so stand in the rain, stand your ground, stand up when it's all crashing down
Your name means rainbow, and when you're five years old and learn this for the first time it's about the best thing you've ever heard. Rainbow, in your mother's tongue, and you're all the colours in your da's world of grey. You've never been to the places they came from, but you grow up speaking three different languages. You put hands covered in flour in your mama's hair, your da picks you up and carries you (you outgrow it quickly, but he doesn't). You learn about the varying ideas of reality, and you don't talk about a lot of things, but that's just how things are done.
You grow up in London, with a Brixton accent a little muddled by the fact you're trilingual. You listen to the Clash and the Cars and sometimes you call your da 'Sarge' because it's what most everybody else calls him. He gets a bit odd when you salute him, so you don't do that any more, even if you still think it's funny. Not everybody agrees with you about what's funny and what isn't; they never have. Your mama tells you not to take the piss out of your poor hardworking da, but you're pretty sure that's exactly what she's doing when she says it, because he makes a face and tosses the tea-towel at her, complaining vocally about being trapped in a little house with little women.
You're almost as tall as he is, now, so you're pretty sure he was just being a prat. It's usually a safe bet.
You're sixteen going on seventeen going on twelve, and the house is too still and too quiet when you get home. It's too tidy is what it is, and if the lights weren't on you'd think nobody was home. You put your books down, you take your shoes off and you hang your coat up. You tuck your glasses in their little case and pad in sock feet into the living room; your da is there, but everything is off and you don't say anything, you just wait for him to tell you why.
He says he's retired. Resigned. One of those words; you're only half listening to what he says, more the way he says it. You know there's more, but Keels speak in half-everythings, only as much truth as they need for their purposes. You know, but you're not going to say anything until you know what you're answering, so you just stand there in the doorway and keep waiting. He doesn't look at you; you don't think he's looking at anything. He says he's looking for somewhere to take you, says he's put the house on the market.
He doesn't say she's dead. In the end, he doesn't need to.
The thing about rainbows is that you can only see them when it's raining. You cry, and he doesn't.