I do remember getting up for a glass of water one muggy night and noticing the lights were on downstairs. When I crept into the kitchen, she was surging back and forth across the room, chainsmoking, her clay-covered smock billowing behind her.
“Mum?” I said.
She jumped, turning around with her hand pressed to her chest. “Jesus, honey.” She puffed out smoke, then air, sounding annoyed. “Don’t creep up. You frightened the life out of me.”
“Sorry.” I scuttled to the sink and started running the tap. “What are you doing up?”
“I’m not, really.” She shook her head, stubbing out her cigarette. The ashtray on the table was full, a medicine bottle beside it. When she noticed me noticing this, and swept it into her pocket, out of sight, relief flowed through me. “I got back from checking on the kilns, and I was still a little revved up. I’m going to bed soon.”
“Okay.” I stood there uncertainly, holding my water. “So…’night.”
I crept upstairs to the Chaos Cave, listening out. Minutes later, I heard the front door opening and closing. She was heading back to the studio. It was after midnight.
I turn back to the article, noticing a new, unfamiliar word.
Synesthesia.
My mouth moves, trying out the sound. Then I pick up my phone and google it.
OED. Definition of synesthesia in English:
synesthesia
NOUN
psychology A sensory perceptual phenomenon. An impression of one sense relating to another; e.g., the color of music.
Letters have colors. The number seven might smell of chocolate, while three has a hibiscus scent. Green can make you hear music; pink can taste like nectarines.
Or sometimes, maybe, colors could vanish…?
Is that it? Mum had synesthesia. Do I?
“Probably.”
I jump. Mum is standing by the window, looking out at the waning light. This is the first time I’ve imagined her wearing sinkhole clothes: baggy jeans and a sloppy sweater, cobwebbed with holes and hanging off her bird body. When she turns around, I see she’s lost weight. Her collarbone sticks out. She tucks greasy hair behind her ear, revealing shadowed eyes, and smiles in a funereal kind of way.
“I am so fucking tired, Min,” she says, slumping on the bed, landing on top of the duvet and making a muffled moan into her hands. Every hair on my body stands to attention.
“Mum? Mummy?”
She sighs, emerging from her hands and giving the mattress a desultory pat. I crawl into the space next to her, upset at how cold her skin is.
She’s translucent, less vivid than the other times I’ve seen her. Does this mean I’m forgetting her? I don’t want to. I want to hold on tight. Because how am I supposed to get the colors back without her, know if I’m crazy without her? She would know what to do. The same way she taught me everything about clay, everything about alchemy.
“Mum … I need your help with something.”
“Did you know There’s No Blue in the Bible?” she answers, cryptically.
Her second work after her comeback six years ago, shown in London’s Tate Modern Turbine Hall. Vast, rounded slabs of every blue, interspersed with mirrors, filled the cavernous warehouse space. Walking through it felt like tiptoeing through the sky.
“Yeah. I remember.” I bite my lip. “I’ve been thinking. I might want to make something different. Something … not clay.”
She smiles in a broken way that sends my heart careering round my body, and says, “Wouldn’t we all?”
Goose bumps run up and down my arms. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing.” Mum sighs, wiping a hand across her face. Her voice is ultrafaint, like she’s transmitting these thoughts from space. “There isn’t any blue in the Bible.”
“Mum!” I’m close to tears. “Stop being enigmatic and tell me.”
“I am telling you, Minnie. You’re not listening.” She rolls over to face me, her hand reaching out and hovering over my huge hair but not quite touching me. She gives me a tiny smile. “There’s my orange girl. Did you know zebras can’t see orange?”
“No.” Frustration nags at me. “Tell me about The White Album.”
She shakes her head. “You know the answer.”
“But I don’t. Mum … I lost all my colors.”
“Ah, Min. There are more colors in the world than you’ll ever know about.”
The door flies open and Mum fades from view.
I suppress nausea as Emmy-Kate barges in, resplendent in a tiny dress and Mum’s shoes. When she sees me, her eyes bug out a little, but she doesn’t seem excessively shocked. I get the impression this isn’t her first time sneaking in here.
