The Colors of the Rain
Page 13
stirring spoons and other things
I don’t know the names of.
There are whole stacks of
paint-splattered things.
We’re learning how to
mix colors, Mr. Langley says,
like he knows I’m wondering
about the mess. The younger
students don’t know as much as
students like you.
We’re quiet for a few minutes,
pouring out and washing and
making new and cleaner stacks,
and I’m thinking about the other night,
when he sat through supper with us
and no one said a word about
how weird it was, how he stayed
to help Aunt Bee wash all the dishes
after me and Charlie had gone back
to our rooms, how I saw him
kiss her again right before
he left.
And I guess my brain forgets
all about keeping my thoughts
safe and private, since I say,
You’ve never come over before.
Mr. Langley doesn’t say anything
for a while, just keeps wiping
a soapy sponge over the cups.
COLORS
Finally, when no more dishes wait for washing
and the drain has sucked all the water down,
Mr. Langley wipes his hands on his pants
and turns to face me.
Your aunt and I . . . , he says,
and then he stops.
I wait.
I asked her to marry me once, Mr. Langley says.
He turns back to the sink, even though
nothing else is there. She said no.
I never really got over it.
He stares out the only window
in the room, right above the sink.
I’m not tall enough to see what
holds him there, so I look at his hands,
gripping the counter in a way
that turns his knuckles almost white.
I blurt out, Why?
Why indeed, he says.
He draws a deep breath.
Some people don’t like to mix colors.
He looks at me again.
Bee has a father.
A father with opinions.
His words grab me by the throat.
That’s just stupid, I say.
She loves you.
You love her.
And she’s all grown up.
What does it matter what Grandad thinks?
Mr. Langley smiles,
but his eyes are sad. Well, maybe this time
will work, then, is all he says.
We stand there and let
time tick through our thoughts,
until the sun comes blasting
into our eyes and we both realize
there’s no time left for painting.
It’s probably time for you to go,
Mr. Langley says, his hand on my shoulder.
We’ll paint every day you don’t go
to the hospital. I promise.
I look into his face, shiny and
still young-looking, even though
his hair is gray at the sides,
and I know, for once,
that I can trust the promises
someone makes.
Mr. Langley is nothing
like my daddy.
CHANGING
The whole world
is changing.
I see it in the trees
that wore gold and rust
and pumpkin yesterday
but are wearing nothing today.
I feel it in the way
Aunt Bee drives to the
hospital this afternoon,
all careful and calm and
too slow, if you ask me.
I hear it in her footsteps down the hall,
in her voice calling hello
to all the nurses she’s never really
noticed before.
It almost makes me go back to
Charlie and the empty waiting room,
since there’s no telling when
she’ll turn around and notice
that I’m not where I’m
supposed to be.
But I make it to Granddad’s room,
behind her, without being seen.
I press my back against the wall
beside the door.
How is he today? Aunt Bee says.
He can answer for himself, Granddad says.
His voice sounds rough and scratchy,
like he hasn’t used it in too long.
You’re back, Aunt Bee says,
and I don’t even have to look.
I can hear the smile in her voice.
But I look anyhow.
She bends to hug
Granddad’s neck.
I’m back, he grumbles.
I never went anywhere.
Gran pats his head,
and they all talk for too long
about little things, like the weather
and school and traffic
on the drive up.
I stop listening for a minute,
until I hear Aunt Bee say,
There’s something I need to say,
and my feet freeze solid
to the ground.
It’s quiet for only a second
before Granddad says,
Well, then say it.
I’m getting married, she says,
and I press my hand to my mouth,
but it doesn’t stop the giant smile
from opening my mouth.
Gran and Granddad stare at her
with their mouths wide-open, too,
but I can’t really tell if they’re happy
or really shocked.
I’m marrying Lucas Langley.
Aunt Bee looks down at her hands.
He asked me years ago,
but you let me know how you felt
about men like him.
She looks at Granddad.
He only grunts.
Men like him? Gran says.
Aunt Bee hasn’t stopped
looking at Granddad.
