Chapter 5
Murky Yellow
When I told Mama about the colors—that I could see them come alive—she kissed my forehead and said, “That’s your blessing, albi.”
It was before the cancer festered in her lungs.
I think I knew something was there, before we went to the doctor.
Mama’s colors were iridescent. They shimmered and flowed, deep blue-green like the sea lived inside her.
I could see that. But when the cancer woke up in her lungs, the colors dimmed.
They flared for a while like they were fighting against the intrusion, but the enemy was too strong.
I was eight, and I didn’t understand what I was seeing.
I remember then Mama set up her easel in the tiny living room and gave me her paintbrush.
“Paint,” she said, sitting cross-legged on the floor with a wide smile. I remember how soft her hair looked, the brown a rich color bursting with life.
I don’t remember exactly what I painted, but I remember the joy on Mama’s face. The pride that bloomed in my heart, knowing she loved it.
Amal’s knack for art was very different from mine.
She was structure where I was chaos. She questioned her blessing and, ultimately, didn’t believe in it.
She never realized her analytical mind, her eye for precision, was her blessing.
I think it’s because she was expecting it to be huge, like the way Mama could breathe underwater. Something more.
Amal didn’t see what I saw in her. How her colors were deep, something I’d never seen before or ever after. She was a golden-yellow star, the yellow deepening to a fiery red. Her heart felt too much, but she didn’t share all it held.
Baba’s colors were an evergreen forest. The different shades of green each tree has. He’d come alive when he was with us. I could see the way his colors would brighten when he walked into the apartment, throwing his jacket onto the ground so I could run and hug him.
The day I painted on Mama’s easel, she showed it to Baba and Amal at dinner.
Baba raised his spoon. “I bid twenty thousand dollars.”
I giggled. “Baba!”
He waved his hand like he was an art critic at the Louvre. “This painting is my soul. I must have it.” He pointed a finger at Amal. “Don’t think you’ll outbid me.”
Amal was right in the middle of her sulky teenage years at fifteen, so when she cracked a small smile, the whole table cheered.
“Going once!” Mama announced, shaking the painting. “Going twice!”
Baba raised his eyebrows at Amal, who rolled her eyes.
“Fine. One million dollars,” she said.
Baba’s mouth fell open, and he stood suddenly, nearly knocking his plate. “How dare you! One hundred trillion dollars!”
“Sold!” Mama cried.
I laughed, my cheeks warm from being the center of attention.
Mama handed it to Baba, who raised it over his head, cheering.
I don’t remember the painting. But I remember the colors clearly.
The happiness made the apartment swim in spun-gold threads. The pure joy that only comes from moments like these.
Those are the moments I hold on to when I go to Braxton.
The world may be gray for me, but in Braxton even that gray is dulled.
The people are nearly translucent when I look at them.
Fear curdles in my heart when I think of the whole world becoming translucent.
That one day I’ll wake up, and I won’t be able to see anyone.
The gray turning into an infinite white blank of nothing.
Stares follow me throughout the school, and I want nothing more than to fast-forward to when they stop. I know they will. It’ll just take time. But Alexis’s friends are bothered.
“It’s just you’re new and you’re not wearing the right uniform,” Alexis tells me Thursday morning, brow furrowed as she looks around the classroom while we wait on the teacher.
“Maybe it’s better if you wear a cap?” Jenny asks. “It would still hide your hair, right? Less attention that way.”
I press my hands over my lap, nails digging into my knees. They’ve somewhat forgiven me for what happened on Monday, but I can see the tension around their eyes and mouths. I want them to like me. It’s safer that way. The fox won’t hunt within the pack.
“I need to cover my neck as well.” I’m keenly aware of the heaviness of my hijab. It’s the same one I’ve been wearing all week but I tried styling it differently, with the long end wrapped around my neck twice.
“Okay,” she says slowly, and exchanges glances with Hayley they think I can’t see. Or understand.
Why is everything with her a no?
I don’t know. She’s weird.
They get tired of me and have their own conversation, and it’s obvious they’re pretending I’m not sitting next to them.
I take as many of my own notes as possible. I’m thinking of organizing them neatly and sending them Jamie’s way as a thank-you. He might have missed a thing or two.
I shake my head, forcing myself to focus.
When class ends, I follow Alexis and her friends, feeling like I’m walking outside my skin. Any minute now they’re going to demand I leave them alone. And Alexis wouldn’t be able to say anything when it’s three to one.
