True Colors

WHAT DO I CARE ABOUT?

Another totally useless question, Mrs. I. What do you do, sit around reading some old teacher’s handbook on how to get bad kids to talk? I can tell you what I don’t care about. How’s that? I don’t care about Oyster Shores or the kids in my class or high school. It’s all just a big waste of time.

And I don’t care about family suppers. We had another rocking good time at the Grey house last night, btw. It’s always the same. Aunt Aurora bragging about how perfect her kids are. Ricky the perfect college student and Janie the girl wonder. And Grandpa sits there like a rock while Aunt Winona tells us all how perfect her friggin life is. No wonder my mom used to take a bunch of pills to get through the day. I’m not supposed to know about that. They think I’m an idiot. Like because I was a kid I didn’t notice that she used to cry all the time. I tried to help her—That’s what I remember most about being little. But she used to either push me away or hold me so tight I couldn’t breathe. I got so I knew what her eyes looked like when she was drugged up and I just stayed away. Now she pretends everything is okay because the medicine cabinet is empty and she never cries.

I found something else I don’t care about. Aunt Winona’s dumb old dock. It’s covered with bird shit, so naturally I’m the one that gets to scrape it all off. You should see the way she watches me. Like I’m going to blow any second or come at her with a knife. She used to like me, too. That’s another thing I remember from when I was little. She’d read me bedtime stories when Mom was gone and watch Disney movies with me. But now she stays away, staring at me when she thinks I don’t notice.

I think she’s scared of me. Maybe it’s because of that time I got pissed off at a family supper and threw my glass at the wall. That was the day Erik Jr. told me my dad was a half breed murderer. I didn’t believe him and when I got home, I asked my mom and she talked and talked and talked and never said anything.

And everybody wonders why I get pissed off. What am I supposed to do when Brian calls me injun boy and says they shoulda fried my dad for what he did?

The next Friday teased them with the promise of summer. A pale, pretty sun played hide-and-seek with the clouds; light came and went across the yard like a capricious child, until finally sometime just past noon it came out and stayed.

Winona was busy scrubbing the kitchen floor when she noticed the change in the weather. At first she thought nothing of it, figured, in fact, that it was just as likely to begin raining as not, and kept working. But when she started to feel heat prickle on her forehead and form tiny moist beads in the curl of her back, she climbed to her feet and pulled off her rubber gloves. If it was actually going to stay nice out, she knew she should power-wash the deck. You didn’t squander sunlit days in June around here.

She changed into shorts and a baggy, thigh-length T-shirt. As she pulled her hair back into a ponytail, she peered through the cloudy glass of her bedroom window and saw Noah down on the dock, supposedly scraping bird poop off the splintery wooden rails.

Honest to God, the dead moved faster.

And his pants were so low she could see the waistband of his blue boxer shorts.

He’d been working for her for five days and she could barely identify his progress. He got here promptly at nine o’clock every morning and went down to the dock without saying a word to her. On the days she went into the office, leaving him here alone, she had no doubt whatsoever that he was sitting on his ass.

“This is so not working out,” she muttered, grabbing a roll of duct tape.

She marched out onto the deck, letting the door bang shut behind her. Enough was enough. She might have to employ him, might have to ignore his surly attitude and his dirty hair, might have to pretend he was working, but by God, she didn’t have to look at his damn underwear.

She walked down the dock. The tide was low, so the ramp down to the dock was steep and springy beneath her. She held tightly to the bird-ruined handrails, looking carefully for bare wood places to touch, as she made her way cautiously down to him. “Noah.”

He’d been so busy doing nothing that he was startled by her voice. He flinched, dropped the metal scraper. “Jeez. Yell, why don’t yah?”

“Duct tape is a remarkable invention. It can be anything. Did you know that?” She unwound a length about as long as her arm, tore it off, and then carefully folded it in half lengthwise.

“I don’t think about tape much, but I’ll believe you.” He reached down for the fallen scraper. “Unless you want to tell me something about . . . I don’t know, maybe yarn? I think I’ll get back to work.”

“We both know what a joke that is. Here.” She handed him the strip of silver tape.

“What is it?”

“Your new belt. Put it through the loops—you do know how to do that, don’t you?—and tie it in a knot. I do not want to see even a strip of your boxers.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?”

“This is the style,” he said stubbornly.

“Oh, yes, you’re a real Giorgio Armani. Put on the belt. If you’ll remember, it was a condition of this ridiculous enterprise you and I pretend is employment.”

“And if I don’t?”

She smiled. “You know what I loved about the fair? The way my chaps and hat and gloves all matched. They were all the same blue. Your mom called it dressing to win. And everyone I knew was there, seeing me dressed like a fat blueberry.”

Noah said nothing.

“I’m sure you’ll be very handsome in whatever outfit she’s made. She is still making your riding clothes, isn’t she?”

“Give me that,” he said, grabbing the makeshift belt. It took him a while to thread it through the loops and pull it taut, but when he was done his pants were pulled up to his waist. The knot was as big as a fist. “I look like a total dork.”