I’m cursed. My doctor calls me superstitious, but I’m cursed.
“Maybe you’re cursed with superstition,” he’d say, probably while wiping his glasses clean of germs, because he isn’t superstitious for germs. He can’t see germs, and he can’t see my curse either, but he’s selective.
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“Don’t test me.” That’s what I’d say. He’d still be wiping his glasses. He doesn’t listen.
I was cursed young, in a hospital, when I was born. I think I knew early that I was cursed, my wails piercing louder than any monitor, so loud my mom would have to buy earmuffs every time she went out shopping, even though the store that sold earmuffs was a three-hour drive away, since we had to move out of the apartment with thin walls, the one my dad always said he missed, the one he tried to copy in our new home lost in a jungle of plains, plains that stretch so far you look out the window and your mind oscillates like a ceiling fan, the one-room apartment he tried to replicate down to the chip on the left wall, the apartment my dad did manage to replicate, the room he’s been locked up in for 12 years now, relieved from any regret. I think he regrets having me.
That was the first curse, losing my dad. He was the one who named me April, and my mom said he thought it was clever because I just kinda happened, and April just kinda happens, but I’m the one who was born on March 31 at 11:59 P.M., and I’m the one who’s cursed, so I guess it was clever, and wicked, and evil. I regret having him as a dad. I regret not having him as a dad. Either way, I’m really, really cursed, and so on April 1 each year, I have the worst day of my life, and those can stack up quick.
Today is April 1. It’s midnight on April 1, and I’m really, really scared, and I’m more scared than normal because this year’s been really, really good. I tried so hard after last year, after my mind just crumbled, turning to rubber and then crumbling… it gave me a real headache… really, really bad, and I was just limp on the floor because, without a mind, I couldn’t move my legs or my thoughts, and the worst part was, when everyone ignored me, I couldn’t be sad. But after that, I’ve tried so hard, and I’ve tried making friends without thinking about how I’d lose them, and I’ve tried checking the time without feeling really, really alone, without my heart gasping, or without my heart deflating like a poor balloon, or without my heart stumbling over itself and coughing a rattling, raddled cough because it couldn’t choose between a gasp or a sigh, and it’s midnight now, on April 1, and I can’t stop feeling so really, really scared, and so alone.
The sun is up now. My eyes are tired, but the sun is up and seven hours have passed and it’s the morning now, and I feel afraid but I also feel normal, so nothing’s gone wrong. My everything is tired, and my heart feels tired, and the tiny beats feel so aged and weak, and I think I have a sore throat, but I need to get up and go to school because that’ll make me feel normal, keep me normal. I have friends… I have fun with my friends… those thoughts make me glad. I cry of joy. I tried so hard, didn’t I?
At school, Casey is playing with her lunch. She sets her spoon by the edge of her tray and pounds her fist down on its end, and the potatoes catapult up into the air and into her mouth. I don’t know how she does it. “A lot of error” is what she says, but she’s so good I can’t imagine her failing. She tells me to try it, and I do. The potatoes arch into my hair so perfectly I think I can write a formula for it… y = x2 + 3, that’s what it is. Casey laughs, and I get hopeful that I just spent my curse for the day.
“Really graceful,” she says. She’s still laughing a little.
“Thank you. It’s my dream to be a McDonald’s table, you know, right after all the kids come and have a go at it, so this is a great stride.” I wipe the potato off my hair. “Besides, I don’t mind how potatoes smell.” We’re sitting inside the cafeteria, and it’s really loud. I like the loud. Everybody’s joy so dense in the air squeezes my thoughts into a crevice out away from my brain, in the hollow part between the tissue and the skull, and the smell of potatoes comes from above and down through my nose to act as a force field, a bulwark shoving all those feelings back, over and over again back into my head, and I’m getting a little dizzy. I feel really, really dizzy. I can hear a vacuum, my mom’s vacuum, and it’s getting closer and closer. Why is my mom here? She must be really close, because the vrrrrrs are screeching up against my ears, clawing at them with fingernails that haven’t been cut in at least six months, and I’m scared that the vacuum will suck up my potato-force field, and I run. I get up and run.
