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Pink and Blue

Written by Charline Ochang | Edited by Gloria Ampadu-Darko

“Pink & Blue” was inspired merely by Charline’s own quirky dreams, and her unusually quirky father. Her father was a big part of her creative journey, and she often accredits her dreams with inspiration for new stories.

As a child, I dreamed in rainbows. I created worlds where the skies were Pepto Bismol pink and the grass was a cerulean blue. Worlds in which colorful monsters threatened my innocence, but my father always came to save the day. A tall, round man with a deep, resonant voice, but a contrastingly high-pitched laugh, bellowing from the top of the water tower to fend off any threat in my surroundings. The top of the water tower held the answers. Every warm night of my childhood, I sat on my back porch. I leaned on the screen door, against my father’s wishes, gazing a quarter mile in the distance at a red and white checkerboarded tower with a barricaded ladder running up the side. I tried to count the rungs of the ladder but I always forgot what number came after 12.

When my father would catch me staring, he’d say something along the lines of, “What’s up with you?” I’d reply with a strangely cryptic question regarding the top of the water tower. A question that could only be defeated with:

“Well, I guess we’ll have to climb to the top and find out.”

I asked every night if we’d climb the tower as the sun climbed the sky the next morning, and the prankster always said yes. But we had yet to do so.

Were we ever going to make it to the top? Or even start the climb? I didn’t know. If I weren’t so young, I’d have given up asking before the snow piled up in my spot by the screen door. But I knew that the answers to my innocent questions, and the key to my dreams were stored up there. As if there was a superhero on top that heard me rambling at the bottom, preparing to lead me up there one day. When I laid my head down to sleep, the skies faded into pink and the sun shone on a world covered in blue grass, but the water tower stayed the same. Colorful monsters threatened my innocence but it didn’t matter; all my answers were at the top of the tower, and my father was taking me to climb it in the morning.

Charline Ochang (she/they) is a second year Film/TV and Philosophy double major at BU, and this is her first semester writing for Charcoal. She grew up in New York, raised by her Zambian mother and Kenyan father. Charline’s greatest passion is storytelling; she is a writer and filmmaker with aspirations to own her own film and television production company, producing independent films and television series. When she isn’t writing or partying with friends, Charline loves to binge movies by her favorite directors and read books recommended by her younger sister.