White Contains All Colors

       © 2025 Linda Angelo Reilly

“White Contains All Colors”

           I awoke in my usual position, lying slightly curled and on my left side. Yanking the quilt from its well-anchored hospital corners, I saw my uncovered knees extending over the edge of the bed and wondered why I habitually avoided the other areas of my mattress. I supposed that the view from my window attracted me at night, when the streetlights illuminated the abandonment of the city. A deserted midnight scene on the other side of the glass, just two feet away.

           It was winter and, most nights, wind gusts swirling up from the adjacent parking lot made the windowpanes vibrate. Cracks in the wooden frame allowed bursts of subfreezing air to blow inside.

           The air was motionless that morning, though, and I opened my eyes to a panorama of nature which seemed impossible in its urban setting. The brilliant daylight seizing upon my sleepy senses was intensified by the snow that had been falling steadily for several hours. One lone car in the parking lot revealed a patch of red where someone had attempted to brush off the roof. A tow-away sign had fallen askew, its warning to unwelcome drivers barely legible in a mounting drift. Otherwise, all was whiteness.

           And still the snowflakes fell, unique particles descending to their common destiny, padding the cement and asphalt with a cushion more copious than my percale-covered mattress. The parking lot had become a paradise again. Never was the view from my window so transformed.

           I pulled on the rubber boots taken from my brother’s station wagon on the slushy afternoon when I transported some old furniture to the apartment. They flopped off my heels at every step, but I didn’t mind. I had my roommate’s Irish setter with me, and we set off on a romp through our favorite streets, inevitably crushing nature’s frothy delicacy. Plows would soon arrive, pushing and churning the snow that cars would then blacken and pack down ever more firmly. Rusty and I had to move fast, outpacing this urban confrontation with nature. I thought of my brother, of our backyard at home, and of how the simple idea of a plot of brown soil rarely entered a person’s conception of what lies beneath these city blocks. The verdant lawns and woodlands of my childhood could only be remembered, not expected now, here.

           Keen recollections were brought into sharp focus by the exertion of keeping up with Rusty. I began to feel the unambiguous emotions and impulsiveness of years gone by. Mental associations took me back, and my double vision of past and present conflated the dog beside me with my childhood companion, a dachshund who utterly pranced through the snow despite her short legs and cold belly. A mysterious feeling of liberation was reanimated within me and, with each turn and pull on the leash into another blizzardy street, the feeling grew.

I was again the age when street-crossing possessed an awesome significance. My eyes were those of the little girl who had learned to confine herself to the safety of “our side of the street,” yet perceived the early morning snow creating a vast neutral zone between our house and the one it faced. Mommy and Daddy’s restrictions were impossible to obey since there was no visible curb to provide a guideline, and yet I had always believed that their words harmonized with some universal order. To think that this beautiful snow from heaven would defy my parents, bringing about a whole new set of conditions!

           Rusty had gone somewhere ahead of me, halted by a muffled sound or muted earth scent which the snow concealed. I must have let go of the leash; but when? I stood fixed in time and place, a small body bundled in layers with the thick blue leotard nearest to my skin and stretch pants that hooked around my feet, like the ones my brother said skiers and dancers wore. I felt the pull on the leash from my little dachshund. We were still clinging to the sidewalk, indecisive about the question of disobeying Mommy and Daddy. We walked at least a block before submitting to our curiosity and beginning to cross the unplowed street. My gaze was fixed on the dog ahead of me, her nose in the snow, and I felt her make a sharp turn. Instead of crossing, we were walking in the middle of the street! I was certain someone would notice us now, and I prepared to accept the blame for our misconduct.

           The tugging stopped, and I turned my eyes down to see the dachshund digging furiously in the snow, pausing only to poke her nose deeper into the ditch she was making. A streak of red. Was her nose bleeding? More clawing and digging as the patch of red grew bigger, until no snow remained. A squirrel lying dead on black gravel. My dog looked up, and I swear I saw sadness, not victory, in her eyes. We both knew about squirrels, how they scampered across the street, even in snowstorms, when drivers couldn’t see them or maybe couldn’t stop in time.

What was it my brother had said when he came downstairs to the kitchen for a snack and saw me crumpled in one corner, still wearing my snowsuit and boots? “Are you okay? You look overheated,” he probably said. “Where’s the dog?” To which I would have gestured without looking toward Daddy’s chair, our dachshund’s favorite spot. And then the tears would’ve come. My brother would listen as I confessed. He was not one to say, “Wait until Mommy and Daddy get home!” I knew he would keep my secret.

           I felt the glow of adventure drain from my face and approached the Irish setter, who was barking into the snow. The weight of my brother’s oversized boots pulled on the muscles of my legs as I leaned down to pick up the leash, and I turned away with a forceful movement that the dog had no choice but to follow.