Four Painted Walls

Before mother receives the phone call that changes our lives, before little Vivian has her first birthday party ever, before I meet Billy the bully at my new school and before the January rains begin to wash away our already faded dreams, the walls are a dull and monotonous mix of stale grey, pale red and a milky orange. In the mornings, when the early sun forces its way through the miniature, prison-like windows, it gives the right wall a salient glow, an imaginable finishing that I see in those dreams before the sudden radiance through the windows wakes me. The glow glides along the walls, following the movements of the sun, to my bed, and then I wish my bed-sheets were the same silky red they were when little Vivian was born. It gives my wooden bed a new shine and I slide my fingers tenderly on the wood, feeling for any change in the texture, perhaps thinking that today’s sun is brighter than yesterday’s.

Yesterday was Sunday; Mother's cleaning day and little Vivian thought that my bed has been on the left wall far too long, so I moved it to face the windows, giving father’s old radio its own intimate space. I drag the heavy study table right under the windows, breaking father’s table lamp in the process, and then suddenly I wish the table would break too, and then the bed, the windows and finally the walls would break in and bury my misery in the debris. Now, the new look gives the left wall a different colour, as if beckoning to the sun to paint it all over again. I watch the dust rise off the window-seal, into the beaming rays, turning the bright light a distant brown and then slowly disappearing into the air, mutely, as the news jingle from the radio.

I listen to the news, the high-pitched, excited nasal voices in the radio radiating a strange and unfamiliar, yet sentimentally engaging peace, much brighter than the sun beaming through my windows and smooth; smooth as the varnish peeling off my bed. I imitate these voices, one letter after the other, the foreign and yet soulful sounds carrying me away, through the brickwork of the walls, through the frayed curtains and windows, out into the air, into the freedom. Mother calls me to the kitchen, but I refuse to hear, preferring to wander away into this new world, pure as nature and unsullied as the morning breeze, alive with colour and atmosphere. The glow hits the now-empty wall, above the radio and a gentle wind lifts the curtains softly, giving the wall an abrupt brilliance, a vivid red and brown melange, almost as excited as the voices on the radio. The wind gets stronger, and I realise that little Vivian has opened the door. She is telling me that she turns seven today.

Mother calls again, louder and more excitedly than before, her slow and heavy footsteps closer to my door, her weighty shadow suddenly giving the walls a dark coating. She has been given the visa, and the man on the phone sounded as eager and nasal as the radio voices.

My new room will have a new radio and four painted walls. The windows will be bigger, with the aura of hibiscuses and roses waking me in the mornings. The rains will be white and solid, and later, mother will say that I speak like the people on the radio. But today, we celebrate little Vivian’s birthday.