Skittles

A short story love and hope and i guess family, written in 2009

My breath smells like Skittles. That is how people describe me. I find the idea of breathing on my hand to smell my breath awfully disturbing, so I can’t really put my nose around how that would smell like - nor whether if it is a good scent or a bad scent. I eat a lot of Skittles and yet I somehow manage to keep that fact hidden from my dentist. I’ve never had cavities and my teeth never turned yellow or whatever colour teeth turn when you eat too much skittles. I guess I’m just a natural when it comes to brushing my teeth. There is a lot about me that a lot of people don’t know.

Just recently I broke my leg because of Skittles. It happened on a bus a few weeks ago. I suppose you want me to tell you how I could possibly break my leg on a bus and what Skittles have to do with it, but right now I am not in the mood for recounting that moment. I just thought I had to bring it up. Yet, in a way that is why I am here sitting by myself staring out my window in an apartment that I’m not yet accustomed to. But the story goes deeper, crazy stuff that escalated one autumn night. Crazy stuff that forced me out of my home and into the bus where I broke my leg. Crazy stuff that happened not at my choice.

I find the worst thing about life is that you tend to forget the memories you want to remember. Some are there in your noggin, but they are pushed back and are blurry. It is all of the memories you want to forget that you remember more vividly. And over time they remain there like the romantic etchings on a tree trunk written by a couple no longer together. At least that is the case for me.   I remember most the flying colors. The red, the yellow, the orange, the purple, the green skittles as they flew in the air and bounced against the wall. They dropped like hail. And they rolled around before settling in no order, no arc - just scattered shards of a rainbow dispersed on a checkered sky. My father his face red, and my mother’s blue shirt soaked by the tears flowing down her face. My father wanted to emphasize how it is bad to see things in colour and how you will never grow up if you don’t see the blackness of life; you will never grow up if you keep avoiding the pains of struggle. My father didn’t realize that I paid, with my own money, a dollar and seventy-five cents for those Skittles. It adds up. Everything comes at a cost.

            Prior to that night, the last time I was this depressed my father was the one who made me happy. To recapture a moment we shared by a lake under a rainbow, he took Skittles and lined up all the different colours in an arch, and said the famous catch line: “taste the rainbow.” It made me laugh. And it was from this moment on that my addiction to Skittles began.

 But on that autumn night he was angry. He never usually takes his anger out on us though. Just this time because my mom told him we were moving out for a while.   What followed became that vivid memory. He threw that Skittle pack, that same man who made me a rainbow out of Skittles. He made my mother cry, that same man who proposed to her and made her life temporarily happy. She told him that she’d come back when he fixed himself. She told him this when he was sober to avoid the worst reaction. He didn’t believe her. He didn’t think that she’d return. And he expressed more anger at her than the anger he expresses at himself when he’s drunk. In ways, this revelation made my father hate himself more than he already does, no matter the attempts of consolation we gave him.

I guess I must recount breaking my leg. Having enough with my dad’s tireless rants I left my home. I did not wait to accompany my mom who went to her friend’s place to stay for however long. I think she needed to be alone with her friend anyways. On the bus I found myself standing on the second floor. Standing was not the right position to be in, the driver was one of those rare drivers with a great sense of finding every pothole on the road. And when he reached a bus stop he would suddenly break for no reason at all except for incompetence. It is important on these progressive roller coasters to be holding onto something. No pole? Hug the person next to you. But luckily on one of those sudden halts I was by a pole. Idiotically, I let go to pour some skittles in my hand. I was on the second floor.

It was raining that night; it wasn’t anymore when I was carried out on a stretcher. Instead there was a rainbow above me. It seemed to come out of the blue so suddenly. And hours later as I stared out my window at the hospital, the rainbow faded into the sky just as seamlessly. Even in pain the rainbow captivated me, it never ceases to do so. I enjoy every second that I bear witness to a rainbow. It doesn’t come often, and you never know if you’ll see another one again. I guess what I’m trying to say is that when my father is happy he can do many wonders. But that never lasts long. His thunderous anger can scare even the bravest of souls. But I’m not going to talk anymore of this. We are a typical family with an alcoholic father, it bores me, and I’m sure it will bore you too.

So here I am. Sitting by a window in an apartment that I’m just getting accustomed to. My leg is in a cast, and I’m eating Skittles. My mother went out shopping with her friend and my father is probably at home drinking and pissing all over the sofa. Another rainbow is in the sky, maybe the fifth I’ve seen throughout my life. When I look up at any rainbow I can’t help but think: who else is staring at that same magnificent sight? Is there anyone looking up in awe thinking what I’m thinking? Going through what I’m going through? Do they feel the same admirations? Find beauty in the most unlikely of things? I’d like to meet that person staring at the same rainbow with roughly the same thoughts and longing and view of beauty.

However, I doubt there is one. The truth is, I can only see blue and pink, along with black and white " the symptoms of tritanopia, a form of color blindness. On that day when we were out by the lake, it was significant because it was when I truly learned colour. How red is like one’s face when they are angry, yellow like your teeth if you eat too much candy, blue " the colour of the oceans and skies that I can see, purple the colour of a horrible bruise, and green the colour of the trees. All though I could not see any of the colours, the way my father talked about them suggested that they could be beautiful individually and more so, together. Yet my father also told me I must see more black, like I don’t already. I sometimes question whether that was the drunken father talking or sober father. But if I put the effort into keeping that memory with my dad by the lake and the talk we had, I know that it was indeed the alcohol talking. And so every time I look at a rainbow, I pray and I hope that my father will find a way to see its colour again.