Yellow is good.

I couldn't tell if the colorful world outside of my little window was buzzing with life or if my ear was just still ringing from the impact. My hand instinctively held the injured side of my face. The burning started at my chin, extended up my jaw bone and wrapped around my ear. He has big hands. Big hands are good for big hits. Daddy hadn't always hit me. He only does it when he has The Bottle. I do what I've always done when he hits me, I crawl over to my bed and lift up the thin brown stained mattress and pull out The Picture. In The Picture there are three people but they don't look anything like themselves. There's a little girl in a purple colored dress with pig tails and ribbons in her hair. She's smiling. That's me. Except, of course, I don't smile anymore. Next to the girl is a women with a braid in her hair and color on her cheeks. This is Momma. But Momma doesn't smile anymore. Next to them is a man. But you can't see the man very well because over time my fingers wore off all the ink. The Picture is yellow. Momma says things get yellow when they are tired, and worn out, and old, and dirty. But that's not true. Every morning I look out and see yellow. The sun makes everything yellow. It makes me yellow too. And if I'm yellow, and The Picture is yellow, and the morning sun is yellow, then yellow is not tired and worn out, and old, and dirty. Yellow is good. 

Brown is bad.

Red is the color that Daddy leaves on me when he hits me, but red isn't the problem, brown is. When I go to bed the sun leaves, and when the sun leaves it turns the clouds brown, but that's only the first reason brown is bad. You see, when the clouds are brown two things happen. First, my yellow walls turn brown, and when the walls are brown bad things happen. Second, when the walls turn brown Daddy brings out The Bottle which is brown. The Brown Bottle is the bad guy, and what The Brown Bottle does in my brown room makes him that, the red marks are only the result. When you try to explain this to grown people they don't get it. Grown people look at my red, they don't understand red is alright.

Red is alright. 

I don't mind my reds at all. When I'm bored I count my reds and it gives me something to do. And I have a lot of reds. I have red marks, red scrapes, red cuts, red bruises, red bumps and a lot more reds. But reds ALWAYS go away. Brown never goes away. Grown ups look at my reds and think they are bad but they aren't they really aren't. Because as long as I have reds I have life. Brown comes first, because of brown I get hit by big hands. When I look at my red I see that I beat brown. I beat brown. There's nothing better than beating brown. So while reds aren't my favorite, I have to at least say they are alright. 

Green is medium.

Green is money. Momma says Daddy drinks all our money. I laughed when she said that because you can't drink money. I don't understand green because I don't understand money. Momma says the reason she's gone all the time is she's making money for us. For me and for her. But where does it go? When I asked her like I said she told me Daddy drank it. Its a strange thought really, Daddy drinking all Momma and my money and drinking The Bottle, he must really like drinking. Or maybe somehow he drinks a combination of both, our money mixed with The Bottle. Or maybe I'm too little to know. Green is medium because money is good and bad, and good and bad mixed together is medium. 

Purple is best. 

It is best because I wore purple in the yellow picture. In the yellow picture everything was alright, so purple must mean happy. Momma says when little babies come they are purple. When you look at old people they have purple on their skin too. Babies are too young enough to know better, and old people are too smart enough to care. They are both purple, which is another reason purple is good. Also when my reds are all healed up they turn purple. If red beats brown and purple beats red then purple is best of all. One time in class we were going in a circle saying what we wanted to be when we were older. I said purple. The teacher tried to cover her smile but I saw it. I see a lot of things people don't want me to see. Everyone in the class rolled back their heads and roared like Momma and Daddy when they don't agree on something. I sat there and didn't know what to do. I guess the class doesn't know about yellow, or brown, or red, or green, or most of all purple. Momma says our family is like a big surprise that people aren't allowed to know about, so not to tell them. She says a lot of wrong things, but I don't know is she's wrong or right about this one so I don't say much about it. 

Everything is me. 

Momma says if you mix up all my colors you get gray, but I laughed at her, because as usual, she's wrong. When you mix up all my colors you get a rainbow, but she can't see it.