All That White

The steel-fortified white door is turning gray, aging under your twelve-year-old palm as you push it open. You are strong, tall, smart as pleats in your Catholic-schoolgirl skirt—plaid in black, yellow, green, white. As you climb eighteen green carpeted stairs, you reach the kitchen, which has linoleum that was once green and white. The first thing you see is white sink with dishes where your brothers were bathed as babies. Light shoots from the white square of window throughout the room. Then, you see Frank sitting at the kitchen table. He is the color of vanilla wafers. White powder dusts his ashen mustache. White grams are piled on mama’s good glassware. Your eyes widen. The whites are no longer hidden. The rustle of skirt brushes your almost-white knee. You turn up your collar like the white girls at school. Look away to forget your father’s friend Frank and his silent white smile. Neither of you say a word about your daddy’s green from all that white.