Searching for Rose

by Dana Becker

  All of the people involved agreed, though, that what they witnessed changed each person there that night, each in his own way. None of them was ever the same. And they also agreed on another detail: Hefsibah’s eyes. Yes. They were wide-open. Wide, wide-open. And her lips murmured continuously. Every few moments her mouth would drop open, and her eyes would screw up, as though she were shrieking. But not a sound was heard.

  The moment they’d come face-to-face—again—with Hefsibah, one of the older boys, Gabriel’s cousin, Reuven, panicked. Convinced that this was the work of the devil, he lunged at the girl, determined to suffocate whatever demon had possessed her body. The other men restrained Reuven. But he continued to rave that they had made a great mistake in unburying Hefsibah, they had to kill the demon, or immediately re-bury this body—or burn it. The men, though they secretly wondered if perhaps he was right, restrained Reuven and overruled him.

  One of the men picked up the girl. Her body was almost totally limp, despite the intense alertness of her eyes. He carried her into the house. It is said that when Hefsibah’s grandmother saw this, saw one of the boys walk into the kitchen with the girl they had buried that morning, she collapsed on the floor and fell ill for a week. She nearly died, they say.

  Hefsibah lived out the rest of her life on Stony Creek Road, just a short distance from where she’d been buried. She was eventually married, had a few children of her own, and lived a life of average length. But she was a strange, quiet woman. She said almost nothing. She never smiled. She had a look of doom permanently on her face.

  “I saw it myself,” Joseph said. “She would look at you and just keep on looking and looking, with huge eyes, like a barn owl, like she was looking into your soul. We were terrified of her. People said she could read your mind. But these were just whisperings. Because, of course, we don’t believe such things.”

  Hefsibah died—for real—just last year. Joseph had been at her funeral. Her second funeral.

  Lying in the dark now, April was so quiet that Joseph thought she’d fallen asleep. But April was awake, though in a very strange state, almost in a trance. In the dark it seemed she was looking at the flat surfaces of Hefsibah’s impenetrable eyes, and she could not look elsewhere. Joseph suddenly regretted telling her about Hefsibah, even though she’d asked for a scary story.

  “Are you okay?” he whispered.

  “Oh, Joseph,” April replied after a moment. “My sister. Where is she?”

  “I shouldn’t have told you that story,” he said. “I’m really sorry.”

  “No, no,” April said, suddenly sounding more like herself.

  She reached for Joseph’s hand and squeezed it tightly.

  “I’m happy you told me that story. Seriously. It feels like . . . I don’t know. Like it’s important somehow. It really happened. To your family. And that makes it important.”

  April and Joseph lay together in the dark. And then they drifted into sleep together, still holding hands.

  * * *

  In the bright morning light of the next morning, everything seemed very tender and still. Like all scary stories told at night, the fear and anxiety, conjured so fully in the darkness, also drained away fully with that darkness, and the new day felt brighter and safer than ever. Lying on the floor beside her bed, only just awakened, Joseph’s large body looked so manly, and his morning face so sleepy and boyish. April could not have been happier.

  Could this be the serenity that she’d sought so long in the Serenity Prayer? As she went into the kitchen to put together some breakfast, she thought about that word—serenity—and decided it was a lovely word. And that if she and Joseph ever had a child together, the child would definitely be a girl, and they would name her Serenity. Serenity Young.

  She opened the freezer and grabbed the small container where she kept her coffee grounds. The smell of coffee reached her, and she felt even better, knowing that, in addition to having all these happy morning thoughts, she was also about to get some much-needed caffeine.

  In her excitement, she almost missed the quirky thing sitting in her freezer. One of her silly roommates, no doubt, during one of their dumber moments, had accidentally put his sweater in the freezer. And like a total freak, he’d meticulously folded it up. April grabbed the sweater and pulled it out. It was stiff, as though it had been in there for a few days. April giggled to herself.

  But then she stopped dead.