Her face holds the pain of a
hundred years it seems.
I feel sorry for her.
Black men, she says.
Black men who love
white women.
HEAVY
The room gets really quiet,
so I try not to even breathe,
afraid they’ll hear me
outside the door.
I love him, Aunt Bee says.
I have for a very long time.
She looks from one to the other,
Gran and then Granddad
and then back to Gran.
I can’t put my life on hold
any longer so you can be
all right with my choice.
She lets the sentence trail off,
and no one talks for
a long time.
Finally, Granddad says,
I should never have forbidden it,
and even from here, I can see
the way his eyes turn to glass.
Aunt Bee takes his hand.
Just because of your ex-husband.
Just because of a child.
He swallows hard.
Just because of his skin color.
He shakes his head. It didn’t mean . . .
His voice breaks, and then
everyone is crying loud,
great, heaving sobs
so I have to turn away
or I might, too.
I guess they’ve all been holding
heavy things inside for too long.
I should have let you raise your son,
Granddad says. His voice cracks
all around the words. I should have
told him who you were
instead of
lying to him his whole life.
My face starts to feel warm.
I can’t really say why. I just
have this feeling I know who
they’re talking about.
You were better parents to John Paul
than I could have been, Aunt Bee says.
I was too young to be a mother. It took me
too long to find my feet after his daddy left.
You did my son a favor
taking him like you did.
What kind of life would
I have given him?
I don’t hear anything else after that,
on account of the whole world
humming loud like my daddy
used to do when he didn’t want
to hear what Mama had to say,
when she would turn away with
anger squeezing all the
muscles around her mouth.
John Paul was
my daddy’s name.
John Paul wasn’t
Aunt Bee’s brother.
John Paul was
Aunt Bee’s son.
The whole world is changing.
I hear it in the buzzing that closes up
my ears and shakes into my throat.
I feel it in the freezing fingers
that grip my chest and
my arms and my legs.
I see it in the floor reaching up
to meet my cheek.
And then all the
world’s colors
turn black.
ANSWERS
I don’t know
what to call her.
She is my grandmother,
but she is Aunt Bee.
She is Aunt Bee,
with her black-and-white hair,
and eyes that watch my every move,
and arms that have started
to feel like home.
She is the mama of my daddy,
the one who picked up
all the pieces when
Mama dropped them.
She is our mama and our daddy
and our aunt and our grandmother,
and I don’t know what to call her.
She sits beside me at the table outside,
watching the trees bend in today’s wind.
It’s cold, so I have a heavy jacket on.
My sketchbook stares at me,
a blank page ready, but I can’t
think of anything to draw.
Aunt Bee or another
name completely?
That day at the hospital,
all Aunt Bee’s secrets came out.
My daddy was her son.
Gran and Granddad took him in
after Aunt Bee’s husband left her
and she couldn’t find a job.
Gran and Granddad
raised my daddy like he was
her brother instead of her son.
He didn’t know.
When Mr. Langley asked Aunt Bee
to marry him back when my daddy
was my age, Aunt Bee said no.
But not because she
didn’t love Mr. Langley.
It was because Granddad told her
that if she married Mr. Langley,
she could forget about seeing her son.
He said he didn’t want his daughter
marrying another good-for-nothing artist,
but what he really meant
was he didn’t want her marrying
a black man.
It makes sense now, how Granddad
wouldn’t set foot inside Aunt Bee’s house,
how Aunt Bee hid all her art, on principle.
The way Aunt Bee spent all her free time
at our house, helping Mama and
cooking dinner and tucking
my daddy in when he was
too far gone to do it himself.
The angry twist of her mouth,
not meant for my daddy but for
Granddad and the secret
he made her keep.
She gave up her son,
her painting, and
her future because of
Granddad.
They’ve been fighting
for a long, long time.
TRUTH
Aunt Bee told us why my daddy
killed the man in the bar, too.
I guess once secrets start coming out
they all get easier to tell.
My daddy’s best friend, Dave,
went on record to say the bartender
at the bar he and my daddy went to
the night my daddy died
refused to give Dave a drink
on account of his skin color.
