Who Names The Colors

Who Names The Colors-Teaser

Fall-2012

"What in the bloody fuck?" Jo asks herself whilst stress eating a chocolate bar in her pantry. It has been a shit show of a day.

She had woken up in the morning with a giant grin of her face. Her boy, her Ethan, was coming home today and she hadn't seen him in three months. Their school schedules should have lined up perfectly, the theoretical perk of having a child in uni when you yourself were a professor. But, her now upstanding young man, had taken it upon himself to get a work study job straight off  in his first semester.

"Mum, I know you will help me, but I want to help you as much as I can too. Plus, you have the baby, so there are lots of extras right now." He's told her on his first actual phone call home. Ethan was right about some things. There were new expenses. Those had more to do with the divorce lawyers than the baby though. Truth was, other than diapers, the first couple of years were as expensive as you chose to make them. With Ethan, she was completely on her own. Jo's parents were livid that she was even considering keeping the baby, especially without the man. She had tried to explain that the man who had got Ethan on her was better off gone, but her mum just couldn't see how she was gonna do it on her own. That hurt, but she had done. Was doing. Without them and their expectations.

Jo had taken her certification and found a school to teach at near a housing estate. Those were always turning over teachers. And she loved it, and the students. They had shitty choices to make, but they made rational choices, whether the government saw that or not

Plus, every couple of years, she was able to spot that eye too. That artistic spirit like her own. She'd take those girls and boys under her wings and together they would find their medium and Jo would enter them in as many art competitions as she could find. Got a few to uni that way. It also let her flex her artistic muscles, which were atrophying teaching general courses.

When Ethan got a little older, and they could afford it themselves. She moved out a little farther, to a nice little village. Jo still worked in the city, where she could do the most good, but the apartment she could afford wasn't a place she could send Ethan out of to play. He needed a garden, a place to grow.

Ethan had brought home Harry when he was 12. They had both been gangly boys, their feet growing faster than they were able to manage on their own. Ethan seemed to grow and use his size well though. He excelled at soccer, where he had met Harry, and continued to play, long past the days where Harry joined him on the field rather than joined her on the sidelines.

Harry was a lovely fluffy boy. He was all curly hair and cheeks and dimples. His pants seemed two sizes to big and his jumpers perhaps a size too small. But he was so well mannered, helped with the dishes and nudged Ethan when he was giving her a hard time, and he had that spark.

Harry had come round sometimes and found that his schoolmate was not about the house. Jo would still invite him in lots of times and serve him tea and biscuits while she subtly fished for information on what her son was like at school. Harry was sweet and polite, but astute and she never got anything out of him.

One day he came in when Jo had been in a painting frenzy. She had spoken to her mother and left the conversation simultaneously guilt ridden and resentful. Her mother was a pleasant person, but a dreadful mum. She seemed to like Ethan, but still loathed the idea of him. Jo was angsty and angry, so she was painting.

"Hiya, Harry." She answered the door breathlessly with green and blue fingertips and a speckled tee shirt. "Ethan isn't here. Think I saw him dribbling a ball towards the fields." She gestured with her head.

Harry looked her up and down. Jo hated when Ethan's friends did that, but this wasn't the obvious ogle she had had to shut down so many times. It was a look of avid interest for what was on her clothes, not under them.

"What're you doing?" He sounded like she was gonna read his tarot cards. A bit of his future in her answer.

"I'm painting." she had answered honestly and wanted to be abrupt and leave the door swinging, even if it hit his sweet face. Jo had some feelings she needed to splash on a canvas.

"Can I watch?" Harry asked with eyes as wide as the pictures she had seen of the Montana sky.

"Yeah, come on in." Her Englishness asserting itself. "cuppa?" She wanted to curse politeness.

"Nah, you seem busy. I'm just..." he looked sheepish. "I can tell you're wanting to get back to it, but I just, like have to watch. OK miss Joanne?" She hated that too.

"Just Jo, Harry." And she led him back to her tiny sunroom cum studio.

He was quiet the whole three hours he watched her, until he started playing with her paints.

"Miss Joanne," she gave him an eye roll. "Jo," he showed her a tube with licorice written on it. "Who names the colors?"