Seven Crayons Are Enough

Seven Crayons Are Enough

They always arrived in the late afternoon. Slow beams of yellow light moved across the wall behind the hospital bed and highlighted the hand-drawn pictures he'd drawn on their visits. His very own art show, Mom had referred to that wall after she taped-up his third drawing for Grandma.

He was so relieved when his mom immediately took his hand in hers. Grandma looked very old, and it scared him. So small and bony, her wrinkled face reminded him of the worn-out, crocheted blanket she'd made him when he was born. Under her speckled skin, she was white as the bed sheets.

He glanced down and spotted a tissue tucked up Mom's sleeve the same way Grandma did before Mom had to help her with everything. He hated seeing- knowing his mom was so unhappy. Just like she’d been the weeks after his father left.

His parents had always argued, but mostly about Bills. Too many Bills to pay. There was a boy named Billy in his kindergarten class, but how many Bills did his parents know, and why did they owe these Bills so much money?

One day during a snowstorm, two men came to their front door. His father said some cuss words and ended up with a bloody nose and a swollen eye. Mom and Grandma were huddled together on the couch. Mom sent him to his bedroom when the men threatened his father that they would be back.

“This is all your fault, woman!” His father sounded angrier than he had in a while. “Why does your old lady need to live here? Huh? I can barely cover our own damn expenses. Now, you're telling me we got all these new hospital bills?" He heard the sound of something smashing and crawled under his bed to hide. "Just put her in a home like most people do. You ain't working. Nope, because you decided it was more important right now to quit your damn job to stay home all day with Blue Hair here, and the kid. You’re all worthless pieces of shit, ya' know that?”

“She’s my mother, she’s all the family I've got,” was all Mom had said.

He didn’t understand why his mom would say that. He was her family too, wasn't he? He would rather be her family than his father's family. He feared his father’s temper, He hid and waited until Mom knew it was safe, His father always called him a sissy and a mama's boy. He wasn't sure what those words meant but they both sounded like nice things to him.

That day the men came to their house; he could tell his father had beers. Eventually, his father tired-out and yelled that he needed to cool off. It was snowing; shouldn’t he want to warm up? He climbed from under his bed and cautiously watched from his upstairs dormer window as his father finally screeched and swerved his pick-up down their unpaved driveway. Gravel spit from under his pick-up truck tires, marking the fresh fallen snow with big black dots.

The men never came back, and neither did his father. The saddest part for him was that he didn't miss his father, at all. His grandma confessed she didn't either, "...good riddance to rotten apples, or somethin' like that...." she'd said a few weeks after he'd left. He still felt sorry for his mom.

The nurse came in the room and smiled in his direction. “Hey, little man. Good to see you, again. You havin' a nice visit today?"

"Yep!" He liked this nurse; she always ruffled his curls. She adjusted the machines on wheels that remined him of robots, with all their beeps and lights. He loved the screens showing numbers and lines. On one visit, Mom explained that each light and sound told the story of what was going on inside a person.

"Then why didn't God make our skin see-through?"

Mom had laughed out loud at that. It was so great to hear her really laugh, like it was from her head to her toes. "Well, that would make it much easier for doctors and nurses, I guess. A bit embarrassing, maybe? I don't know." She began to laugh again.

Grandma said, "Most people are embarrassed in a bathing suit. Can you imagine someone who smokes too much, and can see their own lungs turning black?" She coughed and needed to catch her breath. She did that a lot lately, and sometimes her chest made a rattling noise. "I bet they'd quit their bad habits straight away, don't ya' think?"

He loved these visits, especially if he could get his mom and Grandma to laugh, it was like music to his ears. Laughter really was the best medicine. Sometimes, after long pauses in their conversations, the room would go very still for a few moments and if he listened real hard, he could hear the hospital monitors' beeps and chirps, mixing perfectly together making music of their own. Maybe, it wasn't so bad, after all.

"It's like a spaceship, Grandma!" he'd said the first time he saw the monitors in the dark. But he was never allowed to touch them. Nor was he allowed to play with the electric bed. The first time he’d done that he was alone with Grandma. When Mom returned to the room, she gently scolded him that the bed was in that position for a reason; it was better for breathing.

“Can we have a word in the hall?" The nurse gestured to Mom to join her. These secret hallway discussions seemed to happen at every visit. Mom nodded in the nurse's direction, tucked Grandma’s shawl around her shoulders, and turned to him.