  She quickly brushed off the sweater. She recognized it. The sweater didn’t belong to her roommates. No. It belonged to Rose. It was, in fact, her favorite sweater: blue and gray with a pattern of small elephants. There were a few little snags in it, under the collar, left by Rose’s cat, Dexter. A cold sweat gripped April. She felt as though she might collapse. She shook the sweater, to remove ice. A note fell on the floor. It had two words written on it: STOP LOOKING.

  * * *

  April didn’t see much of Joseph for the next week or so. She didn’t have any clear reasons to avoid him—no good excuses for him, when he would swing by the bakery to check on her. She simply didn’t feel up to it. It made no logical sense, but, in a way, she blamed him for the horrifying experience of finding Rose’s favorite sweater neatly folded in her freezer. When she’d cried out and fallen to the ground—at first too terrified to make another sound, and then finally overwhelmed by grief—Joseph was the first person she saw, standing in the doorway, looking confused. It made no sense, but seeing him there, and the fact that she’d been spending so much time with him—and enjoying that time—made her angry with him. And her reaction was to push him away.

  Joseph, uncertain if these signals meant that he should draw nearer or give her the desired space, eventually decided on the latter: to let April be.

  “I want to see you,” he’d said. “I want you to know that. I always want to see you. But I won’t bother you now. When you want to see me again—if you do—you know where I am,” he’d added, pointing toward the Amish diner.

  That had been almost half a week earlier. In the meantime, April walked around as though in a daze. She barely ate or spoke to anyone. She went through the motions. Work. The college class. The NA meetings. But she felt completely unconnected to anything around her.

  Another week went by. April had visibly lost weight. She shuffled around, her eyes glazed over. Carmen was worried but couldn’t get through to April about even small things, much less the big pressing questions. From afar, Joseph watched, too, and worried.

  One Monday morning, he showed up in the bakery. Carmen, usually a bit cold and formal with Joseph, was thrilled to see him. He was really the only hope of getting through to April. They took a walk. Joseph remarked on how unseasonably beautiful it was outside. April looked around slowly, bewildered. It wasn’t that she hadn’t noticed the nice weather, it was that she hadn’t even noticed that they were standing outside in the world, that there still was a world.

  They sat on a bench, warming themselves in the sun, under the wintry skeleton of their special maple tree.

  “Sorry,” April mumbled, tonelessly.

  “You have nothing to apologize for.”

  They sat quietly like that for a while.

  Finally, Joseph spoke up again.

  “April,” he said, “I want to help you.”

  “I don’t need your help,” she said, and crossed her arms over her chest. “I was doing perfectly fine without you.”

  Joseph gave her a look.

  “I mean, with your sister,” he said. “I want to help you find her.”

  “Joseph, don’t,” April said.

  “I can help.”

  “I really don’t think you can. And, anyway, I don’t want you involved with that.”

  “I’m already involved, April.”

  Joseph suddenly took April by the arm and gently pulled her toward him, looking her deep in the eyes. April struggled hard with her mixed emotions. She squirmed away from him.

  “Look, I know more than you think I know,” he sai
d. “And I also know something—someone—who might be . . . helpful.”

  Now it was April who gave him a look.

  Joseph had been doing some of his own snooping around, it turned out. And he’d discovered that he knew some guys, some Amish guys, who’d worked with Ricky, done some construction for him. These guys knew some things; they had seen some things. They were shady characters, Joseph admitted. Not the kind of guys he usually talked to.

  But despite all that, these guys might be helpful. Joseph could set up a meeting with them. He and April could go out to Lancaster and meet with them.

  April listened to all of this listlessly. Joseph’s efforts moved her—and, yet, she was too depressed about her sister and too irrationally angry at Joseph to listen. But she owed it to her sister to follow all leads. So she grunted and shrugged and said, “Fine, I’ll meet these people.”

  “We’re going to find her,” Joseph said. “We can do this.”

  For the first time in weeks, April smiled a bit. It was a tiny smile and then it was gone. For a moment their eyes locked, and they couldn’t seem to unlock. April felt the warmth. She felt her body drawn toward him. Her hand drifted toward Joseph’s, brushed it just a bit, and landed next to it. He withdrew his hand and whispered, “We shouldn’t, April.” April immediately rolled her eyes and jumped up.

