The Colors of the Rain
Page 9
it’s Greg, bouncing a ball
up and down, shouting like
he’s some kind of sports
announcer or something.
A woman sits on the porch,
watching him. I’m not too close
to them, but even from here
I can see her skin,
darker than Greg’s,
and her wheelchair.
WATCH
I duck behind a bush.
I don’t know why.
I just want to
watch, I guess.
Greg keeps right on playing
and shouting and chasing the ball.
When he misses the hoop,
he races toward the porch,
bouncing his ball
so it thumps on the wood.
The hollow of the bounce
is like the hollowing of me.
He calls her the name
I don’t use anymore.
Want something to
drink, Mama? he says.
I’ll take some ice water.
Thank you, baby, she says,
in a voice I can barely hear.
She holds her hand out
to touch his face as he passes.
The screen door slams
behind him, and I turn to go.
PAIN
I can’t put to rights
what I’ve just seen,
a mama in a wheelchair,
a boy getting her water.
There’s too much shouting
in my head.
The trees blow me
down the road I came,
gusting hard like
my anger.
Why am I mad?
I guess it’s because
a broken mama is
better than a gone one.
The brick school building
shows up quicker than I expect
and when I see it,
I can’t stop myself.
I kick a wall.
My toes scream their pain
all the way to Aunt Bee’s office,
but it’s nothing like the
pain in my heart.
LONELY
Charlie’s in her room,
working on some school project;
I’m sitting in the living room alone,
reading Aunt Bee’s favorite
Agatha Christie book.
Aunt Bee sits down beside me.
She doesn’t turn on the television.
She just stares at the blank screen.
I try to keep reading, but it’s hard.
I’m waiting for her to say something.
I know that’s what she wants to do,
but for some reason she doesn’t.
Are you liking school, Paulie?
she finally says. She turns
to look at me. She doesn’t
seem to notice I’m reading her
favorite book again, even though
I’ve already read it three times.
It’s one of my favorites now, too.
Before I can answer,
she says, Do you like it here?
I think of Mrs. Martell
reading to us
from the front of the room,
how it warms me all through
because it reminds me
of life before my daddy left,
when Mama would read
to me and Charlie
from the books she loved as a kid.
I think of Mr. Langley and his
art room, how every corner of it
feels like home. And then
I think of my lonely lunch table
and the lonely halls and the
lonely minutes before school.
SAFE
I guess I wait too long to answer,
because Aunt Bee says,
I just want to know that
we made the right decision.
She turns a mug around and around
on the table beside the couch,
like she needs something
to do with her hands.
What would she do if I said
I didn’t like school?
Would she send me back
to my old one, where
Josh and Brian would ignore me
in the halls?
The thought of that makes me say,
I like it all right.
I look her straight in the eye
so she’ll believe me,
since I don’t want to go back
to a school where every kid
knows what my daddy did.
Aunt Bee lets out a long breath.
Okay, she says. Okay.
I just wanted to make sure.
She takes a sip from her cup
and then sets it back down.
She looks at me again.
I try not to look away.
It’s not easy to make friends
in a new place, she says.
She touches my hair.
It’s not easy to trust people with your heart,
after all you’ve been through.
I wonder, how does
Aunt Bee know
exactly how I feel?
But sometimes we have to try, Aunt Bee says,
and I don’t know if she’s still talking
about me anymore.
Sometimes we have to risk
the heartbreak
because we’re tired
of trying to live life alone.
I watch Aunt Bee for a while,
and it’s not until she takes
another drink from her cup
that her eyes come back to me.
Anyhow, she says,
and there’s nothing else.
She turns on the television,
to some station that reports news
all hours of the day,
but I’m not interested in seeing
more protests or hearing about
a new school district
or kids who’ll be voting this election year
on account of the voting age changing,
so I go back to reading my book.
Except I’m not really reading,
since the words in my brain
are running into the words
on the page.
I think Aunt Bee is wrong.
It’s not that bad
living life alone.
The opposite of friends
isn’t lonely.
The opposite of friends
is safe.
EASY
It’s really easy
to do it.
I just don’t think.
I stick out my foot
and he trips so his lunch
falls right out of his
hands and into mine.
I don’t think when I take off
running and pull out the
peanut butter sandwich
and the bag of sliced cucumbers
and the red apple and scatter them
behind me like a trail leading straight
into the lunchroom.
I don’t think when I read the note
from his mama in a wheelchair
and let it fly out of my fingers
like I fly out the cafeteria doors,
toward the wooden bench where I sit,
alone, and eat the lunch
I packed myself.
I don’t think about why
or what could happen
or what it means.
It’s easy.
RUN
I don’t even get in trouble
for what I’ve done.
At first I think maybe
Greg didn’t see who it was,
but then today, when I pass
him in the hallway,
he looks me straight in the eyes,
and I can tell he knows.
He doesn’t look angry or
scared.
Just sad.
And that gets caught in my throat.
So I stick my foot out again,
and I only hear
the slap of his hands against
the floor.
I run away as fast as I can,
ducking into a bathroom.
I hate him. I hate him so much.
And I don’t know why.
NOTE
Someone else would probably have
laughed, but I don’t feel like laughing,
so I let myself cry for a while.
When I finally get back to class,
a note is waiting on
Mrs. Martell’s desk.
Please send Paulie
to the office, it says.
Mrs. Martell has kind eyes
when she tells me to
pack my things, since
the bell will probably ring
while I’m gone.
The words fall
like weights clamped
around my feet.
HALLWAY
The hallway to the office is long.
I don’t want to see her face.
I don’t want to hear her voice.
I don’t want to feel her disappointment.
What will she say about
what I’ve done?
I know what Mama
would say: Don’t be
like your daddy.
