The Colour Black

by Maia Walczak

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘how do you feel after your first wild cold water swim?’

  I thought for a few seconds, grinning into the air.

  ‘Alive,’ I said, ‘very very fucking alive.’

  *

  That night, as we lay wrapped around each other in the back of the van, I felt so close to him. I wondered if now was a good time to tell him, because my mind wouldn’t rest until I did.

  *

  Silvia: 2:30am, Sunday 1 July 2007

  Oh wow. I’m buzzing. This night has definitely been a turning point. We just had a house party and I am one hundred per cent drunk. And high. That’s right. Silvia did alcohol and drugs for the first time tonight! I danced so much and hung out with so many cool people and no one thought I was weird! It was amazing!

  Oh god, but I’m so drunk…

  Donny: 2:45am, Sunday 1 July 2007

  Mom and Dad are away this weekend and so, of course, I organised a party. It was definitely better than Jared Hartley’s party two weeks ago, and he’s the high school jock, so I’m feeling pretty proud of myself. I’m also feeling pretty drunk.

  Most people have gone home, but some are sleeping downstairs in the lounge, some in mine and Silvia’s rooms. We’ve managed to keep Mom and Dad’s room out of bounds. Silvia’s been pretty cool about the whole party thing, I thought she’d protest but she didn’t. I think she actually had fun.

  I say goodnight to the boys downstairs. They’re all shitfaced and already half asleep. Josh says hey man, gnarly party, and immediately starts snoring. I climb up the stairs with a bottle of beer. Mine and Silvia’s rooms are full and there’s even some kid sleeping in the hallway. The place is totally trashed, but we’ve got the whole of tomorrow to clear up. I should be taking photos of the state of the house now as proof of how rad the party was. I go to Mom and Dad’s room and Silvia’s already lying on the bed, watching TV and… smoking a joint! No way! Where’d she get that from?

  The room is dark except for the light from the TV. I climb onto the bed, get comfortable and Silvia hands me the joint. I grin. She’s both drunk and high and she’s laughing. She looks pretty hot in the dark. Who am I kidding. She is hot.

  I barely get to smoke any of the joint. We’re kissing pretty much immediately. Silvia’s clearly never kissed anyone before but she’s actually not so bad at it. I wonder if the same goes for the sex.

  Despite being shitfaced drunk I manage to get it up. Today is a success day and I feel pretty good about myself. The sex is all right, she’s not an expert but then neither am I – I’ve only ever slept with two other girls before, and only the one time with each… and that was over a year ago…

  Donny: Thursday 6 August 2009

  I’m standing in the queue at Carla’s Café ready to order, when Silvia walks through the entrance. There’s no way of avoiding her, she’ll look up and see me any second now.

  She’s seen me. Oh my god, Donny, she says. We haven’t seen each other for almost a year. I think we were both hoping we’d never see each other again. I’ve pretty much avoided every reunion Mom and Dad have had with her since she moved out.

  The stuff we did behind Mom and Dad’s back was pretty weird, but I think it’s high time she got over it. We were never actual brother and sister so it’s not as creepy as she made it out to be.

  How are you? I tell her I’m okay, and soon we’re sitting at the same table and having coffee together. She tells me about her art and I tell her about how I’m training to be a police officer. I’m surprised at how good her English has become. I ask her if I can see any of her art and she tells me she doesn’t have any of her work on her to show me now, but she doesn’t live too far from here if I want to come see. I say okay.

  Her apartment is amazing. It’s full of flowers and books. I wonder what books she’s been reading, how smart she is and if I should be worried. She tells me she does loads of abstract stuff and still life. Flower paintings are currently her thing, she says. She’s obsessed. There are thousands of different flowers everywhere. Her art is pretty good. All her paintings and drawings are in black and white and I suddenly remember that of course she can’t see colour.

  I ask her if she’s ever painted nudes before, she says no, but she smirks when she says it. I ask her if she wants to. She shrugs. I ask her if she wants to try now and she says Donny, shut up! but she’s definitely still smirking.

