The Goddamn Ceiling
ONE: New Orleans. The 1950s. I didn’t know in my pre-teenage years about patriarchal systems and how Mother and many women like her colluded with them. Mother’s pride caged me in the dutiful-daughter role while I struggled against her misogynist attitudes. I could not see that by climbing a man-only ladder to clean a sooty ceiling and making a huge mess would become a metaphor for setbacks in achieving potential as an adult female.
TWO: A hungover daddy working on his day off was a dismal sight—wearing boxer shorts and a stained ribbed tank top, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips. He stretched up over the ladder with the paint roller and rolled a fresh coat of white on the ceiling and spattered his tanned skin and the black hair on his head and arms as sweat rolled down his face. I stood where I belonged—beneath him holding onto the ladder.
THREE: Mother badgered Daddy to paint the goddamned ceiling. She nagged him for two weeks until he bought the paint, brushes, paint roller and pan.
FOUR: When Daddy came home two weeks earlier and saw my mess, he turned crimson. The veins in his neck popped out. When Mother saw the mess, she shrieked. They both gave me a good tongue-lashing. I don’t remember if I felt guilty, or cried, or shrugged and walked away. I was used to that kind of scolding, but never before for cleaning.
FIVE: And now I would hear Mother’s words bang in my brain: What were you thinking you stupid girl? And Daddy’s voice: Why couldn’t you leave well enough alone? Now look what I have to do to make up for your blunder.
A YOUNG FEMALE’S INITIATIVE—START WITH A—A good idea AND A simple plan to execute it:
AT THE AGE of eleven, home alone, I decided I would clean the goddamn ceiling—the part where the exhaust from a gas wall heater had turned the ceiling black—a black spot about eighteen inches in diameter. The whole ceiling was dirty with soot and yellowed with age and nicotine stains, but the black spot had to go.
AFTER RETRIEVING a man-only ladder from the shed and setting it up under the black soot circle near the wall directly above the heater, I filled a bucket with soapy water, grabbed a rag, climbed the ladder until I could reach the sooty part with my upstretched arm.
AND THEN the soapy water from the rag dripped down my arms, soaked my shirt, dripped all over the vinyl floors. Reaching over my head and exerting enough force to clean in a circular motion cramped my neck and shoulders. But the soot came off.
AND THEN stepping down from the ladder, I looked up at my work. Staring at me was a glaring white spot—a ghost of the original white ceiling. Back up the ladder with my bucket of soapy water, I cleaned another two feet beyond the white spot hoping to reach a space where the white spot blended in with the rest of the ceiling. But I made the ceiling look worse—a much bigger white spot. The whole ceiling would need cleaning. A job too big for girls.
BRING ON THE B—
BEMOANING MOTHER—I never understood her language about women—her criticisms, complaints, her gossip. And she was mean. Got her meanness from her father’s side according to my grandma. Her Uncle Jim tried kissing me on the mouth when I was nine. I tattled, and Mother said, oh don’t mind him, he does that to all the girls. But despite her criticisms, complaints, gossip, and meanness, Mother was graced with style, beauty, and elegance, qualities I envied, but qualities she exploited to be seen as the good woman. Behind every good man is a good woman, Mother would say.
BEHIND is the word that rang in my ears.
Mother showed me how to put the man on a pedestal and stand BELOW him—at his feet—because that was just the way of things: look beautiful, smell nice, have your hair done once a week, handle the social life but let the man lead the way.
BEMOANING THE MAN—I called him Daddy. He never hit me, spanked me, slapped me around. But because he was a drunk, he was absent—unavailable. He was a very handsome drunk, though, whom I fantasized about—a daddy who could teach his daughter the ways of the world, the ways of love, the ways of making money and spending wisely. Most days he was hungover. He brooded whenever I asked him for help on a school project. He came through for me sometimes but never showed joy doing it.
BEMOANING MOTHER’S MESSAGE—In Mother’s worry days she would say, don’t be stupid like me—don’t marry a man who leads the way to the nearest bar.
BEMOANING THREE MESSAGES FROM DADDY—watching him clean up my mess: 1) Asserting initiative was wrong. 2) Thinking I could clean a ceiling at my age was stupid. 3) Being female made it wrong to climb any ladder that reached too high in life. Only men could climb that ladder. It was my job to look beautiful, smell nice, have my hair done once a week, handle the social life but let the man lead the way.
CONTINUE WITH C—
CONFUSED and COPING with the idea that so many women collude with Patriarchy, giving THE MAN permission to own them, their bodies, their possessions, and the goddamn ceiling.
WOW-Women on Writing Contest 1st Place Qtr 2 2025