Rain is the Colour Grey

Is it true you can’t describe a colour to a blind person? And what is colour-blindness. At school they said you can’t join the army if you’re colour-blind. Not that I would join the army. And I’m not sure if I am colour-blind. Neither matters. More useless information gained at school. So, I hate my mother. Then again, I hate lots of things. I hate mother’s telling their children not to stare. I hate the colour purple. In fact, I hate the name of the colour ‘purple’ I think it’s the combination of the letters and the word I hate most maybe, not the colour. Oh and I hate red.

‘Don’t stare George, George, don’t stare come on, we’ll be late for school, and you’re getting wet’. George, stupid woman. George, an old man’s name for a little kid. ‘Georgie Porgy’ bet that’s what they will call him at school. An ugly little kid too, with droopy eyes just like his mother. George is proper staring at me now. I don’t know why. Fall you little shit, I’m thinking, go on fall. No such luck. Not that I want him to hurt or anything, just to stop staring.

I think I could describe a colour to a blind man or woman. It’s raining today, it’s not cold because its March but it’s raining and its smells of a rainy day. Even if I’m sleeping and I’m dry I can always smell the rain. An odd indescribable smell, nothing special, it's just the smell of rain. Grey, that’s the colour. Tell the blind. Rain is the colour Grey.

I like the colour Grey. I like the rain, I like the way it makes people walk with their heads down to the ground, hoods pulled up tight, walking faster, getting inside as quick as possible, afraid to get wet, afraid to feel cold, afraid to enjoy how it looks, afraid to look my way, feeling guilty. I like the rain and I like the colour grey. People don’t stare when it’s raining. Kids stare though. People don’t really stare, they look sideways, sometimes they look a couple of times. I keep my head looking down at the floor, reading a fictitious paper, sometimes a real paper. It’s easy to open the little wooden store outside the shop. It’s not even locked. The papers arrive about quarter to sixish and the driver throws tied up bundles into it, hops back in his van and drives off. And fat guy who owns the shop doesn’t get up until 5 past six. Most days. This gives me a clear ten minutes to open the wooden store and get me a paper. Paper ink smells. Fat guy smells. I see right into his top bedroom window. He gets up, pulls on scruffy joggers, a red jumper that doesn’t fit, with holes in the elbows and then about three minutes later he opens the shop door, already with a rollie hanging out of his mouth. He stands in the doorway of the shop, sometimes farts. Big fat pig. He must see me, but he still farts. Rude. He smokes half his rollie throws it to one side, picks up the papers and heads in the shop. If I’m quick, I can sometimes grab the rollie and smoke what’s left. Not today though, it’s raining.

So today is Grey Day, a good day, what I hate most is most definitely a black day. For those of you that are blind black is like no other colour. It’s when you’re feeling like utter crap. The world is shit. There is no smell. There is no feeling. Its neither hot nor cold. Its nothingness. It blank. Its empty. And when you wake up and feel like shit for nothing it’s even more black. Its black black. How is it some days are ok. How is it some days you wake up and everything feels fantastic. You know it, you feel it, the air smells nicer, its feels nice on your skin, even when its winter, a good day in winter is one of the best but those black days well they just hit you from nowhere. Like a massive smack across your face, stinging, bubbling, making you want to puke, making your teeth hurt and your heart ache. The kind of smack that gives you that feeling inside when your belly goes all funny and you need the toilet. If you’ve ever gotten one of those smacks, you’ll know the feeling. You’ll know the colour black. Blind or not.

I remember my first black day, well it wasn’t really my first black day I didn’t wake up feeling like shit, I woke up on top of the world. Saturday 6th March 1977, I was 6. Susan Cotterwell’s birthday party. She talked about it for weeks at school. There was going to be games. Games I’d not played before. Games. Saturday. And she’d invited me. That invite hid under my pillow for that whole week before. It felt like Gold. I checked it every night sleeping with my hand on it. I didn’t want to tell my mama. She found it on Friday morning.

“As if you stupid ugly cow. I don’t have any fucking money to buy a present for some other little fuckers’ birthday?”

“Please Mama. I’ll be good for the whole of next week. I will clean every day I promise, I’ll clean how you like it”

“No way. Now fuck off I’m busy”

“but”

“FUCK OFF,” and she ripped that beautiful invitation into teeny tiny bits and threw it over my head.

I was going anyway.