  Soon enough I’m naked and she is actually drawing me. This is great, I’m actually going to do it with Silvia again, I never saw this coming!

  It gets cold when you’re naked and have to sit still. I ask her if she’s finished. She says almost and I say hurry up. When she is finished though, she has a huge smile on her face. Donny, she says, I fucking love drawing nudes! Thank you! She tells me that from now on she only wants to ever draw naked bodies. It’s like flowers but way, way better, she says. She’s found herself a new obsession.

  We’re both laughing. The drawing is pretty good. But I’m still naked and now I’m horny. I press myself against her from behind and start kissing her neck. She jumps away. Donny! She says, and she looks horrified. What? I say. No, she says, no, no, no. And she’s shaking her head. What the fuck Silvia? I’ve just sat naked for you for almost an hour in the cold. You fucking owe me! She looks even more horrified now and I realise what I just said probably sounded pretty bad, but I think to myself we grew up together, I’m allowed to talk to her like that. She’s practically my sister!

  We get into a fight. We’re shouting at each other and swear words are flying around while I’m dressing myself. I’m so fucking angry. I haven’t been this angry in ages. You fucking slut, I say, you’re just a cheap fucking whore, with dumbass parents who got themselves killed because they were loud mouth hippies. Fuck you and fuck them!

  Oh fuck. Oh shit.

  She’s gone silent. What did you say? she says. First quietly and then louder. What did you say? What the fuck did you just say? I sigh. What have I done? I’ve really gone and said it, haven’t I? I’ve really just gone and done it. And I repeat myself in a more diplomatic way.

  She refuses to let me leave. She’s gone psycho and she’s actually holding a knife and crying and I can’t tell whether she’s threatening me with the knife or threatening to hurt herself. But she says she wants every last detail. She wants to know what I know.

  I tell her the basics. She asks me loads of questions. I knew it. I knew it, she keeps repeating.

  She asks me about the money she gets each month from Mom and Dad. Where does it come from? she asks. How am I supposed to know?! I don’t fucking know, I say, because I really don’t. She’s yelling now and I’m hoping to fuck no one else can hear her. Why didn’t they kill me? Why didn’t they fucking kill me?! I tell her I have no idea. She doesn’t believe me. Why didn’t they just pull the trigger? It would have been so easy. So much easier than all this, she says, gesturing at the apartment. It had never even occurred to me that she might have been there when her parents were killed. This is more fucked up than I ever knew. I just know who her parents were and why they were gotten rid of. I overheard Mom and Dad talking about it once. Now I wish I never had.

  I can’t believe I let all this slip after all those years. I can’t fucking believe it. How am I going to cover my back? I need to tell her it’s dangerous. I need to scare her into silence. I tell her she can’t ever tell anyone any of this. I tell her that if anyone finds out that’ll be the end of her. I don’t mince my words. And before I leave I tell her not to contact me ever again.

  Silvia: Thursday 6 August 2009

  I lie on the kitchen floor amongst the debris. Broken glass, plates, cups… I stare up at the fuzz of ceiling and I imagine cockroaches crawling over me. I am death. My right hand pulsates as warm blood oozes out onto the floor. I didn’t want to hurt myself. Silly Silvia. I should have been more careful in my rage. But now that I lie here with the dark flooding the room, I imagine all my blood slowly seeping out of me overnight, and the thought do
esn’t seem so bad. It seduces me.

  Today I have learned three very different things. The truth about why my parents died. What I love to draw most. And that I must now learn to draw with my left hand. Perhaps I won’t wake tomorrow. I laugh my way to oblivion.

  Claustrophobia

  The dreams are more regular now. Fuelled by the fears that come with this journey. Night after night I see the same scene. My mother being killed before me. I hear the two gunshots so vividly, exactly as they sounded the night it happened. They were so real, so audible in my dream, as if no amount of time could fade out the memory. They were just as real now as they had been those seventeen years ago. Bang. The first shot. My mother to my right, our bodies brush against each other as we sit up in alarm. Footsteps to the door, lights on, two men, bang, the second shot. I feel the bed jolt as her body falls back and her head hits the pillow. I look at her, blood seeping out of her chest. The gun is pointing at me. Will he shoot? This is the moment I wake up, bolt upright. I’m breathing heavily and quickly. It’s dark all around. I’m so scared. Jack has reached over to me and is holding me. I’m crying. He’s telling me it’s okay. He’s holding me close and he’s telling me it’s okay.

