{"id":172864,"date":"2026-02-05T12:21:53","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T17:21:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=172864"},"modified":"2026-02-06T11:07:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T16:07:07","slug":"from-blue-obstacles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/02\/05\/from-blue-obstacles\/","title":{"rendered":"from<\/em> \u201cBlue Obstacles\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Images courtesy of Hayley O\u2019Malley and reproduced with the permission of the Estate of Kathleen Collins.<\/p><\/div>\n

The following is an excerpt from an unpublished novel manuscript by Kathleen Collins (1942\u20131988). You can read Alix Beeston\u2019s introduction to the work on the <\/em>Daily here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

This room: contains all the dampness in the world. The sheets are dirty. The floor is cold. Rain runs down the gutters. A step away the door opens and a light clicks. Someone climbs the stairs. The light goes out, leaving them in darkness. I\u2019m in a romantic French hovel.<\/p>\n

A taxi brought me here in the middle of the night. You carried in my luggage, smoking your pipe and grunting while I kissed you and inhaled the damp odor about you of tobacco and mildew. It was a thrilling moment. I have just arrived in my light blue knit fringed in green, looking like a brown nun. A rough net of black hair controls my face and my eyes focus poorly on things \u2026 now on your pointed shoes \u2026 now on the unmade bed \u2026 now on the dampness, the clutter of your romantic French hovel.<\/p>\n

Everything is coming to me fresh through your tinted glasses, your severely pointed shoes. You talk about Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg, the New York School of poets. I\u2019ve never heard of Andy Warhol, nor Frank O\u2019Hara. It is coming to me fresh, while I settle inside the full pout of your lips and inhale the dampness. You have \u2026 an odor about you \u2026 an odor about you \u2026 all these years I have followed in the wake of an odor about you \u2026<\/p>\n

I try to arrange my hair while I listen obediently, try to make it behave. It is not practical to run my hands through it, just to pat the way one does with a sensitive spot. You\u2019re describing the collage structure of Rauschenberg\u2019s paintings and your lips actually purse with excitement. All the heat in your face is there between your lips; the rest withdraws behind your tinted glasses. I touch my hair again and hold back the need to rub my nose against your damp vest that smells sour and warm.<\/p>\n

In a while, I will go for one of my little promenades. Once a day I come out from under the clutter to walk around in circles and put the sun back in my bones. But right now we\u2019re eating croissants; off a scrap of paper you read a poem called \u201cLydia with the Coastal Face.\u201d We\u2019re in bed, dipping the croissants in bowls of caf\u00e9 au lait. The small, dirty window brings in no light and I haven\u2019t taken a shower since I arrived.<\/p>\n

When I go out you begin again your jagged scribblings on bouts de papier, bouts de papier. \u201cTime floats like a bridge between your eyebrows and after joins its sisters, the rain. There are many Mexicos.\u201d I ask for a Pernod and sit in the sun. Methodically I tick off the monuments, the mus\u00e9es, the jardins, the quartiers, the caf\u00e9s you have suggested I must see. But really, I\u2019m walking about in circles waiting to feel I\u2019m in Paris. Just like that, the magic should click and overwhelm me. In the next caf\u00e9 I\u2019ll ask for a jus d\u2019orange press\u00e9 or a blanc cassis, followed by one omelette aux herbes fines with pommes frites. When I eat, I feel Parisian. When I order a Pernod and sit in the sun I discern everything in a Parisian way. Until the thought comes home that my hair is messy and I am too dowdily colored to look French. I am not even well <\/em>colored: just a layer of brown over a layer of yellow. No care at all taken with the shading \u2026 pour que je sois a dark, liquid molasses \u2026 a warm milk chocolate \u2026 a pleasing cr\u00e8me caramel \u2026 rather than just colored, stiffly and dowdily like a brown nun.<\/p>\n

I come back to an odor of couscous and peppers and the piquant warmth of Gauloises Brunes and burnt coffee. When I hug you a stale, sweaty odor saturates my nostrils and I nearly gush with pleasure. I take off my shoes and stretch out on the damp sheets while you cook. \u201cI found the little restaurant you told me about.\u201d (I want so to charm you.) \u201cWhen I left Notre Dame I found this old bridge \u2026 it felt so<\/em> much like Paris with the Seine flowing and all those beautiful apartments in the distance with big French windows \u2026 I really felt like I was in Paris!\u201d (I want to force you to overlook this muddy veil, this hair that will not behave.) \u201cAnd sure enough it was the Saint-Louis and the restaurant was right there to the left of the bridge. And guess what I ordered! Un artichaut vinaigrette, coquilles de Jacques, and a demi-carafe of white wine. Isn\u2019t that a lovely<\/em> lunch.\u201d<\/p>\n

