The Color of Sorrows, page 1
©2023 by A.J. Brown
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.
The author grants the final approval for this literary material.
First digital version
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-68513-119-7
PUBLISHED BY BLACK ROSE WRITING
www.blackrosewriting.com
For Molly
A NOT SO NORMAL DAY
It was a normal morning. A coffee breakfast, chased with dry toast and orange juice, a shower, a shave, and a bathroom break. All normal. Workout clothes on, an early morning jog and another shower after. See? All normal. Dressed for work and out the door on time. It was a five-block walk to the office, and me in my pressed shirt and slacks and nice shoes and a blue tie to offset the lack of color in the shirt, would be there in short time. By my watch, I had half an hour and I had never been late to work.
Everything was normal.
The boardwalk bustled with people already selling their wares in storefronts and center kiosks. Most everyday folks paid no attention to them, but the tourists … ahh the tourists ate up the salespeople and their pitches, especially the ones with the Hollywood smiles, perfect hair, dazzling eyes and plastic bodies. On the beach, just beyond the boardwalk, people already gathered and milled about, some on blankets, some in the water and some walking hand in hand with a lover or holding the leash of a dog. Oh, such a normal, normal morning.
Until I met Kathy and Dave.
They were a cute couple, he with his disheveled hair and horn-rimmed glasses and stubbled chin, and she with her pulled back red hair, green sparkling eyes, and rosy cheeks. He couldn’t have been a day over twenty. She might have been sixteen. Maybe it mattered. Maybe it didn’t. You didn’t have to know them to see the love they had for one another. To me, that is what mattered most.
He pushed a stroller, one of pinks and whites in a pattern of rattles and hearts. She carried a diaper bag on one shoulder. It was the same pink and white pattern of rattles and hearts as the stroller. The top of the stroller was pulled down, possibly to shield the baby (a girl I presumed) from the sun and little old ladies who liked to squeeze the cheeks of wee ones. The wheels were big, made for going over just about anything.
An all-wheel stroller, I thought and couldn’t hold back the smile that formed on my lips.
The smile is what changed my day. It’s not that I don’t smile. It’s just the young couple saw it.
They exchanged a glance, then she nodded tentatively. As we passed each other I gave them a “good morning.” Yeah, that was probably another thing that attracted them to me. I smiled, I nodded, and I spoke, making eye contact with him as I did so.
Just beyond them, he called to me, “Excuse me, Sir?”
I turned. He looked hopeful with his raised brows and a nervous smile on his face.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Hi, I’m Dave.” He put out a hand. His fingers were long and thin. He might have played piano at some point. I took his hand, gave it a good pump and released it.
“I’m Kathy.” She extended her hand, as he had, and I took it, as I had Dave’s.
“We were wondering,” Dave picked back up, “do you have a minute?”
Uh oh. Salesmen? Zealots peddling their religion? Con artists? All of these were normal thoughts, and all of them were wrong. Thinking on it now, I wouldn’t have minded if they had been all three.
I guess the look on my face and the hesitancy to respond said I wasn’t sure about them.
“I’m sorry,” Dave said. “We’re not trying to sell you anything or want any money. We just want you to take a picture of us and our baby.”
I relaxed. A breath escaped me, one both full of relief and embarrassment. Not everyone is crazy in this world.
I glanced at my watch. “Sure. I can do that. I have a little time before I have to be to work.”
Their faces lit up with smiles and he stuck his hand out for me to shake with a “thank you, we appreciate it,” on his lips.
“No problem,” I said.
Kathy set the bag on the sidewalk and rummaged around in it for a moment before bringing out her cell phone. She handed it to me.
“Just press and hold this button for it to focus. When it does, a green square will appear on us. Let the button go, then press it again and it will take the picture.”
Normal. See? Everything was normal.
She lowered the stroller’s top with her back to me. I admit I had to look away because the view from where I stood was pleasant. When I looked back, Kathy and Dave stood by the black steel rail separating the boardwalk from the beach. He smoothed out his shirt with the palms of his hands, and she held the swaddled baby in the crook of one elbow.
“Are you ready?” I asked.
They both nodded enthusiastically, but their smiles looked nervous, almost forced.
I held the phone up, the camera facing them and looked into the display. The view zoomed in, then locked on the happy little family.
Then things got weird.
The phone’s screen showed Dave and Kathy standing side by side with strained smiles on their faces. Kathy had removed the blanket from the baby’s head.
I shook my head and lowered the phone. From that distance I could barely make out the child, but when I raised the phone and looked at the screen, it was clear the child was dead and had been for a long time.
My hands shook. I tried to still them so I could take the picture.
“Is everything okay?” Kathy asked.
I lowered the phone. “Umm … yes. I’m just having a hard time getting the camera to focus. Give me one more second.”
“Okay,” she responded, but her tone said she didn’t believe me.
I held the button she told me to. The phone’s camera zoomed in and focused on them. The square turned green, and yes, that little child was dead, and what I saw was her bare skull. I released the button, then quickly pressed it again. The camera gave a ~CLICK~ and the screen blinked several times. Then it stopped and what appeared on the screen was the stilled image of Dave, Kathy, and the baby.