  Everything’s okay. It was all just a dream.

  *

  It was still dark outside when Jack woke me, but we had a long day’s drive ahead of us and we needed to get going. Our time at the Crater Lake National Park had been incredible. I couldn’t fathom how it was possible that I was finally letting myself go like that with someone… with a man. We drove for around fourteen hours that day, with barely any stops. Jack didn’t talk much, it seemed as though he had some things on his mind, secrets of his own.

  Jack had been, understandably, pretty annoyed that I hadn’t told him about Donny from the start. He said it changed a lot, a fucking great deal in fact.

  My memories of what I did with Donny were filled with confusion, disgust, shame and regret. It hadn’t been easy to talk about.

  Yes, we drove in silence that day.

  A couple of hours before we reached the border, Jack took a turn off the highway, followed a few roads and we came to a track in the middle of some secluded fields surrounded by forests.

  ‘Right,’ he said, as he stopped the van, ‘we need to hide you.’

  ‘Hide me?’

  He climbed out of the van and went to the back. I followed. He opened the boot, told me to wait a minute and he climbed into the back and started rummaging through boxes and arranging things differently. Hide me? After about ten minutes of fiddling around in the back he turned round and looked at me.

  ‘I think this will be fairly easy,’ he said, ‘because you’re tiny.’

  He then proceeded to reveal a secret compartment in the floor of the van and showed me how to climb into it. What the fuck? Instead of feeling fear it seemed my body skipped that part and went straight to a strange paralysis. My arms felt limp as he reached to help me up into the van. I was tingling all over.

  He talked me through the instructions: when to climb in, how to close it, something about breathing, something about staying calm. As I tried the compartment out for size, I felt like I was squeezing into a coffin. He kept asking me if I was okay. I just kept nodding.

  ‘Just remember,’ he said before shutting the boot, ‘once we cross the border you’re safe.’

  Later, when I was surrounded by total blackness, tucked away in that tiny suffocating compartment that smelled of warm plastic, everything turned into a hazy blur. I wasn’t quite unconscious but, I don’t remember much. I lost track of time completely. I have no idea how long any of it took. All I knew was that there was no way I was ever doing this again. There was no way Jack would be taking me to Alaska.

  Oak

  The dog climbed into our van without hesitation. She was at my feet, lying there suddenly, as though this was the most normal of things. She was panting and staring into the air with a stupid happy look on her face. I reached for a bottle of water and poured some into an empty peanut can. She looked up at me with her big grateful eyes and lapped up all the water in a few seconds. She couldn’t have been any older than one, if even that.

  We’d found her the day after the crossing. I was feeling so much better that day – the worst was already behind me. No one knew I was here, and it was like Jack had said, I was safer now. We could slow down. We hovered around the outskirts of Vancouver whilst Jack did some work on my case. He was also trying to plan where we’d go next, now that I’d messed up his plan by declaring that I refused to go to Alaska. I was not getting into that coffin of a compartment again. Yesterday’s tensions about my decision, as well as about Donny, had been momentary. Jack had a way of not harbouring grudges and I admired him for it. It wasn’t at all that he was a pushover, he fought his case, but in the end he realised I was totally decided. Then he told me he had every intention of going to Alaska himself at some point, with or without me. He soon changed the subject though, and any ounce of negativity between us disappeared – for now we were just too relaxed for any of that.

  That night we’d parked up in a big clearing surrounded by forest. It was used as a parking lot but it was empty when we got there. I heard just one car come and go in the early morning, while it was still dark outside. Jack had sensed my fear, wrapped his arms around me and pressed his body against mine, without saying a word. But the car soon left, as suddenly as it had arrived.