The bartender was a white man.
My daddy told him,
Well, that ain’t right.
Black men deserve a drink
just the same as any white man.
What’s it matter what color his skin is?
This made some other
white men in the bar mad.
The bartender told my daddy
and Dave to leave the bar,
since he didn’t want any trouble.
But my daddy made
trouble anyway.
Some friends of the bartender
threatened Dave, said they’d
kill him if he didn’t get on out
and find himself a bar
that served his kind.
Aunt Bee said they’d probably
had too much to drink,
and that’s why they talked about killing.
But her eyes looked like
she didn’t quite believe it.
One of the white men
pulled a gun and pointed it at Dave,
and my daddy snapped, beat him up,
and then ran for his life.
Dave found my daddy’s tangled-up car
and the holes in his chest
and then he ran, too,
without telling anybody what he saw,
since he knew exactly what the police
would think if they found him beside
a white man who’d been shot.
Dave was my daddy’s
best friend. My daddy died
defending his best friend.
It feels good to know that.
SIT
No picture today?
Aunt Bee says.
I shake my head.
Can’t think of anything, I say.
Except black-and-white curls
and brown eyes and a mouth
that smiles much more
than it used to.
She’s quiet for a few minutes,
and the wind shakes the tree
above us so a dried-out leaf falls
on the table. She stares at it.
Nothing has to change, she says,
like she knows what might be
keeping me from drawing.
I can still be your aunt Bee.
She looks at me. I don’t mind.
If you don’t.
Next thing I know, I’m nodding,
saying, Okay, I’ll still call you Aunt Bee,
and it feels right. Good. Special, even.
She smiles at me, and I can feel it
in my chest and my stomach
and my feet.
There are still so many questions
I’d like to ask and so many stories
I’d like to hear, but I’ll save them
for another day.
Today, I will just sit
on the back porch
with my aunt Bee.
GIFT
We’re all gathered in
Gran and Granddad’s living room.
Granddad has finally come home.
Gran is flying around the kitchen,
checking the turkey and stirring
mashed potatoes and frying up
/>
her okra. Me and Charlie
sit in the living room with
Aunt Bee and Mr. Langley
and Greg, waiting.
Greg had to move in
with Mr. Langley a week ago,
on account of his mama
getting worse.
Mama couldn’t be here,
even though it’s Christmas.
She wrote us a long letter
and said she’s trying to get back
on her feet and she’s finally got
a decent job, so she can’t take
time away just yet.
Aunt Bee says Mama is
trying hard to clean up her life.
I guess that’s as good a
Christmas gift as any.
HUG
Even though two people
in my life are missing today,
this house still feels full.
Earlier, when we showed up
at the door, Granddad answered,
looking like his old self. He shook
Mr. Langley’s hand, and then
he hugged him.
I don’t think I ever saw
Granddad hug my daddy.
Aunt Bee’s face looked just like
the sun, it was shining so bright.
BROTHER
How much longer? I say to Gran,
stepping inside a kitchen
that makes my stomach rumble.
A few more minutes, she says.
A few more minutes to Gran
means at least twenty.
I learned that a long time ago.
So I take Greg outside to show him
Granddad’s garden.
It isn’t as pretty as it
used to be, since Granddad
was in the hospital for so long.
The doctors told him not to work
so hard in the garden, but that’s
where he says he wants to die.
He probably will, too.
Me and Greg walk to the end
of the driveway. Someone
paved the road in front of
Gran’s house in the months
me and Charlie have been gone.
It’s so foggy out I can’t see
Brian’s house at the end.
That’s okay, though. I still
miss my old friend,
but I have a new one.
I look at Greg beside me.
He is like me in so many ways,
and maybe that’s why I love him
just like I would love a brother
if I had one.
CHRISTMAS
There is still a whole lot we don’t know.
Will Granddad be able to make a spring garden?
Will Mama come back home, just when
we’re getting used to a life without her?
Will Greg’s mama die?
But today is Christmas,
and even though the next year
looks a lot like that road and