Color the Sidewalk for Me (3 page)

I speared a cherry tomato. “Like DuPont.”

“Huh?”

“You know, the big company. Years ago their slogan was ‘There's a lot of good chemistry between us.' Great play on words.”

She rolled her eyes. “Celia, I'm talking to you about this incredible thing that's happened to me, and your mind's still on advertising?”

“No, no. I really am happy for you! But if he's so great, why hasn't he ever been married?”

“Well,” she grinned, not thinking, “you're great and you've never been married.”

Touché. I looked at my plate.

“Oh, Celia,” she said quickly, “I didn't mean anything by that.”

“I know.”

All the same, I felt a solemnity descend between us. Seven years ago Roger had wanted to marry me. More recently so had Michael. Their love for me had felt good at first, very good, and there'd been a time in both relationships when I thought it just might work. I'd even allowed the thought that maybe God had forgiven me—at least that much. But I was twice wrong. My past loomed too large, age-old desires and guilt drowning out what might have been.

“Hey.” Carrie tapped my plate. “Turtle. Your neck's disappearing.” I put my fork down. “Sorry.”

“Okay, enough of me for now. Your turn.”

Sighing, I told her about Mama's phone call. She listened, full of concern, her eyes never leaving my face.

“Your poor father. How sad,” she said when I was done. She took a thoughtful drink of water. “Maybe God's giving you this chance, terrible as the situation is for your dad, to work on your relationship with your parents. When are you leaving?”

“Oh, Carrie, it's not that simple.” I couldn't help but sound defensive; this was my mother's idea, not God's. “Mama's not asking me just to come for a few days. She'd probably expect me to stay three weeks, maybe more. I can't imagine being back in that town, in that house. My throat almost closes at the thought of it. I can't face her. I
just can't.”

“But how can you not help your father?”

“I don't know. I can't not help him.”

“You must help him,” she said gently, placing her hand on top of mine. “You can't let the fear of facing your mother keep you away.”

The proximity of my half-eaten salad suddenly annoyed me, and I withdrew my hand from hers to push the plate away. I placed my clean knife across it, then my fork. Folded my napkin. Slid it beside the plate. “Celia, listen to me. You need to do this. You need to deal with both of them.”

I focused on the white paper between my elbows. “I
am
dealing with Mama. By staying away for seventeen years.”

Silence. I sensed she was waiting for me to admit the ridiculousness of my statement. Fine. She could wait all day.

“Seventeen years,” she said finally, “and emotionally you've just treaded water. Celia, please hear me. God wants to heal you. He can heal you. Remember that verse I like so much from Jeremiah? ‘I am the LORD, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?' This is your chance. Take it. I know God can fix things between you and your mom. And that healing could in turn help break through the barrier of guilt you've built between yourself and God.”

Carrie was rarely this confrontational with me. I stared at her, struck by her statements.
Emotionally you've just treaded water.
She had me pegged well, but at that moment admitting it was the last thing I'd do. Sometimes I felt so fractured, as if I were three or four people. I'd worked hard to become the cool, competent professional, but mere thoughts of Mama could turn me back into the emotional teenager of Bradleyville. At Hillsdale Nursing Home I could be cheerful and even humorous with patients, for that was the demeanor they so needed, yet these traits were sorely missing in the rest of my life.

I swung my eyes away. Reaching for a crayon, I spun it against the table, listlessly watching the swirl of red on white. “Carrie,” I said, “if I can't even find my way back to God, you can be sure I'll never find it back to my mother's heart.”

Carrie began to utter her disagreement, but I shook my head, silencing her. I'd had enough talk for the moment. The crayon stopped. I flicked it into motion again. A third time. And a fourth. Gazing through the crayon as it spun, as if into the distance, I felt a familiar emptiness as memories of Mama began to etch my thoughts.

Red on white, white under red.

Jerome's buzz of conversation, its clink of plates, began to fade. The crayon was smoothing into chalk, our table cover graining into cement. Walls and ferns melted into the enchantment of a certain spring day twenty-nine years ago, when the temperature so perfectly matched that of my own young body that I felt no separateness between myself and the air, both sun-washed and flowing with magic . . .

~ 1968 ~

chapter 4

T
he red chalk sputtered as I drew it over the concrete, outlining a large heart and filling it in. My hands bore the marks of a passionate artist in a fit of creativity, a pallet of pastel colors blended and sifting into the creases of my palm. My shoulders were tired from the scribbling, my knees pockmarked and scraped, but that didn't matter to a six-year-old trembling with excitement. Melissa Westerdahl, my petite best friend who lived two doors up the street, was kneeling behind me. Hearing her grunts, I pictured her tongue lolling as she labored over our dazzling designs on the short sidewalk that led from my house to the street. We were nearly finished, but time could run out at any moment with the much anticipated arrival of my newborn brother, Kevin Thomas Matthews. He was named after his two granddads—Kevin after my dad's father, who had died before my birth, and Thomas for my other granddad, who lived with us at 101 Minton.