  Now that it was morning I was preparing some coffee while Jack was inside the van with the door open, looking at a map. Over the hiss of the stove I heard a whimper coming from somewhere behind me. I wasn’t sure if I hadn’t just imagined it but I got up out of curiosity. I walked past a section of bushes. In front of a trail that led into the forest stood a long low wooden gate, and there, in front of that gate, a small dog was standing and sniffing the earth. Her ribs protruded out of her tiny frail body and her eyes gazed longingly at me.

  ‘Hey doggy,’ I said, ‘where’s your owner?’

  From what I could see, she was a girl. I approached her slowly, but I quickly realised that she didn’t have a tag. My heart sunk as it dawned on me that the car that had come early that morning had probably abandoned her. I went back to the van. As I finished making the coffee I tried not to look at the poor mutt too much because I knew the eye contact could give her hope. When I was a kid I’d come across tons of strays and I knew that, unless you were going to take the dog home with you, you shouldn’t show it any affection. It was unfair on the dog to give it such false hope.

  But, from the corner of my eye, I could see that she was still there. Her head hung low, her tail was stuck between her hind legs. She was a pitiful sight. After finishing my coffee I went to pour out the remains a few metres away from the van. The sound of her paws on the gravel told me she had followed me. Though it broke my heart I tried to shoo her away, but she carried on traipsing behind. Perhaps she could sense that every time I waved my arm to try to get her to go away, it was twitching to reach out and touch her fur and stroke her little body.

  Jack was even worse at attempting to ignore her. He’d actually ended up getting out of the van and was now stroking her. He’d clearly not had as much experience with stray dogs as I’d had in my life.

  And now she had followed us back to the van. What could we do? She was inside. It was definitely her choice more than ours. We hadn’t discussed it but neither of us protested either. An unspoken agreement.

  ‘What should we call her?’ I asked.

  Jack laughed.

  ‘Sandy?’ he said.

  ‘No, that’s shit!’ I said bluntly.

  He looked around him for inspiration. From the dashboard he picked up the knife we used to cut food with. He read the small words at the bottom of the wooden handle.

  ‘Made in Philippines,’ he said.

  I laughed.

  ‘Philip!’ I said.

  ‘She’s a female for god’s sake!’ he laughed.

  ‘Philippa then!’<
br />
  We thought about it.

  ‘Nah,’ we said simultaneously.

  ‘Nice names,’ he said, ‘but not for a dog.’

  ‘Oak!’ I exclaimed suddenly, pointing at the handle of the knife. ‘Oak! Oak’s a good name!’

  ‘Yes,’ he looked at me and smiled, ‘I love it! Oak!’

  ‘Hey Oak,’ we said to her, ‘hey Oaky.’

  Oak looked up at us, tilted her head and started wagging her tail madly. Jack and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. And so it stuck, Oak, our new companion. I didn’t know then just how important a part of my life she would become.

  *

  That night as we lay in the dark of the van, Jack took my right hand, brought it to his lips and kissed my scar.

  ‘Thank you,’ he whispered. ‘Thank you for sharing.’

  He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t have to.

  Isabelle

  ‘Thank you Isabelle,’ he said, with a smile on his face.

  The girl at the till looked startled, but she quickly realised what he’d done, and she blinked down at her name badge and blushed.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, with a slight giggle, ‘that’s quite all right, have a great day!’

  As we walked out of the shop towards the van Jack was still smiling, in his own world, as though I wasn’t there. We got into the van, he placed the shopping bags behind us and got comfortable in his seat. All the while I was staring at him. He finally noticed.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘What was all that about?’

  ‘What was all what about?’

  ‘The girl,’ I said, ‘ “Oh thank you Isabelle”,’ I said, mimicking him.

  I was laughing, trying my best to seem cool and blasé, but it was too late, my jealousy was obvious. Isabelle wasn’t particularly remarkable or stunning and so far he hadn’t looked at anyone else’s name badge to tell them a personal thank you. Why her?

  ‘Oh, Isabelle?’

  ‘Yes, Isabelle,’ I said, ‘do you know her?’