Under our tree I took the time to make a vow. When we ran the orchard we wouldn’t work on the blossom holiday the way my father always did. No, we’d declare a feast day for our crew. Hot bubbling rhubarb pies would materialize, a haunch of a goat on a spit, loaves of braided bread, and a bucket of marshmallow fluff, all set on planks by the tool house. I thought about how Amanda and Adam were not allowed to stay home on Blossom Day, something we’d never discussed with them, Blossom Day our secret.
I was absorbed in the holiday menu when through the aisle of the orchard I saw a girl, a girl who looked like Brianna Kraselnik. And behind her came a boy—was it one of the Bershek twins? The arresting thing about this boy and girl in the orchard, however, wasn’t the sandy hair or the big eyes or the small glasses frames. It wasn’t that they were probably Brianna Kraselnik and one of the Bersheks. The arresting thing was the fact that each was wearing no clothing. No article of any kind. They both did have tennis shoes on their feet, but no socks.
They were floating along between the trees, coming in and out of my field of vision. The girl’s breasts were small, nothing much to notice not least because the feature that leapt out at you, that stunned your brain, was the huge patch of hair, a black version of the muskrat’s straw houses, in her private spot. That was all there was to see of her. I understood in that moment that underpants must have been the first invention of mankind because without them you would never look into your companion’s eyes or face, and therefore it would be impossible to invent other necessary tools or think up ideas. But wait, another horror. The penis of the twin swinging into view. I think I made a noise. It was—how long? I couldn’t say, couldn’t tell, it defied measurement. He walked as if he wasn’t aware of it, as if it required no concentration to have such an organ. He kept scratching his back, trying to get at a place that was no doubt a sting of some kind. I was too startled and certainly too amazed to notify William.
Some time passed. I began to wonder if I’d seen them. If they’d been real. They couldn’t be real because it was a very stupid idea and scary, too, to take your clothes off and walk around outside. No one would want to perform that stunt. The Lombard Orchard, a nudist colony, ha ha. But then why would I dream them up? Why give Brianna so much hair, far more than my mother had? Furthermore, I could never have imagined a penis that long. I wondered if Mrs. Kraselnik had told her daughter to take the day off from school, appropriating our holiday, maybe the reason they’d wanted to live next to an orchard in the first place. If the couple was real, where were they going? Did it occur to the exhibitionists that the Lombard men might be doing farmwork, that they might bump into the owners of the property? There was then this question: Do I tell Mrs. Kraselnik?
That was a stunner. Mary Frances, darling, how can I thank you for coming to me? Brianna has been a handful since the day we adopted her. Yes, it’s true, I’ve never told anyone that she is not my own—and that I’ve never loved her. My own real child would never do such a terrible thing, nor would she have so much of that…hair.
But again: Wait! Another shocking question was coming to me. Did Brianna know which Bershek twin was hers or were they interchangeable? I almost—almost right then cried out. Did the Bersheks even know which one of themselves was the real boyfriend?
William calmly went on reading while on my side of the blanket the earth kept quaking. The last shock: What if May Hill was in the orchard and saw them?
I said to William, “What do you want to do?” What I really meant was, We should get out of here. We had to leave in case Adam&Eve floated past again. And yet it was our property and so we should build a fort. We had every right to throw stones at the marauders. All my questions and knowledge were like beats within my head, a drumming. I started to pick the grass furiously without even knowing what my hands were doing, trying to outsmart the rhythm.
William muttered, “Reading is okay.”
“What what what what time is it?”
He looked at me, his book closing, his place lost. “What is the matter with you?”
I wanted to tell him everything, wanted especially to tell him about being held prisoner by May Hill, and how every time I saw her I became terrified, my heart always racing even if she was in the far distance. I wanted to cry when I thought of being trapped in her room, the event having grown more harrowing, so that I’d started to believe I’d been there for a few days and then a week had passed. But instead of describing my captivity I said, “I just saw Brianna and one of the Bershek twins naked.”