Esther Grey

It had all started with minimalism. First with well-meaning moms cutting clutter in their homes, providing experiences instead of presents, space instead of chaos. The minimalist moms multiplied and their spending created trends and trends drove markets and somehow, somewhere along the way, minimalism became the rule of law, first locally, then spreading. It was imperative to create space in the homes, then in the schools, then in the communities. Clutter became synonymous with chaos, and nobody wanted chaos. When clutter had been effectively contained, the fight moved on to color. 

Walls became neutral gray, then carpets, then the rich wood tones of hardwoods were pulled from the floors and replaced with austere gray. Home interiors were graywashed, and then exteriors. White was too bright. Black too dark. Gray became the nation’s color. There were splashes of color at first but they faded over time—a splash of red, vibrant like a geranium, fading to the palest pink of a gender-neutral nursery. Or yellow, bright like the sun that faded dull like dry pasta. Eventually, even small, light splashes of color became a distraction.

Distraction led to lack of discipline, lack of discipline led to lack of focus. Productivity suffered. But most importantly to the ideal of the original minimalists, people could not live in the moment with the distractions all around them. Humanity had suffered a great blow by the advances of smart technology, but when the tech cleanse had occurred, positive change was seen after just one generation of children. There must be a color cleanse; just as the internet had been removed, other distractions must be removed as well. Children must be allowed to grow into all their potential without the distractions of color detaining them. 

The attack on art was inevitable. The vibrant colors that still hung against the gray walls of homes and businesses were a distraction. Children were caught in the schools, staring dumbly at the art on the walls, losing their capacity for all other sight and sound, losing all capacity for learning. Works of art were pulled from schools, then other public spaces, and destroyed. School textbooks were rewritten to reflect the color-cleansed world. Art classes were canceled, artists repurposed or removed. All tools for making art were obliterated. The children must be protected. The country must be one of discipline and order, free from chaos, so that the children would be given exactly what they needed to thrive. 

Esther Grey was born into the final phase of the color cleanse. She lay on crunchy gray grass and watched the gray sky. This was what infuriated the yfir-boði. They had removed every drop of color from the lives of children, even the animals of color had been removed, so that on sunny days when Esther Grey compared the shapes of clouds to animals, the only ones she knew from the zoo were gray: rhino and elephant, koala and chinchilla. In the most recent phase, the yfir-boði had chemically altered plant and animal life to reflect monochromatic gray. Yet, they had thus far been unable to permanently alter the sky without triggering asthma in the children. And the children, when left to their own devices outdoors, stared dumbly up at the sky.

“Twenty-seven days.” Esther Grey spoke to the footsteps she recognized without taking her eyes off the sky. A gnarled finger touched her chin, tilted her face to his.

“I have something for you.”

She sat up, suddenly all focus. Afi rarely brought her anything anymore. “What?” she whispered.

“Ladybug.” He unzipped a jacket pocket and pulled out a fist. He opened one finger at a time to reveal a small crawling insect with a vibrant round shell. He held his hand next to hers, and the insect crawled from Afi’s dirt-stained palm into hers. “Careful. She can fly.”

“Ladybug.” Esther Grey cupped her palm and half covered it with her other hand as she repeated the word. She watched the color move across her palm in wonder.

“Red and black.”

“Red and black.” Esther Grey repeated. She had seen red and black before in an invasive species Afi had been called to eradicate. He had taken her along under the pretense of illness, had allowed her a glimpse into the nest full of swarming insects before spraying it, and whispered the banned color words, “Red and black.”

Esther Grey cupped one hand over the other and carefully took the ladybug to the cellar, where Afi hefted large cylindrical pesticide containers out of the way to reveal a hidden door. Esther Grey released the ladybug into the waiting terrarium. Afi would try to find a mate for her. If none was found after a few days, he would release her back where he found her and hope for her survival.  

***

“Twenty-eight days,” Esther Grey whispered to Thomas Grey as he approached her at recess. 

Esther Grey lay on her back in the schoolyard looking into the depth of the gray sky. Thomas Grey stretched out next to her, his focus also upward, and sighed. 