I gush, I crinkle my face, I force a Parisian glow into my eyes. And I am rewarded with a smile that settles neatly behind your tinted glasses.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

If there were only some frosting, some summer by the sea, some secret passion for the rain, some fragrance recalling a smile \u2026 to conjure up beside the tight neutrality of my childhood \u2026 I would not be here, in this damp clutter, following in the wake of an odor about you. I would not be here, listening to the rain and thinking I can be anyone. If only there were some residual scent of baked bread, or lilacs to offset the odor of embalming fluid in my veins, like a neutral current that cannot ignite itself into life. Then, on my own, I could ooh and ahh over a sunset; I could follow the crimson light on its descent across a building \u2026 If there had been some frosting \u2026<\/p>\n

I shut my eyes. When sleep comes it will be brought on by a thin stream of urine \u2026 the first stream will smell of flowers, of fresh baked bread, of hot ginger cakes, wine and chocolate. The first stream \u2026 and I am wandering the street in search of custard donuts, lace half slips, stolen quarters, malted milks. There are no trees. No flowers. No running brooks. No fresh baked bread. No hot ginger cakes. No wine and chocolate. I wet and wet and wet and wet and wet and wet and wet. The cold tears cling about my legs, my thighs, my stomach. The first stream only is warm, reassuring, blessed.<\/p>\n

Half-awake, I feel you. Though in my eyes I know it is a ridiculous passion that cannot outlast our differences, still I am in need of the odor about you \u2026 your gentle musty odor let loose against the cleanliness that seals me to a hands-and-knees shine.<\/p>\n

My parents have gone out. The dark threatening smell of eyes remonstrating against our untidiness: \u201cThe housework has been slovenly girls, little careless habits have been accumulating. When you clean the toilet you must put your hands inside the bowl and scrub it. There\u2019s no other way to clean it well. And the floors\u2014you have to wait until the wax is dry and well set before you use the polisher. The baseboards need cleaning. And there should be no vacuuming until all the dusting is done. To give this house a solid cleaning, you girls must get down on your hands and knees. It\u2019s the only way to reach the grimy crevices that the eye misses.\u201d I take a book of matches into the bathroom and close the door. I pile layers and layers of toilet paper in the bowl until they are fluffed high. Then I ignite them, watch them billow and the flame take hold until they collapse into sodden black ashes milling around the bowl. I do it again and again. Until one day the toilet seat catches fire and in the morning I cannot hide the charred remains from my father.<\/p>\n

I rub my stomach against your hairy belly. I will reach a point where I will fall down and worship the tight well-constricted mass hanging between your legs. It will make me tremble, go weak with happiness, cause me to set my sights no further than your thighs. In the mildew and dampness that chokes us I can imagine becoming anyone, in tune with the astonishing detachment of your mind. I could catch myself out and fuse, even get rid of the embarrassing smell of embalming fluid and discard my colored self for a more enlightened state of being. That is, after all, why I left the sealed corridors of my father\u2019s house. In search of a metamorphosis that would bring me into daylight.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, it\u2019s raining and we don\u2019t have to get up. Why is my father here, in the dampness, disapproving of the soggy, cluttered terrain I have chosen? Why do I see his stern ungenerous countenance presiding over me when I have gone to great lengths, put great distance between us to have a chance at a vague and clumsy life? Can\u2019t a colored woman be vague and full of notions? Can\u2019t she settle on damp, uneven ground and try to twist herself into some odd, unpredictable shape?<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

We have not gone out for three days. Except when we hear the rain, we have no way of knowing what the weather is like. The small barred window lets in the same amount of light, regardless, and we keep a bulb burning over our bed, even when we sleep. You get up at odd hours and sit at your desk. I am not used to sleeping with lights on. I am attached to things like pajamas, a shower, a cup of warm milk with sugar. You are attached to the wall in front of you, staring straight ahead into the night and grunting every now and then. Your fingers hit the keys in answer to the crosscurrents sifting endlessly through your mind. You live an exquisite inner life, full of grace and remembrance, the charm of which has settled on your brows. You live where an endless astonishment holds sway, and yearnings are so whimsical, so free of half-remembered ecstasies that they bend to the simplest fancy. The lilt of your mind is the clearest tone that reaches from you to me. I hear it play more clearly than my own, erupting in some center of lava and decay, waiting to run full steam away from its origins, releasing in its wake a sympathy that will cost me myself.<\/p>\n