“Who were you talking to?” she asks, wrinkling her perfect nose.
“Myself,” I tell her. Which is close to the truth. I don’t believe in ghosts. It’s not Mum I’m talking to but her memories.
“Weird,” says Emmy-Kate. “Are you helping Niko tidy up Mum’s room?”
“No. Go away—you’re breaking the pact.”
“So are you,” she points out.
I throw a pillow at her.
She dodges it and starts slinking slowly around, peeping at me as she opens the wardrobe with an eerie creak, trails her fingers through the dresses there. Fiddles with the scarves draped over the bed’s footboard. Picks up and puts down books, flits her eyes beneath the bed, and generally agitates me.
Without a care, she lifts up the evening dress from the chair and holds it against herself, examining her reflection. My hands make fists, but it’s too late. The dress is ruined. I think about telling Emmy-Kate Mum is maybe dead, watching her face fall.
Instead, I take out my phone and type dementedly, writing help I can’t see any colors and I think I might be going mad into Google and hitting GO.
“Can I have these?” Emmy-Kate holds up a pair of hammered-silver earrings. They dangle from her fingers, catching the light and flashing like fish in a fast-moving stream.
“Yeah, I suppose.”
She smiles, hooking the earrings through her lobes and tossing back her mane of silken hair—a movement so identical to the one Mum would do before setting out for some party or gallery opening or awards ceremony, it smashes me into ten thousand smithereens. I look down.
My phone is showing the results of that ridiculous search. Link after link telling me to seek help, call the Samaritans or NHS Direct, talk to my GP—all things I have no intention of doing. Like Ms. Goldenblatt telling me to see the school counselor. And say what? Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again …
Because if I am going crazy, like her—what then?
A few searches down, a link catches my eye:
EnChroma|Color for the Color Blind
Enchroma.com
“EnChroma glasses open up a world of color for people with color blindness.”
It turns out that “seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses” isn’t only a metaphor. It’s a pair of hi-tech color-correction sunglasses all the way from America. A $430 miracle. I pounce on the link, adding a pair of sunglasses to the online basket at random.
“Who are you texting?” Emmy-Kate cocks her head at me. “Ash?”
“None of your business,” I reply automatically.
“Min-nie, who are you—”
“Emmy-Kate, go away, will you? Climb out of your window. God.”
She rushes from the room, slamming the door behind her with a gust of angry wind that wafts Mum’s silk dressing gown and knocks her handbag from its hook.
She left it behind. Her phone and wallet were inside, but she took her studio key with her to Beachy Head. As though she planned to come back and open the kiln.
The police have touched and cataloged everything inside, from the broken lipstick stub to her old receipts, so it doesn’t matter that I’m lifting it from the floor, finding her wallet, prizing out her credit card. This is something that doesn’t need to be preserved in resin.
W
ith trembling fingers, I type the credit card numbers into the box on enchroma.com.
A button flashes up: TO COMPLETE YOUR PURCHASE, CLICK “BUY NOW”!
I click, squashing the voice in my head that sounds like Emmy-Kate saying, Minnie, what are you dooooiiiiiing. Then I cover my tracks, restoring the room the way I found it. Putting the press clippings back on the shelves, refluffing the duvet, trying to rearrange the folds in the dress.
Emmy-Kate has spilled face powder on the dressing table. I smear it up with my sleeve, not wanting anything to inspire Niko to start her cleanathon. She’ll strip the bed, remove the wineglass, delete all evidence that Mum lived and breathed and slept and dreamed in this room. She’ll put away the books from the nightstand, and we’ll never know what Mum was researching.
I double back and look at the stack. The top one is a coffee-table book of Georgia O’Keeffe, one of my favorite painters; then there’s a biography of Yves Klein—this cool French dude famous for inventing a new shade of blue. Everything comes back to color.
I take the books to my bedroom, then go downstairs and join my sisters for another sorrowful frozen dinner.
