rainbows and coal

a little story....

uncupping her hand, slowly, as if to keep something alive and jumping (like a toad), in, she waits for the flashes of pink and green and blue and purple to appear magically in the cold black stone as they had in her father’s callused palms just moments ago. seeing nothing but gray, she closes her hand again and squinting her eyes shut, shakes up the stone, thinking maybe the colors are playing a game with her – hiding. this time, she unfolds her fingers quickly and down, as if she were releasing a butterfly, but still, sees only the shiny gray and black of the stone.

worried, she tugs at the right braid of her pigtail and looks over at her father, sitting in a chair and leaning back towards the kitchen window, a bemused look about his face.

“come here, hoot, and let me show you something.” grasping her small forearm gently with his thumb and two fingers, he draws back the blinds and guides her still-open palms to the beam of mid-morning light filtered through the trees in the backyard. tilting her hands ever-so-slightly, she jumps as the reds and blues begin skirt across the surface and looks over at her father.

“the guys call it peacock coal because it looks like the feathers in a peacock’s tail.” yes, she knows the peacock, has read about it in one of her reading assignments: the bird with the funny black comb on his head who stole all the colors from the female. she had told her teacher that she didn’t think that was fair. “some oil or something gets on there and makes it shiny like that. it’s pretty rare.”

she turns the coal around and round in her palm until little sparkles appear on her skin and in the rivulets of sweat, building into faint, jeweled creases.

“thank you, daddy,” she whispers and kisses him on the temple behind his eye before she runs off to her room to place the coal on her shelf of treasures above her bed, between to her three-year-old sugar easter egg from the organist at their church and her t-ball trophy.

several times, even on rainy days, she would pick up the piece of coal, unhinging her palms in prayer trying to find her father’s rainbow in the slant of light from the bent slat of her bedroom blind.