I bob in and out of sleep trying to stay in tune with your meanderings: now you are here beside me, it is early morning or late night or late morning or early afternoon. You have debated my efforts to keep track of the time. You are reading another poem off another bout de papier \u2026 about roses that braid your days, about night breezes and locusts and the blue obstacles routed from the fire \u2026 while I search for the right feeling to put on my face, drawn instinctively toward a look of poignant reverence, but worried that perhaps my eyes look slightly crossed under the strain, that my hair is so badly in need of a little dippity-do that I look foolish. You light a cigarette. \u201cThat was lovely\u201d drops awkwardly off my tongue. It is so hard for me to believe in beauty. I am equally tongue-tied before a sunset, before the convergent explosion of spring, before a daffodil, a full moon, a rainstorm.<\/p>\n

Now you are grinding coffee in a little moulin, tentatively stretched out beside me. I mumble something and drift off. When I come up again there is a strong odor of burnt coffee hissing loudly through the espresso pot and you are asleep at your desk. I shut off the burner and try to persuade you into bed while over your shoulder I read. You\u2019re so gentle and brave and I\u2019m with you, though frost covers the lawns of the darkened necessities and the roses that braid my days be undone \u2026 and I start to cry, a sliver of happiness ripping past the mute barrier of my beginnings. I have lost the ground I walk on.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

It is Palm Sunday and we are dressed for church. My hair is in a perfect pageboy and my father bought me a new orange coat and new patent leather shoes. In the mirror I see the perfect image of myself, my hair is just right, the coat highlights the flat tones of my skin, my eyes are sparkling bright. I know I look just perfect, I won\u2019t look like this tomorrow. My hair will start to go bad again and father won\u2019t let me wear this coat or these shoes except on Sundays, but if everyone should see me now they would love me. My father parks the car at the bottom of the hill just below the church. We have only to walk up the slope under his surveillance. It is he who oversees every detail of our grooming. The little dark blue feathered hat my mother is wearing is his selection; so too our taffeta dresses and bright coats; even our hair has been straightened and curled under his supervision.<\/p>\n

My mother bustles along in her feathers, her cream-colored silk \u2026 I am in her closet, counting her dresses, her shoes, her nightgowns. She must be coming back, all her clothes are here, her dresses, her shoes, her nightgowns. I count her shoes and arrange them in a neat row. She is so sad when she comes back. I see her standing at the foot of the stairs. I hear my father repeat over and over, \u201cI wasn\u2019t coming to get you. No, sir, I had no intention of coming to get you. None at all.\u201d At the church steps, my father slows me down for one final appraisal. A fold of my mother\u2019s dress has slipped between her buttocks. We are a few minutes late and linger in the vestibule till the opening hymn. My father nods to the Creaseys. Old lady Creasey wears a little pill box hat and a mink stole and gives us a crinkly smile. Her married daughters accompany her and their husbands bring up the rear. They are all near white, their sallow complexions enlivened by brightly rouged cheeks and hair tinted a light auburn.<\/p>\n

It is a hot, hot Sunday and I am in white. My grandmother is holding me in her arms, she has begun to rock back and forth. \u201cWhen I\u2019ve done the best I can and my friends don\u2019t understand, then my Lord will carry me home \u2026\u201d Her body reaches a fatal pitch that lifts her arms outstretched toward heaven and sends me sideways out the pew; her face is like granite, the near-white skin turned to stone. And her eyes remain unplaceable and stern like my father\u2019s but the body is in ecstasy; her tall stately body is tumultuous and real and given over to her homecoming.<\/p>\n

I am in perfect communion with her tumult \u2026 I know it to be my real heritage, this faceless invasion of an overwhelming sorrow that shatters the heart with grief. The ushers are distributing the palms. \u201cThere is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel\u2019s veins and sinners washed beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains \u2026\u201d I am seated beside my father when the abiding sorrow begins again, this time attacking his face and causing it to crumble. He is helpless against the nameless flood.<\/p>\n

I hold my father\u2019s hand. We are in the light together.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

