Dusty-Old Brown, Dusty-Old Blue, Dusty-Old Red

I’M TELLING SHERRIE YOU’RE DOING that,” said Zuzu, standing in my bedroom doorway. She crossed her arms and planted her feet hard against the wooden floorboards.

“Doing what?” I said.

“Oh, you know!”

“No, I don’t.”

“That!” She pointed to the box I was stuffing with towels for the kitten.

“What?”

“Good towels?” she said, raising her eyebrows and putting her hands on her hips like she was saying the most logical thing in the world and I was too stupid to comprehend it.

“What are you talking about?” I said.

“Those are Sherrie’s good towels you’re putting in that box. She’ll be so mad at you for letting a cat sleep on her good towels!”

“She said I could use them,” I said.

“FINE!” Zuzu shouted. She stomped out the doorway, back into her room, and slammed the door.

I gathered up Calamity and placed her gently in the box. She mewed and picked at the cheek-rouge-pink towels with her tiny claws.

“There you go. I hope you like it,” I said. I put the box on the floor by my bed and opened the window so she could have some fresh air.

I took out my paints and went to the attic. I wanted to paint Palace Beautiful the way it looked the day I found it.

After moving the crates from the little doorway, I climbed in and set my paints on the floor. Using my broadest brush and dullest colors, like dusty-old brown, dusty-old blue and dusty-old red, I began to paint. Looking at the room through the eyes of my paints, I thought it could use a bit more color, but it looked beautiful in its old and creaky way. There are always way more colors in a place than people usually notice anyway. The little room was filled with them, and imagining a girl my age up here writing in her journal gave it extra color and light. Touching the letters over the doorway, I wondered if she wrote them and what they meant. I brushed the words Palace Beautiful on the sheet of watercolor paper and blew on them softly so they would soak into the paper and become part of it. I painted every little detail I could find, from the necklace to the individual drips of the old candle. Painting makes a person look closer than they ever would normally. It makes them breathe and smell and touch and be a part of what they are painting. It makes time stop and something else begin. I don’t know how long I was in the little room, but when I was done, I knew every inch of the space and it felt like part of me.

Leaving the painting to dry in Palace Beautiful, I went to the north window. Cloud shadows passed over the cemetery, making it dark then light then dark again. I wondered who was buried in those graves. My skin itched and pricked with goose bumps. Was Helen White buried in that graveyard? If she was, did she haunt her little Palace in the attic? Closing my eyes, I asked the air, “Is anyone here?” All I heard was a puff of breeze pulling on the branches of an old knotty apple tree in the backyard. I asked again, “Is anyone here?” I tried to listen with my eyes, nose and mouth. My skin puckered with waves of goose bumps, and I wasn’t sure whether they came as a sign from the other side or from just being creeped out in an attic. Either way, I didn’t want to think about it anymore. So I went downstairs to make lunch.

I fixed two peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches out of the bread Bella’s mom had made and called Zuzu to lunch. We took our sandwiches and a couple of apples into the backyard and had a picnic.

Zuzu was quiet. She bit into her sandwich and chewed absently. After a few minutes I saw a tear roll down her cheek.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She didn’t answer right away. I expected a sudden tantrum explosion, but instead, Zuzu looked up at me and said, “I was going to be lunchroom monitor next year.” More fat tears dropped down her morning-rose-pink cheeks.

These weren’t her usual trying-to-get-her-way tears, these were tears of real pain. In all the craziness of moving, I’d almost forgotten to look back. I swallowed hard. I thought of my favorite sitting place by the bayou. I thought of my old school where I knew every hallway and just about every classroom. I thought about the big mall downtown where Sherrie would take us and let us spray ourselves with fancy perfume. I thought of Bluebell ice cream. I knew they wouldn’t have it in Utah. If I hadn’t been the babysitter for the afternoon, I would have cried, too.

“Maybe at your new school they’ll need a lunchroom monitor,” I said, but I knew good and well it wasn’t the same.

“Maybe,” she said. We ate the rest of our lunch in silence. The boiling-white clouds turned calamity-gray, then better-get-inside black. I remembered from visiting Grandma Brooks that afternoon storms popped up and disappeared often this time of year. It looked like we were about to get our first one. The breeze changed from warm to cool almost instantly. Thunder rumbled from somewhere, but it must have been far away because we didn’t see any lightning.