A few weeks earlier my cousin left me a big bag of clothes. Hand me downs. ‘Hand me downs’ - I like that little phrase. I loved those clothes. I loved hand me downs. Okay so she was seven years older than me and her clothes, too big for my skinny hungry body. Never fitted. Lovely ill-fitting hand me downs. Nowadays you see mountains of black bags piling up outside the recycling place. One person’s waste another person’s treasures. In March there are lots more bags. People clear out ready for the summer. I love March. In my cousins bag I found a long flowery skirt. The nicest skirt I had ever seen. My mama laughed. Not a nice laugh. A spiteful laugh. Pulling that ugly spiteful face. The same face she pulls when she’s trying to be nice when she’s pissed. But she is never nice. Never.

All reds, blues, and white little flowers. Also a pair of sandals. Red. If I put the skirt on and pulled it up to my chest and tied a little bit of string at the top under my arm pits it made a long dress. A party dress. My party dress for Susan Cotterwells’ party. And the sandals, well no one would see them too big under the dress.

The slap came as a bit of shock really. All I needed was a present. Piggywigs was the stupid name of the stupid corner shop through the lane by my stupid house. Piggywigs. An ugly little ceramic pig sat on display in the shop window. I hate that pig. She looked like a pig too, the woman with the big black bun hair and the turned-up nose. I wondered if they named the shop after her. I could see her pretending not to watch me, but she could not stop looking, admiring my beautiful flowery party dress. I hoped. I walked tall, smiling, imagined myself a Carnival Queen, I tried not to let the sandals make me look stupid, I tried to walk posh like those queens, but they flapped a bit. Sherbet in a bag. The pink one. Sat on the shelf behind her in one of those jars. And on the counter in front of her a 10p mix bag, bulging with sweets. 10p, you would only get one sweet in a bag for 10p today, but on 6th March 1977 it was full enough to give to Susan Cotterwell for her birthday present. I asked pig lady for 10p worth of sherbet. I didn’t have 10p I didn’t even have 1p but if she turned to grab the sherbet, I could grab a 10p mix and run out. So that is what I did. But those flipping sandals.

The slap. Oh yeah, she had hit me before but not in my face. And not when anyone could see. Mrs Thomas, pig lady’s sister, ran for my mama when the 10p mix fell all over the floor when I fell over those bloody red sandals. I managed to grab something from the bag and shove it in my mouth before she grabbed me. Pig Lady. She moved so quick for a pig.

“You stupid little thief. Your dirty greedy little thief. Just you wait.”

And then my mother came, and she slapped me. So hard. so fucking hard. the sting, the pain, the noise, the smell. I pooed myself and spat out the sweet. Poo and sweet on the floor of Piggywigs. My burning stinging red face. “Fuck off “ I screamed to them all. “Fuck off”. And I legged it home. Climbed into a cold bath, nothing new there though. I stuffed that lovely dress under my mattress stuffed my head under the pillow and the black came. Black. All over me, all day and I knew that day exactly what a black day was.

Go on George stop staring, stop fucking staring at me. I want to shout. I want to scowl. I must not smile. I must not show my teeth. I just look. Kids, they don’t understand. I don’t want to scare kids. Parents scare kids. They tell them that the people that look weird, or different or strange, are dangerous. Stay away from them. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t look at weirdos. Stay away from people who talk to themselves, they must be mad, they must be dangerous. But that’s not true. On no, not true at all. The policeman he’s a good guy. He’s there to look after you. Always trust a policeman. Always. Don’t talk to strangers, no way, but your smiling neighbour who your mama talks to, he’s fine. And when you are really bad, the worst child ever, disappointing, shameful, dirty, disgusting, smelly, stupid and you go to the childrens home for the ‘born naughtys’ then obviously the man there who will look after you, who will teach you right from wrong, good from bad, yes him and his policeman friend, don’t be scared of them. They are not dangerous. But that’s also not true. Oh no, not true at all.