I looked at it for a moment, just as anyone taking a picture would, but I didn’t check it to see if I took a good shot. I checked it to make sure what I thought I saw was real. The image on the screen was of a skeletal baby being held by parents too grieved to let the child go. Dave stood next to his wife, his arm around her. Kathy leaned into him and held the baby chest high. Their smiles were clearly forced. There were tears in her eyes.
My mouth went dry, and my legs weakened. I looked back at them. They hadn’t moved, but their smiles had faltered.
“How … how is this?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.
Dave took the camera and looked at the image. He frowned at first.
“Kathy, what do you think?” he asked and showed her. At this point she had already put the baby back in the stroller and pulled the top back down, not to keep the sun off her or the old ladies from pinching her cheeks, but possibly to keep anyone from seeing she was dead.
Kathy stood and took the phone from him. “Oh, that’s beautiful. That is a great picture.”
They both shook their heads in what I took was satisfaction.
“Thank you,” Dave said and put out one of his pianists’ hands.
The thought of touching his hand made me shiver. It was everything I could do to shake it.
Like Dave, Kathy gave her thanks and extended her hand to me, and like earlier, I shook it gently. Then they both walked off, he pushing the stroller, she with the baby bag slung over her shoulder. As I watched them go, I honestly didn’t know what to think. I stood there a while longer before taking a seat at a nearby coffee shop. My heart broke for the sad couple with the dead baby and the inability to let go, not for the child, but for themselves. Then I cried with my face buried in my hands. After a few minutes, I composed myself, wiped my eyes and made my way to work. I was late for the first time.
GoN
Her name is Abigail Sherman and she used to live in a small neighborhood where everyone knew her as Abby and knew her parents as Gail and Wes. She was six when her family moved away from their nice home with the chain link fence, huge back yard with lush grass and a pecan tree in the far corner. Sometimes they set up a tent and slept under the stars. They had cable television and this thing called the internet, though Abby didn’t quite know what that was. She wore cute pink dresses and took baths daily. She went to a good school for first grade and made several friends whose families often had cookouts or ‘get togethers.’
When they left home one morning—the day after police showed up—she didn’t know they would never go back. Her mom handed her the pink book bag she used for school and her stuffed bunny, Floppy Ears. Then she took her hand, and they went to the car, just her and Mom.
“Where’s Dad?” she asked from her car seat in the back.
At first her mom said nothing but, in the mirror, Abby saw her wipe at her wet eyes. Then her mom spoke and said one word. “Gone.”
For Abby that word didn’t me
Gone is just Go with a N added, she thought, so he must have went somewhere. He’ll be back.
For Gail, gone meant everything. Abby would learn that in time, but at first, it was just go with a N added.
She’s still six and gone is what she and Mom now were. Gone from their comfortable home, gone from her bed, gone from the big back yard with the pecan tree in the corner. Gone from the school where her friends still were, but where she no longer belonged. This is something she didn’t understand either. If she belonged before, why doesn’t she now?
They went from a place Mom called a hotel to another one, to sleeping in her car. Eventually, the car became gone as well. She didn’t understand that, but she understood things were bad. Mom didn’t smile and she was constantly on the phone at the hotel. Abby tried to ‘mind her own business,’ but with just Mr. Floppy Ears to keep her company, she couldn’t help but hear Mom’s end of the phone calls. One of those calls Mommy argued with someone on the other end about it not being her fault Wes did what he did. She slammed the phone down on the receiver. That’s when Abby approached her mom with questions.
“Mommy, why did we leave home?”
At first, Gail didn’t answer. How was she supposed to answer such a question from her sweet, innocent child? Then she did. The conversation went like this:
“We had to.”
“Why?”
“Your dad … well, your dad …”
“What about Daddy?” Her blue eyes were wide and full of wonder, and how can you lie to a child who will eventually learn the truth?
Gail pulled Abby onto her lap and put her arms around her. “Your daddy got into some trouble and …”
“Bad trouble?”
“Really bad trouble.”
“Is that why the police came?”
“Yes. The police were not happy with Daddy, and they took him away.”
Abby nodded, said a soft “Oh.” Then she added, “But why didn’t we stay home so when he came back, we wouldn’t be gone?”
Gail sniffled. “We had to leave. I didn’t want to, but they made us.”
“Who is they?”
“The police.”
Abby sat up. Tears were in Mommy’s eyes and she stared off toward the wall of the hotel that held a large painting of a bull and a man with a red cape, his arm pulled back to throw a long spear. “Are we in bad trouble, too?”
Gail shook her head, sniffled again. This time, she wiped at her eyes with the palm of one hand. “No, Sweetie. We’re not in bad trouble. Just Daddy.”
Abby stared at Mommy. She didn’t know how, but she knew Mommy was lying. She only called her Sweetie when things were not good. They were in trouble. In six-year-old Abby’s mind, they were in bad, bad trouble.
