Chapter 12
Poppy Red
I wake up from a dreamless sleep and rub my eyes to find scattered brushes and tubes on the floor with the sketchbook right in the middle.
My vision wavers, and I know something is different, but I can’t put my finger on it. Sitting up, I rub the sleep from my eyes and look around my room. It takes a few seconds for it to sink in.
Red.
Splashes of red swarm around my room. My hair tie on the floor. The paintbrush with the dried red on its bristles. The books on my shelves with red covers. The red shirt peeking through the closet door I didn’t fully tuck in.
Everything else is still gray.
I press a hand to my mouth, a surprised sob falling out.
I can see red.
I stumble through the apartment, my eyes greedily taking in as much of the color as they can.
I rush to the vanity, where Mama’s rouge is, and press the tip to my fingers, staining them.
The decorative crystal pomegranates she brought from Syria for the living room twinkle at me.
The red threads in the carpet. The red patterns on the plates stacked in the glass shelves.
My heart thunders in my chest, and I look down at my arms to see the blood flowing through my veins.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“What is happening?” I whisper.
I think of calling Amal and telling her the news, but she won’t believe me.
Alexis would.
My excitement comes to a stop when I remember what happened yesterday. Our fight. That moment with Adrian.
I’m already running late, so I get dressed, trying not to get distracted by all the bursting red around me.
I make the subway on time, tapping my foot and staring out the window. Walls and people blur, but I see each strand of red clearly. It weaves among the gray. I catch a glimpse of something that makes my back straighten, but it’s gone as fast as it appeared.
The edge of a conch.
I shake my head and go back to staring without looking.
But then the subway stops at one station, and right there in front of me is the baby I drew yesterday painted on the wall behind a bench. It’s not the whole picture but a section, as if it’s zoomed in on the baby with the edges of the conch showing.
My heart hammers rather painfully, and I try to remember if I saw this yesterday and then subconsciously copied it in my sketchbook. But I’d have remembered something like this.
People mill in and out of the subway, most not sparing the baby a single glance while there are others staring and pointing at it.
The subway moves again, and I stare at it until it disappears.
Bits and pieces of the drawing appear. The rays of the sun. Just the seaweed painted overhead, stretching from one side of the subway car to the other like wriggling snakes.
I get off at my station, my heart still hurting from something I can’t name because what I’m imagining is the impossible. But I’m not ready for what’s waiting for me when I climb up the stairs.
Right there in front of my exit, painted across several buildings like they’re paper, is my drawing.
The sleeping baby in the conch held by her mother’s cupped hands and the tiny jellyfish swimming beside her.
And I know it’s mine because of the tear smudge at the edge of the conch, blurring it.