The busiest room in our house was meant to be sunny, a bright, happy room. However, it had a taskmaster in charge of it, my Mom. A tin ceiling with Grecian patterned squares gave the ceiling class, but it didn’t. Daddy told me not to tell my Mom but he hated that ceiling. I told him not to tell Mom that I didn’t like it either. We had a secret, my Dad and I.
Mom got handy Mr. Gelfan to paint the big walls yellow, liven up the house. It didn’t take long before Mom’s old black gas range, with four burners (one of which was always clogged and sent whirls of smoke into the kitchen) began to turn the sunny yellow into gravelly gray. Dad said he could almost watch it happen.
‘Bob,’ she called. My Dad’s name is Robert but she insists Bob is better. We have all gotten used to it. ‘Bring the tall ladder up from the cellar and the big scrub bucket, too’. At five one, even on the highest rung, Mom had to stretch to barely reach the wall/ceiling juncture. By the time just a few swipes of Mom’s wet rag dripped down her arm, the bucket of water needed changing. Down she climbed, poured the cloudy mess in the kitchen sink, she refilled the bucket and climbed up the ladder again.
Every time Mom wrung out her rag, I got rained on.
The project consumed Mom. The rest of the house was going to the dogs. My sister, Lilly, had to grocery shop in the A & P. ‘Don’t forget a new box of Ivory Flakes, Lilly.’ I had to go to the bakery for a rye bread, (sliced, please) every day. Daddy did nothing except take care of his sick patients.
Mom’s internal clock was magical. With no watch on her wrist, at 4 p.m. every day, she climbed down the ladder, emptied the bucket and refilled it with clean water and Ivory Flakes. Three good, strong twists of the rags and she hung them out to dry on the back porch. ‘Mom, I asked, ‘Why do you have to dry the rags? You are just going to wet them again in the morning. Mom just said, ‘It feels better when I start out fresh. Now stop bothering me. I’ve got wall washing to do.’
At night I often heard Mom and Dad arguing. ‘Millie, stop washing the damn walls, You are going to fall off that ladder and break your neck. For god’s sake, get a day worker for $5 a day. It’s going to cost a whole lot more if you fall.’ ‘But, Bob,’ she whines. I can’t leave the job unfinished. Three or four more days and the kitchen will be nice and bright again.’ The arguing stopped. Mom beat Dad to his knees.
The three days came and went. Dad took the ladder to the cellar. The rags he tossed in the big can in the yard that had lost its lid. Dad never put food in that one. On the fourth day, Mom went to the A & P herself. The real sun was shining into our kitchen, the walls still damp. On the seventh day, when they were as dry as they were going to get, we were shocked, upset Mom felt worse than all of us. Swipe marks were everywhere. It was so ugly it made me want to puke. Streaks of arm movements were like gray ghosts laughing at Mom. They rode into and over her. Some of the blue paint that was there before Mr. Gelfan made the room yellow, made the room look even worse.
Mom lost her cool. She cried and cried. Dad held her, sympathized with her and sent me out of the kitchen. I moved up close to the door and listened. Dad wanted to hire Mr. Gelfan to re-paint the entire room. He cajoled and tempted Mom. ‘What color would you like, Wifey, mine?’
‘Bob, first, before we do anything costly again, I would rather we get rid of the damn gas range. Let’s get a new one that I read about. The new burners come on automatically, no matches. AND they don’t clog. After that you can ask Mr. Gelfan to bring me paint samples. No yellow.’ Dad agreed. I heard Mom say, ‘Stop that, Bob. The children will hear you.’
We finished growing up in that same house and the kitchen was always blue.
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