They were the first words we had heard out of Baby’s mouth since entering the POD. She’d just sat in the corner and cried. Sometimes she drew in a notebook or read, but she never came out of the corner other than for meals, and although we’d tried to get her to talk, she’d never said a word.
“I hate them,” she added.
“I don’t particularly like them,” I said. “My house had a lot of different colors in it. I don’t think anything was white. I’m Ev—”
“Eva, yeah, I know. Actually, your name is Evangelina. Eva is your nickname. I like Evangelina better.”
“Um, well, Evangelina was my grandma’s name. It makes me think of her when I hear it.”
“Well, I guess we’re all going to have to put that aside now. We can’t be running from names that remind us of someone else. We’d never find a name we liked, since everyone is dead.”
“The kid’s got a point,” Seth said around a huge mouthful of cereal.
David was leaning on the counter, his chin resting on his fist. He shrugged a shoulder and nodded.
“I suppose you’re right.” I dried my hands on a towel. “Speaking of names, what’s yours?”
“Katie.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Katie.”
“You too, Eva, Tiffany, Tiffany’s baby, Jai Li, Josh, David, George, Seth, and Aidan.”
“Seems you’ve been listening,” David said.
“Just because one chooses not to speak doesn’t mean they choose not to listen.”
We all looked at her, dumbfounded. The statement sounded very profound for someone so young.
“I’m Katie. I’m thirteen. My best subject in school was art. I was in eighth grade and had an “A” average, like in your theory, Eva. I left my parents, grandparents and older sister behind. I think we’re all caught up. Now, back to my original question—what about the walls?” Katie stood and brushed her pants off. She looked around the room, waiting for our answer.
“They could use some color,” Tiffany agreed.
“Good!” Katie ran to her bunk. We could hear her rummaging around before coming back into the living area with boxes of pastels, markers, watercolors, and acrylic paints. “Let’s get to work.”
“Wait, what are you going to do?” Aidan looked at Katie, down at the paints and markers, and back to her again.
She smiled. “Redecorate.”
I shook my head. “Katie, as much as I don’t like the white walls, I don’t want to use all your art supplies.”
“Oh, that’s okay. I have a ton more in my bunk.” She stared at the pastels for a few seconds before selecting a handful and passing the box to me.
“All right, then. I suppose we’re redecorating,” I mumbled around bites of cereal.
I heard a chuckle behind me just before a hand reached around and took the pastel box from my hand. I smelled him before I turned to look at him. I already knew what I’d see—gray eyes. Not a dull, lifeless gray, but a shiny, silvery gray with just a hint of blue. Slowly, I turned and looked up. He shrugged. “Far be it from me not to give a girl what she wants,” David said with a grin.
He walked off and sat down next to the boys’ bedroom door. It was about the same place I’d first seen him doodling when I entered the POD.
I sat on the floor about ten feet from him, halfway between him and Katie. Tiffany sat adjacent to me at the wall separating the bedrooms and bath from the living area. George started his art masterpiece on the kitchen wall, Aidan and Seth in the hallway. Jai Li watched us like we’d gone insane. Maybe we had.
Josh sat on the couch and rolled his eyes. “Coloring on the walls. I guess the people who fixed the raffle
did
pick a bunch of children.” A pile of candy wrappers littered the floor around his feet. Had he brought an entire suitcase filled with junk food?
“You’re going to pick those up, right?” Tiffany frowned at the wrappers on the floor.
Josh shoved another little candy bar into his mouth and smirked at Tiffany as he flicked the wrapper on the floor.
Tiffany sighed, and I gritted my teeth.
We’ve all got to live with each other for a year. Can’t he even
try
to make an effort to get along?
“Two rules,” Katie announced. “Keep it clean, and let’s have some fun!”
I wasn’t a very good artist. It ranked right up there with being a champion athlete…and the way I’d broken Molly Garner’s nose last year—while running track—was testament to my talent as an athlete. So rather than draw something completely heinous and force everyone to look at it over the next year, I used a paintbrush to write words.
I wrote some of my favorite quotes. Tiffany stopped on her way to the bedroom and watched.
“‘Some people drink from the fountain of knowledge, others gargle.’