George tugs at his mums hand again forcing her to stop. He wants to give me his sweets. But his mum drags at him shouting in frustration “come on”. “Thank you, Georgie Porgy,”, I mouth, he smiles looking back, droopy eyes lighting up. But I’m not hungry. Sunday nights are good for food. The supermarkets close early, and they can’t keep the food until the Monday. Beardy Guy with the blue eyes from Asda, he works a Sunday shift. He smiles at me, his nose scrunching up when he smiles. He locks up the store and gets in his battered old second-hand car. I give him a minute and then I head around the back of the store. When beardy guy isn’t working, they dump the food in the big red bin. Discarded by staff with too little time to think about the waste and just plonk it on top of itself. Then I got to sift through it and don’t always get anything that’s not covered in other food. Sour milk covered bread. Biscuits stuck to defrosted fish fingers. Ribena saturated crisps with mouldy carrots. Yogurt coated raw chicken breast. But yesterday I was lucky. Beardy guy left goodies out of the bin in a carrier bag, a squashed carton of orange juice, a blue ‘out of date’ milk, three broken cookies, a pack of four doughnuts with only two left in, a block of cheese in ripped packaging and some squashed brown bread. And over on the doorstep of the delivery door I spotted the usual mug, stained, chipped, ‘Tea for Two’ in faded writing on the side, filled to the top with hot tea. I love beardy guy. I have tried to smile back at him but its impossible. I start to get that panicky feeling in my chest. I start to breathe quicker than ever, I breathe more my heart races, my face gets hot. Hot and red. Pumping. I just put my big red head down and hide in the corner of the carpark behind the sign so no one can see me. But still, he sees me.

The worst thing about sleeping rough is not the cold, or the hunger, or the hard floor, or having no family, or the rain, or smelling. Or even a black day. For me, the worst thing about sleeping rough is the shame. Perhaps it is the shame that makes it a black day. Who knows?

So old Pig Face herself called the nice policeman told him all about my stealing and mamas slap and he came to the house. Mama, drunk from drinking her ‘special tea’ and the nice policeman with the overgrown brown moustache kissing on the sofa. A disgusting mix of spit and moustache. Mama cried and told the policeman that she did not know what to do with me, no father to speak of, how naughty I behaved, stealing, and swearing and lying and he said he would call someone. That someone I will always hate. She came with her bag and her papers and her keys and her old woman shoes and a horrible red scarf wrapped around her fat neck. She told mama I was born naughty. She said I could go and stay in a special home with other born naughtys. I did not want to go to the special home for born naughtys. She did not care about my tears. It was a black day. I hate my mother. I hate the smell of honeysuckle. I hate that red scarf. I hate moustaches. Just for clarification no one is born naughty. But some people are born pure evil.

Honeysuckle House, was the home for the born naughtys. This ugly fake Victorian house, all red brick, with a scruffy twisty twining plant hanging over a big black front door. Up in the top window I saw a girl about my age, watching me arrive, I could see the fear in her eyes. She watched me get out of the car. I watched her watching me. I knew she knew we were thinking the same, she had been me. Scared shitless. I nearly pooed myself. When I cried, fat neck shoved that red scarf at me and told me to shut up. It took four minutes to walk from the car and up the stairs to room number 14. A door with a fucking pig on it. How ironic.

In four minutes, you can do a lot. It doesn’t seem a long time, but it is long enough. There’s the obvious one of boil and egg, but there is so much more. You can take the blood pressure of at least three sleeping patients, well 2 and set up a third, you can take phone call and argue over the availability of beds with the A and E department. You can take a whiny Mrs Jones to the toilet for the eighth time in one night, you can open the drugs drawer and take the drugs to the patient in the corner who does not want to take her stupid fucking tablets, you can go and whisper with a colleague in the corner about things you should not whisper about and you can watch a man die, a man across the way, no noise, no gurgling or gasping, no cry for help, no sudden moves, just watch slowly as you hold that pillow tight over his face while those minutes pass by and his face, except for that fucking red mark, turns white. A white that can only be described like a kind of loud peace, when you can’t hear anything but your own heart, hear it thumping, banging, trying to get out, trying to get away, even behind that curtain. A noisy but very quiet strange peace. “Come on Anna let’s get you back to bed, you should not be in here? Come on, quietly now we don’t want to wake anyone up, do we?”. Dragging those curtains closed so I could not see but I didn’t need to see. I didn’t want to see.

