The Nursery I Moved Into Her Room

The Paint I Picked

I painted that nursery in my fifth month, before we knew anything was wrong, back when I still thought I would carry her the whole way like everybody else.

I did it myself over a weekend when Cody was pulling doubles. Mama helped me move the old sewing machine and the boxes of canning jars out to the barn. The room had been a catchall for thirty years. We hauled four truckloads to the burn pile and swept up mouse nests and I washed the one window until the winter light came through clean.

I picked a soft gray, the color of a dove, because I did not want to know if it was a boy or a girl and gray went either way. I taped the trim and cut in the corners with a little brush and I talked to her the whole time, told her this was her room, told her where the sun would come in.

Mama stood in the doorway that Sunday with a cup of coffee and said it looked like a magazine. She said, “Your daddy would have liked seeing a baby back in this house.” Daddy passed four years ago. She does not say his name much, so when she does I notice.

I stenciled a lamb over where the changing table would go. It took me three tries to get the face right. I bought the crib used off a woman in Jasper for sixty dollars and Cody and I put it together with a steak knife because we could not find the right wrench.

I hung a mobile of felt stars. I folded her little gowns in the dresser by size, the smallest ones in front. I did not know then that even the smallest ones would drown her for a month.

That was the room. That was the room that had a weight bench shoved against the door when I carried her up the lane.