Part II

Will owned the library. He lived in a small room above it, and he lived there all by himself. The third time I went to visit him, I asked him why he had a room like that, with books that no one here could read.

“Just in case,” he said. “It was… was here when I came. The books were all there on the shelves when I arrived and I never wanted to put them away. I suppose have them there for me because I can read them.” He lowered his voice. “There are others like you, you know. Only a few. I see them stand at the doorway—there—and they stand there a long time, wondering if they should come in. They are curious about the books, too. They’ve heard people talk about them.”

“How come I never seen—have never seen them?” I whispered, distractedly fanning through a book called The Giver.

“They are much older than you,” he said. “They’ve learned to hide it… they’ve been scolded and taunted as children for being different. Or else others have done what your parents have done… they pretend it isn’t true. You can’t see. You are the same as the other kids.”

“I have darker skin than all the other kids,” I said. “And my hair is dark.” I had remembered the word. “Like my mother’s hair.”

There was an awkward silence between us. I saw Will scratch behind his ear and I heard him sigh. He opened his mouth to speak twice, but said nothing. I could hear the clock ticking in the other room. And then, finally, he said something.

“Come to my room,” he said quickly. He rose abruptly from his chair and he frowned when I didn’t do the same. “What’s the matter?” he asked, sitting down again.

“I shouldn’t… I wouldn’t be allowed,” I stammered, gathering up my new books so that I could take them home. “My parents are expecting me back soon,” I added.

“No, no, no… I promise you’ll be safe. I just… want to show you something… please?” He made a face for speaking too loudly. “Just for a moment?”

“Okay,” I said lowly, standing up. I tried to hide my curiosity, but my tone was too eager. So I bit my tongue and followed him in silence.

“I have two cats,” he told me when we reached the top of the stairs. “Homer is black… with a little bit of white between his eyes. Angelo is orange.” He fumbled for his key and opened the door. “So be quiet when you go inside or you’ll scare them.”

“Orange,” I repeated. “Where is he?” I wanted to know what orange was.

“Shhh,” he said. “And don’t bother taking off your shoes.” He wrapped is fingers around my wrist and led me to a corner of his home. He motioned for me to sit at the small table there. I observed the jars that were arranged upon it—jars with different things inside them. “There,” he said, pushing open a window to let the light in. “This is what I wanted to show you.”

“The jars?” I asked.

“The paper, too.” He quickly found some and out it on the table in front of me.

“But I have saw them before,” I said. “What’s in the jars?”

“Paint,” he said. He plucked one from the table. “This jar is red paint.”

“Like Clifford.”

“Yes.” He unscrewed the jar and handed it to me. “Take it,” he said. “I don’t have any brushes at the moment so you’ll have to use your fingers.”

“What do I do with it?”

“You don’t have to use red if you want,” he said, indicating the other jars. “There’s green… yellow…”

“How about dark?”
“Black?” But I had already smeared red on my finger and, without being told what to do, I made a round shape on the blank page before me. I made it at the top right corner. “This isn’t the right colour for the sun,” I said, after deciding that the sun was what it was that I had made. I reached for the jar called white—and then yellow. I wasn’t sure which one to pick.

And so, without words, I made a picture with the paints—pictures like the ones in the library books, like the ones hanging on Will’s walls. I made grass with green, a line of sky across the top with blue, a tree’s trunk with brown. I learned what orange was when I saw Angelo the cat dart under my chair and across the room.

“You should go,” Will said after a time. He was standing by the wall and looking up at one of his pictures: Niagara Falls, he told me later. I could hear him sigh again. I could hear the clinking of the spoon in his tin cup.

I looked up. “Oh?”

“You can come back… if you want. The paints will be here—if you like them.”

“Oh… yes… I do.” I remembered that I had left my things downstairs. I frowned at my picture and, slowly, I reached for the black jar. Can I take my picture home? Put it up on my wall like all your pictures? But I never asked him. Instead I twisted off the jar’s lid, and then dipped my finger inside. I wasn’t watching when I did this; the black mixed with the blue—my sky. I had a different colour on each of my fingers. Will took a sip of his tea as I smeared the black across the colours of my picture. “This is all they see,” I said.

--

“There is nothing wrong with blindness,” Will told me after a week. We were drinking green tea and now I knew why it was called green tea. “That’s what it’s called, blindness. People aren’t supposed to be blind by choice.”

