Color of Limes 2

< Previous Page

    While I painted that afternoon, I watched the world through our window: men wearing scarves and riding Vespas, cars rumbling by, the occasional pedestrian whose hands were invariably buried in their pockets. Each scene looked totally surreal. Then, I moved away from the window, until I could only see the red of the tomato colored paint covering the lime on the wall.

          Maybe God only makes time to look my way once every three days; maybe there is some deeper religious significance to the number three, or God, for all I know, has a sense of humor and keeps in a rut. Whatever the case, it wasn’t until the third morning that the walls became lime again. My father simply shrugged, as if he had reached the limits of his patience, and he came towards me slowly, clenching those green hands into fists and shaking his head sadly.

          I woke up on the floor with a splitting headache, a righteous sense of injustice, that part of my cheek near my eye all swollen up, and the knowledge that God was real. I can attest to you that that knowledge is all a man needs to go to heaven. Near me, at eye level, stood a brand new can of azure paint. I looked at my father, who was seated with his back against the stove, casually picking frayed skin off his knuckles, and watching my reactions like a lion.

          He said, “Make it blue.”

          I did not say anything.

          “I want to be able to feel the ocean and smell the sea on these walls.”

          I stayed quiet; my head ached.

          “You got that?”

          “Yeah, Dad.”

          “Sure?”

          “I got it.”

          “What’d you put that green up on the walls again for?”

          “I don’t know, Dad.”

          “You a fool?”

          I kind of shrugged.

          “You testing me? Seeing how far my patience will go?”

          “Nope. Just painting, Dad.”

          I stood up, grabbed the brush, and I went to work. All over, I felt like my bones were dust.

          I painted those kitchen walls sea-blue, and two nights later, on the third morning, The Lord Above painted them the color of limes.

          I started a little prayer before my father hit me; I said, “Lord, you don’t have to be so cruel, just take me away. Lord, you don’t have to be so cruel to me, just take me….”

          When I woke up, there was a can of yellow paint on the floor, right at eye level. My old man said, “I want to be able to see the sun on these walls. You got that?”

          “I got it.”

          “You know I’m just teaching you how to behave,” he said. “You can’t hold that against a father.”

          “Wish you’d just let me be myself,” I said. “I’m the worse for all your teaching.”

          He shook his head. He was sitting, his back against the stove, and his arms across his knees. “There’s nothing worse than a thick-headed boy. Can’t bend his mind one way or the other. It’d be easier on us both if you could just understand that I’m trying to help you learn. You want to mock my skin and paint these walls green? It’s a disaster every time you do. I can tell you, all this violence hurts me more than it hurts you. You believe that? You understand what I’m trying to tell you?”

          “You must be all broken up.”

          “Huh,” he grunted. He kept picking at the skin of his knuckles. He looked down at his cut hands. “Guess you just don’t ever get tired of painting.”

          I painted all that day and half of the next. I began, in my head, panhandling God. I said, “God, let this time pass quickly, and if there’s anything I’ve ever done wrong, I’ve atoned for it, and if I ever sinned against you, oh, it wasn’t so bad as you’re making out. I don’t have anything against you, Old Man, but you’ve been got me subservient on a tight leash, with a cast-out, demented master. Come on, Old Man, stop granting these miracles or show a little love.”

          But there wasn’t any reprieve, not for a long time. I painted that kitchen the color of cinnamon, pears, and avocados; I painted it black as tires, white as my father’s reckless sheets, and copper like pennies. I painted that kitchen until the walls were so thick with paint, that the paint didn’t want to stick anymore, and the paint dripped in globs. Every third morning, that kitchen turned lime green, exactly the tone of my father’s skin. I learned every crack of those kitchen walls, and I could count the number of feet from one wall to the next, and the number of brush strokes it took to paint each wall. At the end of twelve months, painting destroyed me.

          I woke up in the living room, looked at the can of paint in the kitchen—a snowy white—and lay in my sleeping bag. I could see that the wall in the kitchen was, again, the color of limes. It was with an insufferable sense of reality that I put my head back on my hands.

          At that moment, two miracles happened: my father came into the room with skin the color of brown eggshells, and the Lord found time to spend on mercy.

          “Look at that,” he said, showing his arms to me and grinning.

          “They’re brown,” I said.

          “Brown, aren’t they!”

          “Yes, sir. Beautiful brown skin.”

          “Ha! I know it. ….And, what are you going to do about those walls? You’re still in bed. My skin may have changed, but those walls are still green. Man, what a hell of a day.”

          I said, “Hell of a day. I’m sick of that work. You’re going to have to kill me before I’ll paint.”

          My old man laughed, “Well. So what?”

          Cracking his knuckles, he came toward me.

2