LatinosUSA

Sometimes he only knew one color. I would hide in the bedroom all fluttering eyelashes five years old wondering why. She would run up the carpeted stairs to the very top just outside my bedroom door but the color always caught up with her. She was scared. But she wasn’t gonna stop calling him out on stuff like not going to church on sunday, drinking or smoking too much, being a derelict scourge, treating us harshly, not sticking up for her when the in-laws demeaned her. He called her a nag. You cannot talk sense to a color. She knew he needed her for she was made of things he could not be or do: reading to us kids, celebrating birthdays, singing sweet songs, tending the garden, fucking him, dressing up and looking fine. The patriarchy called her arm candy because a woman’s worth was undervalued. She did the cooking the socializing and the smiling. Only she could pry open his heart.

I was terrified by the color and its frothy arterial spray that broke open doors and could kill us all! I wanted to be a turtle for a shell to hide in. I learned to climb trees way up high.

His smoking habit was her biggest point of contention. He had developed an incessant dry cough. We needed him. He was the money maker, the business man. She cut to the chase. Can’t you see what it’s doing to you? I’m not gonna lose you to those goddam cancer sticks. He peered out from behind his New York Times. She used to smoke herself, hell, everybody smoked back then: if you didn’t you couldn’t be trusted. One  day she took his pack of Marlboros and put them on the butcher block. Before he could finish saying what the hell woman? she had chopped them in half. Whenever he dropped his newspaper without carefully folding it at the creases, you knew it was on. He was too proud to admit he had a problem. Back then people smoked everywhere. There were ashtrays in airplanes and cars! Capitalism dropped romantic lies in billboards and every bus stop was papered with faces of smoking legends.

Coffee mixed with blood. Ceramic fragments on the kitchen floor. She would never get the image of him lying there out of her mind. The color red had left his face a sheet: the color dead. It wasn’t fair. She blamed him and herself for not fighting harder. She blamed his friends. Going out with the boys playing cards and smoking and drinking and chasing women did not help. Leaving their hard-earned money in the oak and maple and beechwood card rooms in Boston. Reciting stats from the Wall Street Journal to impress the Cabots and Longfellows. If you quit drinking or smoking because your wife wanted you to, you were what they called whipped. You were no good to these good old boys. They got things by taking. They loved you best when you squandered your youth breaking up marriages, going into debt, laughing all the way, fucking up your liver and lungs. They loved you best after you were gone. I remembered her trying to talk sense into him after he survived the first heart attack. Five years back when he was scared. But it wore off and he went back to his old ways. I don’t want you to die! she would say, fighting back tears. I would run to the back yard and pump my legs on the swingset until my stomach fell out and my feet touched the sky.

What would we do with ourselves now? It was strange in the house without the pernicious color. I swear to god we missed it. Who would defend us from the big scary world?

Mom got an electric typewriter and went back to school and got a degree and became a special ed teacher. She was irritable and tired all the time but that’s okay. The typewriter buzzed so loud I could not sleep but that’s okay. Our toast got burnt and eggs went cold … that’s okay. Her first classroom was hard to manage and she wanted to give up but she didn’t. There wasn’t enough money so we sold our home and moved into a rental. The in-laws got stingy and didn’t help much. They didn’t say so directly but they blamed her for his death, like you could kill a person by nagging.

There wasn’t gonna be any full circle moment or happy ending but that’s okay. We would survive. My brother lost his role model but grew up to be a good man. He saw the world through many colors. He would never be possessed by any single one. I was his younger sister and took things pretty hard. We were German. We were never given any compass or stars to navigate emotions, but he was there for me like an older brother’s obligation he wanted to meet as best he could. If you ever feel something’s too much for you, he told me, come talk to me and we’ll figure it out together. Okay? He didn’t actually say those words but I like to imagine he would have if he had known how.