Colour Clash by Sandra Arnold

My brother parks the car opposite the house with the red door that used to be grey. The treeless street looks even grimmer than I recall. I glance at the rows of identical houses with the grey pebble-dash walls, trying to remember the neighbours who once occupied them. Women in pinnies and headscarves scrubbing their front steps. Sweeping their concrete paths. Men rolling drunk up those paths. Sound of yelling and slapping. Immaculately dressed children with polished shoes.

I watch a girl with blonde plaits and a green gingham dress coming out the front gate. She walks to the end of the street then grips the horizontal iron bar of a neighbour’s fence and swings herself over and around it. She stands up. Straightens her dress and hops up the pavement, carefully avoiding the cracks between the paving stones.

I whisper, ‘Step on a crack, break your mother’s back.’

My brother laughs. ‘You remember that game? I’d forgotten it.’

‘Boys didn’t play it,’ I remind him. ‘You played football with your friends.’

‘Where did you hide your friends?’

‘In my pocket.’

The girl in the gingham dress takes a stone from her pocket, holds it to her cheek and whispers a name. When she reaches school, she will hide Bridget in their secret place in the playground. She will spend every break and lunchtime making up stories with Bridget and put her back behind the wall when the bell rings and then collect her at home time. The story she and Bridget are working on now is about a man climbing up a ladder beside the grey door to repair a broken slate on the roof. He doesn’t see the blonde girl peering at him from behind her bedroom curtains. He doesn’t know about the loose rung at the top of the ladder. But the girl knows. And Bridget knows. All they need now is to work out the ending of the story.

I want to run after the girl and tell her she will survive the teacher who calls her stupid, the classmates who chase her with worms and hide dead mice in her desk, the father who slaps her so hard her nose bleeds. I want to tell her she will fly so high that there is no chance of her ending up like the pinched-faced women on this street.

My brother looks at his watch and nudges me. ‘So how long are we going to stay in this godforsaken street while you stare at that red door?’

‘It used to be grey.’

He shrugs. ‘Yeah. But some days were okay, right?’

I shake my head.

‘So why did you want to come back here after all this time just to relive those memories?’ He gives an exasperated sigh. ‘Why not focus on what you’ve achieved? I’ll bet you never imagined any of that back then?’

I watch the girl hop to the end of the street. Just before she disappears around the corner, I wave goodbye.

Sandra Arnold

Image: A white heart shaped stone from Pixabay.com