“I don’t think my sisters wanted to be blind,” I tried to say. I decided then that I didn’t like saying the word. It stuck in my throat like something foul, or it was like trying to hold in a cough. “They don’t even know they are… I don’t think.”

“Maybe,” Will said calmly.

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. “But why does it have to be this way? Who made them like that? Why are we different?” And I expected him to answer right away. Instead he hesitated, and he did so in an uncertain way.

“Which one do you like best?” he said suddenly.

“What do you mean?”

“The pictures on my wall. Which one do you like best?”

“Well, I don’t know,” I said. I briefly saw each one in turn. “That one,” I said finally, pointing at the one closest to me. “I don’t remember where you said it was.” I watched Will tilt his head.

“Ah,” he said. “That one is… is… oh, my.” He paused to think. “Delphi. It’s a place in Greece. Why that picture? Why didn’t you choose any of the others?”

“I like the way it is…” I started. “The… the way the... white around the mountains. The old buildings. It looks alone and abandoned… ruined. But it won’t look better fixed.”

“You like the mist around the mountains.”

“Yes,” I said, nodding. “No one can see it like we do.”

“They can feel mist,” Will reminded me. “The same way you do.” His face had hardened, and I could feel my knees shake under the table. I was bothered that I couldn’t hide my fear from him. I couldn’t just hide it by not speaking. “Don’t for a moment think you’re special, Naida,” he warned darkly. “It ruins people.”

I flinched when he said that. “Why did you ask me those questions, then?”

“Lead us not into temptation…” he sighed, setting down his drink. He scratched his nose. “It wasn’t meant to make our world perfect. There are still lots of other things wrong with it.

“And we can’t say that things are ugly,” I said, though it had been a while since I’d used the word. I didn’t like saying it.

“They can’t say anything is beautiful, either.”

“But my father says that Sora—my sister—plays the piano beautiful.”

“Our eyes are easier to… trick than the rest of us… most times.”

When I stepped out into the street that night, and though I had known it all along as something of little significance, I realized that all buildings around me were white.

--

My older sister, Sora, practiced the piano in the evening. It always amazed me the way she found the keys with her hands and not her eyes. She would tilt her ear to the piano to hear all the notes better—at the music she had composed herself, and she would smile. I used to think I was the only one who knew she was happy because she smiled. I never really heard it in her music.

--

“They took the librarian away,” Sora told me quietly one day, moving her hands away from the piano. “I heard he was your friend.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Naida, he sounds—sounded so old.”

“Who took him away?” I demanded, slamming shut my book. My tone startled her, but I saw her calmly fold her hands in her lap.

“I don’t know,” she said simply. “Just yesterday… I think. Mary Milton told me at lunch today. She told me you visit him all the time… that you volunteer there. I never knew you volunteered, Naida. Anyway, the library was closed last night—weren’t you there yesterday?” She shrugged as if it were no important matter.

“Shhh…” I started, going closer to her. “Sora, what happened?” But she only shrugged again.

“I don’t know,” she repeated, but more firmly this time. “What? Did you like him that much?” She almost laughed at me.

“Shhh!” I saw around for my parents. My father was sleeping already, his snores rumbling from the bed. My mother was standing by the wall, looking out of the window that wasn’t there. My littlest sister, Sadira, was playing at her feet.

“Naida, where are you going?” Sora hissed. I saw how she tried to change the subject. “Naida, will you tell me your opinion of this?” she tried, turning around and playing a quick bar on the piano. “It reminds me of summer. What do you think?” But she knew I was already gone.

I took little care in closing the door quietly behind me. I knew I wouldn’t wake my father up. I knew my mother would still be standing where she was when I left, still pretending, and with her lips pursed and her dark fingers curled on her apron.

The library was not very far from my house. I found the library door in a hurry, realizing that it was open when I reached out my hand to knock on it, believing Sora’s explanation all a lie. I heard my heart’s beating in my ears. “Will!” I called, noticing that it was night now, and that I could hardly see where I was going. “Will?” I went inside.

There was a light on in the library: a glowing ball hanging from the ceiling that was like a little sun. I saw no one, though. “Will, it’s me… Naida.” I went to the stairs and ascended them clumsily, hardly remembering not to scare the cats. Angelo was at the very top, sprawled across the uppermost step like some miniature sphinx. His head jerked when he heard me, and he dashed into the open door to hide.