CHAPTER 13
The Color of Newsprint
There’s a lilting breeze as I dawdle home from school on Friday, lifting litter in soft circles around my ankles, wafting London smells through the constant hum of traffic. Exhaust fumes and kebabs and the faint rot from overflowing garbage bins. I think about The White Album as I walk, letting my feet navigate these streets by memory.
I know this neighborhood by heart. The overground trains that rattle across my pillow as I fall asleep; my favorite florist next to the fairy-tale children’s bookshop on Full Moon Lane. Neon-lit fried chicken shops, the independent cinema, bus stops and Meadow Park and the pool and towering oak trees. But I don’t think I know who I am anymore.
With one step into the empty sky, Mum has made me a stranger to myself.
When I turn the corner onto my road, I immediately see Ash a few yards ahead. I’d forgotten I invited him over and anyway, he’s earlier than I would have expected. It gives me a brief flash of annoyance.
With headphones on, he’s oblivious to my footsteps behind him: He struts along, a supersized silhouette in his puffer coat, guitar strapped to his back. We’re so close I could call out his name or toss a paper airplane past his shoulder or reach out my hand to touch his shoulder.
For some reason, I don’t do any of those things. And the longer I wait to catch up and say hello, the more difficult it becomes. So I end up playing Red Light, Green Light, creeping behind him all the way to my house. I linger at the gate, next to a heap of whipped-cream roses, as he rings the doorbell. Through the transom window, I see the lights flashing.
Ash turns slightly, sliding his guitar from its straps, and catches sight of me standing there. Time syrups to a stop. All the recent awkwardness crash-lands on the path between us: Saturday’s kiss. Me hiding under the bed. Creeping up behind him.
“Min?” Ash smiles, befuddled, clearly trying to work out how I’ve appeared from thin air. He pushes back his headphones, runs a hand through his hair.
“Um, boo?” I say. “Surprise.”
The way things used to be between us: Ash would have gone supernova with amusement. He would have lifted me into a bear hug and spun me around and around like a merry-go-round.
Now: He chews on his lip, watching me carefully. He leans his guitar against the wall, then jumps down from the porch, smiling and coming to stand cautiously in front of me—it reminds me of the way we approach Salvador Dalí when he needs to go to the vet.
“How long have you been standing there?” he asks.
“I turned the corner, and there you were,” I say.
Ash’s eyes roam my face, the same way he reads sheet music. After a moment, he reaches out and tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear, smiling. I tilt my face up, like a flower toward the sun. It might be easier to kiss than to explain; and there’s only so far we can go on the doorstep.
We kiss politely, mouths closed. Soft against mine, Ash’s lips are dry and ever-so-slightly chapped; as familiar to me as Poets Corner. He’s lovely, and lemony … but when I think of last weekend’s hot-blooded-rolling-around-on-the-rug-wild-boner-out-of-control-super-kiss, I want to die.
Immediately want to unthink that thought.
I pull away with a slurping-suckerfish-toilet-plunger sound that makes Ash chuckle. He scratches the back of his neck, dimpling with confused amusement. Behind him, the front door is wiiiiiide open. And Niko is standing on the porch, watching us.
Guilt wraps around me like ivy. I instantly start reliving Bonfire Night last year.
The night was freezing, the air icy-clear. A snap-crackle-and-pop firework soundtrack played as we Sloes left the house, the sky covered in faraway sparks. Mum rapped on the Professor’s door as we went by, hollering through the mail slot for him to come out and join us. When he emerged, a vision in tweed and an incongruous pom-pom-topped hat, Ash was with him.
By then, we’d known Ash a year, each of us nursing a separate, distinct crush. Emmy-Kate had a kind of hero worship; me, I straightforward plain liked him. But he and Niko, both university students, shared this inexplicable understanding, even though Ash’s attempts at signing were slow and clunky. As he stepped out of the Professor’s house, Ash went through his handclap routine with Emmy-Kate, bestowed me with a dazzling smile, then spelled out, intently, “H-E-L-L-O, N-O-K-I.” She flushed, happily.