Hmm, is that quote meant for Josh?”
From the couch, Josh frowned and flipped her off, then shoved earbuds in his ears and started nodding along to the beat of his music.
“Yeah,” I said under my breath. “He’s the gargling type.”
“What other quotes do you have?” she asked, looking around me to see what else I had written.
“‘When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice’
I like that one,” Tiffany nodded.
I smiled. “It’s a Cherokee proverb.”
I also painted some random words like
peace, joy
, and
love
. I wrote whatever came to mind, like I would in my journal. I did most of it down at the floor level so it’d be hidden as much as possible by furniture, hoping someone with talent would draw something spectacular above to mask my mess below.
I was painting my favorite verse from the Bible—Psalms 118:24—when Josh came up behind me.
This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it
.
“What’s there to rejoice about, Eva? Huh? Everyone is either dead or dying and you want us to be all happy and stuff? That’s kinda sick.”
“Hey man,” George said, “cool down. We all deal with things differently.”
“I don’t like her sanctimonious crap. I don’t want to have to read it every day.” He picked up a paintbrush covered in black paint and swiped it over the verse I’d just painted, the black swirling with the red I’d used, making a large, ugly splotch on the wall.
“Josh, you’re a real—”
“It’s okay, George. No big deal.” I picked up the black paintbrush and blacked over the red and black mess Josh had made. I evened out the edges and made a black square. As soon as it dried, I took a piece of white chalk and wrote the verse on the black paint.
“There.” I turned and looked at Josh with a smile. “If you paint over it again, I’ll write it in permanent marker across your forehead when you’re asleep.”
“Bitch,” he muttered under his breath.
“Spray hairspray over it,” David said.
“What?”
“The hairspray will keep the chalk from smearing.”
“Okay.” I grabbed my hairspray from the bathroom and sprayed the wall. “Thanks.” I smiled at David.
He shrugged, not looking away from his drawing. “No problem.” David had drawn a sweeping mural across one entire wall of the living area. It was a forest filled with trees, their leaves colored red, yellow and orange. A figure—I couldn’t tell if it was male or female—raked fallen leaves at the side of the road. The road wound through the hills of the landscape until it disappeared in the horizon, which held a large autumn sun.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered. I didn’t know I’d said it out loud until he turned and smiled. I could almost feel the chill of the autumn air, smell the leaves on the wet ground, hear them crunch under my feet.
“Thank you. Your border around the floor is… interesting.”
“It’s okay,” I laughed. “You can call it horrible. I’m under no delusion that I’m an artist. You can paint over it if you want. I wish you would, actually.”
He smiled but didn’t answer. He was adding something to his mural and I stood on my tiptoes to look over his shoulder. When he was done, he dropped his arm to reveal another figure in the painting. The person sat cross-legged on the ground, reading a book.
“I wish I had your talent, David.”
“I like that,” he said with a small frown.
“What? That I think you’re talented?”
“No. I like how my name sounds on your lips.”
I felt the blush crawl up my body until my face burned with it. My breathing became shallow; I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. Why did that one little statement get me so… so… confused, elated, off-balance?
Seth rounded the corner and spied David’s mural. “Whoa! That’s wicked cool.”
“What’s cool?” Aidan asked from the hall.
“You gotta see what David’s done. Get out here.”
I took the distraction as my cue to make a quick exit. I didn’t know what to say to David. It wouldn’t be a good idea for any of us to become involved while we were living in the POD. If the relationship went sour, it would make our living arrangement worse than it already was. We already had Josh’s attitude to deal with. We didn’t need two people bitter from a break-up added to the mix. No, there was no way any of us should become romantically involved. None.
No relationships in the POD, Eva. Your rule. Not even if the guy smells as good and looks as yummy as David. Wow! Where did that come from? And how come I want to tell him that I liked the way his name felt crossing
my
lips?
I walked down the hall to my bedroom. Tiffany was there, trying to paint moons and stars on the ceiling above the baby’s crib.
“Tiffany! What are you doing?”
“Decorating the ceiling. The baby won’t have a mobile. This will at least give it something to look at.”
I had a good idea, even for me. I went back into the living area and whispered to Katie what I wanted to do. She smiled and nodded.