“Why don’t you draw Grandma a nice picture, love,” and his mom slipped from the room.

He loved drawing. It was his favorite thing besides when Mom read to him. She didn’t read too much to him now that he was almost six. He was happy reading his own books, but he still loved when Mom snuggled up next to him in his bed and read him a story until they both fell asleep.

He took out his art supplies, it wasn't much, just plain white paper, and a tattered box of crayons. “Look Grandma, I still have the crayons you bought me for my birthday last year. I’m going to be six soon.” He knew she didn't have any money but maybe Santa would bring him a new box of crayons.

“I remember,” she said in a tiny, scratchy voice. “I love all the pictures you draw.” She paused, turned towards the window, a bruise-colored sky darkened. She spoke without looking at him, “Yes, you will be six.”

He set to work, carefully taking out one crayon at a time. There was a total of eight in the torn box. He only took out seven. Some were broken in half like the green one and the purple one. He had used the red and yellow crayons the most. Those two crayons were so worn down; they were just big enough for him to pinch them between his little fingers. Grandma called them cheerful colors, said they were, good colors to paint a kitchen. The day she'd said that he’d drawn her a picture of a yellow and red kitchen. She loved it. It was the first picture to be taped over the hospital bed. He had to save what was left of those two crayons for a special picture because they would only last one more.

He loved the white crayon. Grandma showed him how it could fix mistakes, like when he accidently went out of the lines. It was a special crayon because white was all colors. He didn't understand that, but it didn't matter, it was still his favorite one.

He chose the blue one and the bigger half of the green crayon. He remembered just after his fifth birthday when they’d all left the doctor’s office. Grandma had been crying and Mom said she was just feeling blue. So, he didn’t use the blue crayon very often when he drew her pictures. He remembered how much she enjoyed watching the fish dart around in the aquarium while they sat in the waiting room of the specialist's office that day.

“How about a whale, Grandma?”

“That sounds lovely, darling.”

He saw a television commercial once where a person could send money to help save the whales. He really liked that idea because if whales could be saved than so could people. Why didn't they have television commercials to save the people? He would send his piggy-bank money to that commercial, for sure. He was nearly done with the green and blue parts of the ocean, when he heard his mom’s voice in the hallway.

“What are you trying to tell me with all this medical mumbo-jumbo? I'm really trying to understand." A hushed tone - then Mom's voice again, "What do you mean the blood count is still way too low? After all this time?” She sounded angry like the time he put mud in the ice trays. Or the time he snuck Grandma some brandy. “Isn’t there anything else you can do? Please, there must be something.” A hushed voice again, then a deep, muffled moaning noise. "...dear God, ...only a few more weeks? What am I going to do?" Then, silence.

He looked over at his grandma, but she was resting her eyes which he knew meant napping. He thought about blood count because Mom said that a lot. He didn't understand how blood was counted - it would be like counting water. He would tell his mom to find Count Dracula. Of course, Dracula could make the blood count higher. It made sense. He smiled at his clever idea.

After a while, Mom came back in the room and sat on the edge of the hospital bed. Her eyes were red and puffy. He tried to cheer her up, so he blurted out his idea about Count Dracula helping the blood count. Mom's forehead wrinkled like she was thinking about it, then she laughed but when her eyes squeezed shut, a few tears rolled down her cheeks. He knew people sometimes cried when they were laughing, but his mom's tears didn’t seem like happy tears at all. He felt a lump rise in his own throat.

His father had told him that big boys don’t cry. When his father left forever, Mom said that wasn’t true; tears were good because they carried the sorrow out of the body. Even when someone laughed really hard, they felt better afterward because sorrow they may not have even known they were carrying, came out in their happy tears, too.

This time, he swallowed that lump. He would be brave, not hide under his bed. He showed Mom and Grandma the picture of the whale and as always, they made a big deal about his amazing art. They all laughed because they were running out of space on the wall behind the bed.

He yawned just as the visiting hours are over announcement echoed from hallway speakers. They had a long group hug and Mom adjusted Grandma's shawl, again. He no longer needed to hold his mom's hand because was a big boy, he was almost six. Before they left the room and Mom turned off the light switch, he turned and as always, Grandma blew him a kiss. He pretended to catch it, then mom closed the door and together they left the hospital.

He was alone again, in his spaceship with the blinking lights and beeps. He listened for a song, but none came from the machines this time. He gently put the seven crayons back in their torn box and tried his best to ignore the black crayon, the absence of color. The crayon he would never use.