In class, Ms. Grant is droning on about President Johnson and his policies. I don’t know which Johnson. Andy sees my notes.
“Andrew Johnson,” he whispers.
“Is that the one after Lincoln?”
“No, that’s Jackson.” He takes my notebook and starts scribbling out the mistakes. I take it back.
“I’m able to cross out Lyndons with Andrews,” I say.
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine. It’s a good thing, too, since I was getting a pretty low opinion of Johnson. Lyndon, I mean. He’s lucky… for now.”
Ms. Grant gets to talking about the Trail of Tears. Listening, I’m terrified.
“Andy, have you heard about this?”
“Yeah,” he says. His face is fixed to his notes.
“Why would anybody do that?”
Andy dots his period, and he turns to me.
“The textbook says -”
“I don’t care what the textbook says. What do you think?”
Ms. Grant is still going on.
“Well. It made sense to them back then,” Andy says. I stare at him.
“How?” I ask. Andy starts fiddling with his pencil, rolling it on the desk.
“April, do you believe in God?”
This catches me off guard. He’s never been so candid.
“Maybe. Do you?”
Andy picks up his pencil.
“I think so. I go to church and pray.” Andy is back to his notes.
I think about God. Andrew Johnson believed in God. I think I do. I think I’m completely different from Andrew Johnson. I think my God is cruel, cursing me like this. I wonder if Johnson sometimes thought God was cruel. Andrew Johnson, not Lyndon. I don’t care about Lyndon right now. I wonder if the American Indians believe the same way they used to, after what their home did to them, after what should’ve been their home kicked them out. No home… that’s like being nowhere. That’s like floating two inches above the Earth, two inches above living with doubts but knowing you still have a home, two inches above being friends with Casey and Andy. I don’t feel so bad about being cursed anymore.
After school, I’m walking home with Jenny. She has a quick pace. One, two, one, two — her tempo is like a guitarist’s fingers on a really hot solo.
“Humans don’t know a lot,” she says.
“I guess not.”
“We think some people know a lot, but in the grand scheme of things, they just know a little more than we do.”
I think about this.
“I guess so.”
“Do you know what I think the most amazing thing we don’t know is? Well, I guess you wouldn’t. Sorry. I’ve always wondered what the inside of a black hole looks like.” She walks a little faster. I speed up, too.
“I’ve thought about that too,” I say. I like the sound of our steps, keeping beat. “Sometimes, though. Not always. What do you think it looks like?”
Our steps match time with the rain — we’re practically running, now. Jenny’s voice is breathless. “I think there’s nothing. Absolutely nothing. I think it absorbs everything so completely that it’s all trapped, smaller. Tinier and tinier. Everything just gets tinier and tinier.”
“But that would be something, though. It would be really, really small, but still something.” Jenny stops. I do, too. Jenny explains that I’m cursed, and that every April I have the worst day of my life. She tells me I die once I turn thirteen, but I come back again, later. Over and over again. I tell her I turned thirteen yesterday. She says she knows. She says she’s sorry. I don’t know why, but her sympathy means something to me.
I’m floating four million inches above my home, inside a black hole. Much time has passed. The Earth looks so gentle. Me and the Earth, we’re constantly getting smaller. Me and the Earth, we’re constantly getting more insignificant, but we can’t really feel it, and we don’t really care, since everything here is relative. Sometimes, if I try really hard, I can float down and count the people who could’ve been my friends. Out of everything in here, the Earth is the most colorful. I like finding which parts are evenings, and then circling around counterclockwise so I get to be a part of the orange 24 hours a day. I wonder if they can see me up here… telescopes are pretty powerful now. I wonder if I hope that they can.
