See No Color (7 page)

Her big gray eyes, small storms themselves, holding me. What is in
her
mind? Am I
her
sister? The swirling pulls back, the echo moves on.

Did you hear it, too?
I ask her.

But she doesn't answer. She keeps looking at me. What does she see?

I reach in and touch beside her eyes with my finger. She grabs onto it, so hard that I am scared.

God
, I whisper.
You're strong.
I find the footstool in the corner, move it beside the crib, step up, and climb in. Then I put my hand on her back and another at her neck. They told me many times to never pick her up.
One, two, three,
I say, and lift her slowly. My eyes never leave hers. She fits into my arm, and I begin to rock her. She makes a
ca-ca-goo
sound and moves her feet.

You're Katherine,
I whisper in her ear.
You're Kit.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

S
he was hunched over a book on Frida Kahlo the next morning, knees folded into her chest on our front steps. It was a thick, hardcover book that Grandma Kirtridge had given her for Christmas, and it looked like her tiny, delicate hands could barely hold it up.

“Good morning,” I said, as I sat down next to her.

Kit peered at me sideways, her eyes slowly coming into focus. “Oh! Good morning!” she said, a little too brightly. It was almost like she had forgotten that I lived there, too, and that she would therefore probably run into me sooner rather than later.

Mrs. Olson waved as she passed us, and we waved back, absently.

“How's Frida?” I asked Kit, squinting into the sunlight.

“Who?” She closed the book, looking confused.

“You know, Frida,” I said, pointing to the self-portrait of a young, all-too-prescient woman on the cover.

“Oh!” Kit laughed. “She's … not well, I believe. Streetcar crash rammed a steel rod and all her insides together, and she's never been the same since.”

I nodded, remembering the story from when I had read it years ago, in some book I checked out from the library. It was a terrible accident that required her to wear a full body cast and endure multiple operations that were never really successful. She was in pain for the rest of her life. “Poor Frida,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Kit. She put the book down beside her. “But she learned something from the pain, I think.”

“And what was that?”

Her eyes met mine, and I could see that she was tentative, scared. “She learned that she could live with it … if she could find a way to express it.”

I grimaced. “Sounds pretty morbid.”

Kit fiddled with her fingers. “You know she was mixed too, right? White and Mexican and Indian.”

I scowled. “I don't even know what that means, anyway. Mixed.” I sighed. “As far as I can tell, it means closer to white for Mom and Dad, and the lightest shade of black for everyone else.”

Kit tried again. “All I'm trying to say is that all those letters, all that information—it's your story to have and do with what you wish.” She scowled. “I just hated the way Mom and Dad were keeping it from you.”

“What if they were trying to just keep me safe? Did you ever think of that?”

She glared at me. “Come on, Alex.”

I looked down at my hands until I was ready to meet her eyes again. “I just don't understand why you felt the need to get involved in something that doesn't concern you.”

She looked me up and down slowly, assessing me and my level of anger, perhaps. “If you're trying to tell me that I shouldn't have done it, that you're mad, I understand.” She peered down the street, like she was trying to see something. “I'm just … worried about you.”

I tried to laugh. “Well, you shouldn't be. I'm fine. Better than fine, actually. I'm one of the top high school center fielders in the country, probably about to win a state championship. And I've got a shot at valedictorian. Doesn't exactly sound like someone you should worry about, does it?”

Kit scowled. “That's Dad talking.”

“Kit,” I said wearily, standing up to go. “What do you want from me?”

She grabbed my hand. “I want you to talk to me.” She looked at me, almost in desperation. “I need you to talk to me.”

I sighed. “We talk all the time.”

She squeezed my hand and looked me in the eyes, meaningfully.

I pulled my hand away. “I can't … talk about that yet.”

