and I’m painting the field
that leads to Gran’s pond,
and I can’t seem to get
the bluebonnets and
Indian paintbrushes right.
I try and try again,
but nothing looks
the way I see it in my head,
so I walk around to his side
and sit in the grass,
watching him.
He doesn’t say anything for a while,
so I think maybe he doesn’t know
I’m watching. But then he says,
Finished? and looks back at me.
I shake my head.
He sets down his
can of spray paint and
sits down beside me. We both
stare at his picture of a bright blue
sky and puffy white clouds he’s
shaped into animals and
faces and hands.
I’m trying to paint a dragon, he says,
pointing to the cloud in the very
center of the wall. It doesn’t look
like a dragon at all.
Can’t seem to get it right today.
He smiles at me and
stares back at his picture.
After a few minutes, he says,
Dragons were my brother’s favorite.
He folds his legs under him and
leans his elbows into his knees.
My brother was the greatest man
I ever knew.
DRAGON
Mr. Langley tells me a story
about two brothers whose daddy
drove away on a motorcycle one day
and never came back.
One brother later lost his bearings
when the world dumped its rain
and the other brother carried
the lost back to life.
He tells me how he spent
those days after his breakdown
searching the sky with his brother
and his brother’s boy.
Two men and a little boy
staring at clouds, trying
to find the answers to life,
Mr. Langley says. His eyes
turn real sad.
He saved me.
So now I try to save others.
He doesn’t look at me,
but I think he says that
last part for me.
Does your brother live
around here? I say.
Mr. Langley squints up at the sky.
He died last year, he says, and then
he jumps to his feet and
runs back to the building.
He picks up the can he threw down
a while ago and shakes it and
starts spraying.
When he steps back,
away from the center cloud,
it doesn’t look like a white
blob anymore. It looks like
a dragon blowing smoke rings.
He is grinning when
he turns around, and
I can’t help but join him.
MEAN
I leave Greg alone for a while,
until one day it’s just me and him,
standing near the bus stop where
Charlie will be dropped off.
I feel myself turn mean.
I feel myself hate him
for having a mother
or for being black
like the man my daddy died for
or maybe both those things
tangled up together.
He looks surprised when
I walk up close and stare at him
for one second. Two seconds. Three.
And maybe I want to get caught.
Maybe I want someone to help me
know what to do with all this anger.
Maybe that’s why I hit him
in the mouth this time.
What? he says, but I hit him again,
and this time he loses his balance
and lands hard on the sidewalk.
I hold him down, but I don’t hit him again
until he says, We could be friends, Paulie,
and then I don’t know
what happens exactly.
I just know that somehow
Charlie is there, pulling me
off him, and that Greg’s nose
is puffy and bleeding and that
Charlie’s eyes are saying
something I don’t want to hear.
Don’t be like our daddy, Paulie.
And then I feel a hand
on my shoulder and a
familiar voice say, Paulie,
and I can’t stay there, with
Charlie and Greg and Mr. Langley
all seeing and knowing just how
messed up I am, so I pull away
and run again.
I run past all the familiar houses
and all the unfamiliar ones, and
I run past Greg’s porch,
where his mama waits for him
in her wheelchair and waves and
calls out Hi there when I pass,
and I keep on running until all
the houses fall away
and I’m alone.
FOUND
Aunt Bee is the one
who finds me.
I must not have gone
as far as I thought,
being as it doesn’t take her long.
She says nothing, just opens the
car door for me, and we drive
in silence back toward the school.
No one’s angry, Paulie, she finally says.
Her voice stretches tight in her throat,
like she’s trying hard not to cry.
We just want to understand.
I watch the sky out the side window
and imagine all the clouds are animals.
There’s a swan and a snail with a
crooked shell and a chicken with hair
and really big tail feathers.
UNDERSTAND
Too soon, we’re back at the school
and then we’re walking through
the doors and then we’re inside
Aunt Bee’s office, where everyone
is waiting for us.
Mr. Langley stands.
