rainbow's story

my name is rainbow. and that is one of the reasons why i hate my mother. only one of the many, many reasons. i don't know what mother was thinking when she named me rainbow, maybe she wasn't thinking at all. all i know is that she was into hippie stuff, back when i was born and i remembered living with tie dye tshirts and earth tone pants- that kind of stuff, for awhile. when she started dressing me in real clothes, albeit, jackets and jeans from the gap, i was afraid, at least for awhile. it was a big change, and i never figured out why. before long, we completely ditched the hippie stuff and started living like a normal family, until mother found a new fad which caused us to live with burlap sacks and organic food, where recycling was mandatory, and we started washing dishes by hand.

the second reason as to why i hated mother was because she got divorced with father. mother was tough, she didn't cry. she never cried not when they fought, not when she said she finally had enough. it was the typical divorce, father took me out to the park and we shared a giant hot dog and fed the bread crumbs to the pigeons. after that he told me that he'll be getting a divorce with mother in the nicest way possible. "mother and i aren't going to be together anymore." i was only eight. that was the only way i could've understood what was going on. father then moved to a flat in the city and mother kept the house and me. father would take me out every weekend and i would stay in his flat for one night. this is the only time i had to spend pigging out on frankfurters with father and watching endless cartoons on the television, the things that mother would never let me do.

there are many more reasons as to why i hated my mother, writing them all would be a book in itself, but that's not the story i want to tell. the story i want to tell starts now, at sixteen years of age, where i first fell in love.

he was captain of the school's lacrosse team and a point guard in the varsity basketball team. he was tall, dark and handsome- that type of guy, the perfect one, the type that every girl loves, but that wasn't what i saw in him.
i like him, albeit, for a different reason.

he was in my art class, the one and only class i had with him.
everything he did at art class was beautiful, everything he touched was perfect, it was like he had magic within every fingertips, and everything he touched, turned into something purely magical.

we never talked and that was a good thing, for what could i ever say to someone as perfect as him. i kept to myself and my only best friend julie who always sits beside me and find it extremely hard to not talk while painting. likewise, he also kept to himself. he never talked. he had no friends, at least not in here, and he would always sit in one corner of the room, alone making magical things.

they say that love at first sight doesn't exist, but i believe that this isn't love at first sight, because all those days of looking at him and studying his every action has to count for something, if not anything. i knew him, the way his face crinkles into a smile everytime he finishes an artwork, the way he would run his hands through his hair while painting and bite his bottom lip, perhaps when making a mistake. i didn't know his name, though and at that time i knew i never would.

"mother called today."
i was with father at the park, like ever, we were sitting on the bench sharing a giant hotdog, our ritual and has ever been since eight years ago, when he told me about the divorce.
i nodded.
"rainbow, why don't you ever talk to mother?"
"i don't know."
i knew that with father i never need to talk, he'll always know what i'm thinking, without me having to say anything. this thing i had with father, i believe isn't something i had with mother.and no matter how hard i try, i would never have a mother.
"honey, you can't blame your mother for the divorce."
then who should i blame, father?
"a divorce takes two people, like getting married, it's no different. something's just breaking this time."
i didn't want it to break, i still don't. i wanted a promise if not a certain guarantee.
"but things broken can always be fixed, it might not turn out the way you expect it to, but here's the guarantee, it'll always be a whole lot better than right now."
"promise me that you'll start talking to mother."
and that was when i realized that i had finally gotten my guarantee.

mother was on the kitchen patio tinkering with the radio when i came up to her. at first she was surprised, but that didn't last long, after all what mother would be surprise when her daughter comes to her, arms open wide for an embrace.
every mother, would smile and my mother did this,
and she also cried.

that would've been the perfect ending, but if there was something about life, it just doesn't end like that. life continues, or so i've come to learn, and then another story unfolds if not an alternative ending to this story. however ever since then, mother and i became inseperable.
father was right, it was never her fault- all these voices in my head, they were never screaming out her name, they were screaming out mine.

i was walking into art class when i bumped into him. he was holding two canvasses and one immediately dropped, syncronized with my bump.
i started picking it up, then stopped.
he painted a face, somewhat familiar.
it took me awhile to realize that it was me.
"i'm sorry." he said.
who knew, all these times, while he was alone, and while i tried so hard to discern what he was thinking, all along, i was the one thing on his mind.
"talk to him" mother said, "who knows, life might end up giving you a surprise."
i looked up at him and our eyes met for a second before i finally said,
"i like it."
"really?"
i nodded.
"what's your name."
"rainbow."
he looked at me for a second
"i know stupid name, right?"
and then out of nowhere he smiled at me, he really did and said,
"no. it's beautiful."
and then he told me his name.

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"and being a girl could be about interest rates and skinny jeans, riding bikes and wearing pink. not about any one thing, but everything" - along for the ride, sarah dessen