Only White

It has never been just one color before. 

The outside world, when I do see it, has always been a collage of sorts. Always hues of grey, shades of green, entire rainbows. Always brown dirt mixed with yellowing grass. Light blue fading to soft orange melting into pink. Speckles of light embedded in an endless sky.

There has been the soft yellow of a basement light. The deep magenta of the sheets freshly washed. The solid grey of cement between the brick of the walls. There has been the amber of my hair when the tips reached my waist.; the gold shine of a lock, but only when it catches just the right light; the crimson red of thin blood.

Even the color of silence; the still quiet that is not the same as muffled quiet, not the same as distant footsteps on a ceiling, or even the white static of rain, pelting in the distance. But deep, deep silence; so deep it could have no barrier, or end, or be anything other than emptiness itself.

Silence is light tan.

But it has never been just one color before. 

Today, through the windowpane, it is white. 

Only white.

A brilliant, blazing chalkiness that glows like a mirror of the moon. The only image I can conjure that is even close to it is that of a limitless sea against a clear sky. All blue; mat blue; flat blue. But even then, in that image, there are ripples. Even then, there is green algae and seagulls. Not to mention the blurriness of it all; whether from an imperfect, incomplete imagination, or a memory too far gone.

But now—right now—there is only white. And it coats everything. Gone is the field—the winding paths that disappear into them. Gone is anything that ever grew out here. The sky itself is falling apart; falling down, down, down, in chunks of that white, landing upon the earth like feathers. Like a blanket.

Like the blanket Terry tugs over me at night.

Terry.

Terry, who is the only person I’ve known for ten years. 

Terry, who has a gravelly voice, and gravel tinted hair, and etched lines going every which way across his face; who is red-faced and loud when he’s angry, and soft and guilty when he’s sorry; who is getting old, he says, but has felt younger in the years since a youth like me came along. Came willingly, he always makes sure to say.

Terry, whose attitude always gets a bit colder this time of year, like the chill outside is part of him somehow, and who was blank-faced and skittish when he promised me that later, when he got back, we would play a game in my room. Always in my room; always downstairs. Stay put. Stay quiet, he said.

And he does not know that I have known for a while now how to get out of that room. That four blank walls spur something inside a person, force them to retreat into themselves. That, when you have time on your hands, it is impossible not to turn things over in your head. That, eventually, you get tired of it. 

It wasn’t too hard to fashion a hairpin into a tool. 

He would be back soon, he had said. 

I would be here, I had said in response. Waiting.

It has only turned into a lie these past few minutes.

I have never gone upstairs alone. I have never gone past that doorway—only found a way to open it, to make it an option—until now.

Terry is not here. Not now.

And because of that, I should not be here. 

I should not be here. 

I should not be here. 

But I am here. I am here for what feels like the first time because I am alone.

The windows in the living room are floor to ceiling in length. In the scarce moments I have ever spent next to them—the rare, treasured hours Terry has allowed me to sprawl across the wool carpet and read a book, or play cards with him from the floor—the curtains have always been drawn. The number of times he’s allowed them open, and me to go beyond them—to run amongst the field of flowers and smell the air that is sweeter than any treat he’s ever given me—I can count on my two hands. I always return, always retreat from the glass, beyond the narrow staircase leading down, behind the door. 

The window fogs with my breath as a step, closer still. It clears. 

Fogs. 

Clears.

Fogs.

I drag a finger through the haze just before it disappears again. A single line; smudged, there, and then gone. And I remember a miniature version of my hand wrapped around a crayon, holding a pencil, and the scratch of both against paper. Phantom memories.

There are no crayons in Terry’s house. There have never been pencils or paper.

My reflection, mirrored back to me, is faint. But there it is—there I am. Dark hair and light eyes. A forehead and long nose, both of which grew the same year the other parts of me did. The same year the cloth covering me changed from a nightgown to a shirt. It, like the too-large sweatpants pooling at my ankles, long ago faded from vibrant to pale, soft to worn rough.

The white outside hurts my eyes.

I put my hand, almost as pale as the outside world, against the pane, and it hurts that too.

But despite the pain, despite the cold, something sparks in my stomach. Adrenaline, and a want. I want to touch it. I want to feel and see it, up close. Suddenly, there is a word in my head for it: 

Snow.

It is snow, falling from the sky.

And I don’t remember learning it. But there it is, pulled deep from the part of my brain that holds letters, words, the way to tie shoes. The basics, and not much else. The same part, I suppose, where the dregs and scraps of a past life remain, broken down into single memories: a scraped knee, a dark mustache, an open laugh, a baby’s wail; a quiet night, cold feet, salty tears, and a pair of hands—warm when they tugged me away. Memories I shove away most days. I’ve found that when I do that, many of them find a way to disappear.

I want to touch the snow. Now.

I tear my gaze from the glass only to study the door at the far end of the room. Everything about the entryway is, and always has been, singular; a single jacket; a single hat; a single pair of shoes. Only one pair of skid marks on the mat. Even the door itself is alone, dark and closed. 

I don’t realize I’ve walked over and opened it until the wind is caressing my face, bitter and cold. And the view is somehow one hundred times better—a million times brighter. I shiver as I take a step and warm my flesh meets the cool stone beneath the awning, but it isn’t enough to stop me from taking another.

Terry is not cruel, I think as I twist back towards the door. A faint bang sounds as it bounces back against the wall; the house beyond it is dark and empty, and suddenly I can’t make myself take even a step back in its direction. Terry is kind, and he is caring. Always, Terry only wants to keep you safe, protected, away.

The snow sparkles with what seems like a million diamonds beneath the moonlight.

He wants to keep you protected, I repeat to myself. 

The breeze seems to whisper back: from this?

I shuffle, one foot of distance turning into two. Three. Four. And then I am inches away from the edge of the snow. The edge of the world.

I should go back. 

I should go back. 

I should go back.

I go forward.

And as my foot sinks into the world—the real world, the outside work—wet and cold and glorious, I wonder, faintly, what I have been missing.