Manzana / The Orchard Julia McCoy

Julia McCoy

Lucy did everything last minute. She worked well only when she had to. Which was why she was studying for the Spanish exam on her way to school, vocabulary list twisted up in her hand.

Lucy folded and unfolded the paper, covering up one half and then the other. Vocabulary word hidden, then revealed. Apple was manzana. Easy. Banana, plátano. Or, banana. Both pretty simple. Pear, just pera. But if you added that extra r it was perra, and that meant bitch. Sometimes she’d whisper that at people under her breath, like the girl who’d laughed at her in the locker room for not having enough breast to wear a training bra, or the boy who slammed her locker shut just after she’d opened it. In her pocket nestled a small wooden box she’d won during lotería on the first day of seventh grade. Inside sat worry dolls, Señora Diaz had called them, figurines in brightly patterned cloth no bigger than her thumbnail. Supposedly, if you slept with them under your pillowcase, and wished your worry on them, the worry would disappear. Hadn’t happened, not just yet. Maybe she had too many worries. Still, she kept hoping. As usual, Lucy stopped by Kat’s house to pick her up. She knocked on the door. No response. She could see through the front window into the vacant living room, where only a TV stood on an ice chest. Sometimes they watched Survivor on the carpet, while her little brother ran trucks over the edges of the cooler.

There were days like this when Kat’s family wasn’t home. She told Lucy her mom let her skip. They went on grand adventures to amusement parks and ice cream parlors, the kinds of things that happen in movies. Once she even got to pet an elephant at the zoo. One day, she promised she’d let Lucy come along. Kat’s mom wouldn’t mind. Lucy didn’t want to be Kat, but she did admire her. Hair dyed black, skin pasty, she wore shades of clothing only darker than blue. She had four piercings in each ear, and wore long gloves to hide cutting lines, which she’d once shown Lucy at lunch break. She talked freely of smoking cigarettes, and made Lucy stand guard while she and her boyfriend made out in the ditch behind the school during breaks. 34

Without Kat at school, Lucy waited in the cafeteria for the bell to ring, scripting careful glances back at the door, as if expecting her friend to arrive. The last thing she wanted was to get noticed by the teachers, get singled out as friendless. Better to just fade into the background of 300 middle school children. She did this any time Kat was gone. Or anytime she was there, but had other things to do. Homework, she said. Later, Lucy would pretend she knew it was a lie all along. First period was Spanish, her favorite. Except, today was the examen. Foods and food related words. Spoons, forks, cups and plates. Fruits and vegetables. Manzana. Plátano. Pera. The test was simple. Blank space. Clip art drawing of food. Escribe la palabra en español, por favor. On reaching onion, her mind went blank. She drew her hand into her pocket, ran her fingers around the edge of the Worry Doll’s box. Cebolla. The door to the classroom opened. An office aide, a redheaded eighth grader she’d seen around, delivered a summons. Señora Díaz placed it on her desk. It directed her to Ms. Adams, the school counselor. But why? She hadn’t done anything wrong. Was it that they had noticed her sitting alone? Her throat tightened, lungs refusing to fill all the way. She clutched the note and stood up, pushing the chair back just loud enough that everyone stared up at her. “Can I go?” she choked out. Señora Díaz smiled, like all of this was normal. In the office, Lucy sat on a blue, padded chair just tall enough that she could swing her legs. She swung them to the rhythm of the hanging Garfield clock on the wall. After enough ticks that her legs began to tire, Ms. Adams came out. “Lucy. Come on in.” Ms. Adams was petite, almost Lucy’s height. She had on a floral-patterned shirt, and the lanyard around her neck was decorated with tie dye. Her office was covered with smiley faces. Even the clock was a round yellow sun, beaming down at her with a buck-toothed grin. Lucy didn’t know the rules of this room. She sat in the wheely chair opposite Ms. Adams’ desk, but didn’t dare push it along the carpet like she normally might. She crossed her arms in her lap, then readjusted them to the arm rests, then settled on one on her lap, the other on the rest. “You’re not in trouble, Lucy,” Ms. Adams sat opposite of her, wheeling her chair back a little. “I just wanted to ask you