The six of us traipsed up Meadow Park’s hill. It reminded me of when we were little, when Mum would lead us hand in hand like the tail of a kite. Only tonight, she was walking with the Professor, and Emmy-Kate was charging ahead, bobbing up and down through the crowd. She was wearing a sheepskin-lined aviator hat that made her look like Amelia Earhart. Every now and then I lost sight of her, before she’d reappear, earflaps bouncing.
Niko touched her hand to Ash’s arm, commanding him to walk with her. She angled herself slightly away from me, keeping her distance from me and Em because she was a SCAAAAAD student now. That was how she signed it: stretching the word in her fingers like toffee. It made me want to glue her hands together. Since enrolling at SCAD she homesigned less and used BSL more.
Through the sparkling dark, I watched them tentatively talking: signing slowly, lipreading, gestures, miscommunications and laughter. A language of their own, a little like the Sloe sisters’. Ash was clearly trying to tell her something about music; Niko formed chords in the air and he nodded.
When we reached the bonfire, the Professor spotted a group of friends, and Mum took Emmy-Kate to buy cotton candy. I produced a pack of sparklers from my pocket as Ash asked, “How’s it going, Min?” The first time he’d spoken to me all night.
“I’ve never seen you without your guitar,” I said, lighting a sparkler.
He laughed and started air-guitaring, like a total idiot. “This better?”
My heart did this overflowing Coca-Cola fizz thing, the sparkler beginning to crackle. I waved it as I signed, catching Niko up on the conversation and adding, “Incredible, was that ‘Yellow Submarine’?”
Niko plucked the sparkler from my hand, dropping it in a puddle and stomping it with her boot. “They’re not allowed, Min,” she signed-said, rolling her eyes conspiratorially at Ash.
I stared at the ground, reduced to a toddler tantrum next to willowy-tall Niko. Her auburn hair was piled into a ballerina bun, and the wide-open eyes she was batting were flicked with eyeliner. And Emmy-Kate, who was returning with a mound of cotton candy, was, well, Emmy-Kate.
When the first firework surprised us with a whizbang, the crowd surged forward, sending me stumbling sideways into Ash. His gloved hand wrapped around my wrist as he helped me upright, mouthing All right? and flashing me a smile as bright as the fireworks.
Another rocket exploded in a shower of dots, smearing smoke across the sky. Ash tilted his head down, saying, “Min, all right?” over the noise, his brea
th fogging the cold air.
His hand was still on my wrist. I stood on tiptoes to reply, and it made our faces not so very far apart. It gave me that Coca-Cola sensation again, and I thought of Niko and SCAAAAAD and the sparkler, and I said “Yeah” before quickly daring myself to kiss him.
A tiny experimental peck.
When I stepped back, Ash looked dazed and cross-eyed—as if he’d been bonked on the head with a frying pan—before breaking into his most dazzling grin. Over his shoulder, I saw Niko, her face painted with green light from the fireworks. Shock splashed across her face, the perfect eyeliner trickling down her cheeks.
Now, as Niko turns away from us, into the house, I catch a glimpse of the same expression on her face. And even though we’re only a few feet apart, we might as well be on different continents. The animosity between us dates way back, to before the disappearance. But without Mum, I don’t know how to find my way back to my sister. Motherless-me is lost without a map.
Rust
(An Ongoing List of Every Color I Have Lost)
Iron oxide. Pinwheel fireworks. The urban foxes who strut through Poets Corner after dark, scavenging from garbage bins and not giving a hoot who sees them. Niko’s glossy hair the night I kissed Ash right in front of her.
CHAPTER 14
The Color of Marble
The next morning, Saturday, Felix Waters comes slouching up the front path.
One minute I’m staring mindlessly out of the landing window, watching the crisp shadows turn the street into one of Niko’s paper-cutout scenes. The next I’m thinking, Hmm, that tall boy pushing open our gate looks familiar. Then I go flying down the stairs.
I hop from foot to foot in the hallway, Rumpelstiltskin-style, then wrench open the front door before Felix can ring the bell. He’s slumped against the porch, his hair a mass of bedhead. No beanie today, I note, though the jeans are as paint-covered as ever.
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