The Other Side of Blue

by Valerie O. Patterson

  If it was an apology, did Mother accept it? Would I?

  When the last guest leaves, Mother collapses her easel, keeping the canvas clipped to it to transport it back to Maine.

  “You’ll exhibit this in New York?” Mrs. Bindas asks.

  “Not right away,” Mother says. She needs time to let the paint dry.

  The door opens, and Dr. Bindas appears.

  “Oh, so sorry,” he says. “I thought the party was over.” He starts to back out, shooing boys behind him. I see Saco and then Mayur peer around him. Kammi smiles at Saco, who grins and lets himself be pulled back. Mayur smirks from behind his father’s shoulder, then looks to make sure the others haven’t noticed. He hasn’t told them, I’m sure. There is now another secret between us. But this one we share. I roll my eyes at him and he disappears behind his father.

  “No, Dr. Bindas, please to come in and say goodbye to Mrs. Walters,” Mrs. Bindas calls after him. Dr. Bindas, stiff in his short-sleeved shirt and pressed slacks, enters and nods to my mother. Very proper. His physician’s eyes then take me in. He sees I’m no worse for wear, the bruises fading from blue to yellow.

  “Glad to see you are feeling better,” he says.

  “Thank you.”

  Kammi raises an eyebrow, motioning toward the door. I shake my head at her. I’m not interested in Mayur. Absolutely not. Maybe.

  “We are indebted to you,” Mother says.

  Dr. Bindas raises a hand. “No, it was so little, and we are grateful. No permanent injuries. Here, let me help you. We shall drive you back.”

  Dr. Bindas reaches to take Mother’s painting. Mother’s never let anyone else handle a fresh painting.

  “No,” I say, suddenly not wanting anyone else to touch The Blue Boat.

  “It’s all right, Cyan,” Mother says, touching my arm. “Dr. Bindas, wet canvases require special handling. I’d feel better carrying it myself.”

  Dr. Bindas blushes, as if he’s done something improper, but he nods politely, as always. He holds the door for Mother.

  Even when she moves away to allow Mrs. Bindas to hug her ever so gently before we leave, the warmth from Mother’s touch on my skin lingers.

  “Do you want to go to the airport?” Mother asks me the next morning. As I did the day Kammi arrived, I shake my head. It’s only been a few weeks since then, and yet it seems like months. Time is like that. Fast and yet slow, like waves of light shimmering through glass. Goethe said that, in order to be seen, every color must have light within it or behind it. Blue is the first color that appears when darkness is penetrated by light.

  Mother doesn’t ask a second time. She slips into the cab. From the window closest to me, Kammi waves. Excited like a kid going home from summer camp, she moves her arm back and forth in a wide arc. The top edge of her carefully wrapped painting peeks over the back seat.

  I hold my hand up in the air, not waving. But I imagine my hand touching hers through the air, the glass. My yellow to her pink. I don’t think about Howard yet. He’s overeager, like the puppy he gave to Kammi’s mother. But he might be okay.

  Jinco pulls away, bits of shell spitting from under his tires. If he’s watching Kammi through the rearview mirror, he’ll be subtle so Mother doesn’t see him. She wouldn’t like it. Kammi won’t notice, either. Later, I’ll tell her, warn her about guys.

  Martia stands next to me, but she doesn’t put her arm around my waist or hug me. I don’t have to say I’m okay. Martia knows somehow, knows I don’t want to be too close. She steps inside, and the scent of food wafts through the open door. For once, I am not ravenous.

  Tonight, before Mother and I finish packing, Martia will go home to her family. To her children and mother. They must already be thinking of the sweet kokada treats she’ll bring.

  In my room, I open the box of sea glass and add the photo of Martia’s family to it. Then I get out the largest, bluest piece I have, the one I keep in the sock, and hold it to the light. Without my jeweler’s pliers, I use my hands to pull the wire I’ve hidden away straight. The sterling silver grows warm in my hand. It curves around my finger and over the glass. I wrap until the silver holds the glass fast, and I twist it to make a loop, securing the back of the glass. I file the rough edge before tucking it underneath. Hiding it.

  In the bottom of the box, there’s still the sliver of sharp, clear glass from the blue boat. If I toss it back into the sea, years from now the ocean will have worn down the jagged edges. Someday, the sea will give up its smooth treasure along the shore for someone else to find.

  Maybe my box is like the one Pandora decided to open. Maybe I was too curious, like she was. But with all the chaos and longing, everything Pandora released into the world, there was something else at the bottom of the box, a gift.