about Kat.” Lucy picked at her cuticle. “She’s not here today.” “That’s okay. How about when she is here? Anything you want to share?” Later, she realized this was a focal point of her life. She would, from then on, be trapped between speaking and silence. “Like what?” “Anything that maybe worried you?” Lucy felt a surge of loyalty. No way would she be the one to get Kat in trouble. Once maybe, but she’d put that self behind her when she started seventh grade. Nobody liked the sixth grader who cried when their teacher struggled to control the class, or the one who tattled on the boys when they’d scratched swears into their desks. “What about Kat?” “I was just wondering if you noticed anything that might be out of the ordinary. Something that made you worried, or something that seemed like it might be dangerous. Anything that might hurt her?” There were seven worry dolls in the box. Lucy counted them every night before placing them under her pillow. She rotated her worries through each doll, hoping that one might work better than the other. Now, she imagined all seven of them as Kat. Her scars. Her boyfriend. Cigarettes. Missing school. Skipping lunch. And now, the new one, in trouble with counselor. “Is she in trouble?” Ms. Adams pressed her lips. “No. She’s not in trouble.” “Will you tell her what I said?” “I won’t tell her you said anything.” There would come a time, in later years, when Lucy would imagine herself revealing everything about Kat. Her mother’s boyfriend, the razor she hid behind the toilet. And other times, she’d imagine herself locked tight. Would Kat still have come back? Would she have hated Lucy? Would she still have left to live in a foster home, not a year later? Would Kat be a different person if Lucy had chosen to speak one way or another? Instead, she planted herself between telling and keeping, the beginning of a pattern that would take years to break. “She has these scars under her gloves. I think they’re old, though. She told me she got bit by a dog.” Lucy blushed and stared through her knees. “That’s all.” 36

Ms. Adams rested her hand on Lucy’s shoulder. “Thank you, Lucy. That’s very helpful.” “Can I go back to class? I have a Spanish test.” “Claro.” Though Lucy tried, the rest of her test remained blank. Even the images blurred into nonsense, and she turned it in not even half finished. On her way home, she stopped at Kat’s house, this time, going in. The rooms were still vacant, though unwashed dishes lay in the sink, and the fan in the bathroom had been left running. Lucy opened the door to Kat’s room, sat down on her unmade bed, a mattress without a box spring. Posters lined the walls, crooked and faded with sunlight. Bands with long, dark hair and heavily shadowed eyes. Her school binder was discarded on the ground, the cover inked nearly black with words; never love, eternal anguish, alone. The only thing in the room that looked cared for were her gloves, resting on top of her pillow. Elbow length and satin, they looked like they were from an old movie. Lucy slipped them on. Too long, the fingertips hung out over her own, and they gapped too wide at the wrist. Still, she would take them. She would keep them after Kat came back, and after she left again. She’d leave them in her jewelry box, where her own children would take them out and pretend to be ballroom dancing. In exchange, Lucy took the worry dolls out of her pocket, and laid the box on Kat’s pillow, hoping that if they worked just once, it would be right here.

Julia McCoy

I was made immortal so long ago. My Lover kissed it onto my lips one morning while we lay together underneath the canopy of the Orchard, our legs entwined. My eyes were closed as my Lover brushed their lips against mine. Feigning sleep made the kiss more precious. Light shone through my eyelids, and weightlessness filled me, as my back arched in a moment of ecstasy. Then an ache struck me and tethered me to the ground of the Orchard. Without opening my eyes, I knew my Lover returned to the heavens. For so long I’ve asked if they will come back and I am met with silence. My Lover made me Steward of the Orchard. Nearly endless rows of apple trees, forever bearing fruit, forever greenleafed and under my care. The apples carve into faces, people I never meet but know from their inception. They change as they age. Infant, child, adult, elder. Then they drop. Of course, not all are lucky enough to last that long. Some drop much sooner. I gather the fallen in a basket, rejoicing to find one withered with age, mourning faces still fresh. At sundown, I place the basket on the back porch of the cottage we once shared, and when the sun rises again, it is empty. The Orchard passes through its own seasons. Sometimes, apples drop everywhere in droves, young and old alike. Other times, they are rain clouds, groups of trees shedding apples for years in great quantities. In time, the young faces fall less frequently, the old apples grow more wizened. I gather them all. One day is like another, one sunset as meaningful and meaningless as the next. But today makes me pause. Today is new.

His apple is broken off the branch, but hangs frozen in midair. A man’s face, middle aged. He has wide eyes, a half smile, light wrinkles at the edges of both. I reach out to take it, but can’t. The apple is hot to the touch and leaves my palm red. From the door of my cottage, someone cries out. No matter how far I am in the Orchard, my cottage is steps away. I set my half-filled basket down on the porch, the sun nowhere near setting. I crouch behind the front door and peer out my window, to see my porch and the world beyond I can never reach. They are a man and a woman. The woman sup38

