Crave by Laurie Jean Cannady

Author:Laurie Jean Cannady
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780990322146
Publisher: Etruscan Press
Published: 2015-10-10T04:00:00+00:00

Yellow Peace

The rest of the summer unfolded like a crisp shirt. I began my seventh-grade year with a newfound excitement. Days were filled with classes taught by Miss Shumaker, a rather large woman of German descent who commanded attention during every second of class, and my nights were spent on Queen Street dancing, playing kickball, racing, and willfully getting caught in almost every game of hide-and-go-get. Mr. Tony often appeared and disappeared like most men and Momma decided our home on Constitution Avenue did not suit us anymore, so we moved to an upstairs duplex around the corner from our house. We moved ourselves, carrying bags of clothes and bed frames in the short trek from our old home to our new home.

The little yellow house looked like a square sun sitting in the middle of a forest of brown trees. We ran up the stairs, falling over each other, trying to be the first to claim the best corner in the one bedroom we five would share. There were windows on both sides of the room and the sun shone so brightly it looked as if we were all standing outside of the house. I got the spot next to the window that stared out to the highway and Champ got the window that stared into the neighbor’s house. By process of elimination, and the fact that Mary and I were the only girls, Mary joined me in my bed. Dathan and Tom-Tom were stuck in the middle of the room.

The house was tiny, but the newness of it all made it feel like a mansion to us. The carpet resembled the bark of a tree. It had long been trampled from the point of fluffiness that would have distinguished it as a shag carpet. Momma’s room was on the other side of the house and was as big as the room that held the five of us kids. The spacious living room separated our room from Momma’s. We had no furniture, except for the new-to-us beds we’d gotten from Salvation Army. They were all full-sized and, once placed in our bedroom, left little room for movement. In order to get out of the room, Champ had to crawl across Dathan and Tom-Tom’s bed.

The living room remained empty except for the antique stereo Grandma Rachel had owned before she died. It stretched across the mantelpiece, covering the fake fireplace that had obviously been built to make the room look rich. It had not worked. The walls were a pale, weathered gold that had, over time, lost their luster. The house felt to me like an old soul waiting to be revived by our life and laughter. We had a lot of work to do.

Our first task in making the house our home was painting. I didn’t want to paint because I loved the rugged look of the yellow paint waking me to its rays. I argued to keep the yellow, but was outvoted. We settled on a soft blue that made the sun look like sky.

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