Clouds

No.437 in 'A Story a Day for a Year - and then some!' (Will get to reading stuff tomorrow... am a bit behind... sorry!)

CLOUDS

Mrs Darking asked us to draw a picture. She said it was to be a picture of a house and maybe it could be our own house – if we wanted. And I looked at the blank and beautiful white of the paper laid flat and perfect on my desk and I stared at it and it was like looking at clouds and if you look hard enough at clouds you can see what aint there.

Pa does that with me sometimes. We just lay back on the warming grass and we lay close enough I can feel his arm touching mine, and he asks me what I see. And he laughs when I tell him and he says something ‘bout what he sees. Rabbits with overlong ears sometimes, or dogs without tails and running so fast their legs is a blur, or a old man smiling and then not smiling and then not a old man.

And pa knows from the shape and the blow of the clouds what sort of night it will be and from his calc’lations he plans where we’ll sleep for the night and he says we got the whole wide world to choose from and he makes it sound like a adventure not to be sleeping in no bed.

Mrs Darking puts a crayon in my hand and she says something nice and encouraging to get me started and she smiles as bright as the sun. I like Mrs Darking and I sometimes wish she was my mom. I hold the pencil like she told me to do and I go to make a mark on the page, but I don’t. Mrs Darking’s smile goes behind a cloud and she moves on to Barbara and Stevie and leaves me to myself.

Sometimes me and pa sleep all curled up together in the doorway of Douty’s bakery. The air leaking from under the door is warm and old Douty don’t disturb us when he comes to make the bread, comes early as sunrises, and he steps over us real careful. And when pa wakes it’s to the smell of fresh baking bread and old Douty comes out with gentle good mornings and something for us to eat and it breaks warm in our hands and soft and white as clouds.

Sometimes we sleep in the park, if the night is warm as cupped breath and dry as bones and breathless still. And we got our own special benches and bats thrill the air and pa makes stories out of the shapes of stars and a owl speaks wise words to you if you listen.

And once a week we go to the Sally shelter and we get soup with vegetables in and bread that aint so good as old Douty’s, and we sleep on limp sagging mattresses that smell of sweat and cigarettes. And pa says maybe next month we’ll be back on our feet and when he says that his voice is all soft and laughing like he’s telling what he sees in the shapes of clouds.

I draw a few quick marks on the paper, even though I know it spoils the perfect white. And the marks make a house, with smoke coming in a grey spiral from the chimney and flowers in the window boxes, and the door is a little open like an invitation, and a mom stands tall as a tree in the garden with her hair like Mrs Darking’s hair - as near as I could draw it.

Mrs Darking sees what I’ve done and she strokes my head, pats it like I am a good puppy, and she says well done, and like that the sun comes out from behind the clouds again.