ports the man as he clutches his stomach, red sprouting underneath his fingertips. They have lacerations across their faces and arms, their clothes torn. The man is the apple. No one has ever found this place. My Lover told me once, while I was cradled in their arms, that this was our sanctuary. No one could enter. Of course, neither can I leave. I decide to open the door. The woman relaxes when she sees me. “Oh thank God. We were in an accident. Our car slid down the mountain. Do you have a phone we could use?” I swallow. I haven’t spoken in so long, not because I can’t, but to preserve the last words I said to my Lover. Closer. “Please. My husband is injured. A branch went into his side. He needs an ambulance.” His face is strained and drained of color. Even his lips are muted. He is dying. “Come in.” I leave the door open for the husband and wife and go to the kitchen to make them tea. I need to think. Though I don’t need to eat or drink, my Lover left me mortal things as comfort. I watch the couple in the front room. The woman props her husband up on my couch with pillows, wipes sweat from his forehead. Affection is too blinding, and I look away. No one comes to the Orchard without being brought. Lover, I wonder, have you brought them, too? I pretend not to hear the woman come up behind me. “Please. Do you have a phone?” The woman, like the man, has smile lines at the edge of her eyes, the joy she has seen written on her face. Not since mortality have I felt so envious. “I don’t have a phone.” The wife’s face falls. “There must be something you can

do.”

“Who are you?” “Kristin.” She nods at her husband, now sleeping. “My husband Reggie. Do you have a neighbor we could get a hold of?”

“How did you get here?” Kristin takes a moment for herself, pulling nature from her hair. “When we rolled down the mountain your cottage was there. I thought we might hit it, but we stopped just in time.” To find me. “How is he?”

“He’s stopped bleeding.” Kristin is pale, panic just below the surface. “I don’t understand why.” “He won’t bleed here.” I was dying from illness when my Lover found me. My family had abandoned me to save the rest, left me on an empty road. They sacrificed my life for time. I remember my lover picking me up. The next time I woke, I was in the cottage, lying on white linen sheets, a warm breeze playing across my face. “Please.” Kristin takes hold of my hand. My eyes tear with the memory of it, my Lover’s hand squeezing my fingertips, pulling me off of the bed and into their embrace. I understand in a rush like the moment my Lover left me-- they are here so I can save them. I pull Kristin close and she relaxes in my arms. “I can help you. But you need to come outside with me.” My Lover waited weeks before taking me to the Orchard. I looked out from our bedroom window every morning, watching them gather the apples from beneath the trees. I noticed how different the apples were, how the sun rose and set with their harvest, but I waited to understand. I knew one day they would explain. I see myself reflected in Kristin. Wide eyes, open mouth. Except, my Lover held my hand, kissed me when they found my apple, frozen mid fall. We lay in the grass beneath it, coming together for the first time. “What are they?” Kristin reaches out to touch an apple, but I pull her back. “They are all of you.” I take her to the next tree. There is her husband’s apple, still hanging midair. “When they fall, you die. His apple is falling. He’s going to die.” Kristin grabs the apple, but it doesn’t budge. She strains, knuckles bloodless. “Please help me.” I shake my head. “I can’t take it.” “Please!” “Kristin,” I peel Kristin’s hands from the apple. “Stay with me. Both of you. As long as you stay here, you’ll never die.” “Stay here?” To our right, an apple falls. Kristin picks it up, runs her fingers over the apple’s eyes and mouth. The face is young, just out of childhood. “Who is it?”

“Someone who died, Kristin. Like Reggie. Like you will. Unless you stay.” When we awoke in the grass, my Lover told me the truth. Will you stay with me? What choice was there between death and my Lover? Kristin drops the apple. “What will happen to us?” “You can live here with me. You can help me tend the Orchard.” I see a new future of companionship and love, beyond my loneliness. My Lover taking care of me as he did before. Kristin traces a line from her husband’s apple to the branch. Her own face is not far, but she doesn’t linger. She reaches out for one below. She strokes a young woman’s cheek with her fingertip. “We can’t stay here.” “You have to.” “No. We have children. Grandchildren. They need us.” I grab Kristin’s shoulders. “He will die! And his children will lose their father and you will lose your husband. You’ll be alone. Do you understand what that means?” “I won’t be alone. I have my family.” “I could make you stay.” I can. I feel it. My Lover is at the back of my neck, breathing into me. Just out of sight, but there. They don’t need Kristin’s permission to do this. I hear my Lover whisper, I did this for you. You’ll never be alone again, love. Just say the word. Kristin doesn’t move. “Please. Don’t.” None of us alone, and all of us trapped. Her children, left wondering. Her life, gone, like mine. Lover, you took too long for me to believe you. Let them go. My Lover no longer stands beside me. His absence doesn’t hurt as much. “Someone will be coming for you.” I collapse against the trunk of the tree. In the distance, we hear sirens. I can’t watch Kristin when she turns to leave. The apple falls, and I reach out to catch it. I won’t harvest it yet. I am the Steward of the Orchard, and this apple will fall when I let it go.