Green: A Fond Memory

Sweat rivered down my face as, wary-eyed, I watched Susie concentrate. The lines around her nine-year-old mouth grimaced, her bobbed blonde hair frizzy with heat.  She was deep into figuring out a solution to her latest observation why were all the people in our experience the same color, bleached out white—no variation—bland.  For a lifetime of moments, at least to a six-year-old who wanted nothing more than to play on the swings in the backyard, we sat still, cross-legged facing each other on the oak floor only moments away from Susie popping up to announce that she had reached a conclusion. The two of us were going to be gloriously unique.

It was August 1954, the year of the landmark Supreme Court decision, Brown vs. the Board of Education, the year Jonas Salk developed a successful polio vaccine, and Ellis Island was closed as an immigration center. Despite the landmark events of that year, in our small bungalow in the Westside neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio life-changing events were about to be set in motion. At the beginning of that summer, I still believed in my sister, did whatever she commanded, believed whatever she said because she was three years older and wiser than I was.  By the end of that summer, everything had changed.

With a smug grin, Suzie hopped up from the floor and grabbed my hand.

“C’mon, Nancy. We’re going to the basement. We’re going to be green.” She smiled as she pulled me toward the basement door and down the steep, creaky stairs.

“Won’t mom and dad be pleased that they are going to have wonderfully unusual kids,” she said.

We slithered past the coal bin where Oscar, our duck—a product of Susie’s last notion: we needed unusual pets.  His feet slapped on the concrete as he waddle over to us. He followed us to the center of the cellar. Susie pulled the string hanging from the lone 60-watt bulb and the light shadowed the room with pale yellow.  Creeping around the debris of cardboard boxes stored in haphazard rows and assorted tools, we found the house paint—spruce green.  What a provocative, sensuous tinge, the color of the forest, deep and silent: trees, majestic.  Out came the brushes; off came the lids.  We started with our hair.

“Hold still, Nancy.” Susie said with lips pursed in concentration. 

“I want to make this curl.”  She stepped back to view her work. “There, it stays just the way I fixed it.”

I reached up to feel my head.

“No, don’t touch. Let it dry so you don’t have curls that flop around,” she grimaced.  Suzie had watched our mother use gusty spurts of Spray Net hairspray, compliments of Helene Curtis, until her hair looked as stiff as mine felt. Well, if my sister had let me feel.  

I painted my sister’s face with stripes.

“Do we have any other colors, Susie?”  I said glancing around.  “Why don’t we do Oscar, too?  He’s very white. We could have the only green and white duck in the city?”

Susie’s lips curled into a frown as she considered the idea while I circled her neck with a semi-perfect stripe.  The job complete, Susie picked up the green paint-drenched brush and headed in Oscar’s direction.

Suddenly, the door to the upstairs slammed open and we froze in place as heavy footfalls pounded down the stairs. 

“It’s Dad,” Susie said as she whipped the paintbrush behind her back.

I smiled, a big face-splitting grin. Pride bubbled up. I felt like a peacock, tail feathers spread.  My heart raced and I burst with the pleasure of the moment.

When father pivoted from the bottom of the stairs to the center of the room, I wondered why he wasn’t smiling. Instead, his lips curled downward as he whipped to our sides. With a practiced stroke of his hand to our bottoms, I realized he did not appreciate the exotic.

“But Dad,” our mutual whining stopped flat with one cold stare from our father.

“Jesus H. Christ.” Dad grimaced. As he put his hands on his hips, his voice notched up into a yell.  “That’s oil-based house trim.” 

He pounded over to the stationary tubs and slapped on the water. Reaching for the turpentine, he dumped half of the gallon into the tub yelling. “Get those clothes off and hop in. God damn it.”

“But dad that will take the paint off. We won’t be green anymore,” I whined.

He turned slowly stepping closer, his eyes slit wide, reptilian. In my angst, I hadn’t noticed my grandfather come down the stairs and stand beside my father, a quiet grace in a thunderstorm.

            He spoke one word, softly, “Ralph.”

            My father turned toward my grandfather, who stood like a small wall of finely chiseled granite, hands casually in his pockets.  My grandfather smiled at him, eyes crinkling up at the corners.

            “Frank,” my father spoke in return.

            “Girls, hop in and clean off.” It was like a switch had been turned low. Normal volume.  “Get all the green out and don’t get any in your eyes. Yell if you do and I’ll come help.”

I swallowed hard and shut up.

            As they clomped up the stairs, I heard laughter.

After we immersed our painted bodies, Susie glared at the stairs, listening intently. Satisfied no one was there, she whispered, “Who wants to be green anyhow? I know something better than being green,” Susie said, her lips a hard line in her nine-year-old face. He blue eyes glittered with anger.

            Choking back a whine, I stared up at her. “Really?” My six-year-old hands pruning in the water, the smell of turpentine wrinkling my nose. It stung in places I didn’t know about yet.

            “Yea,” Susie got that look on her face, mouth curling up, reptilian—like Dad’s.

            “What?” I knew she waited for me to ask.

            “I’ll tell you, but you can’t say anything,” she grabbed my wrist digging her nails in.

            “Ow.”  I shook her away and water splashed in her face. “I won’t tell. I never tell.” She let go of my hand and resumed washing my hair. Water dripped down the angry red spots on her cheeks. 

“You know Johnson’s Feed Store? Where we got that huge bag of dog food for Skipper?” she said, a distant look in her eyes. “You’re the one who sneaked the dog into the house and hid him in your bottom dresser drawer.”

“You told me to.” I remember her threat of annihilation if I didn’t follow her orders.

 “So?” she pulled my short brown hair.

“Ow, stop it. I’ll tell mom.”

Susie laughed. “No, you won’t.”

I shut up again and listened.

“They’re going to have baby chicks for sale this week in all the colors of the rainbow.” Susie grinned.

“Really?” I said.

“Yep. Blue ones and yellow ones, but they don’t count cause most baby chicks are yellow. We don’t want yellow.”

I shook my head no. “How about green?”

“Dark green. A dark green baby chick.” Susie’s eyes glazed over.

“You in? Want some rainbow chicks?” she asked.

I thought for a minute as we turned with Susie’s back to me. I started to wash her hair. “So, how will we get there?  It’s really far.”

“Don’t be such a baby. It’s only two miles away, up that big hill.”

I considered this. “We’ll have to get up really early.”

“That’s what I thought, too.” Susie quieted as I washed her hair. I knew she was figuring out how we’d climb down from the second story bedroom window in the dark.