel remained by her grave all afternoon, refusing to leave. And when, one by one, his family left the graveside, his rage deepened. He couldn’t believe that his family was just going to leave the girl outside, in the ground, like she was an animal. Gabriel vowed, then and there, that he would never forgive his family for this betrayal of his sister. They told him that she was dead. Her soul was in heaven. Her mortal life was ended. But, in his mind, his sister was alive. It was the rest of his family who were dead.

  Gabriel kept his furious vigil into the night. It was a humid summer evening and he wasn’t about to go inside. He curled up on her grave, on the freshly turned soil, and dozed off to sleep.

  That’s when it happened.

  At first, he thought he was still asleep. But he wasn’t. He was awake. He could see the sky and the dark shapes of the barn and pens and fields. He could smell the farm aromas. He was at his grand-folks’ house. He was awake—no question about it. And the sounds he heard were real.

  It was a low sound. The thrum of a heartbeat? Was it possible? No, ridiculous. Not a heartbeat, not a regular rhythm. But something. A distinct pounding of some sort. From the grave. Gabriel pressed his ear against the fresh, still moist soil, and put his hand over his other ear, canceling out all other sounds. And when he did, the sound he heard, from his sister’s grave, was even louder and more distinct. A knock; then nothing, then more nothing. Another knock. Two more knocks.

  “Wait a second,” April said, putting her hand over Joseph’s mouth. “What are you saying, Joseph?”

  “Let me tell the story!” Joseph replied.

  Gabriel lunged into action. He knew what he needed to do. He was a young boy then, only eleven or twelve. But he had a fierce personality and was also physically large. And the burial of his beloved sister—the unforgivable betrayal, in his mind, by his entire family—had filled his body with such a zealous rage that, as people tell it, he became a fully grown man in one
single night. When he heard the sounds—or what he thought were sounds—from his sister’s grave, he ran to the barn, grabbed a pick and shovel, and began furiously digging. Though he didn’t care for, nor trust, his family to help him, he knew that more people digging were better than one, and so he began shouting, even as he was digging.

  It wasn’t long before his uncles and cousins, and one of his brothers, came running out. Without even hesitating, they tackled him, certain in their suspicions that Gabe, already so troubled by the loss of his sister, had now finally gone mad. Gabe, who was strong, and so filled now with the righteousness and urgency of his cause, put up a formidable fight. But soon enough his family members overpowered and subdued him. They had to tie him up and gag him, though. He would not relent otherwise.

  But when they had Gabriel gagged and tied up, and the noise and commotion of the fight had died down, they heard it, too. They heard the same sounds that Gabriel had heard, the same sounds that had sent him, deranged, into the barn to grab a shovel. The sounds were unmistakable.

  “Joseph. What are you saying!” April protested.

  “This happened, April,” Joseph replied calmly. “The Hornung family is related to mine. We all know them.”

  The men and boys all stood there silently, by Hefsibah’s grave. For one second they listened. And then it came again: the muffled sound of pounding. Without even saying a word to each other, they all ran to the tool shed, grabbed every pick and shovel they could, and furiously began digging. They were so focused on the sudden, horrifying task that they hardly noticed young Gabriel, still lying on the ground, gagged and hog-tied. But soon, one of them did notice and untied him. He immediately joined them.

  Within minutes, they’d managed to dig far enough to hear more of what was happening down there. It wasn’t just pounding. It was scratching. And most chilling of all: a small voice. It was a girl’s voice, no doubt. But it sounded animal-like. No words could be discerned. And yet its meaning could not be more clear.

  When they reached the casket—the very casket they’d buried only a few hours earlier that day—they hoisted it up and out of the ditch and threw open the top. What they saw in there was so horrible that none of them ever really managed to describe it directly. It was as if they’d forgotten what they’d seen, even though they hadn’t, of course, but rather, remembered all too well.