I have gone to take a shower in the public bath down the street. For twenty centimes I get soap and a towel from one of those \u201cconcierge women.\u201d At the same time I\u2019ve taken along a little shampoo and I\u2019m going to wash my hair and try and mat it into shape. This is my first bath in three weeks. We\u2019re going out to dinner. You\u2019re taking me to meet some friends of yours. I already know what I\u2019m wearing: a bright green knit skirt with a matching sweater, black high heels and gold earrings. Now if I can make my hair inconspicuous I\u2019d look alright.<\/p>\n

I cherish the idea of me here in his shower, mingling with the proletariat; all these little sorties into French life excite me. When I buy my baguette at the corner bakery, my tranche de p\u00e2t\u00e9 or a little salade mac\u00e9doine from the charcuterie, I wait in line and rehearse how I will deliver my order \u2026 Bonjour, Madame. Il me faut (is that the way to say it or should I say je voudrais bien) deux baguettes, s\u2019il vous pla\u00eet. C\u2019est tout, merci, Madame. Bonjour Madame, je voudrais deux tranches de p\u00e2t\u00e9 de campagne, deux saucissons secs, une livre de carottes rap\u00e9es, et une livre de salade mac\u00e9doine. They take me for a Martiniquaise. Vous \u00eates de la Martinique, Mademoiselle ? Non, je suis am\u00e9ricaine. Vous \u00eates am\u00e9ricaine ? Mais vous n\u2019avez pas d\u2019accent, Mademoiselle. Vous parlez tr\u00e8s bien le fran\u00e7ais. C\u2019est \u00e9tonnant. Je souris. Je souris. It\u2019s more than a smile. It\u2019s a positive sourire that coats my face at the very idea of being foreign, foreign anything, just foreign.<\/p>\n

We meet your friends in a small hotel. One is a very British Canadian, thin and slight of build with a long nose and curly hair, the other is a hearty, graying American who tells intelligent, funny stories. I feel all feet in my high stack pumps and a bit ass-broad in all this bright green. I smile a lot. I have this idea that if I hold my breath and smile a lot no one will notice how pieced together I am. It\u2019s clear that your friends think a great deal of you. Suddenly I am in awe of your grace, your detachment and ease. Here in public I begin to persuade myself into love, take and transform it into love, the<\/em> love, the only<\/em> love conceivable for a woman with my neutered imagination. In turn I will give you myself, a blank canvas, and you will etch out the broad strokes of my becoming.<\/p>\n

I have managed to impress your friends with my French. I indicated my dinner preferences with a flawless command of the language. Even you give me a smile. Roger, your Canadian friend, is sitting opposite me at dinner, talking about things French. \u201cI find the French indifference so liberating,\u201d he sighs. \u201cThey don\u2019t give a damn about you and really, it\u2019s quite the best place for one to sort out things and just want to be left alone. The English are busy bodies. Really, I lived in London for nine years and it\u2019s quite a stultifying place after a while and when I came to Paris I couldn\u2019t believe the French! Even with all their charming little ritual politeness, they\u2019re just about the most indifferent people on the face of the earth and it\u2019s really quite refreshing because it\u2019s on such a sophisticated level.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure I\u2019ll find it quite refreshing after New York, which is really quite a difficult place in which to live \u2026\u201d The inflection in my voice has shifted in his favor, taken on his clipped outer edge. \u201cReally, I lived there for two years and found I was living a dreadfully harried existence \u2026\u201d I\u2019m really quite good at this stretching to make myself fit, a regular chameleon easily muffling my unacceptable self. I shall never recover from my darkness, really. I\u2019ll slip out from behind it whenever I can and change colors under the light. Already I\u2019ve won over your friend Roger, simply by exchanging my opaqueness for his clipped outer edge.<\/p>\n

On my way home I\u2019m feeling very cheerful. You stop to buy Elle<\/em> and Vogue Paris<\/em>, and we go into a caf\u00e9 for coffee. I\u2019ve not done too badly on this first night out and I\u2019m fishing for a light hug. I ask for a jus d\u2019orange press\u00e9 in my best French \u00e1 la Martinique and out of the blue you ask if I ever read fashion magazines.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d I answer, and put aside the question.<\/p>\n

\u201cReally? Aren\u2019t you into fashion and makeup?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat kind of thing bores me, I\u2019m not the fashion kind.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess American women are like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy should I read fashion magazines?\u201d I didn\u2019t get away with it. I didn\u2019t hold my breath long enough. The sparkle in my eyes didn\u2019t win out.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo learn how to adorn your body. French women have perfected it to an art, they do wonderful outlandish things with their make-up and their clothes. But simply, just by tying a scarf in some zany way they create a whole new look for themselves. It\u2019s breathtaking.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m frightened. There\u2019s no way my tasteless insularity can feed such a freewheeling imagination that swoops down out of the blue and feasts on the nearest delicacy at hand. This is a ridiculous situation. The best I can do is wait for my dismissal.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou made quite an impression tonight with your cute little French accent. I didn\u2019t know you could speak that well.\u201d<\/p>\n

