Chipped Paint

I watched her grow up.

Her mother sang lullabies and read her storybooks and remembered to do all the voices. I often wondered what she dreamt of, and wished I could soothe her on the nights her dreams turned dark. I couldn’t protect her from the monsters in her dreams, much less reality.

She scribbled on the egg white paint that coated my form. Her mother asked her to use paper, but the scribbles happened now and then for a bit. On the doorframe within me, her mother marked her height. Notch after notch, inch after inch. She learned to walk on the floors at my base, and I can still remember the sound of her tiny sandals on the tinted wood beneath her feet. She would flip through the same board books over and over, memorizing the words and art underneath her pudgy fingers. As she grew, so did her vocabulary, and after a while, she was repeating the lines in her books to her mother, reading along as she tucked her into bed.

She would watch the same films on the loop, and within the safety of the room we shared, she'd quote them with joy as she played with her favorite toys. I was merely a wall, but she whispered so many secrets I held within the wood beams that were my foundation. She started school, and she would come home each day and curl up in her bed with her favorite stuffed rabbit and go through the events she'd cataloged carefully in her mind. There was a spot she hit behind stuffed animals where she would doodle on me, organized little drawings that fit perfectly against one another. I felt like I was the louvre itself, I was displaying the finest art for only her and I to admire. She's come along way from those simple scribbles years prior.

She started to come home and cry, throwing herself into her bed and wondering why they didn't like her. I later learned that the they in question were her school peers. There were a few times her hair came home messy, not from play, but from bullies. There were times where she begged in a broken voice for someone to be her friend. There would be a few, as she continued to grow, some even sat before me, and I could see how happy she was to share herself with someone. Her friend didn't mind the way she walked on her toes or flapped her hands when she was excited. The bullies still came at her, but she was collecting friends just like the dolls that sat on her shelves. She hadn't played with them in a while. but she wasn't ready to let them go just yet.

I watched her struggle in her school work some days, but excell in oher subjects. She was hard on herself, and I wished as always I wasn't just a wall, that I could tell her how much she'd grown, how much she'd learned! She still fought against people who found her strange, and I let her pick at my paint, peeling at little chips on my form so she could feel better. I could be painted again, it was okay!

There’s a flutter in her footsteps when she has her first crush, and those light dancing toe prints in her carpet turn to heavy footsteps like sludge when her heart is broken. She loves with her whole heart and others didn’t understand it, she was always too much for people who cared too little. There were more crushes, some stronger than others. Crushes led to kisses and her first real boyfriend. They only lasted a couple months because kissing was overwhelming for her. She didn’t like doing it for long and it was all he wanted to do. When he pressured her into other things she decided he wasn’t worth it and stood up for herself. She walked him out of the door and away from my chipped paint and crayon masterpieces.

She didn’t go away to college, she stayed home for a bit. She started packing up her dolls and taking down her posters because her parents said she was much too old. She met someone who promised her the world and so she went away. I saw her now and then but her light had dimmed, she didn’t draw anymore, she didn’t dance or sing or make fairytales with her dolls. She came in, she sat, she stared and she sighed.

When I saw her again, she had someone special. Someone who changed her whole world she said. Her own tiny person, needing a quiet place to rest. She remembered the soft rustle of leaves from the tree outside and the way the sun would shoot it’s way through her sun catchers at just the right time. It was her safe space for so long, and now it could be a safe space for her little one too. They weren’t here every single day, but the days they were there was laughter vibrating against me and warming my core. The old beams within me groaned with their age but I could still hold up the room that raised her.

A room that would raise another.

She sang her baby lullabies and read her storybooks and remembered to do all the voices...