I walked over to David, determined to ignore his earlier comment. “Would you help me and Katie?”
“Sure, Eva.” He smiled.
Now I just had to get Tiffany out of the bedroom.
“Tiff? Come on, it’s time for a break.”
“‘Kay.”
She meandered into the kitchen, one hand pressed against her back and the other on her belly, and dropped onto a chair. “What’s our MRE lunch for today? Is it spaghetti? Spaghetti? Or… gasp… spaghetti?”
“Have I told you how much I hate spaghetti?” I pushed my meal away.
“It’s come up once or twice,” she said with a laugh.
Tiffany ate her lunch before falling asleep on the couch. She slept most of the afternoon, giving David and Katie enough time to finish the mural around the crib.
“It’s awesome. She’s going to love it.” I could hardly wait for her to wake up so we could show it to her.
“It’s not too bad,” David said with a small smile. “It’s the best we could pull off with what we have to work with.”
“I think it’s beautiful.”
“Oh, the baby, the baby, we must paint something beautiful for the illegitimate baby,” I heard Josh whine behind me.
“Stay out of this, Josh,” I said, not turning around.
“Don’t worry, Evangelina. I don’t want anything to do with the baby or your little surprise party for its mommy.” He stuck his head in the bedroom and looked at the mural. “It’s okay, I guess,” he said, before returning to the dining area to stare at his laptop screen.
Finally, after what seemed like the longest nap ever, Tiffany woke up. She made her way to the bathroom and we all snuck into the bedroom, giggling like little kids. When she opened the door from the bathroom I called, “Hey, Tiff? Can you come in here a sec?”
When she walked through the door and saw us all standing there, she looked wary. “Uh, what’s going on?”
“We got you and the baby a gift. Well, some of us did the work, but the others supervised.” I smiled.
David chuckled behind me.
We shuffled to the side, revealing Katie and David’s mural of a summer’s day—the sun shining, birds flying in the sapphire sky, a little stream bubbling over some small stones as it made its way toward the horizon. A large oak tree stood in the center, a swing hanging from one branch. Flowers dotted the lush, green grass, and butterflies danced among them. The ceiling was midnight blue, edged in silver-gray clouds and filled with stars and a crescent moon.
“Thank you,” Tiffany said between tears. “It’s beautiful.”
I put an arm around her shoulders. “Well, we aren’t able to give you a baby shower, so we decided to give you and the baby this. Everyone painted something, except Josh. I wasn’t able to paint much, but it was my idea and they did relent and let me paint my own initials in the corner.”
“Yeah, and even that was pressing her artistic ability to its breaking point.”
“Very funny, David. Anyway, we thought it would give the baby something to look forward to after the POD is opened. Fresh air, wide open spaces…”
“Thank you. I don’t know what to say. It really is beautiful.”
“Here.” David thrust a paintbrush at her. “I thought you might want to paint something on the mural, too.”
Tiffany looked at the paintbrush and shook her head. “I don’t want to do anything to mess it up.”
“Then just do a butterfly or flower. Write a message to the baby in a corner. Do anything you want, but do something. It should be from all of us, including you.”
Holding the paintbrush next to the wall, Tiffany bit her bottom lip. “Okay,” she said slowly, “I’ll paint a butterfly.” She dipped the tip of the paintbrush in orange paint and took her time, mimicking the butterflies Katie had painted. “And I want to write something.”
“Whatever you want,” David told her.
She squatted down, wobbling from one side to another as she tried to keep her balance, but gave up after a few seconds and plopped onto the floor. “I’ll probably never be able to get up again,” she laughed.
She chewed on her fingernail, thinking of the perfect message to write to her child, taking her time, getting it just right…
One day you’ll run and jump and swing in a field much like this one. I can’t wait to watch you and hear your giggles. I can’t imagine loving a person more than I do you
.
Love Always, Mommy
By the time the day was over and all the finishing touches done, a lot of the walls had been covered in paintings and pastel drawings. George drew fruits and vegetables along the walls in the kitchen and I doodled in places it would be hard for people to see if I messed up. There was still a lot of white space to cover up, but we decided to save that for another day.