A bit of nothing and I\u2019m beaming. I\u2019m such an elastic little soul.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

My eyes closed when those dark lips came toward me. Somebody told Timmy Hays to take me over to the marriage booth. He offered me himself in matrimony and I nodded my head. I was so square. We walked over to the booth and the “minister” gave us a certificate. This is to certify that Timmy Hays and Mildred Pierce \u2026 then he kissed me. I went into a trance. But I was dazed. I couldn\u2019t stop watching him. Herbie Williams told him to walk me home but just as we got near my block my father pulled up alongside us and made me get in the car, and Timmy ran away out of old man Pierce\u2019s sight. I felt awful. When we got back in school I looked for Timmy all the time.<\/p>\n

It was that kiss that set it off, honey, that\u2019s how ripe she was for a feeling, and old Timmy Hays got there first. When the Hays Brothers came down Johnson Avenue she\u2019d be trottin\u2019 behind them trying to catch up without breakin\u2019 into a run. She was so square and her nose was wide open, chile; she even tried to make friends with Josie Strothers who was going with Timmy\u2019s brother. She\u2019d sneak over to her place and watch Josie curl and coo over Ricardo Hays. Josie\u2019d pump her full of stories and give her tips on how to get Timmy then she\u2019d take turns behind her back. Everybody took turns behind her back. She was so fair and so square and she swallowed everything whole. She tried hangin\u2019 out with Gloria Henry cause Gloria was in a pout over Herbie Williams, and Herbie and Timmy were tight. But you know Gloria, she hated Mildred for being fair and did all kinds of turns behind her back. She told Herbie to tell Timmy \u2026 but Timmy knew she was too square for much except following him around, walking past his house a lot, going over to the track meet to watch him practice.<\/p>\n

Josie Strothers, Gloria Henry, Maizie Foster, Edna Javis, Jody Silas \u2026 they all took turns behind her back. She had swollen lips for old Timmy Hays and all she could do was follow him around with her fair square self while everybody took turns behind her back.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve taken to spending Sunday nights at the Coupole with your friends Roger and Bill and a coterie of people who drift in and out. There\u2019s a woman named Marise Silvers who fascinates me. She\u2019s very calm and watchful and I want very much to impress her. She\u2019s extremely fond of you; she told me that after you came to her apartment and read your poems.<\/p>\n

The other night you were frivolous and playful. It was a warm night and we surfaced for a little air and took a stroll through the Parc Montsouris. We were talking in French. I was going to envoyer a letter to someone, but no, you corrected me, I poste<\/em> a letter, I do not l\u2019envoyer. \u201cOh,\u201d I laughed, blushing at the correction, but in my heart I was frightened. I held my breath and waited to be dismissed, sure that you had found me out<\/em>, and know now that I was an impersonator. You took my hand and began talking about fourteenth-century tapestries. My stomach collapsed. I mustn\u2019t make mistakes, or you\u2019ll find me out \u2026<\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost morning. We\u2019re walking up the Boulevard Raspail on our way home. I\u2019m listening attentively to a story about a girl on a motorcycle who came to Paris to marry you. I see a wholesome-looking girl, short or a bit plump the way you describe her, squiring you around Paris and the countryside on her motorcycle; I see a dazed noncommitted expression on your face as she suggests flying you home and marrying you. I imagine you adjusting your dark glasses and pursing your lips a bit, while a sly squint of a smile escapes and then a chuckle. She meanwhile being altogether captivated by the idea overrides your loose-jointed objections until the tickets are bought and it\u2019s Sunday morning: the day of your scheduled departure. Then you wake up in a huff of anxiety: you have books overdue at the library that must be returned tomorrow. No, no one else can return them, no, they can\u2019t be mailed. No, no, no. She must fly on and you will follow her after you\u2019ve returned the books to the library. I see a deep frown crease your brow as you tell her this, a furrowed look that makes her know you are fondest of the boy you were, eager, above all else, to keep him alive and well, and capable of forsaking anyone for him.<\/p>\n

