Picking Yellow (fiction)

Dad parked the van in the Home Depot parking lot and we all climbed out and dashed through the rain to get inside before we got soaked.
I lifted Annie and Charlie, my four-year-old twin sister and brother, into the double seat section of the big orange racing car cart. My seven-year-old brother, Ethan, climbed into the merchandise section.
“Stay on your bottom,” I reminded him.
He answered back, “You’re not the boss of me, Hannah Banana!” I ignored that.
“Orange!” said Annie, “Let’s paint your room orange!”
“Ugh, no!” said Dad and I. We laughed. She sure likes those carts.
“Hannah, you can go look at the paint. We’ll be in the garden area,” said Dad.
I was glad to go look at paint alone. It had been raining for five days straight and I was really tired of my siblings. I was also glad mom stayed home while we went out. She was tired from being sick so much.
I always liked looking at the little colored cards, all neatly arranged, that showed the paint color choices. So many choices.
I studied the cards for a while. I could never decide. Dad said whatever I picked, I would have to like it for the next six years, until I left for college. I finally took a card with ‘clear sky blue’ and a card with ‘fresh cut grass’ then went to find my family.
It wasn’t hard to find them. I could hear Annie and Charlie chanting, “Yell-ow, yell-ow, yell-ow!” from three isles away.
Dad was putting yellow potted lilies into the cart and the twins cheered. “Ethan,” he said, “You need to get out of the cart now. What color flowers do you want to get mom?”
“I want yellow, too,” he mumbled, climbing out of the cart.
Annie called him a copy cat, but Dad put some yellow marigolds into the cart. I knew I wanted to get mom some miniature roses. Since it looked like the thing to do, I picked yellow.
On the way to the checkout lanes I showed everyone my paint color cards. Dad said green walls would probably not be a good idea, since my carpet is green. “Clear sky blue sure sounds good, though!” he said.
“Does color have a sound?” asked Charlie.
“No, stupid!” said Ethan.
We all just looked at him. He stared at the flowers, scowling like it was our fault he was grumpy.
Suddenly Ethan’s eyes widened. He picked a rose right off one of the plants. “Oh!” he said.
I was about to scold him, but Dad said, “What is it, Ethan?”
“Hannah should paint her walls blue, and paint yellow flowers all around, like a garden. Then it will be like her carpet is grass, and we could go look at her room when we get tired of too much rain, and in the winter we can remember mom’s birthday garden.”
Annie and Charlie chanted “gar-den, gar-den, gar-den!”
I liked his idea so much I gave him a big bear hug. He smiled.
We bought enough blue to paint my ceiling blue too, a small can of green for the stems, and a can of sunshine yellow for the flowers.
The rain had stopped. As we walked to the van, the sun began to poke through the clouds. My heart felt warm and happy and I knew we made the right choice.

by Dawn Bonnevie copyright 2009