She stood up and nodded like she understood, but I could tell the conversation wasn't over.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I
think that Dad sensed that something was off, that Kit was getting to me, so he took me to Elle's, our favorite bagel shop, for lunch that weekend. They had lox and herring to die for. Dad's side of the family was originally from Brooklyn (though he'd grown up on Long Island), so he could never eat just any old bagel. Elle's was really the only bagel place Dad would venture to in Madison. Trips there were usually reserved for our annual father-daughter birthday lunch. It felt strange to be there on just a normal Saturday afternoon.

“So, so good,” Dad said, wiping his mouth with a napkin. He had just bitten into a toasted garlic-onion bagel with cream cheese and lox. “It's been too long.”

I forced a smile.

He could see that something was wrong. “Aren't you going to eat?” He pointed at my bagel plate of the day, which I hadn't touched.

I shrugged. “I'm not really hungry.” I sat back in my chair and folded my arms across my chest. We had sat at this very same table, near the back by the south window, the same day every year since I could remember. Everything was always the same. Except for today.

Dad frowned. “That doesn't sound like you.”

I stifled a grin. He often said that I could eat my weight, which was almost not an exaggeration. People always found my appetite confusing, since up to now I had always been excessively skinny.

“Alex,” he said, after taking a deep breath. “I know you must have felt … awkward … at dinner the other night.”

I couldn't look him in the eyes, so I looked out the window instead at all the people crossing the street to the farmer's market.
You are a liar. A liar.

“I mean, I felt awkward, and I wasn't even in your shoes.”

Good thing you know that your shoes are different from mine.
I just kept staring out the window like there was something incredible out there that I couldn't afford to miss.

“You know, I just wish there were things I knew how to talk about with you,” he said, warily.

That got my attention, and I looked him straight in the eyes. He was sad and the lines in his face seemed deeper somehow.

“Your mother and I … We have always just wanted to give you things. I mean, give you everything, really. Color never mattered to us, what anyone else thought never mattered to us.” He sighed. “All we wanted was the best for you kids.”

Did he know? I probed his eyes and decided that he didn't—at least consciously.

He rubbed his forehead. “I can't apologize for your sister—”

“There's nothing to apologize for,” I said, surprising myself. The sharp edge in my voice made both us of flinch.

“Well, I wouldn't put it that way …”

“I would.” I picked up my cinnamon apple bagel and took a huge bite out of it. Maybe that would stop me from talking.

Dad sighed. “Look, Alex.”

I chewed on my bagel noisily and pretended that my eyes were closed. I could almost see the black of my eyelids everywhere.

“The way that conversation about your …
identit
y … came about was all wrong. Anyone could see that. But at the same time…” He paused and appeared to be thinking for a minute. “I think that Kit had a good point about what an awkward position you're in sometimes, in terms of the assumptions people make about you. I had never really thought about that before.”

I forced myself to swallow. The breath in my windpipe was getting tighter, and I sensed that hiccups were well on their way.

Dad leaned forward, his brow furrowed, and took my small hand in his large one, as he'd done so many times before when we were having difficult conversations about my game, school, friends, or even family. His thumb rubbed my knuckles, which was usually a calming and reassuring gesture. “I just want you to know that your mother and I, we will always see you as just you, as Alex. There's nothing black—or particularly … racial—about you to us because you're our little girl and always will be.”

Something about the way he said “black” made me cringe a little. Like it was the worst thing a person could be. I remembered his tone when he used the word “mixed” to describe me, however, and in contrast, it was almost prideful. Dad gave me a hesitant, crooked smile, which let me know that he was taking a risk, and saying things he hadn't intended to say to me, in an effort to make me okay again. And I should have appreciated this, even after what they had kept from me. Instead, I hiccupped and pushed my crossed ankles below the table together tighter and tighter.

“I know, Dad.” As I said this, it was like there was another person saying it, standing outside my body—a robot almost, who knew exactly what to say, how, and when to say it, in order to affect the desired results.

Dad squeezed my hand, which was my signal that things were better now.

