House—Painting
Father informs me that if I wish to paint my bedroom and satisfy my instinct for decoration, I will have to get down on my hands and knees, brave the poisonous spiders and their webs, then carefully retrieve the glass bottle of turpentine and the dented tins of paint from the dusty, so-called crawl space.
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I wanted to color in our house with crayons, Prussian blue and lamp black, but mother managed to convince me this was a very large undertaking, gently suggesting the advantages of a water-resistant paint.
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The days were getting longer, and the cuts on my wrists were beginning to form into fine scabs, like thin red ribbons in a prayer missal. You suggested we paint the outside of the house. Painted objects last longer than unpainted ones. We took our time, but eventually we were finished. I was going to run the brushes under the tap, but you snatched them out of my hand and stored them in the freezer, so the next time we paint the house, we will remember the color.