Tiz the Law


I swung my legs off the side of the bed. This bed was higher than mine. I liked that feeling, my feet not touching the ground. The nail polish on my toes was a mess. This was the first time I had done it myself. Mum had let me borrow one of her bottles. I picked Moonlight Silver.

It was hard not to paint the skin on my toes and stay inside the lines. I liked the messy magic of it all. I’d dip the brush in, wipe the excess around the rim but still manage to get drops running down the side of the bottle. Normally I hated labels on any bottles or glass jars and I’d spend hours scraping off the paper and soaking away the glue. I didn’t mind the label on this tiny bottle. I wanted to know that my toes were shimmering Moonlight Silver when I twinkled them.

I liked colours. I especially liked the name of colours. Why was blue blue? What made green so green? Last summer holiday mum insisted the kitchen needed a new coat of paint. Dad and I went to the store and I admired a rainbow delight. There were rows and rows of little cards in perfect colour symmetry. You could choose Bubblegum Blush or maybe Lady Lavender would make all your dreams come true. I chuckled knowing that someone’s job was to name all these colours. Smiling, I picked a few of my favourites to keep and held them together like a hand of Go Fish, just like Uncle Ray taught me.

This room had no colour. I heard mum tell the nurse that they hold a special place in prison for people who did such awful things to little girls. Dad’s eye went heartbreak red.