Color of Limes

The Color of Limes

                                            by David



    It was through my simple task of painting our kitchen walls a hundred different times that I learned Christianity. I painted our walls a different color every third day, for a year. You want another story? Fine. There are others. But none like this. Not one. And this short story is truly short, because it doesn’t take much time to learn religion, not when you’re suffering recurring miracles. But if you’re going to listen, we need to begin with a basic fact about my father. When he was born, his skin was the shade of a lime, of a lamplight’s glow in London fog.

          My father—cracked bell jar, solitary goose—nestled into his desolation a short while after my mother left without me. It was him and me, in an apartment with three hundred and fifty square feet. We had a kitchen with a lonely white stove whose innards were like viscera after a sandstorm. Our place sat away from the street, in shadows, and we had an odd, arched door. We had no cats, no dogs with jangling collars. We had a kitchen floor with speckled linoleum. The walls were painted olive, and all our windows had been painted both white and shut by some lazy painter thirty years ago. Dust accumulated along the sills. There was only one bedroom—which he slept in, on sheets so white they were reckless. I slept in the living room, in a thin sleeping bag on shag carpet, a cracked ceiling above my head, my hands below.

          At home, my father was impossible.

          I forced myself, during every meal, to ask, “Care for some salt?”

          And he invariably replied, “Would I?!” with a laugh. He would take the salt and shake it over his potatoes, which he ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

          If I didn’t offer salt he would ask, “Wouldn’t you like to know if I wanted salt?” and then he’d snicker. “Ask me,” he’d say. “Just ask me.”

          During the afternoon, one year, he had me paint the kitchen red.

          “You’ll have to buy paint,” he said. “Use your money. These walls must be, by tonight, the color of ripe tomatoes.”

          I returned, cold from the winter wind, with two gallons of red paint, a roller, and paint supplies. While I painted, the kitchen lay quiet, mostly. My father sat on the floor, his back against on the far wall, watching—occasionally speaking—as I rolled the red over the olive. The day wore on in this way, until I finished the first coat. I set the brush down for a moment; the kitchen looked worse than ever before.

          “What are you stopping for?” he asked, still seated on the floor, now leaning against the oven. “Keep painting.”

          “I’m just thinking that the place looks like hell. That’s all, man.”

          The old man heaved himself to his feet with a grunt; he walked across the room, and he boxed me squarely across the temple. “There,” he said a moment later, standing over me like Muhammad Ali. “That’s for impertinence.”

          At 4:30 that morning, the kitchen was the color of tomatoes. My father was snoring in the corner, and I couldn’t keep my eyes open much longer. Frigid air slithered through the cracks of our windows, the kitchen looked alien, and even our familiar oven looked lost. I said on a whim, thinking about my father and the kitchen walls, “Lord, bring a flood and wash this hell all away. Lord, bring a flood and wash this all away. Lord, bring a flood….” And, wouldn’t you know it, the worst miracle I’ve ever heard of happened in our house that night. I woke up, and I looked past my father to see four kitchen walls the color of limes.

          My old man kept his head down over his potatoes that morning, and I was too scared to offer the salt. When he jabbed his fork through the potato, I heard the tines clink against the plate. He didn’t raise his eyes to ask, “What kind of a joke is that?”

          “I didn’t do it.”

          His blow came so fast that I jumped back in my seat, not fast enough, and he sent me to the floor, knocked down as easily as a bowling pin.

          “What are you going do?” he asked.

          “Paint over it. I’m going to paint over it. The walls, by tonight, will be the color of tomatoes.”

          “Are you ever going to do anything that foolish again?”

          “No.”

          “No?”

          “No, sir.”

          “I know you won’t.” My father sat down to his potatoes. A moment passed.

          “Aren’t you going to ask me,” he said glumly, “If I’d like any salt?”

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