  “We will find her,” he shouted as she walked away. She gave no indication that she’d heard him.

  Chapter Seven

  April surveyed the scene of her twelfth birthday party—which was far from being a celebration. Little April kept a close watch on her younger sister, Rose, who was starting to get fidgety and restless, and a close watch, too, on her mother, who was growing fidgety and angry. April often felt as if she had two younger sisters—or, really two daughters: one, the free-spirited, slightly hyperactive ten-year-old Rosie, and the other, a loving but sullen and unpredictable, occasionally just mean, adult-child whom she called “Ma.”

  But for this one day, her birthday, April wanted to be the daughter, the kid. For one afternoon she wanted to be the birthday girl, to have her mom and dad and sister shower her with gifts and attention and cupcakes, not because she wanted to feel special but because she wanted to feel normal.

  But her dad was late. He was always late—if he was around at all. For her birthday, he’d promised to make the hour-and-a-half trip from the shore, where he lived with his girlfriend, whom April had once met (and whose giant hair and long nails she’d marveled at). He was now an hour late. Then he was two hours late. There was no word from him. As time went by, Rose started to literally bounce off the walls. And April’s mom had drifted toward the high cupboard where she kept the vodka. She’d grabbed the giant bottle, and then disappeared into the bathroom—the only other room in the studio apartment—which was where she did her drinking, supposedly out of sight of the children. But April knew and always noticed.

  For a brief moment while they were sitting around the table—that was, sitting on the edge of the bed, since there wasn’t enough room for chairs—she’d believed today might be the day. Today was the day they could feel like a normal family just spending time together. But as soon as April saw her mom disappear into the bathroom with her vodka bottle, muttering curses under her breath, she knew it wasn’t going to happen.

  Rose was, for some mysterious reason, standing at the front door, shaking the doorknob with all her might, as though she were trying to escape, playing some sort of imaginary game. Her mother was behind the bathroom door, probably sitting on the sink—as April had once seen her do—killing herself slowly with that bottle. Once April herself had tried this drink. While her mom was showering, she’d climbed up to the high cupboard, and secretly sampled it, and had decided that it tasted like death itself. April was clever enough to know that this drink was her mother’s crutch in life, but she could not understand why; how could this vile drink, this poison, be the thing that she so craved? How could this be the thing she cared about more than her daughters? How could the feelings of sadness and despair, rage and violence be the things her mother so desired in life? It was a mystery to April. On that birthday, her father was where he always was: somewhere else. And April was left staring at an unopened package of cupcakes, so pretty and pink, wrapped up and untouched.

  * * *

  As April sat on the Greyhound bus, headed west on the highway, Joseph could tell that her mind was far away. She stared out the window, trying to remember that scene, her twelfth birthday. Some details were coming back into focus; others remained hazy. Did her father ever show up that day? She honestly couldn’t remember. She focused hard, tried to put herself back in the moment and remember. But nothing.

  What she did recall was that she’d started crying that day. She’d sat at the edge of the bed—the bed she shared with her little sister—stared at the sealed box of cupcakes and began tearing up. Quietly at first, then loudly.

  And then, all of a sudden, she’d felt a small, soft arm, and then another coil around her neck. She’d felt her sister’s hot breath, smelling of candy, on her neck. And she’d heard her, in her raspy little voice, say, “Don’t cry, Ri-Ri. It’s gonna be okay.”

  Did her father show up that day? April couldn’t recall. But she could remember, with total clarity, as though it had happened this morning, that her sister, Rose, had been there, and that she was the one who comforted her that day. Rose had been there for her, always.

  As the bus ride dragged on, another memory suddenly came to April. Even though she couldn’t recall whether her father had arrived for her twelfth birthday, she did remember that he eventually did give her a gift that year. It was a sad little doll, the kind you can get at a pharmacy, between the magazines and allergy medicines. It was likely that he’d done exactly that: on the way to see her, he’d probably realized that he’d forgotten to pick up something for her, and he’d stopped at a pharmacy to grab whatever he could find that resembled a gift.

