Colorless

Many people lose the color.

It's a precious thing, but sometimes it is lost. My second grade teacher had proposed to his girlfriend and was engaged, only seeing a colorful future, one that had blossomed into a symphony of hues the moment he'd fallen in love. But we had a minimum day Monday and he missed Tuesday. When he returned, the gray eyes we glanced at while turning in our homework, expecting to see them bright and big, newly introduced to the world of color, were cold and dark. And damp, after recess.

A kid's dad worked in the office, and discovered that the teacher's fiance had cheated on him and lost his love. His expression for a while after was one that had lost the light and was looking for it.

Many people lose the color.

I had crushes, but I understood it didn't equal the color. I would say you had to really KNOW you were in love to see the color, but I don't think that's true. I think everyone has a certain level of attraction. When you reach it, you gain the color.

And when I got my first boyfriend in high school, I was disappointed at the absence of color, but I stuck with him. Some people don't see color until a few months or even years with their boy or girlfriend. Maybe something clicks, maybe they realize it themselves, but just because the color doesn't come with your first kiss doesn't mean he's not your soul mate. But during college we drifted apart, and decided to break up for our own good. 

I moved into a flat with a quiet male roommate who kept to himself, and I slowly but surely became infatuated with the colors.

I recall an early attempt to gain the colors. On Sunday, I'd bought a package of thread - six different colors. At least that's what the tag said. I had cut off sections of the five lightest colors and tied a loose, clumsy bow on each finger of my left hand. Every time i became aware of the strings, I'd looked at each bow carefully for a few seconds, trying to see something past the varied grays while thinking about all the secret crushes I was harboring at the moment. 

I had failed. And I supposed I'd known that I would not succeed, but desire, a burning need, had pushed me to at least try and fail. 

In the early days of living with a roommate, one of my best friends visited with her boyfriend, leaning against him and laughing. My lonely roommate greeted them shyly and talked to us for a while.

"How long have you been together?" he asked, less awkwardly than usual. The couple was pleasant and he responded in kind.

"Ten months," she replied, squeezing her boyfriend's hand and giggling. Her mouth fell open unexpectedly, and she let go and backed into the wall, shocked and confused.

"Are you OK?" her boyfriend gasped.

She looked up with widened eyes. "I think this is color! Like, I see so much!"

"This is amazing! I'll pull up the picture!" he offered.

When I was four, my favorite book was No, David! by David Shannon. I reread it again and again and I labeled each part of the drawing according to its color with my mom's help. In third grade, he visited our school. As if I was seeing the President, the entire assembly I sat with my mouth slightly open and focused on his face and the way he acted and the way he moved, so I could keep it all in my head like a mosquito in amber.

Her expression was similar to my childish one, her eyes bright as she picked through my roommate's desk decorum.

"Is is red? It is kind of warm, like they said!"

Her boyfriend had picked up her phone from where she had dropped it and scrolled excitedly through the gallery, obviously remembering her greatest wish.

My friend's father died from cancer when she was very young. She said her mother had always talked about how vivid and vigorous he was, the embodiment of color. When she gained color, she planned to look at the picture of him healthy, cancer-free, holding his newborn.

Shaking, her boyfriend held out the phone. She grabbed it and blinked several times. The blinking led way to crying, and the crying led to full on sobbing. Her boyfriend hugged her, and my roommate went to get a blanket she could wear, because that's the way he dealt with crying, apparently.

For months afterwards, she was ecstatic and stuck with her boyfriend through thick and thin. I listened to her descriptions of gaining a sense you never had. Of living with one leg but suddenly being able to stand on two.

But her boyfriend told her he couldn't take the commitment and left, and I never figured out if he saw the color or not. If he did, how could he keep himself from telling everyone he had gained something so incredible?

She was visiting me, and we were in the living room when she got the call, her annoying ringtone blaring through our conversation. I heard his tinny voice as he said he was sorry, and I watched her close her eyes, and I felt her tremble as I patted her back. My roommate dragged his soft blanket off his thin shoulders and dropped it on hers before leaving quietly.

"I don't want to open my eyes," she muttered, bringing the blanket around her face.

"I know," I said after a pause. She didn't want to lose the color, wanting to keep it like a mosquito in amber. But it doesn't work like that. I have forgotten David Shannon's face, and that moment I knew she would forget red and purple and everything in between.

There was silence. A gasp and sniffle under the blanket.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Blue."

"What?" I recognized the word immediately. It was like lucid dreaming to a regular dreamer. Blue. I knew what it tasted like, what it smelled like, which of my belongings were blue, the names of what colors "looked nice" with blue - but I had never seen it.

"The blanket. It's blue." She let it fall from her eyes. She looked at me. "And you're peach with brown sprinkles." Something she had already told me, back when she had just gained the color.

I smelled peaches and the light taste whispered to me. Brown reminded me of purple because it was so dark, but seemed happier and kinder, a chocolatey touch.

"You...still have the colors?" I asked. She nodded.

"How do you feel?" I asked cautiously.

