The Color Gray

When Victoria was nine years old, her mother said, “If you don’t stop that, I’m leaving and never coming back.”

The child might have been racing from room to room in the apartment, always starting and ending in the kitchen. Above the stove, the pink-orange chef with the clock tummy would judge whether she was faster or not.

Perhaps she was jumping with an invisible jump rope which would annoy the neighbors downstairs who might complain again.

Maybe Victoria kept singing the same song over and over, either from Saturday morning cartoons or more likely a song that she made up.

Whatever it was, the child stopped what she was doing.

Then, because she was having fun and possibly mother was only joking, she continued playing.

A cloud of anger came over mother’s face, putting ugly lines on her forehead. Abandoning the sink full of dishes or the bills she was trying to pay as a single parent or the letter she was writing to her friend in faraway Brooklyn, mother walked briskly through the apartment to the front door.

Victoria hurried after her and watched breathlessly as mother took down the soft gray scarf from the hook. This was only a game, wasn’t it?

“Mom?” Victoria asked, wanting everything to be okay again.

Mother draped the fringed gray scarf over her shoulders, then shrugged into the gray winter coat and fastened the pale gray buttons, one by one.

“Please,” Victoria said, not knowing what else to say.

Mother sat down on the wooden chair to put on her tall gray boots.

Victoria tried to give her a hug, but Mother ignored this and stood up.

Mother dug in her coat pocket for keys. As she took them out, a fluffy gray glove fell to the floor.

“Mommy?” Victoria asked, her throat tight with tears.

Mother picked up the gray hat that looked like a gray hen sitting on a nest. She did not look at her reflection in the mirror as she put on the hat.

“Please don’t go,” Victoria begged as Mother unlocked the front door.

Mother did not reply or glance at her, quickly going out.

The door slammed.

Victoria heard the key turn in the lock.

The sound of boots going down the stairwell shared by all the apartments made her run to the door, sobbing and calling for Mommy to please come back.

Using both hands, Victoria twisted the door handle but nothing could open the door without a key. And Mother had the only key.

She ran to the nearest window to try and see where Mother was going, maybe call to her. No gray coat or hat. Nobody outside at all. Just snow, half melted and a car passing with white clumps of snow on top. Mother would not have heard her anyway with the window shut tight against the cold.

Victoria trudged back to the front door and tried the handle. She slapped her hands against the door to punish it for refusing to open.

She huffed a big breath then moved away and sat on the wooden chair. Putting her fingers in her mouth one by one, she bit down with her lips not with her teeth, hard enough to hurt.

Hugging herself, she started to rock forwards and backwards.

Her head lowered when she finally slowed to a stop.

She noticed the gray glove on the floor. Almost like a beckoning hand. She scooped up the glove, standing and waving it at the door and shouted, “Mommy, you forgot your glove!”

Silence answered her.

Victoria lifted the gray glove toward her face and smelled Mother’s flowery perfume. She hugged the fluffy glove. Sitting down, she began rocking again, back and forth, back and forth.

“Mommy,” she repeated quietly like when she felt scared if she woke up from a nightmare. “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy.”

She studied the gray glove, then partly folded it in one hand like Captain Kirk did with that gadget in Star Trek.

Holding the glove up near her mouth, she said, “Mommy? Can you hear me?”

Victoria could almost taste the popcorn from the big bowl that she and Mommy shared when they watched Star Trek.

“Mommy?” she said hopefully, but no answer came.

She rearranged the fluffy gray glove until she could imagine she held a cute tribble from Star Trek. Though Christmas was over, and it was ages and ages until her next birthday, she wanted a tribble. Renting, they couldn’t have a cat or dog. And tribbles only ate cereal which wouldn’t cost a lot. They would be more fun than goldfish or canaries.

Victoria started petting the gray tribble. She pretended to hear it purring like the heaps of tribbles on their small black and white television last night. If she could choose, she wanted a pink one although maybe they only had boring colors like hamsters.

By the time twilight turned the world gray outside the apartment, she had dragged blankets and pillows under the dining table to make herself a fort.

Sound asleep hugging her teddy bear, she didn't hear the key turn in the lock.

The sound of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” from the Mary Poppins record playing on the stereo was the first thing Victoria heard. Her very favorite song.

“I brought us something,” Mother told her, putting a plate on the dining table with a pair of Hostess chocolate cupcakes which had squiggly white icing on top for them to share.

***

Almost eighteen years later, on a Saturday afternoon three days before Christmas, Vicky got off the bus on her way home. She walked up the street and climbed the outside stairs to let herself into the most recent apartment that she shared with her mother.

“Mom, I’m home,” she called. In public, she always used her mother’s first name. Too embarrassing for anybody to know that Vicky went to the mall or the movies or wherever with Mom.

Silence answered her.

“Mom?” she said as she walked toward the kitchen.

Two cereal bowls, unwashed, sat on the dining table, a half empty mug abandoned nearby.

As Vicky walked toward the back of the apartment and saw that the bathroom door was open, she called a third time. “Mom?”

She found her mother in bed, familiar blue eyes staring at the ceiling without blinking, a web of blood across the lips.

Awful knowledge gripped her though she tried to deny it, wanting everything to be okay again. She patted her mother’s cheek, then nudged the blankets that covered mother’s shoulder.

“Mommy?” she pleaded, a word she had not used for years.

Vicky tried to think. Her brain refused to work.

How to call for an ambulance?

She needed paramedics.

Why didn’t she ever learn First Aid?

“Mom?” she tried again, her eyes stinging with tears. “Please wake up.”

Mother’s friend was some kind of a nurse, wasn’t she? Maybe she could help.

Vicky hurried to the living room where the blue rotary dial phone sat on a round table.

She picked up the tiny book that contained phone numbers.

The gray book dropped from clumsy hands.

Paralyzed, she stared down at the floor.

Scraps of paper lay scattered, phone numbers not added yet.

All the fear and guilt from when Vicky was nine years old engulfed her as the memory surfaced.

Mother’s angry face. Gray coat with pale gray buttons. Gray hat that looked like a hen brooding over eggs. Fluffy gray glove laying on the floor. The flowery scent of Mother’s perfume.

Mother had left and would never be coming back.