Charlotte Boddington was beautiful, she called herself Charlie so she could be more like a boy. Charlie was the girl from the window when I arrived at Honeysuckle House. After they all left, I sneaked out of my room, I heard swearing coming from a tiny toilet room. Charlie, with red kitchen scissors hacking away at her hair, cutting in clumps, crying, snot smudged across her pretty pale cheeks, shoving clumps of beautiful yellow curly hair down the stained toilet, she didn’t say hello, she just screamed, “cut yours, cut it all off – cut it”, she shoved the scissors at me, staring at me with her big brown eyes, tufts of hair sticking up like mini hay bales. “You’re too fucking pretty you’ll never survive. Cut if off,” she screamed at me. I did as she said clumps of orange mixing with her blonde curls down that toilet. A toilet that I would soon become used to looking down as I threw up. “And you must not smile. Don’t fucking smile at them”. Charlie’s room was next to mine, number 13. “Born fucking unlucky me, and I must have been really bad in my last life to deserve all the fucking shit and crap I’ve gone through in this one”, she sobbed later that night, too young to swear but swearing like a seasoned adult from an 18+ film. But Charlie was amazing, she could never have done anything wrong in her last life or this life or any other life she lived. Charlie, always brave whose mouth curled up on one side when she smiled. “Dropped on her head as a baby”, she spat one Saturday while we leaned against the honeysuckle scoffing on sweets stolen from the local shop, dropped by what was supposed to be her mother, or ‘mam’ as she called her in her cute welsh accent. If any colour could describe a person, then Yellow described Charlie. Yellow is a warm April afternoon, when the rain stops and the sun slowly peeks out, warming the world, drying the ground. She smelled of sweets and lollipops, well not really, we all smelled horrible in Honeysuckle House, not a smell I could or would even want to remember let alone describe, but I always imagined Charlie smelling of sweets and lollipops and Yellow. When she would hug me so tight as I staggered back after having been called into the special room for the ‘born naughty’s’ by Mr Twitchy Thomas, or when I cried and bled after mama’s policeman friend came to ‘take a statement’. When she held my hand as I puked into that fucking toilet after Devil Davies from the Council with the bad breath and fucking bright red mark had his ‘little princessy’ in his disgusting room for a ‘private chat’, she always smelled of sweets and lollipops. And then one Sunday she was gone. Scruffy dirty little Neil Bailey from room 10 mumbled something about her killing herself and that only stupid people like me would not know about it. Now she was in heaven stupid. But I would know, I would have felt it. Charlie would never have left me, never. She always hoped for a good forever family. I hoped for her too. Charlie would never have left me. I hate Neil Bailey. I hate the word stupid.

The little girl reminded me of Charlie with her long curly hair. But her voice, whiny, squealy, annoying. Charlie spoke with a harsh husky voice, a broken one, “from all the shouting at me mam” she laughed. “Gang-gang” she shouted excitedly down the corridor of Stratton Ward. “Gang-gang”. She saw him and she smiled a huge smile, scrambled quickly up on his bed, and plopped a big kiss on his lips. He lifted her in the air, and she giggled. She asked for more, more Gang-Gang more but her mother soon came, no more, come on now, sit here on this end of the bed and tell Grandad all about your loose tooth. They all smiled as they closed the curtains around the bed, like they were in some soundproof booth, but those ugly curtains around a hospital bed mean for nothing. They are pointless. You can’t see but you can still fucking hear. The giggling, the tickles. “Come over here my little Princessy, let’s look at that loose tooth”. I puked in the sick bowl. At least I couldn’t see anymore. I hate visiting times. I hate hospitals. I hate him across the way. I hate Gang-Gang. What a fucking name anyway.

Hand me downs. That’s why I am here. March, it is always good for hand me downs. I saw posh lady put a bag in the pull-down thing. But it wouldn’t close. Lucky me. New clothes, posh clothes. Those boys, shouting at me all week. Hey tramp, hey lady did you murder your kids in a fire, hey tramp you stink. The same shit. I ignored them. They are ignorant. In 1977 they would be born naughty now they are just cheeky kids. I did not see them if I’m honest, or I would never have gone over. But my excitement about posh lady’s bag threw me. I grabbed the bag, head down, making my way back to my place. One of them came past on his bike, hey guys Tramp Lady’s nicking clothes he shouted. The others came. I kept my head down, walked faster. They surrounded me with their bikes. I spun round to try and knock them, lost my balance, and smashed to the floor. Posh lady’s bags spewing posh clothes across the supermarket car park. Stupid dirty Tramp. Next thing there’s an ambulance and people and more people and now I’m here at the hospital. Puking into a fucking cardboard bowl.

Faces are never forgotten. Never. Crooked smiles, big noses, droopy eyes. Sometimes a good thing but on some days, black days, it can be the worst thing and that big fucking ugly red devil mark I can NEVER forget. Tell the blind please that red, the colour of hell, is like a high-pitched noise that burns deep inside your ears, ringing, screeching. Screaming at you so you want to slice off your ears, the screaming never stopping, and the red so fucking hot, agonising burning fucking hot. Red. Burning. Cruel. Painful. Disgusting. Red Sandals. Red Jumper. Red scarf. Red Mark.

