April
“Help me, God,” he muttered under his breath as he wiped his clean-shaven face with large hands. Eddie knew he hadn’t lost his mind. Hadn’t the county shrink declared him fit to stand trial? Branded with a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder, Eddie had languished in lockup since last year, awaiting trial. He had also, inexplicably to him, been declared a flight risk, when in fact he had no money, not even a car. He couldn’t make bail. When he was a young teen, he had spent time in juvenile detention for such offenses as panhandling, wandering around without proper ID, trespassing, and the like. But this was so different. It was, his lawyer had told him, deadly serious. He may have ASPD, but still he would face the music for his most serious alleged misdeed yet: rape.
Her name was April. She was beautiful, with long, supple, athletic legs and blond tresses that spilled down past her shoulders and ample breasts. She had a bronzed, radiant complexion from basking under the Georgia sun for all the world to see. Eddie had spied her clandestinely many times but had been afraid to approach her. She lived four houses down from him, in a large, two story home that was painted dark blue and was known throughout the neighborhood as the Blue House. Her parents were attorneys or something, and away a lot.
Eddie wasn’t clever with words and didn’t know how to be cool with a woman the way his friends could. In her yard, April wore a string bikini that showed darn near everything, almost revealing her private parts. This made Eddie uncomfortable at first, but he overcame his discomfort as he got to know her. Unlike most people he knew, April talked to him, not at him, and asked him about his life and what he liked to do when he wasn’t working at the restaurant where she also worked. So at first he made stuff up to make himself sound more interesting. He liked to skydive and hunt bears in the wild, he told her. She told him she didn’t like guns or hunting, and he told her he wouldn’t do it anymore. As he grew to know her better, Eddie came clean and told April that he didn’t know how to skydive and didn’t even own a gun, much less hunt.
“I knew you were fibbing, Eddie,” she said with that laugh that sounded like ice tinkling in a glass. April wore pale pink lipstick on her rosebud lips. Eddie loved her lips and longed to kiss them. He’d never kissed a woman other than Aunt Trudy, with whom he lived. April might have thought there was something wrong with him because he didn’t really know how to kiss, but no. She was patient with him; she showed him how to pucker his lips, lean into the kiss, and relax.
“Put your arms around me, Eddie. Put your hands on my hips; that’s right.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he protested. She laughed, but not at him.
“I’m not made of glass,” she told him. He took a great breath. He instinctively trusted her. Unlike a lot of the people Eddie had met, April hadn’t a mean bone in her body. Other people called him retard or stupid, and made him feel ashamed. She liked Eddie; he could tell. And he was soon crazy in love with her. They began to spend long hours together when they weren’t working and when April wasn’t in school. She told Eddie that she worked hard at her studies.
“I don’t want to work in a restaurant my whole life,” she said. Neither did Eddie, but he’d worked there for ten years, since he was sixteen, and had dropped out of the special school; he didn’t know what else he might do. April encouraged him to become a student like her, but he didn’t know. He’d never been that bright in school. Always self-effacing, he repeatedly put himself down.
“You’re not stupid!” she told him pointedly, almost losing her temper.
“But you study calculus. I can barely do fractions,” he replied honestly.
“Go to the library and get a book on math, and we’ll work on it together,” she insisted. “I’ll prove you’re smart.” So he did, and it worked out beautifully. Before he knew it, she was teaching him algebra. Eventually, Eddie’s feelings towards April began to evolve; he became more focused on her, more possessive, and more committed. He discovered, to his surprise, that he wanted a life with this wonderful woman. Best of all, she seemed to feel the same way.
“Oh, Eddie, I can’t wait to make love to you,” she said unexpectedly one day after work. They were alone in her bedroom at the Blue House and, following her shower, she wore nothing but a thin robe, green like her eyes, Eddie flushed, embarrassed but in the same frame of mind. Eddie, of course, had never made love to anyone. What if he couldn’t do it? he wondered. All those ads on TV about ED and everything. Maybe, he thought, he should get some pills, but he’d be too embarrassed to ask for them. What if he let April down? He wouldn’t be able to live with himself. He’d have to quit his job at the restaurant and hide away in shame. He began to hyperventilate. April touched his arm. Her hand felt warm.
“I think you’d make a wonderful lover, Eddie,” she told him. She looked straight into his eyes, and again, he believed her.
“Have you ever…” he began.
She smiled. “Of course,” she said gently. He stared at her in awe. “Eddie, I’ll teach you everything I know. “It’ll be like the fractions,” she said lightly. “Only more fun.” Whatever April told him, Eddie believed.
During his time in jail, men had approached him and wanted to have sex with him, but Eddie was a large man and very strong. So far, they had kept their distance. Most of the time he was kept in solitary because of the seething hatred the other inmates had for rapists. How were they any better? he wondered. In lockup, Eddie wasn’t called by his name but rather “chomo,” whatever that was supposed to mean.
Finally, one afternoon, they did it—they made love in April’s bed. Eddie had been afraid to reveal his body, feeling self-conscious about his appearance, but April was impressed with his physique.
“Ooh, Eddie, you have a fantastic body,” said April with a delighted squeal, running her hand down his chest. Eddie had lifted weights for ten years because he liked to be strong, but he had never thought much about how he looked. He smiled. April was a skilled lover, thought Eddie. She knew just what to do; she never hurried him, and their bodies melded into one. She was like a force of nature. This was but the first of many times.
It all came to a tragic end one day when Eliza, a friend of April’s, entered the Blue House uninvited and stole up the stairs to April’s bedroom. There she spotted the two lovers, wrapped in each other’s arms and fast asleep. Soon, a tender secret became town gossip and then common knowledge. April’s parents were stunned. Authorities were summoned, an arrest made and charges filed.. Eddie, impoverished, was accorded only a public defender.
So Eddie had spent the ensuing nine months locked away in jail, awaiting trial, his aunt and his attorney his only visitors. He stood in his cell, his large, powerful fists rigidly gripping the bars. He hadn’t known that what he was doing was wrong. To him it had been about love. His mind drifted back to April; the worst part of his incarceration was his isolation from the woman that he adored. Just two days from now, he knew, would be April’s birthday; she would then turn seventeen. Eddie had never before even heard of statutory rape.
…
