Purple Vindication

Melinda had no idea she was supposed to know, amongst all the colors on Earth, which one was her favorite. She learned this in a most unfortunate way at the age of six while out shopping with her mother, who impatiently asked her what her favorite color was.

Melinda stared blankly. She didn’t know how to respond.

“C’mon girl, that’s not a difficult question. Which lollipop do you want? The red one? Or the purple one?”

Melinda continued staring, then softly mumbled, “It’s not the color that matters. It’s the flavor. One is cherry. One is grape.”

Her mother grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out of the store.

“How dare you be insolent toward me! And in public, no less!”

“But Mama…”

“Don’t you, ‘But Mama’ me!”

Mama raised her hand, about to slap Melinda across her face as she often did for the tiniest of Melinda’s infractions, until she noticed the pastor heading their direction down the sidewalk, and slowly lowered her arm to her side and forced a smile.

“Good day, Pastor. Beautiful morning today!”

“Why yes, it is Mrs. Morris. And how lovely Miss Melinda looks today with that pretty, pink bow in her hair!”

“Thank you, Pastor. Have a wonderful day!” she replied, waving as he passed by.

Her smile quickly faded into a scowl, and she grabbed Melinda firmly by the arm and continued dragging her down the street.

“You got lucky today, Missy,” she snarled as they moved on to their next errand of the day.

********

That night, alone in her bed, Melinda wondered, do I need to have a favorite color? She decided she’d best figure it out, so she wouldn’t make Mama so angry ever again.

But I like all the colors, so how will I ever choose?

Well, maybe not yellow. I don’t like yellow that much. Except for sunlight. I like that. And daffodils. I like them too.

I don’t really like green. Well, except for green grass. I like that. And the bright green leaves on trees in the spring. I like them too.

Pink is nice. But that’s Mama’s favorite color. I need a different favorite color than Mama’s. But I do love when the roses in our yard blossom in pretty shades of pink. And I love the pink bow Mama puts in my hair to match my pink dress. Even the pastor said it was pretty. But something tells me Mama wouldn’t like it if my favorite color was the same as hers. Or maybe she really would like it. She would see I’m just like her. Then maybe she wouldn’t get so angry at me all the time.

Ok, pink is my favorite color.

*******

That weekend Mama and my sister and I went to visit Grandma. I love going to her house because she’s always nice to me. Sometimes I wonder how it’s possible that my Mama is so different from her Mama.

Every time we visit, Grandma holds out a plate of cookies and tells me to pick one (or two if Mama isn’t nearby to get mad) and Grandma never gets angry with me if it takes me a couple of minutes to decide which cookie I want.

Grandma sews new quilts every winter when it’s too cold to spend much time outdoors, and before we had arrived that day, she laid two of her newest quilts out across her bed. She took us into her bedroom and said she had made one for me and one for my sister and we could each pick the one we liked best.

My sister immediately pointed to the pink one and said, “I like that one best!”

Now that I had decided pink was definitely my favorite color, I looked up at Mama and Grandma and meekly said, “I like that one too.”

“Well, that’s your sister’s,” Mama pronounced definitively.

“You’ll have the other one. The purple one,” Mama said. There would be no debates today.

It was lavender. Not purple. But I knew better than to argue that fine point. Mama had put her foot down. And I didn’t want to be at the receiving end of her wrath.

“You like purple,” she went on saying just to get me to shut up and take the quilt I didn’t want. All the while in my head I wondered, “But do I like purple? And even if I do, that’s not purple!”

I resigned myself to the fact that Mama had assigned purple to be my favorite color. But to be clear, my favorite color was never going to be lavender. It was too bland and practically as drab as gray. I hated it.

Over time, I did begin to embrace purple though. After all, I did love grape soda and grape candy the most, much more than cherry or lemon or lime.

********

When I was twelve, I told Mama I wanted to redecorate my room in purple, only to come home from school one day to discover she had put up frilly new lavender curtains over my bedroom window. Mama loved only pastel colors and that was the way the world, my world, was going to have to be. I had no choice but to live with those ugly, muted, not purple curtains for years. 

I started using the birthday money my grandma gave me every year to purchase dark purple clothing and decorations for my bedroom. I bought dark purple sweatshirts and pants, dark purple throw pillows, and a dark purple bedside lamp for my late-night reading. Mama just rolled her eyes whenever I brought something new that was truly purple, not lavender or some other pastel shade, into her house.

********

Mama and I were simply destined to always have a difficult relationship. I don’t know what I did to make her so angry all the time. But it was just the reality of my existence.

When I was finally old enough to move out on my own, I decorated each room in my apartment in a variety of shades of red, blue, and green with just a dash of purple here and there. I was finally allowed to love all the colors for the first time in my life.

Years later, my sister was in the hospital having a baby the same week our mother passed away, leaving all the responsibility for making Mama’s burial arrangements to me. With mixed and somewhat confusing emotions, I laid Mama to rest. In a dark purple dress. But it did have tiny pink ribbons down the front.