Charlie and Greg sit in chairs,
but Charlie gets up when
I walk in. Her eyes are
red and puffy.
Aunt Bee wheels her chair around the desk.
Mr. Langley touches her shoulder
before kneeling on the floor
in front of me and Greg.
He looks mostly at Greg, not at me.
I guess I won’t be painting
that building with him anymore.
My chest cramps into a knot.
I wish I had my sketchbook.
Then I would have a place
to hide from all their eyes.
What happened?
Aunt Bee says.
I already told you,
Greg says. Nothing.
Mr. Langley puts his hand
on Greg’s knee. Let’s hear
from Paulie now, Greg, he says.
I shake my head. I don’t understand
why Greg would protect me.
I don’t understand how he could
still want to, after what I’ve done.
I do understand that I have to
tell the truth now.
SORRY
I don’t look at anyone
when I say those shameful
words: I hit him.
Why? Aunt Bee says.
I can feel their eyes on me,
but I keep staring at my shoes
that don’t look so new anymore,
even though they’re the newest
I’ve ever had.
Since I can’t answer
Aunt Bee’s question,
I say
the only words I can.
I don’t know. And the sadness
moves all around my words
and into the back of my throat
and down my cheeks. I bend over,
shaking in a chair that’s too hard
and an office that’s too cold.
Someone’s arms wrap me tight.
At first I think it’s Aunt Bee,
but she hasn’t gotten to me yet.
It’s Mr. Langley, and that
makes me cry even harder,
since I thought for sure he’d
give up on me now that I’ve
bullied a boy I barely know,
a boy with the same skin color as him.
But he’s holding me and then
Aunt Bee is there saying, Oh, Paulie,
and then everything I’ve wanted
to say for weeks is spilling out
and all I know is it needs
to be let out.
I’m sorry, I say. I’m sorry for
destroying your lunch.
I’m sorry for tripping you.
I’m sorry for hurting you.
I don’t know if anyone
can even understand me,
but I have to try.
I don’t want to be like my daddy.
I don’t. I don’t want to
hurt people like he did.
Mr. Langley’s arms wrap even tighter,
and it’s the only way I know I’ve said
those terrible words
about my daddy out loud.
BREATHE
Someone touches my back,
and I turn, and it’s Greg
standing there, crying, too.
His nose is swollen where
I hit him. How many times
did I hit him? I don’t
even remember.
I forgive you, he says,
and maybe that’s what
everyone in the room was
waiting on, since we all
breathe one big breath
together.
SKY
Mr. Langley takes Greg’s hand
and says, I’ll walk him home,
and Aunt Bee nods.
Me and Charlie gather our bags
so we can follow Aunt Bee
out to the car.
We pass them on the edge
of the schoolyard. They’re sitting
in the grass, pointing toward the sky,
smiling like they’ve discovered
something great.
And that’s when I know.
Greg is the nephew who
helped save Mr. Langley’s life.
Greg has a daddy who died, too.
I guess we’re not so
different after all.
HOLE
The next day Mr. Langley
takes me out to the building,
even though it’s not one of our
days to paint.
We’re not going to paint today,
he says, like he knows exactly
what I’m thinking. We’re just
going to sit and look and see.
I don’t really know what this means,
but he sits down in the grass,
so I sit down beside him.
The ground is colder now,
like winter is sneaking closer.
So I pull my knees to my chest
and wrap my arms around them,
since I’m still wearing shorts.
We sit there, listening to the birds
somewhere behind us, until
Mr. Langley says, I grew up
without a daddy. He’s staring
at the building, even though
we’re facing a side that hasn’t
been painted even a little bit.
It’s the side he wants us to
paint together, but I haven’t
gotten my side right yet.
He left right after my brother
was born. Mr. Langley clears his throat.
I guess I hated my brother for a while
after that.
His words make me think of Aunt Bee
and how her daddy turned nice,
which really means he quit drinking,
after her brother was born.
Mama once said Aunt Bee hated
my daddy for that, too.