Abby pushed away from her mother’s chest and slid off her lap. She went to the hard chair with the blue cushion on it where her book bag sat. She put her crayons in it. Then went to the small dresser near the foot of the single bed the two of them shared and pulled the few clothing items from it. She put those in the bag. She then picked up Mr. Floppy Ears and set him next to the bag.
“Abby, what are you doing?”
“Getting ready.”
“Getting ready? For what?”
Abby turned to her mommy. She almost rolled her eyes but didn’t. “To be gone again.”
And they were gone again. This time, with no car to go in. They walked, Abby with her backpack on her shoulders, Mr. Floppy in one arm and holding Mommy’s hand. Mommy carried a black trash bag over one shoulder with her head down. They walked until they came to an overpass.
“Stay here,” she said.
“Why?” Abby asked.
“Just do it. If anything happens, scream.”
That scared Abby. Chills ran up her small arms. “Where are you going?”
Gail jerked her head toward the dark overpass. “To make sure it’s safe.”
Though her mother wasn’t gone long—two minutes at most—it seemed to last the entire night. Abby peered into the darkness but could only see a faint impression of her mother. Tears formed in her eyes and her bladder suddenly felt like it would let go. She licked her lips and held Mr. Floppy Ears close to her chest. She let her breath out when her mom came back into view.
“Come on,” she said.
“Is it safe?”
“As safe as it’s going to get.”
Abby took Gail’s hand and they stepped into the darkness of the overpass. Once beneath the road above them, Abby’s eyes adjusted to the dark. It wasn’t a big area, and the road connected the small downtown to what looked like a neighborhood on the other side. A long fence separated the two sections of town.
Gail led her to one of the pillars of the overpass. On the ground was a long piece of cardboard. “Lay on that,” she said. “It will be better than laying on the hard concrete.”
“What about you, Mommy?”
“Don’t worry about me, Sweetie. I’m going to be right here beside you.”
“Here,” Gail said and reached into her trash bag. She pulled out a pink blanket, one Abby hadn’t seen in a while. It was her ‘sweet sweet,’ at least that was what she called it when she was smaller and younger than she was then. One corner was frayed where she chewed on it when she was teething. Abby took the blanket and held it to her cheek. It didn’t smell freshly washed, but stale, as if it had been at the bottom of her closet or under her bed in her old house.
Abby first sat on the cardboard. It was thin and old looking. Then she laid down. It was stiff and hard and nothing like a mattress on any bed, not even one of the firm ones in the hotels they stayed at. She pulled the blanket over her shoulders. Her legs stuck out and that bothered her, but at least her arms were covered. She clutched Mr. Floppy Ears tight to her chest and stared off at the fence separating one part of town from the other. Before she could close her eyes and fall asleep, she wondered if that was their life now. Living under a road that cars passed by overhead on. Eventually, her eyes grew heavy and the last thing she saw before falling asleep was her mother with her knees to her chin and her arms covering her face. Abby thought she might be crying.
When she woke, the sun was out. Her body hurt when she sat up. The blanket lay beside her. Mr. Floppy Ears was still in her arms, but her mom was nowhere to be found.
“Mommy?”
She stood. Her heart sped up.
“Mommy?”
She spun in a circle, taking in her surroundings and hoping her mother had just laid down in a darker corner or was sitting somewhere else. Maybe she was beyond the fence. She couldn’t have gone too far. She left without Abby and her trash bag laid near the cardboard bed.
“Mommy?”
She ran to the open end of the overpass and looked up the road, then down it. Cars passed overhead, their tires thumping on sections of concrete. A bird chirped from somewhere. A lawnmower grumbled angrily from the neighborhood behind her as it chewed up grass. A dog barked then grew quiet. But Mommy was nowhere to be found.
“Mommy?”
Abby ran to the other end of the overpass, crossed the crumbling blacktop, and stood at the fence. She clutched it with her right hand as Mr. Floppy Ears dangled from her left. Tears spilled down her cheeks. She sniffled.
From where she stood, she could see a road and the fronts of several yards. Most of them had neatly cut lawns. On the porch of a house painted yellow with several creepy looking lawn dwarves standing watch in the yard, an old woman sat in a rocking chair. Her hair was gray, verging on an ugly shade of blue. She wore a long gray gown with some sort of pattern on it Abby couldn’t make out from that distance. The old woman stood and went to the edge of her porch. She looked toward Abby then went down a couple of steps.
Abby turned and ran back under the overpass. She went to the piece of cardboard she slept on the night before and sat down. She pulled the blanket over her knees, then pulled her knees up to her face. With Mr. Floppy Ears sitting tight between her legs and chest, Abby cried.
After crying, Abby straightened her legs and stared toward the entrance of the overpass. Her stomach grumbled. Abby crawled to the trash bag and looked inside. There were clothes and some toilet paper. There were a couple of dollars in a clear zip up bag. There was a grocery bag with a couple of small bags of chips. There were no other food items and no drinks. Abby took a bag of chips, sat back on her cardboard, and ate quietly. It did little to satisfy her hunger, but it was better than nothing.