There were lights in Will’s room, too. All his things were gone, though, save for the table in the corner where I had painted—and the jars of paint, scattered on the floor. My feet felt heavy when I approached the table, and I saw that there were things left on it. There was a round, flat thing, with a pretty handle and a peculiar front. I picked it up and examined it briefly. I brought it close to my face, but I grew alarmed at what I saw in it.

I had seen myself before. I saw my face—I only assumed it was my face those times—in water, in the silverware all distorted. I hated myself when I did this, knowing that I was not like the others at school with their same bright hair and light eyes. But I saw myself differently this time. I counted all the spots on my face, and then, transfixed, I unstuck the hair from my wet cheeks. Certain that Will had left it for me, I tucked it carefully under my arm and reached out my free hand to retrieve what else was on the table.

It was a picture—Delphi. All the other pictures on the wall had disappeared and holding this one made me think of him. I wanted him to have it wherever he was. Having it here only reminded me that he was gone.

And then there was the flashlight. I knew what it was; Will had shown it to me once before. He flipped the switch on and off to show me how it worked, and he closed the window to put the light on the wall. “Look at your Delphi,” he said, and I thought I was blinking while I looked at it. But it was only the flashlight’s turning on and off.

He is probably better where he is, I decided, knowing that I only thought so to make myself feel better. Feeling too alone where I was, I thought that I should go. I took the first gift from under my arm and, after seeing my face one last time, put it back on the table. Instead I stooped to gather up the paints in my arms. With the jars nestled in the creases of my sleeves, I went to the door.

--

The night air seemed colder than it was when I had first ventured out in it. It was like sadness, I thought, and it was trying to cover me up. My hand wasn’t free to use the flashlight and so I stumbled to find my way in the dark—in a place I should have memorized but had forgotten because I didn’t recognize it in the darkness. I dropped one of the jars and, after wondering briefly if I should abandon it, turned back to retrieve it. I bent my knees to place the other jars carefully on the empty road. And then, after pulling out the flashlight and pointing it in front of me, turned it on and put its light on the ground. I had to go back to the library to find the lost jar. It was lying at the base of the wall. Finding it with the light, I caught the wall, too and all its whiteness. It was a vast sheet of paper before me.

I hurried to get the other paints. Unable to carry them all with ease, I picked only a few—my favorites. Standing before the wall, and with the jars at my feet, I opened the blue first.

I drew as many pictures as I could—as many until I thought my fingers were calloused and I could feel by fingernails peel away from my skin. I drew a circle for the sun, blue lines of wind, the outline of a big, red dog… a smiling face. I made the eyes brown like mine, and her hair black. I dabbed spots on her cheeks, too. It was the simplest of pictures, but I was pleased with it. I even signed it: ‘naiba’. When I was satisfied with my work, I lined the jars against the wall and went home.

--

I thought heard “Für Elise” playing inside my house when I got there. But then it stopped suddenly. The door swung open and my father stepped outside. His shadow was cast on the wall behind him by the flashlight, and I turned it off quickly when I thought for a moment that he could see it.

“Naida… is that you?” he demanded, his voice angry. I noticed his fists clenched tightly at his sides, his vein poking out of his head. “Answer me!” he bellowed, and I thought the whole town might hear him. “Naida…”

I stopped in front him.

“Maya, are you sure it was her?” he asked, turning his head to address my mother behind him. “You said you heard her. Even though Sora was still playing.”

“Yes, yes, I did,” my mother insisted, and I saw that she was crying.

“Naida?”

I was very still. I wanted to run away and never come back. But I stilled my shaking hands and lifted my hand with the light to cast it on his face. I held it there for a time, wishing somehow that he would flinch at it, or cover his eyes with his hands. He didn’t. So I turned it off. “I am here,” I said, and I expected him to shout some more. Instead he reached out for me.

“Come inside, Naida,” he said. “Go inside now and go to bed. Sadira is sleeping and I… don’t want to wake her.”

--

An old woman walked into the library today. I saw her from across the street while walking home from school with my sister. Before she went into the library, though, I saw her hesitate. I could only see the back of her head then; her chin was raised. She turned her head to see around her briefly—like she thought someone was following her. I thought I saw her smile.

--

To explain the colour grey: like the clouds that give birth to rain, like a spider’s web, like this rock I hold in my hand. But then I realize that this rock is not grey at all—it’s pink, black, orange, brown. It’s every colour Will taught me. My world is grey.

The End