But I don’t say anything.
I lost my way for a while,
Mr. Langley says into my silence.
It’s hard to know how to be a man
without a daddy.
My nose starts burning,
like my heart walked right up into it,
since Mr. Langley
has somehow seen the deepest hole in me
even though no one else could.
SWINGING
Mr. Langley is quiet for a long time,
so it’s only the wind we hear now,
whistling through the spaces
we can’t see.
There are other ways to figure out
how to be a man, Mr. Langley says finally.
He pulls a piece of grass and strips it
clear down the middle. There are other
men we can watch, men we want to be like.
He looks toward the building again.
My brother figured it out. And he was
that man for me.
What happened to him?
I can’t stop the question.
I don’t tell him I know
his brother was Greg’s daddy.
Maybe he wants
it to be a secret.
Mr. Langley takes so long to answer
I think maybe he’s not going to.
But then he says, He died in that
building right there.
He tells me about his brother,
who came back from the war and
took a temporary position
doing maintenance at the school
and every day stepped in and
out of the doors while
people threw things at his back.
At first I think maybe Mr. Langley
wanted to paint pictures on this building
to remember his brother, but then
he tells me about his brother’s son
walking into the building one day after school,
even though he didn’t go to this school then,
and seeing his daddy swinging from a rope,
how the boy screamed all the way
down the road and
all the way back.
Why did he do it? I say.
Mr. Langley stares at the
empty wall.
He didn’t, he says.
He clears his throat.
Then how . . . I let
the words trail off.
Mr. Langley shakes his head.
Some people will do anything
to keep a black man
away from their white kids, he says.
Even if he’s only a maintenance man.
HOPE
After that we don’t say anything
for a good long while.
I think I understand now why
Mr. Langley wanted to paint this building
with a memory that was better
than the one it hid inside.
Come with me, Mr. Langley says,
and he’s on his feet, heading out
to a field behind the building.
It’s a whole field of blue and red flowers,
their faces turned up toward the sun.
After he died, I used to come out here
and rest with the flowers, Mr. Langley says.
He loved the Indian paintbrushes best.
He lies down on his back, and I do, too,
and then we’re staring at the sky
through the petals of glowing flowers,
and I can’t explain it, but it feels like
>
they’re telling me something.
Mr. Langley looks at me,
like he understands. He smiles
and says, This is hope, and I feel
the warmth of his words reach
all the way to my toes.
MEMORY
I’m walking around after school
with nothing to do, wandering down
toward Greg’s house without
even noticing, when I feel
the first drop of rain.
I don’t think anything of it at first.
The sun is still out
and there aren’t many clouds
and the sky still looks blue
from where I stand. But then
it happens fast, the whole day
darkening like the black clouds
were just waiting for permission
to take the light, and before I
can even think what to do,
the sky dumps water
all over me.
It’s the first time since school started
that it’s rained, and for some reason,
even though I thought I was better,
I can’t move. My legs feel stiff,
like the cold water has somehow
glued my feet to the sidewalk.
And in all those drops I see
red and blue flashes
coloring our drive, and I hear gravel
crackling under tires louder
than the thunder in the distance,
and I see Mama fall to her knees
and Aunt Bee touch her soggy hair
and Gran running across the yard
without her shoes on.
EYES
Then I see Greg,
right in front of me.
He holds his arms out,
like he’s trying to reach
for something I can’t see.
His face is turned toward
the sky, and the drops
run down his mouth and
nose and chin.
I don’t know why,
but I feel myself move now,
straight toward him.
He must know I’m coming,
since he says, You want to
wait out the storm on my porch?
I don’t answer. He opens his eyes
and moves toward the covered place
where I saw his mama twice before.
I follow him.
He sits in one chair,
and I sit in another.
It took me a while to love
the rain again, Greg says.
He stares out toward the street and continues.
My daddy died on a day like this one.
He looks at me with eyes
blacker than the sky, and I stare
right back. He nods, like he
understands what I can’t say.
The Colors of the Rain Page 10