“Come over after school,” she said quietly. She didn’t have to say, just you or don’t tell anyone. 

His eyes moved to hers sharply, then he answered with a quick nod. Together, they looked back to the sky, watching the gray for any sign of change.

When Esther Grey led Thomas Grey to the cellar a few hours later, Afi was releasing gray aphids into the terrarium. “We need more food for her,” he said. “Thomas Grey, can you see if Amma has any aphids?”

Thomas Grey nodded, wide eyes on the ladybug. 

“Ladybug.” Esther Grey smiled. “Red and black.”

***

Amma grew a garden. She was a botanist tasked with creating the herbicides that drained the plants of their color. It was a painstaking process to drain them of color without killing them, and one that was learned through trial and error in her garden. Playing in Amma’s garden, surrounded by a tall gray privacy fence to keep out prying eyes, Esther Grey had learned the beauty of green. 

They found Amma crouched behind some leggy herbs. They approached quietly, recognizing something out of the ordinary about the stillness of her posture. Esther Grey let out an involuntary gasp when she noticed the object of Amma’s focus. It was a ladybug, red and black, smaller than the one in Afi’s terrarium. 

“Amma,” Esther Grey whispered excitedly. “I think this is a male! We have a female.”

Amma’s eyes sharpened. She deftly cupped the insect gently into her palm and then into a jar. She secured the lid and slipped the jar into her pocket.

“Seven years since I saw a live ladybug, and now there are two,” she said, clapping her hands. “It is a gift. Come children.”

Together, they returned to Esther Grey’s house, where Afi looked askance at them as they strode into the gray yard. The glint in Amma’s eyes was the only answer until they all trekked down the cellar stairs, and in the security of the secret room, she pulled the jar from her pocket. 

“It is time,” Amma said, and Afi nodded. He left the cellar and came back moments later with a shovel. He dug until he was sweating and Esther Grey took the shovel from him, and then Thomas Grey took it from her and then Amma took it from him, and then Afi again, until they heard the clinking of metal on metal. They had hit a steel container. 

They all worked together to brush away dirt, and then Afi and Amma worked together to open the door, revealing its contents.

Esther Grey’s mouth dropped open as they pulled out canvases of vivid color. Colors she had never seen. Scenery that was foreign in its vibrancy. Animals she didn’t recognize. Not one drop of gray in it all. The last picture was a photograph of two couples laughing.

“Artists,” Amma said the unfamiliar word. “Your parents were artists. Best friends, just like you. Born into the second phase and gone by the third. Removed as dissidents.”

“They tried to stop it,” Afi said. “We all did. But they were more . . . passionate. They wanted a recording, painted and photographed the natural world even as the yfir-boði were executing the plan that would be its destruction.” He met Esther Grey’s eyes. “Your mother and father would be so ashamed I haven’t taught you all they knew.”

“You’ve taught me everything I know,” Esther Grey protested.

“Not enough. I was too scared of them.” Esther Grey didn’t need to ask who. The yfir-boði who made the laws that ruled the world, who had employed meistari to train the children and had militant guards always at their disposal. “Scared I would lose you, too,” he continued. “So I kept silent. Kept all this . . .” He gestured to the paintings and photographs. “Secret.”

“But only until the right time,” Amma soothed, covering his hand with hers reassuringly. “We all did what we had to do to protect the children.”

“There have been murmurings of change,” Amma continued. “We’ve lost too many species. There is fear the earth will not support ours much longer. There is a call to reverse the process of phase four. There were many meistari at the last meeting I attended.”

“And many militants at mine,” Afi said. “Even some yfir-boði.”

Esther Grey’s eyes shot to Afi’s. He went to meetings?

“Ours is to meet. Yours is to grow,” Amma said, noting Esther Grey’s fear. “My vegetables and aphids will feed Afi’s insects. You and Thomas,” she paused meaningfully, then continued, “You and Thomas will tend the ladybugs.”

“Thomas Grey,” Thomas corrected shakily. The punishment for leaving off the required middle name was severe.