  That gift, of course, had been all wrong. April was too old for dolls like this one, much less for a piece of junk with a creepy expression on its face. It wasn’t remotely what she had wanted. She’d wanted to go to the zoo with her family. But that trip was too costly and also required more coordination than her struggling parents could muster. And so this was it. He’d gotten her a doll that was wearing a nurse’s uniform because he knew that April dreamed about being a doctor. He was, in other words, trying.

  April never once played with the doll. But she did keep it in a special place. Especially after her father died, suddenly, shortly before her thirteenth birthday. That stupid pharmacy doll, in a nurse’s uniform, was the last gift she’d gotten from her dad. She wasn’t ever going to let it out of her possession. She’d packed it away somewhere. She hadn’t seen it for years, had almost forgotten about that doll. But now, as she sat on the Greyhound bus next to Joseph, it was all coming back to her, accompanied by a feeling of immense hollowness, of a sudden emptying out.

  In a swirl of emotions, April felt the sudden need to return home immediately and find her missing doll. But this odd feeling shifted to finding Rose. As she sat there on the bus, surrounded by strangers, sitting beside a man from whom she was feeling more and more estranged, April felt overwrought, and maybe even a bit embarrassed by these runaway emotions. Before she sank any further into her troubled memories, she turned to Joseph.

  “Hey,” she whispered, taken aback a bit by her directness, by the firmness in her voice. “I don’t know about this.”

  “About what?” he said, sleepily.

  “This,” she said, gesturing around them. “This trip. Just not sure it’s a good idea.”

  This wasn’t the first time they’d discussed this. Just yesterday they’d had almost this exact same conversation. And what Joseph had told her then, he repeated today: the man who they were going to meet had some information for them. He knew some things that, as he’d told Joseph, they “were gonna want to know.” He had some information regarding Rose.r />
  “But doesn’t this guy work for Ricky?” April said. “You know what I think of Ricky. You know I don’t trust him. . . .”

  “It was only on a couple of jobs. . . .” Joseph continued.

  “Really, what kind of jobs? Because the jobs Ricky does . . .”

  “He helped Ricky do some construction stuff. That’s all.”

  “Yeah, that’s all he’s telling you. . . .”

  “Look, he doesn’t work for Ricky. And he’s not his friend, either. He overheard some things, and he thinks we’ll wanna hear them. Let’s just hear him out.”

  April got quiet for a moment. None of this felt right to her.

  “How do you even know this guy?”

  Joseph hesitated before replying. April crinkled her nose.

  “Been making some inquiries around the community,” he said, finally.

  It sounded suspicious to April. And she felt that his hesitation was more revealing than his answer.

  But she was already on the bus, heading into Amish country, and so she decided to ride this out. She turned away from Joseph and stared back out the window, at the fields going by. She heard Joseph say, in a near-whisper, “Just try to keep an open mind.”

  She didn’t reply.

  Instead she returned to her memories. She remembered the nicknames Rose used to call her: Ri-Ri, and Apple (which she pronounced appo). Apple had been one-year-old Rose’s attempt to say “April.” It had been Rose’s very first word.

  And now she was gone. Dead.

  Wasn’t she dead? Nobody would say the word. Nobody wanted to admit it. But wasn’t it true? Rose was never coming back. All of this talk about finding Rose . . . it was all delusional, wasn’t it? For a brief moment, April stepped outside of her own head and tried to see herself as she probably seemed to other people. Didn’t she sound like those poor, tragic moms you see on the local news, those people who look like they haven’t slept or eaten in months? They clutch some smiling photo of their missing daughter, wearing her cheerleading outfit, and tell the reporter that they are “still hopeful,” and that they know their beloved Angie or Katie is coming home soon. But the look on the reporter’s face says: “You poor thing, that smiling girl is never coming home.” We all know how those stories end. The search continues, the news anchor says. The relatives are holding on to hope. And then, three months later, that same anchor will announce, Today that search has ended—in tragedy. The body was found in a creek.