  Hope.

  I think that’s what we have left, Mother and me. I give it to both of us, cupping it in my hands like a piece of tumbled sea glass, holding it up to the light.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) for years of community and a Work-in-Progress grant for an earlier, unpublished novel.

  Thanks to Lisa Fraustino, Han Nolan, Alexandria LaFaye, and Amanda Cockrell of Hollins University’s Graduate Program in Children’s Literature for gentle encouragement and the occasional kick in the rear. To Hollins students Brie Shannon, Candice Ransom, Tere Stouffer, Amie Rotruck, the Owl Girls, and the Wildflour online group—thank you for your friendship.

  With appreciation to the Writer’s Center of Bethesda, Maryland, and its committee, Northern Virginia Writers, for bringing writing to the larger Washington, D.C., community through such gifted instructors as Barbara Esstman.

  Thanks to Lee Smith and the members of her Advanced Fiction Workshop at the Key West Literary Seminar, January 2008.

  For the Rector Lane Irregulars—Donna, Carla, Ellen, Peggy, Laura, Noreen, and Sandi—thank you for a roundtable of mystery and sisterly support.

  Thanks to Leone Ciporin, Marcy Dolan, Lee Lawrence, and Sue Buck for believing.

  With special thanks to my children’s writing group—Ellen Braaf, Erin Teagan, Sydney Dunlap, Lorrie-Ann Melnick, and Corinne Wetzel. To Ellen, who does so much for the Mid-Atlantic SCBWI and for the Writer’s Center and who still has more love for others and their dreams than anyone I know, an extra hug.

  For the wonderful agent and literary godmother Sarah Davies of the Greenhouse Literary Agency—thank you so much for helping me realize a dream.

  With special thanks to editor Jennifer Wingertzahn for loving Cyan from the beginning and for guiding me along with a gentle touch and a kind soul. And to everyone else at Clarion Books, thank you for making The Other Side of Blue such a beautiful book.

  Thank you to my parents and late grandmother for encouraging my love of books; to my siblings, Melanie and John, for letting me subject them to my earliest writing efforts; and, to my sister-in-law Jane for artistic consultation—any errors are my own.

  To Tom, who has never wavered in his support of my dreams despite too many takeout dinners and a seriously cluttered desk, thank you for being on the journey with me.

  One

  WHITENESS EXPLODES behind my eyelids, and my eyes shoot open. I’m not sure if I am awake or still asleep and dreaming. My heart beats hard and fast and tight, as if trapped inside a small glass jar.

  Light glows around my bedroom shades like a solar eclipse.

  It’s morning. Early. I’m awake after all.

  The noise builds again in the distance. First a crackle. Then a sizzle.

  Silence.

  Then boom.

  Boom.

  BOOM.

  Firecrackers. Just firecrackers.

  Somebody down the block with leftovers from last night’s Fourth of July. I lie there in bed, trying to force my heart back to normal.

  Across the room, Cara sleeps in her toddler bed. She always wakes up when I try to sneak out of the room in the morning, but now she cou
ld sleep through a war zone.

  My ears strain to hear anything more. Maybe it’s finished. Maybe some dad or military police officer on the block has tracked the kid down and yelled at him.

  I don’t care.

  Just that the noise stopped.

  Because, after last night, I hate fireworks. The way the lights flamed in the sky and made people sitting on the beach look like silhouettes of soldiers waiting to go into battle.

  The clock radio by the bed blinks 12:00 in red over and over like warning lights on a runway. The power must have gone out overnight. It happens during Florida thunderstorms.

  With the clock out, I don’t know what time it is. I told Meriwether and Sam I’d meet them at the post exchange, the PX, at eight to staff the booth.

  I don’t know what time it is in Afghanistan, either.

  Rumors of troop movements have spread through the post like a game of telephone. Have you heard? Surge. Maybe this week. No one knows what’s true.

  Already dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, I fling off the thin sheet and dash for the kitchen. I plug in the computer and press the on button, holding it hard until the machine strums to life. The monitor glows for seconds with a gray, empty light. Then the login page appears, and I enter my password.

  The screen flickers.

  I tap my fingers against the keyboard. Hurry up.

  In the upper right-hand corner, the time shows. 6:44 a.m.

  Late afternoon in Afghanistan.

  I click through to my e-mail.

