The Roller Monologues

Women are supposed to shop together. We’re encouraged to go to the bathroom en masse. We’re expected to group-quilt, and clamour in hordes around Tupperware. In times gone by, women could be found chasing after small animals (or small humans) together, and chanting to the moon. Last weekend, the women of my tribe engaged in a long-standing ritual. We painted.

By painted, I don’t mean in any artistic sense (I’m a weak link where visual talent is concerned). Our gathering was not marked by circles of easels, bowls of shiny fruit and smears of vermillion and burnt umber. There was an apartment to be tamed, an unruly set of grey walls, and we came together to make it feel like home. In a ballet of grubby clothes and latex-acrylic, we danced, a trio of weird sisters. My mother governed the heavens, standing tip-toed on a chair and occasionally chiming “Shit, I dripped again.” My sister muscled the middle, wielding her roller pole like a javelin. Plumbing the depths behind furniture, I crawled along the trim on the floor.

All the while, we called to each other from opposite corners of each room:

“Damn, this colour looks good!”

“Did you watch John Stewart the other night?”

“Who do you have to kill to get a raise these days?”

And at some point, my mother made an astute observation. This is what we do. Some kinswomen knit, or have brunch, or watch the latest movie. We paint. Even when we don’t do it together, we still eagerly share battle stories. The shade of green that made my sister nauseated. My sponge-paint job that looked like blood spatters at a crime scene. My mother’s discovery that magic marker bleeds through every layer of paint that’s slopped on top of it. The rooms that do turn out are shown off as badges of honour, and garner appreciative “ooohs” and “aaaahs”.

One could blame this long-standing tradition on our fickle decorating tastes, or our collective need to move things around our dens. Maybe it’s our waspish need to avoid idle hands (the work of the devil), or our genetic predisposition to organize. Maybe all three of us were chameleons in a former life. Not one of us expected to wake up the next day without dried, crusty paint between her fingers, or without sore muscles. We did, however, leave my sister’s apartment confident that there would be a future call to arms, and we would follow the brush-shaped signal back to the coven. Probably as soon as my sister decided what colour the kitchen should be.