“Alexis!” a voice calls, and we stop, glancing back.
It’s like we’re in a high school movie because Alexis turns around in slow motion, an excited smile on her lips when she sees the floppy-haired boy from lunch on Monday.
“Mason!” she breathes out, and suddenly, she’s someone I don’t know. She tucks her hair behind her ear, batting her eyelashes up at Mason, who takes it all in like it’s the highlight of his day.
Up close, I admit they look cute together, and another pang rattles in my chest, wishing she didn’t see me as too broken to share this with.
It doesn’t matter, I tell myself. She doesn’t owe you every single moment in her life.
“Any lunch plans?” His hands are in his pockets as he rocks back and forth on his heels. “I know of this wonderful place in this building.”
She taps her forehead, frowning. “I’ve heard of it. Is it the dining hall?”
“Heard we’re having some sort of pot roast. Would you join me?”
She presses her lips together, the dimple in her left cheek deepening, a thing she does when she’s incredibly ecstatic.
“I’d like that,” she says in a measured voice, and I want to applaud her for sounding collected when I can tell she wants to scream. “Can my friends join us?”
He glances at us, confused, like he didn’t see us standing there before.
“S-sure,” he says, eyes sweeping over and staying a bit too long on me. “I don’t think we’ve met before,” he says with a forced ease. “You’re the new girl? The jihadist girl?”
“Mason!” Alexis gasps, hitting him on the shoulder. “That’s not her name.”
There’s cement in my mouth, so I let Alexis do the talking for me. Beside me, one of the girls snorts a laugh before disguising it as a cough.
“What?” Mason says, not looking abashed in the least. He just grins a cheeky grin and winks at the other girls. “It is, though.”
Alexis glances at me quickly. “It’s Ji—Jihad,” she says, her voice wavering for a fraction.
The cement has sealed my mouth shut and is now trickling down my arms and legs.
“Sorry,” he says to me, not sounding the least bit sorry.
I manage to nod.
Alexis’s shoulders relax, and she grins back at him. The second bell rings. “See you at lunch?”
“I’ll be the one with this face.” He gestures at his mouth, and she laughs, but before she can leave, he catches her hand, tugs her toward him before planting a kiss on her cheek. Then he hurries away, and as soon as he’s gone, the girls burst into squeals, rushing toward Alexis.
“Oh my God!” Hayley shrieks.
“Did that just happen?” Alexis whisper-yells, a hand over her mouth.
“Yes! We all saw it!” Nicole shakes Alexis’s shoulders, jumping up and down.
I step back into shadows, the cement unbreaking and unrelenting.
No one brings up what Mason said.
I shove what Mason said out of my mind, getting to my next class. World history with Alexis and Hayley. I walk beside them quietly while they go on about Mason kissing Alexis’s cheek.
When we walk in, I spot Jamie sitting in the corner, working away on his laptop.
“Ji, right here,” Alexis says, patting an empty seat beside her.
“Thank you. Just one second.” I place my bag on my chair and make my way to Jamie.
“What’s up?” He smiles as I approach.
I fidget with my fingers and take a deep breath. “Thank you for sending the notes last night. Really saved me. I didn’t catch most of that.”
His smile becomes a grin. “You’re getting the cream of the crop when it comes to the notes.”
My lips twitch involuntarily. “Oh, am I?”
“Very much, yes. I’m organized, as you saw from the color-coded sections, and I add in extra information I find online to expand on certain topics that were vaguely discussed in class.” He waves a hand. “Cream of the crop.”
I smile. When I saw the different gray gradient of the sections, I thought they must be different colors, but I wasn’t sure. “I appreciate it.”
He nods. “Wasn’t any trouble.”
The warmth from his kindness spreads hesitantly from my chest, like it doesn’t know how to crawl through my bones and blood vessels.
I go back to my seat, only to see Alexis and Hayley staring at me.
“Um, what just happened?” Alexis asks.
I shrug. “He sent me notes, and I thanked him.”
“He has your phone number and he emails you?” Hayley says. “God, don’t tell Nicole. She’ll kill you.”
I frown. “He’s just helping me.”
Hayley ignores me, going back to her phone, but Alexis leans her head against my shoulder for a second, and sparks of happiness burst inside me.
When class starts, I look up at the board to see we’re discussing global human rights, particularly women’s rights as human rights in the twentieth and twenty-first century.