  Pressing the icon to get mail is like entering a code that sends Dad’s message across a wire from Afghanistan to here, and I imagine cables running undersea, across deserts. As if Dad’s physically connected to me by a cord, knotted and strong. Something that can’t unravel.

  I know it’s really just a signal through a satellite. It seems impossible, almost magical. Something not to trust.

  Only, his e-mail is there.

  I check the date and time of his note. As of this morning, Dad was still alive in Afghanistan. I try not to think about it this way, but I can’t help it.

  I reach toward the wall and pick up the chewed-end pencil—Cara’s—tied to a string. I mark an X on the calendar for yesterday, July 4. One day less to go before he comes home.

  A ritual, marking off the days on a calendar until a whole month, and then another, and another, is crossed out. Only then—it has to be in the proper order—do I open the e-mail message. It’s short.

  Dear Jess: I attached a video and some new photos Cpl. Scott and I took at the orphanage. Guess which photos I took. (Hint: They’ll be the catawampus ones.) See how great Warda looks? What a difference you all are making. The school supplies are a big hit. Keep them coming.

  Love, Dad

  PS—We roasted hot dogs on the Fourth over the burn pits. The buns were AWOL, but the dogs tasted like home. What I would have done for sparklers.

  Sparklers.

  Last year, when it got dark enough, Dad brought out sparklers. The bright flowers danced, and the smell of match tips lingered in the air. We ran up and down the beach, waving our wands of light until they fizzled.

  Then the real fireworks started. The firemen lit them off a barge towed out into the gulf. The rockets shot into the air. I couldn’t see them when they lifted off, but you could hear them. The swoosh of power jetting them up, followed by silence until they burst overhead. Green and red and blue and white sparkles showering the sky. Dad said the blue was the rarest color. I forget why.

  I open the attached photo, and my hand squeezes the computer mouse. Warda’s photo. Her wide green eyes are like those of the Afghani girl from an old National Geographic magazine Ms. Rivera tacked to the bulletin board at school. She said it was taken when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. Gunships fired on villages, and bombs disguised as toys glittered in the village roads, tempting children to pluck them off the ground like piñata candy.

  Warda’s eyes are just like those from the other photo. Startled, haunting, seeing more than they can express. As if there’s something just beyond the reach of the camera, something she can’t forget. They’re like the photo I found in an old album in the utility closet after we moved on post. A photo with curled edges. A girl wearing a faded T-shirt and a hat, haunted eyes staring out. Mine.

  In this shot, Warda stands straight, stiff, facing forward. Dad’s on one side of her, and Meriwether’s mother, Corporal Scott, kneels on the other side of Warda and smiles. But it is Warda’s eyes that draw me in, and somehow her eyes are my eyes. I am the girl thousands of miles away in an orphanage, Dad’s hand on my shoulder. And I am safe.

  I download the other photos and the video of the children playing in the courtyard, the milk goat we raised money for grazing on weeds in the background. We named it Zebah. It’s a name that’s easy to say. Sam and I dig deep inside for a voice that rumbles out into a big long zzzz sound when we pronounce it.

  Against the pockmarked building, oleander bushes battle to survive. Dad said they bloom in the same shades as here. That’s what gave me the idea for Operation Oleander, the plan to donate supplies to the orphanage. It’s why I’m meeting Meriwether and Sam at the PX so early. I print out the photos and upload the video to my MP3 player so people get to see what they’re supporting.

  I type a reply.

  Dear Dad:

  Great photos. Our hot dogs had buns.

  I don’t say we didn’t go to the post fireworks, that we stayed home. I don’t ask about the surge and if it’s started.

  Instead I write,

  Remember the fireworks last year? How perfect they were? Love, Jess.

  I hit the send button and let my fingers linger over the keys. Feel the connection being made and the message reaching back across the distance to Dad.

  Inside the house, everything is quiet. No more firecrackers. No more booms. No noise comes from my bedroom. Cara is still asleep, and Mom’s door is shut tight.

  I sign off the computer, make sure Mom’s coffeepot is programmed to brew at eight, grab my iPod, and head out the door. When the key clicks in the lock, I rattle the doorknob just to make sure it’s secure before I walk toward the PX.

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  About the Author

  VALERIE O. PATTERSON was raised in Florida. She has an MFA in children’s literature from Hollins University, where she twice received the Shirley Henn Award for Creative Scholarship. She also won an SCBWI Work-in-Progress Award. An attorney by day, she lives with her husband in Leesburg, Virginia. Visit her website at www.valerieopatterson.com.