It is a sobering moment. I want to tousle your hair and, in the same breath, disappear, seeing with lightning clarity that sincerity is useless against a man like you. And all I have to offer is sincerity \u2026 We\u2019ve reached that wonderful mossy wall of steps that take us up to the Rue des Artistes just as the sun begins its ascent. I, who know nothing about sunsets or sunrises, whose connection to nature is feeble and unlearned, stop and gape at the light touching those old crumbling walls. My hands reach out to follow the veiled light and I begin to cry. Some yearning quivers in me to go inside the light and find a watering place for all my fears; some yearning swollen and real to touch the spot where confusion is laid to rest and there is only what is what is what is without the mean design of our untruths. I want to turn to you and smile and kiss you softly on each cheek and say goodbye \u2026 But we\u2019re almost home, stalking the wall that leads to our doorway while the sun floats above the cobbled roofs.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

I\u2019m caught in a circle, inside a kiss that won\u2019t go away. Every day I detour by this house looking for the beginning of the circle. Every day I relive his kiss: dry and swollen and hard. I close my eyes \u2026 a dry kiss comes out of nowhere and touches my flat surprised surface. Then a little collapse goes through me like a knife. I close my eyes \u2026 I can revive it at will and the same feeling will pierce the wall. I can revive it anywhere. In the den watching Charlie Chan. At dinner while my father stares. In bed where I am afraid to shut my eyes. It never fails to come behind the wall and stun me. And it has put my heart on the mooning circuit. Margie Hays grins when she sees me walking by. She likes to boast that I\u2019m chasing her brother. I wish I could go in and see him. Maybe he\u2019s at the window watching. I lower my head, I smile. I come through the door composing my lies: \u201cI\u2019m sorry I\u2019m late. I was in the library until around five, then I went by Elizabeth Estok\u2019s to do my math with her, and we just finished. You want me to set the table?\u201d \u201cI\u2019m sorry I\u2019m late. Judy Guttman asked me to help her lay out the paper so we stayed at school until five thirty. They\u2019re going to put my article on the front page.\u201d \u201cNancy Nijeski fell on her way home from school and I walked her to her house because she was bleeding a lot.\u201d The ice has fallen and lies trickle off my tongue.<\/p>\n

I take cover behind a watchful veil, astonished at the width of my deceit, how it curves two-facedly in any direction struggling to avoid collision. My mother\u2019s gentle voice makes little waves at the table, a soft pitter-patter that numbs us; it is so frail and useless against my father\u2019s black and abiding anger. He slices across her twirping. Ramona and I look at each other. We can feel Mommy begin to splash about. Her eyes thicken. In a moment she will come unhinged and a dreadful knot will tie my stomach. I will try to stop her flailing about. Ramona will beg Daddy to leave her alone. Her rage is almost virginal, it is so clean and defensive, intent only on recouping its pride. It has no weight against the troubled waters into which my father sinks, his rage rising from a frightening place full of self-condemnation and neglect. There are no signposts between them. Mommy sends a black frying pan close to his head. He grabs her dress, intent on knocking her down. But here is my body in-between and there is Ramona at his sleeve. We scream for him to stop. He can never seem to stop. We are trapped inside his anger and it is sickly and mean in there and the taste weighs us down. It lingers so. It will be there in the morning when we awake. I will smell it first thing, a sickly after-taste coating our stomachs, and turning the house into a sealed corridor. It lingers, it lingers, it lingers so \u2026 When the dishes are done I\u2019ll go quickly to my room and revive my kiss \u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kathleen Collins (1942\u20131988) was an African American playwright, filmmaker, civil rights activist, film editor, and educator.<\/em>\u00a0Her film\u00a0<\/em>Losing Ground (1982) is one of the first features made by a Black woman in America. A never-before-released collection of Collins\u2019s short fiction, <\/em>Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?, was published in 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n

Collins’s story \u201cScapegoat Child<\/a>\u201d appeared in the Spring 2018 issue of the<\/em> Paris Review.\u00a0You can also read selected notes from Collins\u2019s diary on the Daily here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI discern everything in a Parisian way. Until the thought comes home that my hair is messy and I am too dowdily colored to look French. I am not even well-colored: just a layer of brown over a layer of yellow.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1689,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2258],"tags":[67827,71,33154],"class_list":["post-172864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction-2","tag-featured","tag-fiction","tag-kathleen-collins"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nfrom \u201cBlue Obstacles\u201d by Kathleen Collins<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"February 5, 2026 \u2013 \u201cI discern everything in a Parisian way. Until the thought comes home that my hair is messy and I am too dowdily colored to look French. 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