The sky is green

i dare you to look

I once sat between my mother’s knees as she combed twigs from my hair and asked her why the sky was blue. Her silence was fragile, confused, and uncertain. As she continued to pull at my hair, I did not dare speak or wince. I had learned long ago that a mother’s silence was a warning. A deep invisible line in the metaphoric sand that a child should not cross at the expense of her behind. When she finished tying my hair into neat braids, she leaned down to whisper in my ear.   

“The sky is green, and should anyone ask you this question you will answer as I have.” At the confusion on my face, she pinched my arm. “You have been warned. The rest is in your hands.”   

I returned to school with my head raised to the sky, desperate to find the green in all the blue and when I failed, I turned my eyes to the ground. When the teacher called on me to answer the question of what color the sky was, I bit my tongue and ignored the beating of my heart.    

“The sky is blue.”   

Time was still, and a hush swept through the room. I watched as the teacher’s face pinched as if he were sucking on a lemon. I had done something wrong, that much I knew to be true, but the teacher did not say a word. Slowly, like a clock ticking, his head turned to a skinny boy who sat to my right and asked him the same. The boy stood, seemingly unaware of the tension in the room, and spoke with conviction.    

“The sky is green.”   

Like a rubber band snapping in place, the teacher’s face softened and he applauded the boy. I turned to my classmates, desperate for justice, but none would look my way. The ones who dared to see me, a girl with a kind face that refused to smile, looked at me with a violent pity. The next day, I was asked to answer “1+1” and, confident in my knowledge, I answered 2 and was sent home. I found my aunt sat atop a jerry can plucking the feathers from a chicken. I asked her the question and she looked at me with a knowing sorrow.   

“It is 6, and you will do well to remember.”   

I returned to school with a familiar confusion that was quickly transforming into its stinging cousin, frustration. The teacher asked again and I repeated the answer I knew to be true. The expected silence did not come, instead, a roaring laughter ripped through the room. They laughed until tears fell down their cheeks and then laughed some more. The teacher, righting himself from laughter, called on a different boy, a bigger boy with round cheeks.    

“6,” he said.    

Again, the teacher applauded.    

The next question went the same, then the next, and the next, until I finally learned to speak their truth. “Gravity was the name of a song.” “An elephant is pink.” “I do not know.” “I do not know.” “I do not.” “I am not.”   

I no longer looked to the sky for fear of what my eyes would see. I did not count my fingers to find the truth, for it no longer belonged to me. I did not play in the forests for fear of stumbling on more questions.    

As I pull the leaves from my daughter’s hair, I listen to her ask a familiar question and wonder. What if? Why not? So, I lean down, the words stinging my chewed-raw tongue, and whisper    

“Trust in yourself. The truth belongs to you”    

As I awaited her return, I looked to the sky to watch the kaleidoscope of colors weave in and out of each other. They danced together, never stopping long enough for me to name a single one. It was as beautiful as it was painful. With a sigh, I shook the dread from my bones and boiled some water for chicken clucking at my feet.  

The blub blurp blup of the bubbling stew was interrupted by her footsteps, beating away at the ground as if it had personally offended her. Anger had always been quick for her; in the way biting is easy for a cornered dog. It was instinct, I realized, a reaction to a danger I long learned to bare my neck to. 

She huffed and puffed her way to my side and yelled, “What color is the sky?”   

My skin buzzed like a was wearing a scarf made of bees and hornets. It was as though I had reached the end of a long journey that I did not start. A marathon with no beginning.    

“What color do you think it is?” I asked.   

She looked at me with a familiar frustration playing on her brow as she decided on her answer. I repeated the words whispered the night before, this time as a promise.  

“It’s blue,” she whispered. “But sometimes it’s grey, and in the afternoons it turns orange and purple.” As she spoke her voice grew stronger and full.  

As a shiver ran over my spine, I smiled and asked why she thought it changed so much. Her brows furrowed and her eyes moved left to right, frantically. As if seeing the world again for the first time, I tried to mimic her movements with my own eyes but I found that they could no longer move as fast as hers. So, I took my place behind her, pulling the knots from her hair, as her voice filled the silence.