And You Will Be Happy

Mama rushes into the living room from ironing Daddy’s shirts in the kitchen and finds me on my belly on the living room floor.

She yells at me, “What’s this about?”

I’m 3 years old and can’t tell her. All I can do is bawl and batter my fists on the coloring book with the picture of the kitten I’ve just messed up so bad. Brown kitten paw is now all over what-I-wanted-to-be a red ball with blue feathers.

I laid down in the sunshine from the window where it comes in just in front of Mama’s big green chair. I put the coloring book at the angle of my right arm, in front of me, like always. Then, I selected the colors in the Crayola box. My brother colors kittens carmine red or violet, but kittens are not carmine red or violet. Kittens are black like my cat Sulpher. But Sulpher’s mean to me when I get too near, so not black this time. Burnt sienna? One of my favorite colors. But no, too burnt. Just brown. I put the box of 24 crayons — the biggest box of crayons Mama could buy at the store — to the left of the coloring book, and I put the brown along with that carmine red and a medium blue in a line to the right, like everything should be. I started with the kitten shoulder, then moved so-o-o carefully down to his paw. And then, look at that! I messed up again. I can’t keep the colors inside the lines. I just can’t. All I can do is wail and wallop the coloring…