“Thomas Grey at school,” Amma said. “No more at home. Thomas.”

Afi nodded, confirmed, “Esther.”

“Esther Grey,” Esther corrected automatically. For those who had the middle name Grey, it was not optional to use it.

“Esther Grey at school,” Afi said. “Your parents named you Esther Penelope.”

Esther mouthed the word. Penelope? It sounded so . . . colorful.

“The Grey was added as punishment, to mark you as children of dissidents.” Afi stared at the floor. 

“You are Thomas Adair, the name given you by your parents,” Amma told Thomas.

Esther stole a glance at Thomas as they absorbed their true names. Her heart raced. Her parents, and his, had been dissidents. They used to joke they were cousins because of their shared mandatory middle name. This felt closer than cousins. 

“Esther Penelope and Thomas Adair,” Amma said, “this is your time.” 

Amma handed Esther and Thomas the jar and together they released the ladybug into the terrarium. They knelt on the dirt floor to watch as the male ladybug traversed his new terrain until he found the female. They continued to watch, fascinated, as color began the process of reproduction. 

***

Esther and Thomas weren’t allowed at meetings, rumors of which were ever-increasing, but they saw evidence of change. First a green patch of grass here and there, a green leaf, then one day they saw a flower. They huddled with other children around it in the schoolyard. 

“Yellow,” a voice whispered behind them. It was an older meistari. “Dandelion.”

The graywash chemicals were being watered down. Dissidents, Esther thought with a smile.  

***

“Day forty-seven,” Esther whispered to Thomas from her spot on the crunchy, gray grass. However, this announcement didn’t hold the misery it usually did; for today, Afi had shown her a cluster of tiny yellow eggs on the underside of a leaf in the terrarium. 

“Anything new?” Thomas asked quietly.

She nodded, almost imperceptibly, whispered the golden word, “Eggs,” with a shiver.

***

There were seven more days of gray before the eggs began hatching, and Esther returned home from school to see the terrarium crawling with black and yellow larvae. She and Thomas were tasked with vacuuming insects and their eggs from Amma’s garden and returning with them to the larvae. They couldn’t find enough to satisfy the larvae's voracious appetites. The larvae were eating the eggs that hadn’t yet hatched. Amma collected their food when Esther and Thomas were at school, and Afi brought home live insects that were destined for death. Between the four of them, they managed to provide enough food for the larvae to grow.

***

When the larvae finally began attaching to leaves and the sides and ceiling of the terrarium, Esther and Thomas were glad to take a break from their daily insect collection. Esther felt like she was crawling with insects, seeing them awake and asleep, in her daydreams and nightmares. She was glad to focus on the stillness of the pupae as they metamorphosed in their cocoons. She sat still and silent with Thomas and together, they watched the mystery and magic of quiet transformation.

***

“Day sixty-four,” Esther whispered to Thomas on the grass, but today, there was joy underlying the dire accounting. Thomas smiled down at her instead of looking up at the sky.

“Ladybugs?” he asked.

She couldn’t contain her smile, in spite of the gray. “A loveliness.”

***

Afi was feeding the ladybugs when they returned from school. Color crawled all around the terrarium. Esther had rarely seen that expression on Afi’s face—it was more than happiness; it was hope.

“What happens now?” Thomas asked.

“We tend them . . . and then we submit them for research. Research informs policy. The food shortages due to the overpopulation of pests, the yfir-boði are actively working on this. They are in talks now about the watering down of the graywash, and how we have already seen positive changes in the nation’s food supply.” 

“We’ll hold some back,” Esther assured. She had seen Thomas’s face fall at the word research. They had just facilitated a marvelous mass of color; none of them wanted to lose it. Afi and Amma would make the submissions, volunteer to help with the research, the science where both their hearts belonged, and Esther and Thomas would tend the ladybug farm. 

***

“Day One,” Esther Penelope whispered triumphantly to Thomas Adair as they both stared at the sky in wonder. All the children and many of the meistari in the schoolyard did the same. For sunshine didn’t just illuminate their gray world and make everything a little brighter. It turned the sky blue. 

*