Charlie said it was a birthmark, but I say the devil burned his face to let the world know he belonged in Hell.

I saw the unmistakably crooked smile first. The yellow hair turned a smooth grey, short. Boyish. Pretty. She didn’t see me then; well, she didn’t know it was me. I tried to hide. I knocked over my cup of tea and tried to make a break for the toilet. Her hand on my arm. That lovely warm yellow colour spread all over me. That husky voice saying Anna. I saw the floor, white tiled hospital floor, coming closer and closer, then nothing. Again, the smile. But this time sitting beside me – stroking my hand. Smiling. Anna your safe. Anna, please Anna. I didn’t know if I could speak, having not heard my voice in years. I must not smile. I must hide my now black teeth. That feeling coming, that panicky feeling in my chest breathing quicker, heart racing, red hot face. ‘Anna’? All the colours mixing up, the dizzy and then the nothing again. I must be dead. This must be heaven. Charlie is in heaven. For the blind, this is blue. Its floaty, smooth, and dizzy like you’re spinning slowly on a chair, a faraway hollow sound in your ears. Voices, but you don’t need to hear them, sounds but you don’t need to listen. It is floaty. Blue is floaty. I like blue. I like heaven.

“I owned five rabbits. Five. But me mam she killed them all, ‘cept one. Better than killing me I guess”, Charlie told me once, while we sat waiting in reception. She tore out a picture of a rabbit from one of the magazines, to stick on her wall in her room. Bonzo she whispered. She got into extra deep shit from Devil Davies for that picture, she didn’t say what extra shit though, but we all knew. I’ll see ‘em rabbits again in heaven she scathed through her tears. She wasn’t crying about the fucking rabbits. We all cried. But we didn’t talk about things. The boys cried at night. But we all heard.

There are no rabbits in this heaven.

“I heard him before I saw him too. ‘Little princessy’ and that devils stamp still there as bright fucking red as ever, burning and seething at me, his horrible face gawping at me . He’s an old man now, he wouldn’t know us. Why would he. He doesn’t care what he did to me or you. What he did to all of us. He’s not here now it’s safe. I’m here. Your safe Anna”.

I was afraid to open my eyes. I could not open them. I felt her warmth, her yellow I heard that smooth husky voice. I will my eyes to open but at the same time force them to stay closed. I do not want to see heaven. I do not want to see Charlie in heaven.

“Strangest thing really, he wasn’t extremely ill, not ill enough to die. Fancy that? But he did. He did die. Right here, where we both are Anna, what we wished and begged and prayed for, so many times”.

Where we are? Are we in Heaven or Hell? Slowly I peeked. She didn’t see me; I saw those ugly curtains. I am still at the hospital. She moves my filthy hair from my face. “look at you, still beautiful in all that mess”. My tears roll down leaving clear streaks on my dirty face. Finally, I smile, still afraid to open my eyes but I smile. I know I am smiling. I can feel air on my teeth. “Charlie” I hear myself say. I force my eyes open. I see those big brown eyes. “It’s Dr Charlotte Now”, she smiled with her cute crooked smile.

“Why purple?” he asked. “Not sure just the word” was all I could offer. I often wondered why, if it was the mix of letters, to me they just don’t match. U’s and P’s. I never gave it any thought. Blocked it, I guess. Now back in this house, looking at this photo, her looking out to the world, smiling like a princess, smoking, wine glass in hand and wearing that dress, that purple dress and me standing awkward beside her. I understand why now. She wore it all the time. I thought life was rubbish then, you know, no food, the name calling, no covers on the bed, and the cold. Fuck me the cold. And her dancing around pissed in that purple fucking dress. But really that was probably a good life. I lived six almost seven years of that ‘good life’. That purple dress, she had it on in pig lady’s shop. Life changed then. He could see the dress. He saw the purple. He knew. He held that photo in his hand. He took his lighter out of his pocket and burnt it. Simple as that burnt the photo. And in that moment life changed again.

“Come on he said, let’s go nothing in here for you now”. Smiling at me with his scrunched-up nose, big blue eyes, and scruffy beard. For the record, tell the blind, blue, it is not heaven, its happiness. Blue is happiness.