Colors

I would like some pink today

But it seems that she has gone away

I could use some yellow now

But yellow, he has gone to town

I do miss the color green

But he can be so very mean

I wish that I could see some blue

But blue, she has up and moved

Colors, you leave me on dreary days

And won't come back no matter what I say

XXX

Rubin held his shaking lover by her shoulders, wishing she would quiet down. People were beginning to stare. Maybe it wasn't the crying so much as the way her legs were twisted up beneath her like a deformed pretzel. Whatever it was, Rubin didn't like the eyes on them.

In the circus, those eyes had always conflicted him. They kept him alive, fed him, clothed him, put a roof over his head. But they judged him, too. They stripped away his dignity, labeled him, dismissed him. Freak. Orphan. Immigrant. Not one of us.

He didn't know if the other people in the waiting room were thinking these things, but his cheeks burned anyway. Rubin looked down in shame, hoping they would not perceive the filth of his background. He heard Minka's sobs magnified in his ears as he hid his flushed face in her long swath of platinum hair.

He and Minka, a team from the start, united in their abandonment. Tied with the rope of distrust. Well, not distrust. Wariness. Wariness against the world and its tricks.

And here was another, perhaps one of the cruelest yet. Poor Mink. Rubin knew what she was feeling; if they were alone, he might have cried as well.

Right now, he felt as though he and his beloved had been trapped at the bottom of a dry, empty well for a long time and someone had finally come by with a rope. Only, just as they were about to lower it into the well, they realized the two of them were not the ones they had intended to save. They coiled the rope back up and moved on.

Minka released a particularly horrible sob. Rubin pressed her face to his shirt, whispering, "It's alright, Kwiat. Why don't we go home now? You'll feel better after a good meal."

"Home, Rubin?" snapped Minka, her voice uncomfortably loud. "What's home? The circus? The Springs' house? Poland? Where is it you want to get back to so badly? Face it, there's nowhere for us to be except here. Waiting."

"Waiting for what?" Rubin muttered under his breath. They had been having this argument on and off for the past few hours. This vigil in the hospital waiting room was, he knew, a pointless exercise in persistence. Family members only, the woman at the desk had said. I'm her mother, Minka had cried. No you aren't, the woman retorted.

Minka said she was waiting for the father, the mother, someone to come out. She was going to ask to go in and see Amethyst. His poor little ukochana, so convinced of the goodness in people. She had her heart fixed on the fragile, erroneous assumption that the Turners would understand what their daughter was to her. How could they? How could anyone, when their connection was so obscure, so fraught with darknesses?

But for now, they would wait.

XXX

There was a bed in the living room.

A real bed, the frame at least, slats hammered in place and little bed posts like legs of a wooden bug. It fit snuggly between the bureau and the wall, one of the legs twisted in to squeeze in the tight space.

Libby felt hot tears brewing behind her eyes. She blinked hard, forcing them out. The bed was only about four feet lengthwise, just long enough for a small child.

Bitterness brewed hot in her stomach. She recalled the disgust on Annie's face as she walked through the museum of Amethyst's early years. The bureau and the stairs and the backyard. Well, if the Springs loved her so much, why couldn't they just have her?

The feeling surged, reaching a bursting crescendo in her veins. "Why can't you just have her," she said aloud. Her voice came out raspy, thick with tears. "You can have her. Have her. Take her. I don't want her. We don't want her."

Only, there was no one to hear it so none of it meant anything.

XXX

"Minka?"

"Hmm?" Minka jerked back to reality, heart beating fast. Cars had always made her sleepy, the steady hum of the engine lulling her to rest like a mother singing softly to her baby. The scenery streaking by like a surreal painting, the road jostling beneath like a slow massage. Her mind couldn't help but fuzz over, shut down.

Annelise glanced at her with a smile. Minka felt a sting of guilt; she liked Mrs. Springs a lot and didn't want her to think she wasn't listening. What was Annelise, if not everything Minka wished to be? A strong, motherly woman with a good husband and a pretty house and a smile that made rooms light up? She had such a sour little face, Mrs. Springs, but when she wanted to be, she was radiant. Happiness made her instantly beautiful.

Minka wished she was that way rather than the opposite. Many times, she had been told that she was lovely when she cried. Tears slipping down fragile cheekbones, nose becoming a prominent pink bulb in the center of her face. Her cheeks colored and her eyelashes became visible when she cried. She was pretty, then, they said.

But when she smiled. Oh, she couldn't count how many times she had begun to laugh in the presence of a new acquaintance and had to watch them flinch slightly, recoil. Though Rubin insisted it was merely her imagination, Minka knew it couldn't be. She had seen herself grin. She simply had an ugly smile. Her lips grew taut and colorless, her cheeks gathered into doughy balls of flesh, the cleft in her chin came out. Her teeth were too small and her eyes, too beady, too hard. She was better off sad.

Mrs. Springs, however. What a lovely smile.

"I'm sorry, I didn't hear what you said," Minka admitted. Her legs squirmed nervously beneath her body, trying to twist themselves up in the shallow space between the cushion and the seat belt. Minka took a deep breath and forced herself to sit normally.

"I asked how you and Rubin met," Annelise repeated.

Minka met her eye in the mirror, seeing the glinting smile still present in her glimmering irises. It was a conversation-making question, Minka knew. Just something to fill the silence. Yet, she found herself spilling the truth with a fervor she rarely found in her own mouth. "We grew up together in Poland," she said. "At the orphanage. We were best friends, even then. All the other children were either younger than us or horrible to us. They stole our things and beat us up in order to get our meal rations. But Rubin, he grew bigger in time." Minka's lips twitched into a grin at the memory of the first time Rubin hit an older boy back. It was sensational to watch: the shock on both of their faces, the moment of reverent silence, the bruise blooming. "He learned to defend us." She smothered the smile, wondering if Mrs. Springs had already caught sight of the ugliness in her soul. After thinking about all this, she felt so self-conscious that all she could do was turn her face against the window and close her eyes.

Her face was still raw and red from yesterday's crying jags. Minka had almost begun to sob again this morning, but then Mrs. Springs asked her to take this journey with her and she accepted. As Rubin said, maybe the fresh air would do her some good. So far, she did feel better; whether it was the company of calm, collected Annelise, the wind in her hair, or the prospect of seeing her Kochanie again, Minka couldn't say, but something was filling her, making her feel bright and almost buoyant inside.

They were going to the Turners' house. A little cardboard box sat in the backseat of the car, full of things that had been Amethysts and a few that had not been. Her teddy bears were there, Scrubbles and Molly and the ugly little grass doll, which, if Minka was not mistaken, Amethyst had named Kochanie. There were a few books, Peter Pan and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Mrs. Springs had added some of her own: Where The Wild Things Are, The Giving Tree, and a book called Frederick about a little mouse who collected colors to show his friends in the wintertime when things turned bleak and gray.

What a good message for their sweet little girl. Hold on, Minka wanted to tell her. Remember the colors. Remember, they will come back to you someday. 

XXX

In the attic lights
Voices scream
Nothing's seen
Real's a dream

Leaving the things that are real behind
Leaving the things that you love from mind
All of the things that you learned from fears
Nothing is left for the years

-Toys In The Attic by Aerosmith