1st 5 Pages Jan. Workshop: Rose

Name: April C. Rose
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
Title: Winter on Brimstone Hill

I roll over to check if the milk is frozen. It is. It’s going to be a bad day.

I pull the sleeping bag over my head.  Maybe, just maybe, I’m
hallucinating. If I pretend to fall back asleep and go through the
whole process of waking again, then perhaps there’ll be a fine icy
film over the milk and nothing more.  It’s worth a try.

I almost convince myself it’s going to work, but when the sleeping bag
comes down, the day looks pretty bleak.  The milk, neatly stacked in
three crates of glass bottles, is solid.

I could pray that the bottles won’t break as the room warms with
daylight. I could pray, but I won’t.

In any case, there’s no use wasting energy over frozen bottles.
What’s done is done.  I can’t control the temperature any more than
the wind or rain.  If it’s going to get cold, it’s going to get cold,
and all things—milk among them—freeze. There’s a life lesson for you.

I pull the folded clothes from my nightstand into the warmth of the
sleeping bag.  I am the salamander that used to live in the cellar.
Joseph and I used to amuse ourselves by enticing it with earth- or
mealworms.  It shot from under the stone long enough to bite down on
the morsel before retreating.  The salamander couldn’t guess we
weren’t going to hurt it. It didn’t need to move fast, but I do.
Otherwise, my body heat will escape.  The chill will never leave me
then.

At least my bedroom isn’t as damp as the cellar. That’s something.

When I was little, I learned that sleeping in my clothes provided me
with extra warmth and a better night’s sleep.

One overheard conversation during middle school made me stop.

“Did you see Sarah’s shirt?  It’s so wrinkly it looks like she slept in it.”

That was the last time I did.

If I’m being honest here, it was the first time I noticed I wasn’t
like everyone else. Now I can’t forget it.

True story: middle schoolers are cruel.  Those who were smart enough
to understand refused to, and everyone else couldn’t.

How’s this for a conversation starter: Hey guys, I swear I don’t dress
like this on purpose. It’s just that my parents don’t have the money
to dig a deeper well or install a working water heater. It sure makes
washing a pain. So yeah, that’s why everything looks like I picked it
off the rack at Salvation Army. Oh, by the way, I did.

Try telling that to a bunch of thirteen-year-olds—or sixteen-year-olds.

I’m not jaded—I swear. It’s not like my parents are to blame or
anything. They once had dreams. Maybe somewhere along the way they got
thwarted, but it happens. We can’t all live the dream. It’s more that
I have a realistic view on what it takes to get through the day, so
that’s what I do. I get through it.

My hand gropes for the boy’s aviator frames I call glasses. They
hearken back to Tom Cruise and the 1980’s, but they work.  Why someone
would beg her parents to spend twenty dollars extra to buy girl’s
frames when she can have her peers make fun of her for wearing
outdated and gigantic frames is beyond me. I mean, what’s not to love?

The clock reads five a.m.  My glasses let me see that.

I don’t have to be in the kitchen to know my father sits at the head
of the table with a coffee cup in one hand, and Mom sits to his right
with a deck of cards in hers.

Grace will sleep a while longer, being too young for chores and
school, and it’s another hour before Joseph wakes to tend the
chickens. He’s lucky; throw some scratch down and refresh their water
and they’re fine.

In the kitchen, it’s exactly as I anticipated. My parents listen to AM
radio, the steady tick tick tick of the electrical fence interrupting
the radio waves.  They listen to the morning show with DJ Dan with
such frequency that he might as well be family. The only other noise
is the burble of the coffee pot on the wood stove and Mom’s cards
flicking onto the table.

I press my feet into my muck boots and shrug into Mom’s oversized wool jacket.

I’m turning the doorknob when my father speaks. “Not going to say
‘morning,’ are you?”

“Good morning,” I say, chastising myself for the slip. Being caught up
in my head is a perpetual problem of mine. I don’t pay attention to
things around me. I should.

“It doesn’t mean anything now that I had to tell you to say it.”

“I’m sorry.”  My voice is soft, little.  It’s not my real voice; it
doesn’t belong to me. He inspires this voice; it belongs to him.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he says.

“To milk the goats.”

“How many times have I told you not to mumble?”

Mom stops dealing the cards to the piles on the table.

“Sorry,” I say.  “I was going to milk the goats.”  I put more force
behind my words, but they still come out tight.

“Look at me when you speak to me.”

My eyes dart up to meet his.  I don’t want to stare into the green we
share, but I have to.  I can pretend I’m stronger than he is.  This
time, my words carry.  “I was going to milk the goats.”

He turns back to his coffee, Mom’s cards flick onto the table, and I
escape to the barn.

Chapter Two

It doesn’t matter that, when I massage the goats’ teats with bag balm,
I also liberally apply it to my own hands. They become chapped by the
time I finish the milking.  There’s no relief through simple friction.
 Rubbing only aggravates the broken skin.

My parents aren’t in the kitchen when I set the bucket of milk on the
stovetop and turn on the gas.  I light a match and hold it to the
burner until the flame spits.  Then I toss the expired match into the
sink.  It wouldn’t do to start a fire.  At the match’s sizzle, I
stopper the sink.

The heat from the woodstove behind me entices me, summons me, but I
ignore it to skim the hair and dirt from the milk.  The milk’s
temperature rises. Burned hair and animal stink fill the air, and I
fight down my gag reflex. That’s how I know the milk is nearly done.

The moment the red bar reaches 165 degrees, I count. “One banana, two
banana, three banana….”

When my count reaches fifteen, I remove the steaming milk from the
flame and place the bucket in the sink to cool.  My movement is too
quick. The cold water splashes.

I step backwards, but not fast enough. The water runs down my front
and onto the floor.  I inwardly curse my clumsiness and grab a towel
from the formica countertop.

I finish mopping up the spilled water and turn back to the cooling
milk.  This time I curse aloud.

“Crap.”

Water wasn’t the only thing that spilled.  In my jump from the
displaced water, I must have set the bucket down wrong.  Milk clouds
the water.

“Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap,” I say, rushing to drain the cloudy
water.  If I am quick, I can refill the sink with clean water. No one
needs to know.