Black and White World by Ron Gibson, Jr.

Black and White World

Looking through old family photo albums as a little boy, I was convinced the world was once in black and white. My mother was Dorothy at the beginning of The Wizard of Oz, dressed in bib overalls, bangs crooked from cutting them herself, arms wrapped tight around her little dog, Maximillian, as if anticipating her feet may leave the ground at any moment.

She's never remembered much of her childhood. It's as if a cyclone fell from the sky and transported her through a tunnel of darkness from one age to the next. Asking her certain questions feels like digging through the remnants of a destroyed home, trying to find an unbroken piece of happiness.

On the other hand, my father vividly remembers the first time he noticed my mother. They were in choir together, on a field trip, when my mother slipped in the mud. The choir teacher instructed him to escort my mother and her female friend to knock on a stranger's door to help her clean up.

While the woman of the house and my mother's friend helped my mother in the bathroom, my father said he watched Search for Tomorrow on a black and white TV until they were done.

The first time my father told this story, my mother denied it. The more insistent my father became, the more vehement her denial.

I could never understand how something so simple could cause such arguing. Was it pride? If my mother admitted it was true, was she also admitting she didn't remember? And if she didn't remember, was she admitting in some way her life didn't make sense?

Over the years, I've watched my mother's resistance fade. It's as if the memory built from the telling now stands as fact. The only proof I have is a middle school recording of The Little Drummer Boy. On the back album sleeve their names are listed. When I'd play it on the turntable as a boy, wearing oversized headphones, their voices would blend. I saw them in my mind, young, in a black and white world, two dark ships passing each other in a tunnel of night, until they were due to arrive on the otherside of the photo album, both seventeen, hand in hand, my mother in a bright floral dress and my father in a tux with wide lapels, ruffles and a moustache about to head off to the Homecoming Dance.

Once I asked my mother what it was like back when the world was black and white.

And though I doubt she remembers, she placated me and said, "It's not so much different than now."



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Bio: Ron Gibson, Jr. has previously appeared in Entropy Magazine, Stockholm Review of Literature, Cheap Pop, New South Journal, Jellyfish Review, Whiskeypaper, Easy Street, Noble / Gas Quarterly, Harpoon Review, Spelk Fiction, etc. & forthcoming at The Nottingham Review, Rain Party Disaster Society and apt. @sirabsurd