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This appears in a pre-2010 issue
of cc&d magazine.
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cc&d v199

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Laying the
Groundwork 		Laying the Groundwork
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this writing is in the collection book
Ink in my Blood (prose edition)
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 Ink in my Blood (prose edition)
Color, Forms and Family

Brenda Boboige

    July, 1976. My five-year-old self sits at the backyard picnic table, floating on a sea of green grass. Sap from a hovering pine tree drips like thick sugar rain on my cheap timber island. My spindly legs dangle from a shaky plank of bench as I open the veritable treasure chest in front of me.
    My mother handed me the box after dinner, told me to go outside, go play, stay away while she and Dad talked.
    As the lid tips off the flimsy box, a toxic mix, reminiscent of Mylar balloon and pleather shoes, blows through the air. This plasticity overcomes other neighborhood smells of burning leaves and bar-b-ques. Nothing covers the hundreds of shapes at my fingertips. Red triangles, yellow circles, green squares, blue rectangles. My new Colorforms set, my new friends, cut-out to play with me, cut-outs to play a part in my own private masterpiece.
    I hear voices rising through screened windows. The only word I can make out so far is ‘bitch.’
    A 9 x 12 coated-cardboard frame sits, blank, ready to stick with my ideas. I pick at the corner of a green square, pry it from its backing. It takes three tries before the piece sits straight on the board. A home must start with a good foundation.
    “You’re a crazy bastard. Your father was a jealous asshole, and so are you. He sent your mother to an early grave, and now you’re trying to do the same to me.”
    A red triangle for the roof, a green rectangle for the chimney.
    A plate smashes, a glass shatters. My mother screams.
    My house has no windows and one secret door. No one hears what I say; no one gets in unless I say it’s okay.
    Heavy footsteps shake the walls and chase each other up steps. From the second-floor landing, Dad spits, “I’ll kill you, whore.” He always goes for the throat.
    Thin rectangular boxes create my new, two-dimensional existence, stiff and blue.
    Silence.
    I give myself two eyes and a nose, no ears.
    A thunder cloud of pounds, Dad on the bedroom door.
    In the upper, right-hand corner, I attach a yellow circle. I want the sun to shine on me.
    Mom always outruns him, locks herself in the bedroom. She waits until his ranting stops, until he gives up trying to break down the door, until he leaves. Then, sometimes for hours, we sit there in the dark.
    I try to bend a tiny scrap of the vinyl into a smile, but neither the cut-out, nor my imagination, is that pliable. Both of my faces freeze. We stare at each other, waiting for my father to go, waiting for me to clear the board.
    A car door slams, an engine revs, a tire squeals.
    I peel myself off, pick myself up.
    My family forms an arrow, pointed towards dead end.
    I ask myself, ‘why do they stick together,’ as I head towards the house, once again, to pick up the pieces.



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