Teal

Teal

The woman sat on the edge of a pale green sofa, her legs crossed at the ankles. She was thinking, he supposed, as she stared unblinking off into space. The sun filtered in through a window, making the woman’s short red hair flame against her ivory face. Her white shirt gaped a little in the middle where the buttons strained to hold hands. She sighed then spoke, “I remembered that the nursery was painted teal, I always remember the colours of things, especially since that day. I also remember pain,” she looked up at him, her brown eyes deep in memory, “I was in labour for eighteen hours.”

“We came home and shut the door to the baby’s bedroom. That was two years ago. I took it hard, but he took it harder,” her right hand gestured gently to the last place she’d seen him, to the large brown leather wingback across from the sofa, “he sat in his chair and barely moved, except to go to the bathroom or go to work, but then he got fired. I tried to be supportive, but I kept forgetting what he looked like.” Pausing again she leaned back, relaxing from her perch, and pressed her head into the back of the couch, closing her eyes. “Then one day I smashed up our car,” she continued now, her small, pale fingers laced across her abdomen. “I hit a tree. I didn’t see it,” she clapped suddenly, the man with the notepad jumped upon hearing the sharp noise in the otherwise quiet house. She finished by lifting her head and blinking hard, “the airbag broke my cheekbone. But the bruise faded, like the accident never happened. It was beautiful, like the skin of a dark ripe plum. I watched every day as the bruise faded, into a dark brown like an over ripe banana, and faded green like the yolk of an over boiled egg, and then back to my pink flesh. From that moment I craved colour. I started smashing fingers, or my shins, or pressing as hard as I could on the pale under-skin of my arm hoping with each moment of pain that I’d bring back the purple- black, so I could watch it fade again through the aching rainbow.

When I was a kid, I loved to paint. My parents let me use a wall in my bedroom as a canvas. They bought me a large can of white paint that we used to create the background, then I could use my poster paint to decorate however I wanted. When I grew tired of my design, I started over with a fresh coat of white.” She was talking faster now, standing up from the sofa and moving quickly around the room. Her voice grew louder also, and he could hear the swoosh of the khaki fabric pants she wore as she strode quickly from the window to the fireplace and back again. “I liked the way I could control what was erased and what wasn’t. I always liked the new, fresh wall, even though I would sometimes miss what was in the layers underneath. Once, I painted a beautiful garden full of flowers. I think that was my favourite painting ever.

By the time the bruises healed, I started to think about having another baby. I felt like enough time had passed that I could make it grow. We hadn‘t made love since before that day and I missed him so much. I just wanted to feel him next to me. Most of the time he wouldn’t talk to me, or look at me, and rolled away to the edge of the bed when we slept, but when I asked him to make love to me again, he looked at me in a strange way, his gaze black and dark. He grabbed me and kissed me hard. I kissed back and he shoved me to the floor. His love making wasn’t gentle. When he was finished he lay on top of me and sobbed until his breath evaporated into silent hic- ups. Every night for a week that’s how it went. He threw me down hard, blackness filling his eyes, only to end with crying. It wasn’t love the way we had known it before, but, at least I got to feel him again. After that week, he never touched me, but that didn’t matter so much because I could tell I was pregnant. I was so happy. When I told him, he got that same look on his face again, his eyes swirling darkness. He started staying out later and leaving early. I never really knew where he was. I hoped he was looking for a job, but, most nights he came home smelling like beer.” Suddenly she stopped her violent strides across the room, and said quietly, “at least he always came home.”

Slowly, she walked over to the brown leather wing-back and sat, her hands landed on the cool of the leather. She looked down to the surface where her fingers rested, seemed to realize where she was, and moved back to the pale green sofa, sitting uncomfortably, placing a pillow in her lap hugging it to herself. Again, she looked off into the nothingness for a few moments, gathering her thoughts. When she spoke, her voice filled with determination, “I decided this pregnancy would be different. I was going to be better prepared. I started to collect things to show my baby, beautiful pieces of colour that would fill the room with brightness. I needed colour, to possess it, to have it all for my baby. I got myself an old shoe box and hid it under the bed so he wouldn’t find it. Every time I mentioned the baby he just looked right through me and left. I figured it’d be best he didn’t know I was collecting up things to show it when it came home. Every day I found something to put inside the box. The first day, I saw a hillside of yellow dandelions. The colour was familiar; looking like someone had made the sun bleed all over the grass. I was drawn to it and suddenly, I felt ill. Something was wrong with that colour, it was too hot.” She spoke as though no one was listening, her voice hoarse, “what a villainous colour yellow is, not like I remember it from when I was a girl, no, no. It’s not like when we used to play in the school yard, the tiny petals hitting us in the back of the mouth with brightness, like the sour of a lemon. We used to hold yellow flowers just away from the soft skin under our chins to see the warm glow reflected there. That was all a lie, yellow was never that honest of a colour, I can tell you that.” She agreed with herself, violently bobbing her head.

