Noises in the House By April “Daddy?” I ask even though I know he won’t hear me. I take a couple steps towards the bathroom, the room that the banging sounds are coming from. “Daddy?” I say louder now. Still, my tiny voice sounds like a mouse compared to the booms of noise coming out of the bathroom. Surprisingly, the loud racket stops. “Apo?” The sound of my dad’s voice is like a magnet. My feet pull me straight to him. But the room I step into isn’t my bathroom. It can’t be. The floor is covered in some type of plaster and only some tiles are in. My dad is kneeling, measuring a space in the corner without a tile. “What was that noise?” I ask, my voice quivering. “There is nothing to be afraid of,” my dad says. “I had to get a tile up from out of the floor. It was just the sound of a hammer.” He talks to me like I am clueless. Well, I am only 5 so I guess I am sort of clueless. “But what are you doing?” I say, still confused. “I thought that this bathroom looked a little dull. So, I’m adding some color.” He looks up and looks at my confused face. “I’m putting new tiles in the floor, silly!” Silly? I don’t like how he talks like I don’t know anything. Maybe I need to show him that I can do things, just like he can. I reach my hand down to help pull out the tile that he was taking out. My fingers try to grasp the tip of the tile. But, it’s sharper than I thought. The corner slices my finger making a trickle of blood flow out of my fingertip. Immediately, I pull it back. “Are you okay!?!” My dad is up on his feet now. His eyes are filled with concern. But I’m not a baby. I look down at his outstretched hands. They are covered in cuts and bruises. If he is brave enough to have those, I want to be just as brave. “I’m okay!” but my voice quivers. “April, let me see. If there is a bit of tile in there, it needs to be cleaned.” A bit of tile?!? Still, I need to show him that I’m brave, and not a baby. “April, let’s go and wash it so that it doesn’t get infected.” INFECTED?!? Maybe I should listen to him. I stretch out my arm and show him. Blood now covers the palm of my hand where I had clutched my finger.
“Okay, let’s clean that up and then show it to mom.” He says in a worried voice. Maybe it was worse than I thought. * * * The ointment smells like nail polish remover. Still, my finger is relieved to have the pain finally escape it. My middle finger is wrapped up in a lime green band aid. I had wanted the princess band-‐aids but I guess that my dad finally thought that I was old enough to get a “big girl” band-‐aid.