"Not so great. I lost something and didn't lose something, I guess," she said, tracing the blanket's fringe. "Maybe it's a failed signal. But I think I love someone still. It could be anyone,."

It was possible. Colors were generally gained when the cause was in view or nearby, but it wasn't always true.

She left without saying much except "Yeah", "I will", and "Thanks." A curious numbness seemed to have taken hold of her, a sudden change from hysteria to detachment.

I folded up the blanket and stared at its light gray static before leaving it in front of my roommate's door. I studied all the possible soul mates for my friend but didn't reach any conclusions. Who was I to say who loved who?

That night, I wandered about my room and repeated a ritual I had grown accustomed to. I picked up objects - a stapler, an action figure, a stuffed animal - and placed them in order of color. Red to orange and yellow to green and so on, trying desperately to understand how some could be warm and some cold, attempting to see if green went with orange or if yellow went with purple. I had labeled my belongings with their colors, sending pictures of them to my parents to get the colors. As far as I knew, no one else did this, but I couldn't understand how they would understand everything when they finally gained the final sense.

After leaving a pile of pennies near, but not in the brown pile (something I had decided long ago), I snatched up a plastic bracelet I had bought at a fair, having noticed the beads' spectrum from warped translucency to dark gray. I was sure that it held many colors but had forgotten to ask anyone. Then I decided to try a little experiment.

I placed it on the dark gray desk near my black laptop and a gray pen (labeled red) and a light gray action figure. Carefully, I focused on the bracelet, observing its every curve, noticing the plastic seam that circled the beads. Cheap, yes. But rich in something I longed for. I stared at it and I thought of every possible soul mate in my life. My brother's buddy, the guy at the bus stop every morning, the security guard I greeted every morning, the students that sat on either side of me during class, the bus driver I talked with every day. I even considered my own roommate, but only felt some pity and awe of his silence. People I liked. People I saw and had conversations with. But not people I loved.

And yet still I tried to bring out the color in the bracelet, turning it blurry and going cross-eyed and blinking and squinting and glaring - 

Swallowing an achy lump in my throat, I turned away from the bracelet. My life was still in black and gray and white. I couldn't change that through willpower. It was a stupid thought. I picked up the worthless jewelry, putting it in my wallet, impatient to ask my friend what colors it kept from me as soon as possible. 

The next day, I came home from class to find her at my front door. I greeted her, surprised, and opened the door. She headed for the living room and found my roommate reading a comic book as usual.

"Hey," she said, quieter than usual.

He looked up carefully, as if his fragile neck would snap from the weight. "Hi."

"How's that comic?" she asked.

"Colorless," he said.

I was taken aback. I didn't think she knew how to talk to someone like him, but here she was hitting his favorite topics on the head.

"I think I love you," she said in a rush.

Nope, she diidn't know how to talk to him.

He kissed her.

It was probably his first kiss, looking back.

They separated with smiles. He blinked, his mouth falling open to reveal ivory teeth, creamy sheets of paper from which braces had recently been erased.

"How's that comic?" she repeated.

He looked down at it and a tear marked the page. "Colorful."

I left the room, tasting green, bitter and rough.

They married in the next four years. I wasn't the maid of honor, because she was my best friend but I was not hers. I stood to the side and I clapped for her, the plastic bracelet hard in my pocket, as the painful green and the soft, gentle brown tickled my taste buds and left their scents and brushed my fingers and whispered in my ears. Teasing, just out of sight.

I met someone after college at a boring party. We dated and became officially "together." Six months ago, he proposed to me. I said yes before he finished the sentence.

"Red roses," he breathed as I hugged him, and I knew I had opened a new world for him.

I love him; I am certain. But I hide one thing from him. It is difficult to conceal, but I would do anything for his happiness. I love him. A mantra I have repeated for months, willing my secret to be made false by one single gain. 

I had whispered the colors to myself every night. At the grocery store, I silently named each familiar item, like my mother had done for me when I was a child. Carrots are orange. Eggplants are purple. Bread is sort of brown. Pre-sliced apples are sold in green bags. I had gone "shopping" and went through each tag to read the color. Orange Heels. Pink Teddy Bear. Yellow Highlighter. Navy Blue Baseball Cap. I focused until my eyes blurred with frustration and desperation. It didn't work.

It never would, and never will.

I know they are waiting in the church.

I sit on the chair in the dressing room in my wedding dress and my pink heels. "The splash of pink is perfect with your skin," the fitter had assured me when I bought them. Smiling, I had looked right at him. I had said, "Thank you."

Then I had gone to the car and cried, alone.

And again the tears fell, leaving the fabric a bit darker. I resist raising the "gorgeous" roses that I cannot appreciate to sniff their scent. I hide my feet under my gown, for I cannot smile when I see how the pink shoes flatter my skin. I do not lift my left hand to wipe away the tears, because my eyes will not be caught by the warm gold that "glows" from my engagement ring. I refuse to take the plastic bracelet out of my wallet, for I cannot smile at my former ignorance. I prefer to focus on the wedding dress.

At least I know it's supposed to be white.