I feigned a smile, but my grip on his hand felt loose and undecided—like it could fall off at any minute and it wouldn't have mattered.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I
threw myself into my schoolwork, which wasn't hard since the sophomore year honors track wasn't exactly easy and there were a lot of projects toward the end of the year. I was also dragging Jason to the batting cage whenever I had the chance. Neither of us wanted to bring up Kit, so it was pretty easy to just talk about other things.

But I couldn't quite forget. More than once, I caught a glimpse of the gray filing cabinet out of the corner of my eye when I passed by the den, and my pulse would quicken. I'd feel the coarseness of the papers between my fingers, and I'd see the messy handwriting of the man who said he was my father. I couldn't help worrying that someone would throw them out, and then they would be gone—all that was left of my connection to my father and the only part of my mother I would ever know. But then I would blink and turn back toward the kitchen. I would see the glasses and perhaps the orange juice carton held tight in Jason's grasp. He would be discussing his batting stance with Dad, and then they would both laugh suddenly, and then I would be right there, in that precise moment, thinking,
This is your father. This is your brother. Your family.
I would step forward, toward them, into the kitchen, and the letters would be gone again, and all of it would be enough. At least for a moment.

• • •

“You see the way he hits the ball
hard
at every at bat,” Dad told Jason and me as we watched a game between the Mariners and the Red Sox in mid-Apri. He was talking about David Ortiz.

“That's a sign of greatness. I used to hit like that,” Dad said wistfully. “That's why his home runs are always long line drives to straightaway right rather than fly balls that arc.” Then he flipped a popcorn kernel into his mouth.

Jason nodded, peering at the screen intently. “Reminds me of Willie Mays,” he said.

Dad looked at him suddenly, eyebrows raised. “Damn right.”

The two of them reached into the popcorn bowl at the same time and grabbed huge fistfuls. It had only been a month since Jason had revealed his misgivings about the game to me at the pizzeria, but it already seemed like a distant memory—something he had said to me in a dream rather than real life.

Dad moved on to the relative weakness of Boston's pitching and defense, and I relaxed into the easy pattern of their conversation. Soon, Dad would start in on Pedro Martinez, and Jason would know exactly how to steer Dad toward his one Pedro at bat story (past-his-prime Pedro with the Mets, but still). I had just taken a sip of my Powerade when Mom peeked around the corner. “I need to see you in the kitchen,” she said. Her small blonde head was barely visible in my line of sight, but her demeanor caught my attention. Something was on her mind. I groaned. I was just getting into the game. “Go ahead,” I replied, fixing my eyes back on Ortiz. “I can talk and watch at the same time.”

“It's really important.” I caught an edge of something—I didn't know what—in her voice.

Ortiz swung and the ball thumped into the catcher's mitt.

“Oh!” said Dad and Jason, slapping their knees.

I rose from the couch slowly, carefully negotiating the glasses we had placed on the table. “Ma, I was wa—” I said, as I walked into the kitchen. But when I saw her face, I shut up—it was red and puffy, streaked with tears.

“Alex,” she said, in almost a whisper. “I found this.”

She held up the folder. I watched a few of the letters spill out, onto the countertop. I had to hold myself back from snatching those precious documents into my hands. She was cooking something on the stove, soup it smelled like, and the only sound in the room was its bubbling.

“That's … that's a folder,” I said, feeling my face color. She might as well have been holding a baggie of meth for all the tension that suddenly filled the room. I didn't know what to do—would it even work to say that I had never seen the folder before?

Mom's face crumbled, and she dropped the folder onto the floor. “I knew you'd been in it! Everything was out of order,” she said. And I thought I had put everything back just the way it was. My mother always was an expert observer of detail, though. “I wanted to just burn them, but your father wouldn't let me …” her voice trailed off, and she sank to the floor.

I rushed toward Mom, wrapped my arms around her. I had never seen her like this. “Mom, I didn't …”