Shivani Patel

Lawless
Creative Writing 211:12

Treacherous Blue
It was lovely color really. For many years bodies of water were colored blue. The
ocean I often saw in paintings was graced with skillful strokes of an ultramarine shade of
the very same color as was the swimming pool down the block; no, the color in the pool
was not a reflection of the too intricately designed mosaic tiles. Shivani, there are no
sharks in the swimming pool; its a cartoon on the titles! I sometimes forget who had
yelled out this flimsy assurance, I assure you that it did not help. One can imagine my
disappointment when I later came to the conclusion that water really was clear not
without any nuance of blue within it. Thus, it was not surprising that excuses of pungent
chlorine stenches bothering me were made whenever 16th street pool was brought up or
any other one for that matter. Though as compensation for the farce the color had been
exuding, my eyes mooned towards wherever that treacherous color was. I did not think to
simply look up.
It bothered me. The dress was a lovely tint of cerulean enhanced with thin strips of
silver lining the sleeves and outskirts completely contrary to the white cardboard
background. She had to wear that doltish color! Every time I leave my home the portrait
lay there taunting me with that cerulean pigment worn by my own mother no less. She
stood straight as a rod on the left-hand side to my father as I stood in the middle in a color

that bore no affinity to blue, I noted with pride. However, this was not even the worst of
it; it would not stop following me.
I was to be an aunt. I was to be an aunt to a little brat while being thirteen myself. The
Television announcer continued the boring, meaningless conversation. Books that I had
already read 6 times each sat on a nearby oak table as the heart rate machine screamed
"BEEP!" every 20 seconds from 40 different patients. The pale white walls matched the
boring bedspread but the window permitted me gaze back upon the outside world in a
sort of worriment over the new addition to the already long list of presences. It was then
that the wailing started. The cacophonous screeches tormented the pin-drop silence that
had previously dominated the room. I did not like her already; no, I was not jealous. This
feeling of deniable resentment lasted until I grasped the hastily cleaned sleeping bundle
while slyly counting ten fingers and ten toes, it does not hurt to be sure after all. She was
not adorable but just alien-like with a head too big for the miniature brownish-red body
breathing heavily. Then, of course the midget opens her eyes and of course, while the
rarity of one of my pure and boringly Indian cousins producing a blue-eyed child is one
in a million, her mothers sapphire irises seem to have prevailed over our dark brown eye
color genes. I may be able to warm up to the pigmentation after all.