Colors
Serena carefully colored in the petals with the maroon crayon. It was always the crayon one shade darker than the red one. The stem was light green, and the leaves forest green. The sky in the background was light blue, because it always was. She finished coloring the rose just as it was supposed to be. The little girl ripped out the page, carefully on the perforations, and ran downstairs to give it to her mother. Her mother smiled and put it on the refrigerator door, next to all the perfectly colored maroon and forest green roses.
At school, Serena colored, too. The boys, always too anxious to play, complained, but the endless number of rainbow crayons excited her. She took a few minutes to choose what shade of blue would be perfect for her drawing. They sat in groups of four tables, and each group shared a pack of crayons. The boy sitting across from her refused to color and was instead playing around with the crayons.
“Why would you ever need to use black?” he said out loud, picking up a black crayon from the pile.
“Uh…for coloring in black shoes?” the boy next to him said.
“Also a blackboard.”
“A zebra!” another kid called out.
“And for her hair!” the boy said, looking straight at her. “And,” he said as he picked up a yellow crayon, “this could be for her skin!”
The friend next to the boy nudged him. “Wait, I don’t think you’re s’posed to say things like that. Right? He looked in the direction of the teacher who was busy and seemed not to hear.
Serena looked up in the middle of coloring her blue sky. She stared at the crayon in his hands. She did have yellower skin than her classmates, she thought. She didn’t know why that was bad, so she shrugged and went back to her coloring.
The boy was bothered that she simply ignored him. “Hey, did you hear me? Can you even understand what we said? Guys, did you realize she never talks in class?” he said, snickering with the other kids. “Come on, say something!” The boy yanked the crayon out of her hands and it made a blue streak outside of the lines she had been coloring.
She looked up in surprise at the stupid boy, but no words came out because she felt the tears coming up. She didn’t want to be the silent one and the crybaby. Serena glanced over at the teacher who had seen what happened but simply sighed and thought boys will be boys. Looking around at the class, Serena wondered who actually knew her or cared about her. She wanted to crawl up in her chair, but she felt like a giant creature, with everyone staring at her black hair and small mouth. She glared at the boy who quickly grew bored and walked away to find a new toy, leaving her alone with the messy drawing in front of her.
Later in gym class, Serena stood at the end of the line when the teacher picked two boys and told them to choose two teams. John and Chris ran up, excitedly choosing their best friends. The line grew shorter and shorter and she felt smaller and smaller. She could see the boys avoiding her, their eyes passing over her as if she wasn’t there. She heard someone whisper, “She’s always so quiet.”
The gym teacher sighed, “Guys, don’t leave anyone out,” but he was tired and did not care.
“She’s too smart, she’s not good at sports.”
“Do I have to choose her?”
They whispered, but she still heard in the silence.
Silence surrounded her back at home, too. It was a different silence, a comfortable silence. After her mom picked her up from school in their run-down car, they would spend the rest of the afternoon in the kitchen together until her dad came home. She and her mom never had much to say, and she had no younger sibling to run around and be playful with. But she loved watching her mom cook her favorite dishes, throwing in ingredients according to the recipe she knew by heart after all the years. Serena sat by the counter, immersed in her coloring book while humming along to her mom’s familiar tune.
At dinner, Serena, her mom, and her dad sat at the table, chewing quietly, hunched over their bowls of rice and stew. Her dad began the conversation—he had been pulled over by the police along with others who were speeding. He grumbled that everyone else got off fine, but the policeman could not understand his accent. Her mom added that the policemen were always picking on them. “Is it our fault our skin is different in this country?”
Serena thought back to what had happened in class that day, but she didn’t think it was the same thing. The boy was just being stupid and when she entered the adult world it would all be okay, because everyone would be smarter.
“Should we just go back?” her mom sighed as she did everyday. Serena always told her, But Mom, this is our home. Her mom would smile at her with sad eyes.
She didn’t feel like saying it today.
Her dad cleared his throat. “I’ve actually been thinking about it. My business here isn’t doing well anymore and…there might be no point in staying.”
“You’ve been thinking about it? I think it’ll be a good idea. We’ll get to take care of our parents more and I would love being closer to my friends…”
Serena dropped her chopsticks. “NO!” she shrieked. Her parents stared at her.
“Honey, please don’t yell. Your father and I are discussing things that adults know better.”
She shook her head, yelling through her tears. “No! I just want to stay here!” Serena rarely yelled at her parents. They stared at her, and it reminded her of the way her classmates had stared at her that morning. She ran out of her chair and up to her room.
Serena sprawled down on her bed and cried out loud, hoping her parents would hear. After a few minutes, she calmed down and wiped her messy face with her sleeve. She didn’t want to go back down, so she got out her coloring book and crayon box. The crayons were neatly labeled and assorted in rainbow order, and just staring at them made her feel a little better. They were so perfect.
She picked up the maroon crayon to color her favorite flower, the rose, because that was the color for roses.
Roses are red, violets are blue.
She didn’t want to move far away from her friends. They had to pack all their stuff on the airplane and she would never see her friends again.
She’s always so quiet.
It was all her parents’ fault they couldn’t fit in here because all the other students’ parents she saw were cool and friendly with one another.
Is that what you’re eating for lunch?
Why do you wear those shoes?
But sometimes she felt lonely here, too. Sometimes she felt her classmates didn’t like her, and even her teachers, too. Everything had rules, and she followed them, but what made her so different? Why couldn’t she just feel at home here like everyone else did?
Suddenly the maroon crayon broke in half under her strong grip. Serena frustratedly dug through her box for a different color. Everything was falling out and getting messy, but she didn't care because she couldn’t even see, her vision blurred from tears. She grabbed any color that she had never used and scribbled away at the page, ignoring lines and patterns, mixing different colors together. Nothing would matter if they had to move. She could never see her friends again and she hated making new friends.
The sky didn’t have to be blue, so she made it orange, a bright, red-orange. She used yellow, which she rarely used because nothing pretty was yellow, for the leaves and purple for the clouds. When she was done filling every space of the page, Serena went down to put the drawing on the fridge.
When she stepped back from the fridge and looked at the gray and yellow rose among the other perfectly-colored ones, she thought it was the most beautiful drawing she had ever made.