And I know what I
would yell back, right
into the cheeks and chin
and eyes she gave me:
I’m trying.
If someone could just
show me how.
SCREAMING
I walk through the office doors.
Aunt Bee’s assistant, Mrs. Blake,
waves me on through.
She’s waiting for you, she says,
and I try not to cry.
Aunt Bee is sitting at her desk
when I step into her office.
I sit down in the seat I
always sit in, like it will
somehow keep me safe
from what’s coming.
She stares at my face
for a minute before she says,
Is something wrong, Paulie?
She sounds concerned,
not a bit angry like
I thought she’d be.
I shrug
and look at my feet.
She clears her throat.
I wanted to give you a little time
to adjust to school, she says.
But now that you have, I think
you’re ready. I watch her stand.
I’m so confused my face
starts burning.
Does she know
or doesn’t she?
Aunt Bee kneels in front of me.
She takes one of my hands in hers.
I want you to meet the school
counselor today, she says.
You’ll be seeing her for a while,
just to talk.
I don’t hear anything else she says
after that. The whole room fades
and the only person I see
is my daddy.
BROKEN
Mama asked my daddy to
go to counseling once,
just like Aunt Bee is asking me to do,
and he exploded into a wild rage.
There’s nothing wrong with me, he yelled,
over and over again until I wondered
if maybe there was.
He added other words
after a while. I don’t need no doctors
telling me there is, he said.
I’m not weak.
I’m not damaged.
And then he threw the glass in his hand
and followed the throw with a fist
to Mama’s jaw. His hand went through
the top screen of the door
on his way out.
Me and Charlie stood
in the middle of a room
where a glass had broken
in a corner and our mama
sat broken on the floor.
WRONG
I try to find words,
but the only ones
turning through my head are,
There’s nothing wrong with me.
There’s nothing wrong with me.
There’s nothing wrong with me.
But what if
there is?
Sometimes it just helps to talk
to someone, Aunt Bee says.
She’s dropped my hand.
God knows I’m not so great
at that part.
No. I can’t talk to some stranger,
not about me or my daddy or
Mama or Charlie. I can’t talk
about all those memories
that belong to us.
I won’t share our secrets.
I won’t betray
my daddy like that.
I don’t know how to explain it
to Aunt Bee, though, so I just run.
I run until the whole world blurs
and I don’t know where I am
or where I’m going, and I don’t care
if I never find my way
back again.
RIPPLES
I find a little pool of water
down past all the houses.
The water is clear enough
to see through. I watch my feet
and the ripples that shake
around them when I move.
They’re like the ripples that
shake around my life.
I wish my life
would stop rippling.
I stand in the water and think
about my daddy’s hands.
I think about all those times
he didn’t come home and
Gran or Aunt Bee had to come
stay with us while Mama
went out looking.
I think of a drawer beside their bed
where I thought scissors might be,
but instead I found piles of pills
spilled out inside.
I think of the dead man and
those men who shot my daddy
and Josh and Brian and the words
kids flung down the hallways
in the days before Mama
pulled me and Charlie out.
I can’t tell a counselor all that.
I guess I’ll just have to learn
how to hide my secrets like
Aunt Bee hides hers.
BACK
My whole body feels hot
after my run and all this thinking,
but the water feels cool and soft
and right, like a mama’s touch
or a daddy’s hug. So I close my eyes
and I let it love me like
I guess they never could.
And when my heart feels
even and smooth, like the
surface of the water,
I walk barefoot back
to the school, surprised
I know the way.
HELP
Mrs. Walsh is short and young,
more like a student than a grown-up.
She pulled me out of
writing my spelling words
three times on a page, so I
didn’t mind much at the time,
but now I’m here, and her eyes
are like the prettiest water I’ve
ever seen. I think they can
see right through me.
She asks me some questions,
how I like the school,
what I think of my classes,
which subject is my favorite.
And I start thinking this
might be easy, since I’m
watching the clock, and it’s
ticking toward the end of
thirty minutes. These questions
I can answer.
But then Mrs. Walsh says,
It’s hard to be a boy without
his parents, isn’t it? and I
don’t know what to say.
All those times I wished
my mean daddy gone and
a nice one in his place
come pelting me like giant stones.
Mrs. Walsh looks at me,
and I hold on to my chair like
her looking will somehow
sweep me away in those
clear waters.
Then she says, It’s like walking
down a road with no traffic lights
and the sky is getting darker
and we can only see more headlights
coming at us, blinding us,
and we don’t know if
we should cross the street
or just stop altogether.
The whole time she’s talking,
she never looks away.
She leans across her desk
and takes my hand.
Her voice is soft when
she says, I promise, Paulie,
I will help you find
your way across.
But you have to help me.
And the next thing I know,
I’m nodding and wiping water
from my eyes and it’s
time to leave, except I don’t
really want to, since this place
feels warm and dry and
safe enough to stand on
my own two feet.
But Aunt Bee is waiting at the door,
so I follow her out, turning back
only once when Mrs. Walsh says,
I’ll see you next week, Paulie.
Okay, I say, and I mean it.
FROZEN
Outside the door,
sitting on a bench,
is Greg. He stands
when the door closes
behind me. He stares
at me like he might
say something, but I
look away.
Next week Mrs. Walsh will know
something else about me, I guess.
His visit with her has to be about me,
since Greg couldn’t possibly need
Mrs. Walsh to help him find
his way across anything.
He still has a mama, after all.
I guess that place isn’t
as safe as I thought.
For some reason,
instead of sad, I just
feel frozen, like maybe
I expected this all along.
Like maybe I knew
a boy like me could
never find safe.
BROTHER
Mr. Langley is painting the wall
on the other side of mine.
He’s much further along
than I am, since he’s painting a sky