An hour earlier I'd been bouncing anxiously around the worn carpet in front of our brand-new color TV, pestering Granddad with “How much longer? How much longer?” Daddy had left for the hospital to bring Kevin and Mama home, and even Saturday morning cartoons with the Pink Panther in his true pigment could barely hold my attention. “Jus' lookit how
pink
he is!” Granddad exclaimed numerous times in an effort to distract me. He was almost as proud of owning the first color television in Bradleyville as he was of his first grandson, since both helped fortify his place as town patriarch. Granddad cared not a whit that Mama had been beside herself with rage at his purchase, railing that too much television was “the Devil's tool.” “Oh, cats-in the-cornbread, daughter!” he'd retorted as the delivery men scurried out the door to escape Mama's wrath. “Our black-and-white one a in't done us no harm yet, so I don't see what a little color'll do!”

As The Pink Panther
ended, with Granddad still humming the theme song and chasing me around the coffee table on his hands and knees, Melissa had called through our screen door. Melissa and I spent so much time together, Mama sometimes called us the Twins even though we looked nothing alike. My hair was blond and wavy, and hers was brown and straight as a stick. My eyes were blue; hers were brown. Melissa would bounce with energy, throwing her light frame into cartwheels, often bubbling with giggles. Sometimes she even made
me
tired.

Melissa and I both were dancing with anticipation. Granddad gave up trying to distract us, falling into the sofa to fan his face.

“Oh, I know,” I cried, eyes widening. “Let's get some chalk and color the whole sidewalk for Mama and Kevin! It'll be a great present, and Mama will have a pretty carpet to walk on!”

“Yeah!” agreed Melissa.

We finished our masterpiece with only a moment to spare, the entire sidewalk covered with glorious pictures. God himself couldn't have made it any finer. No matter that my legs had fallen asleep and felt as if they were covered with biting ants.

As I was cleaning my hands against the grass, Daddy pulled up to the curb. You would have thought he was driving a chariot of gold for the care he took in stopping so Mama's door was perfectly aligned with the sidewalk.
My sidewalk.

“They're here! They're here!” I yelled, jumping up and down. Melissa jumped too as I ran to our steps to call Granddad, who was already easing out the door, whistling the
Pink Panther
theme song through his teeth. “Be careful of the sidewalk, Granddad,” I sang. “Don't scuff it!”

He stopped dead still, a veined hand on his chest as he admired our artistry. “That's so pretty, girls,” he exclaimed. “The prettiest thing I ever did see!”

Daddy was opening Mama's car door with a mixture of grandiosity and awe. Mama rotated her legs slowly until her feet hit pavement, then rose with his help. The naturally smooth skin on her face was lined with fatigue, and she moved with the languidness of a hard day's housework. In her arms lay a yellow-blanketed bundle.

“Look, Mama!” I burst. “We colored the sidewalk for you!”

My cry tumbled over the pavement between us, ricocheting off the oak trees in our front yard to careen around their breeze-ruffled leaves. The moment grew heavy with import as I sensed the jockeying of positions in our family now that I had a little brother. I needed Mama's breathless response, her embracing of me and my desperate desire to please. Silently I pleaded to God that she would still want me.

Granddad had not yet moved from the porch. I was still on the bottom step, Melissa frozen on the grass. Daddy's arms were steadying Mama; the yellow blanket was silent. I lifted my eyes to Mama's face and the afternoon stood still.

Her expression was one of utter dismay. It reminded me of the time I spilled a bottle of vegetable oil on her newly cleaned kitchen floor, or when a neighbor's dog left a steaming pile among her rosebushes. She stared at the sidewalk, then at Melissa and me. Daddy remained anxiously at her side, his face shuttered, awaiting her pronouncement. Time spun itself out and I held my breath.

“Well, William,” Mama uttered finally, “I guess we won't spank her, since she was tryin' to give me a present.”

Relief spilled from Daddy. “I think you did a right fine job, girls,” he ventured, smiling at me with reassurance.

“They worked a long time on it, Estelle.” Granddad's voice behind me held more than a tinge of disapproval. Mama shot him a look.

Mama and I had volleyed our share of heated words in the past. But for once I had no retort. Mouth gaping, throat tight, I let my eyes fall to the sidewalk, sweeping them over its glory-filled length, searching its decorations for a clue to her reproach. Not to save my own right hand, not for the life of me, could I understand how she could view this heartfelt gift as a mess. How could she even think of spanking me; how could she not grasp that I had lovingly prepared this for her, that I'd worked hard on it, that I was so proud?

The magic of the afternoon melted away, and I shivered as a chilling realization washed over me, coating me with desolation. It was a knowledge that I'd somehow sensed from my earliest memories but had not quite grasped hold of, like a deep, festering splinter that finally works its way to the surface.

For all her Christian charity, my mama could not love me.

~ 1997 ~

chapter 5

A
fter my lunch with Carrie, the rest of the day saw a whirlwind of meetings. Our campaign for Cellway Phone Systems was gearing up, and three assistants were reporting to me as they drafted and redrafted the script for a local TV commercial and copy for supporting newspaper ads. The Southern Bank account had just landed unexpectedly in our laps after four years of pursuit by Quentin Sammons. Southern Bank was redefining its stodgy image into one with which high-tech, younger entrepreneurs would identify. This involved devising a campaign from the ground up—new colors, new logo and slogan—to be incorporated into everything from brochures, radio spots, a series of television commercials, and full-page newspaper ads to the large signs on the sides of metro buses. Quentin Sammons would personally oversee the account but looked to me to lead the creative process and organize logistics.