Girl Unmoored Read Free Page A

two of me though; it was just her bad English. I was supposed to be named April after my great grandmother, but my dad found out that April in Latin meant “opening” and no way was his daughter going to be called that. My mom said Latin had nothing to do with the real world and my dad said it seemed to be paying for the real roof over her head. She put April on my birth certificate anyway, but in such tiny chicken scratch to hide it from my dad that some wizard thought it said Apron . “Apron?” my dad asked. “What kind of numbskull would write that?” But my mom said it served him right for being so stubborn. And then they never changed it.
    “Morning,” I told M.
    I climbed onto the counter and got down my bowl and cereal. Outside the trees were busy growing. Little green buds popping up everywhere.
    “There is oatmeal,” M said. Well if you wanted to glue something together, then you needed M’s oatmeal. So I jumped down and went straight to the icebox for the milk. “Better that you eat the oatmeals, Aprons. In Brazil the Mammas would never let their childrens eat that ca-ca .”
    I could feel that thing creeping up in my throat like it always did whenever M was close. Pretty soon even a Fruity Pebble wouldn’t fit down it, so I knew I better start eating fast. I got a spoon, took everything over to the table and sat down in my spot. A little girl lobster was painted right onto the wood. My mom had painted lobsters for all three of us: one with starfish sunglasses, one reading Latin, and one tap dancing. She quit tap dancing classes when she got into karate, but kept the lobster. The other side of the table was empty. It was supposed to have a baby lobster on it someday. I wanted a sister, but my dad wanted a son. Now though, I just wanted it blank. If M thought she could paint a nurse lobster there she had another think coming.
    I poured some cereal and put the box in front of me so I could read the Do You Know s on the back. You never wanted to talk to M if my dad wasn’t around.
    “You will get fat eating this,” she said anyway, pointing to the box and walking toward me with her bowl of glue and one of her Portuguese romance novels. “The boys will never like you.” I tried to look shocked that the yo-yo was the most popular toy in the world and took a bite of my cereal, which was the best thing you could ever taste unless you had something in your throat trying to kill you or M staring down at you. Then it tasted like cardboard.
    The toilet flushed in the hall bathroom. My dad would be in for more coffee soon. Out the corner of my eye, I saw M put her bowl down on top of the tap-dancer’s feelers. My skin caught fire. You weren’t supposed to put anything hot directly on top of the lobsters. “Please move that,” I said as smooth as silk. But she ignored me. So I picked it up myself and put it down on the empty side of the table.
    “Hey, that’s mines,” she whined.
    “Keep it off the lobsters, please.” I slid a place-mat from the center of the table over to her. My blood banged too hard inside of me, but my dad still wasn’t out of the bathroom so I took another bite of my cereal. M clucked her tongue and reached over for her oatmeal, her book dropping to the ground with a thud as she did. But before she could snatch it up I saw it: a folded piece of paper that had fallen out of her pages. “K-1 Visa: Marrying within the U.S.,” it said at the top.
    Just when you think the toilet is about to explode into a million pieces, it shuts off. But I didn’t hear it this time because of my bowl hitting the floor, causing a flood of Fruity Pebbles all around my chair. The cereal box had knocked over my bowl when I stood.
    “What’s going on?” my dad growled from the kitchen door. I swallowed that sugary milk gone sour and looked up at him.
    “Oh dears, just an accident, Dennis,” M said, wiping cereal off her bathrobe. The paper was nowhere to be seen now. I was the only one who knew the