Continuing less viciously she said, “the next day, I was at the drug store and I walked down the makeup aisle. I saw this beautiful bottle of nail polish. I knew I shouldn’t buy anything that we didn’t really need, since he was still looking for work, but that doesn’t mean I can’t look. So, I went over to the polish display, and I saw this bright bluish green shade. It looked like the sky right after a thunderstorm, the kind that bends the trees and crackles with electricity. The name on the bottle was teal death do us part. I thought that was sort of funny, and, on the spur of the moment I bought it. I got a thrill thinking about when the baby would discover it in the box under the bed.

Later that same day, I took a green scarf off the back of an old lady’s chair at a coffee shop. The colour was as crisp as freshly sliced celery and the fabric felt soft against my cheek. She probably wouldn’t even notice it was missing and I told myself that she wouldn’t have wanted to deprive a baby of such a beautiful hue. A few days after that, I found the red velvet part of a Remembrance Day poppy on the sewer grate outside my house. I picked it up and washed it carefully in the kitchen sink. The smell of old mud wafted up from the basin as I used my nails to scrub the fuzzy crimson clean.

Months went by and every day I found something to add a new fragment of colour to the box. I added a rounded shard of blue glass, a slick shiny black crow’s feather that had a hollow lightness which surprised me. And I found the peel from a tangerine dried into a brittle rusted piece of carroty elephant skin.” She smiled proudly, lifting her head, her hair still aflame in the light, “I put those things in the box, along with about a hundred other things I found.”

After this, she fell silent; staring, slouched against the pillow pressed to her stomach. “Go on,” the note taker said, wanting her to finish her story. Pulling her pallid lips together, she continued reluctantly, “one morning, I woke up really early and something felt wrong. An invisible sledge hammer knocked again and again through the wall in my stomach, to reach my baby. He had just come home and was watching television in his chair when I cried out in pain. He came running and found me lying on the bathroom floor, blood pooling all around me, the thick smell made us both ill.

When we got home from the hospital, he cleaned up the blood from the bathroom floor where it had dried up like old brown leaves. I stayed on the bed and watched him scrubbing in the pool of light from the opened door. When he came and sat next to me I said, ‘at least I couldn’t feel this one’s bones.’ He just stared off, to the freshly cleaned bathroom floor. The smell of bleach lingered in the air and on his fingers. I cried as he sat absently stroking my back. Suddenly, I remembered the box under the bed and asked him to get it for me.

‘What’s this?’

‘It was for the baby,’ I, reached out and stroked the pale celery scarf.

‘Why?’

‘So, I wouldn’t forget to show it colours.’ He picked up the nail polish, shook it and held it toward the light from the doorway. Then he picked up my hand and carefully painted each finger nail, and then moved down the bed to my feet and took off my socks to paint each toe.

‘Like the nursery,’ he said.

‘What is?”

‘This colour, it looks just like the one you picked out for the nursery,’ he replied, and placed the bottle back into the box and slid it back under the bed.

I recovered quickly. After a couple of weeks, I didn’t need him to help me out of bed in the morning, and a couple weeks after that I decided I would look for a job since he was having such a hard time finding one. I managed to get work at the coffee shop on the corner, serving breakfast to the early morning crowd. I like working there. He seemed happy to see me happy. He stopped sleeping on the edge of the bed. Every night since our second trip to the hospital, he cradles me, gently wrapping his arm around my middle. I still smell the bleach on his fingers though. I think he must scrub the bathroom floor every morning after I leave for work.

I felt new again, working at my new job, having some purpose, healed. I felt new and fresh, scrubbed clean like the tile floor, my womb painted over with a fresh coat of white, but after awhile I started thinking about a baby again. This time, I decided not to tell him. I let him use the condoms he bought, because he told me he couldn’t go through it again.”

She flicked her eyes from the middle-distance place they’d been fixed up until now. Thinking she was looking for sympathy, the man who’d been listening turned his head away, pretending to focus on taking notes. “The first time we made love again,” she continued, “he was so gentle, like he used to be. He didn’t know I’d used a pin to poke holes in the condoms. I thought it would be a wonderful surprise when I started showing and we would know that this time the baby would make it. I felt it move this morning and knew that this baby would come. I thought I would make sure everything in the nursery was ready and he found me standing in the doorway.

“What are you doing in there?”

“We are going to need the room,” I said, “I’m pregnant,” and pulled him close to put his hand on my stomach so he could feel. He pulled away quickly as I reached to switch on the light and looked at the room. There were yellow ducks painted on the teal walls.

“What are those?” I asked. He looked at me strangely.

“You painted them, for the first one. Don’t you remember?”

“The colour burned my eyes and made my stomach turn. I ran to the bathroom and vomited, even though I hadn’t had any morning sickness before. The bile in the bowl floated custardy on the surface of the water. I flushed it down quickly. When I felt better, I got dressed and went to work. I left him standing in the doorway of the nursery.” She fell silent after this.

After several moments he realized that she felt she had finished her story. The man with the notepad prompted, “what about when you got home, where was he then?”

Seeming bewildered she added, “when I got home this afternoon, Officer, I called to him but got no answer. When I went to the bathroom to take a shower, I found him there, in the tub, surrounded by blood.”