Here's a story I recently wrote for a class...not necessarily my natural style, but none the less, my words...

Paint Schemes

Bernard had wanted her to take the job right away, but she hadn’t been so eager. What’s an old man with a half-assed house-painting business got to offer her, she’d wondered. She had bigger dreams, dreams she hoped would carry her away from this place, out into a world filled with excitement, wealth, and security, and once she got there she wasn’t ever coming back. And why didn’t Bernard get off his lazy, no-good ass and find some work of his own instead of spending his time pushing her towards this and that while he wasted his days hangin’ with Ahmad and Sulky outside McQuill’s convenience store—as if his ship docked there.

“Baby, I’ve got to make myself available to the possibility of opportunity” was Bernard’s pat reply when she grilled him about doing something, anything, to improve their situation. “Ya just gotta have a little faith in your sweet old man Roachy, I’ve got some dreams too.” She hated this pet name he’d given her, “Roachy”, short for Rochelle, because it made her feel like just another piece of his paraphernalia, like she was merely some stoned bitch Bernard had picked up as an afterthought. At the start she had fallen for his easy smile and exotic good looks, and perhaps his steady supply of weed played a bigger role in their relationship than she’d admit. Now, with the baby only three months away, and having given up smoking in a sudden act of responsibility, she felt all too intensely trapped and was beginning to loathe the idea of a lifetime with Bernard. Feeling helpless and in desperate need of the money, she resigned herself to the old man’s offer of working “the office side of things.”

She showed up on a dreary Monday nearly twenty minutes late for her first day, but the old man seemed unconcerned as he escorted her through the garage and stacks of paint containers, old brushes and rollers, and loosely folded tarps splattered brightly with paint. “Sorry ‘bout the mess Rochelle, guess I’ll hafta make changes now I got an assistant.” He gently guided her into the bowels of his house and showed her to a table mostly hidden under a bounty of papers, and folders bulging with wrinkled receipts. An ancient adding machine, the kind that spits out its work on long ribbons of translucent paper, sat in the middle of this confusion, and next to it a small can ripe with a child’s art work was stuffed with a variety of ball-point pens and stubby pencils. “Welcome to the office”, he beamed, “No painting today on account of this weather, so I can show you the ropes. I got some hot coffee, you wanna a cup? Have a sit, that’s your place now Rochelle, you gonna be the boss here soon.” She did as instructed and watched sullenly as his old bowed legs carried him painfully into the kitchen.

Over the next few hours the old man showed her his ways, and the more she learned the more she wondered how he’d been surviving. She’d always had a way with numbers, and the lack of order and connection between his business and the mess on the table was unsettling to her. “Mr. Wallace, I’m not sure I’m the right person for this job, I mean I got no experience at this type of thing.” “Please Rochelle, call me Knuckles, everybody does on account of my arthritis.” She peeked at his gnarled hands and saw direct evidence of this claim. “You need money with that baby coming soon and all, and I need help with all this. My sister used to help me, but her eyes is failing and she can’t do no more bookwork.” Rochelle could only nod meekly, and that night she told Bernard about the old man called Knuckles and what she’d learned about the business. “That’s right Roachy, things is lookin’ up now. Soon as I git my thing rolling, we gonna be smooth.”

Rochelle spent the next few weeks reorganizing and revamping the old man’s books, tapping into a business savvy she hadn’t known she possessed. The old man happily agreed with whatever she suggested, and by and by she started to feel good about what she was doing and glowed under the praise Knuckles was throwing her way. “Rochelle, you ‘s making my life easy, gonna keep me in the business for awhile now.” The old man certainly had a way about him, and the phone rang steadily with inquiries from well-to-do folks across town wanting their homes touched by his talent. She was careful to explain that she’d have to discuss a schedule and set up the time for an estimate with her boss, and jotting down their information, she dreamt of being able to make such plans for her own home someday.

“House painting is a good business,” he would say to her occasionally, smiling at her from beneath one of his protective paper caps. “People always need a good house painter.” She would watch him drive away alone, the ladders clattering in the rear of his old paint-splotched truck—hardly secured by the threadbare ropes—the multicolored cans of paint sealed tightly, knocking against each other as the truck sputtered off. She wondered why he didn’t hire another helper, an apprentice to learn the trade and maybe take over someday. She even tried to envision Bernard in this role, but all she could see was Bernard sitting around while the old man worked himself into his grave. She hoped her baby would at least be blessed with ambition, and not the listless genes of its father.

One Friday afternoon, the baby’s arrival a mere six weeks in the future, she sat waiting on Knuckles’ front porch for Bernard and her ride home. He was late, as usual, and she felt hugely tired and inconsolable. The baby had been wrestling with her all day as if foretelling that some difficult future was close at hand, and she wished that someone else could carry her burdens for the remainder of the day. As she sat and considered her immediate prospects, some distant but newly familiar sound caught her attention, and leaning forward she was able to make out Knuckles’ old truck wobbling around the far corner and creaking its way home. He was early—she normally didn’t see him until the next morning once he left for the day’s work—and she figured the dark clouds promising a rainy evening had shortened his day. He smiled and waved as the old truck labored into the driveway, and feeling her mood lighten, she smiled in reply.

“Can’t do no outside work in the rain Rochelle, no sir, no good in the rain”, he huffed as he struggled to exit the truck. “Mother Nature has her own mind and don’t care ‘bout no house painting, the Fishers just gonna hafta wait. How you doing now? You looking tired.” The old man seemed to know just what was going on with her all the time. At first she had felt uncomfortably exposed by his way of knowing things about her that she hadn’t yet shared, but lately his perceptions felt natural and fatherly, and she found herself wishing from time to time that she was really his daughter and not just someone recently hired to help out. “I’m fine Knuckles, just a little tired, that’s all. Bernard said he’d be on time today, but you know I can’t trust that man. I wish he could carry this baby awhile so he’d know how it does a woman!”

She watched the old man slowly make his way across the hard-scrabble front yard and then settle heavily beside her on the top step. He smelled of sweat and turpentine and sat with swollen knuckles and bent fingers cupping his knees, the backs of his hands looking like some of Picasso’s best work. “He looks just about right”, she thought, “a man who knows his place among things in this life”, and she longed to press into him and stop the world for awhile. The “what ifs?” of her young life suddenly flooded her mind and heart as she watched the old man peer into the decaying neighborhood and beyond, and soft sobs of despair welled-up and spilled from her being so full of life’s hard edges. The old man looked at her and innocently slipped a weathered arm around her heaving shoulders and spoke softly as he pulled close, “Now, now honey, Knuckles got ya, things gonna get better, always do.”