Turquoise

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
To call it red would be doing a disservice to the brightest scarlet,
And to call the air blue would be doing likewise to the deepest turquoise.

In one hand; brush. The other; resting on the thin wooden ledge of the easel. The canvas? Destined for my final colour.

The crown jewel,
La pièce de résistance,
Tour de force,
Magnum opus…
Turquoise.

I breathe in and allow it to flood my currently red veins. Its flooding shades immediately fill my head with urgent whispers; desiring, needing to alight upon the white. I wield my brush, ready to-

Creak.

That floorboard is my undying enemy.

“Don’t interrupt,” I tell Aaron, as he eases off the board.

“Interrupt what?” he asks, guiltily.

“The turquoise,” I reply.

Gulp. Teeth eased slowly across lip. The waiting tide of turquoise engulfs me.

Pigment swirls in waiting pots.

A long, drawn-out sigh eases through my lungs and chest, letting flow a river of soft breath. A soft, turquoise river, flowing, easing away from me, spreading gently in the atmosphere, diffusing gently into the air. It tests the boundaries of freedom with its subtle fingertips.

Aaron always forgets about the silence. Silly boy. Silly-lily-adopted-older-bolder-brother-beloved-boy. Yes, I know my rhyming skills are pitiful, but still; Aaron doesn’t know what the silence holds. Doesn’t know that it holds my painted life in the palm of its lingering stillness.

I focus on the turquoise.

绿松石
Turkoois
綠松石
Türkis
Τυρκουάζ
トルコ石
Turchese
터키석
Turquesa
Бирюза

Tranquilote. Limpia… no esta sucio… y… inequívoco aquí.
Tranquil. Clean… not dirty… and… unmistakably here.

Ready, my fingers curl willfully around the brush.

I begin to tell my story to the canvas;

The name with which my parents called me was Leah; I am named, aptly, after the old English for meadow. But don’t render me Hebrew for weary, grieved, offended, impatient, slow, toiling, hardship. I am none of these. I am a meadow of turquoise, a liquid meadow, a thousand shades of cyan rippling in blue-green grass.

I am nearly twenty – but only in body. Younger cells reside in my head and heart. And I am currently one hundred and ten percent pure, genuine turquoise. The colour is me. I am the colour. It, me, us, we… just the one. Only an I. It makes no sense for me to be any other colour now.

My brush jars on the edge, slipping off and marking the easel.

Sigh.

Reach for a wet cloth to wipe away the acrylic before it dries.

Other colours are… dirty, too intense. Brown is of the soil for one thing. Red crawls and creeps and invades. Blue is too bright, too happy. The same is in yellow, and pink, and acid green. In shades of lime and lilac... Only turquoise is entirely clear and lucid, yet vivid and passionate. It paints me with a hundred ideals, a hundred shades, a hundred tones and textures; stormy, luscious, silky, rough… But I am the painter as well as the painted. And so I have embraced each colour in turn until there is only mine left to paint.

It’s been a battle, my little rainbow project. I say little… Often the colours don’t want to transmute their essence onto the muddled canvas. Sometimes they put up such a struggle that bloody murder is done before I can leave the easel. But each one has been dealt; caught on canvas for scrutinisation; red, yellow, orange, green, blue, indigo, violet. And finally, now, the in-between colour; the one that makes those seven even. The one that makes sense of them. My colour. The final nailing to the mast. Turquoise.

My fingers curl, again, around the brush, staining aqua from drips, drabs, drops of paint that have run along its length. The paint sticks sticky to the palm. I breath and begin again.

Turquoise is peace. Peace, tranquility, calm... it is the colour of affection. You'd think pink would be the official affectionate colour, but truly, turquoise is it; deep enough to care, but light enough to not turn into passion...

Aaron only puzzled when I told him.

Stood haphazardly in the attic doorway, leaning, paintbrush balanced on two fingers, one eyebrow quizzically raised, mouth scrunched, he wondered what I meant. He didn’t know I was opening a secret up for him. The single, tiniest, most insignificant yet significant secret of my entire existence; that I am turquoise. That I was showing him my soul, he did not know-

Interruption breaks through again.

“I wanted to ask you-“

“Ah, ah ah!”

“But-”

“Silence?”

Aaron shakes his head, but remains still beside me on the stool, his head close to mine.

Perfecto. Si, su excelencia; turquesa. Porque? Porque es yo. Ah. Si.
Perfect. Yes, your excellency; turquoise. Why? Because it’s me. Ah. Yes.

My mother never did understand turquoise. I guess that’s why she never understood me. She never understood its depths, the deep, unfathomable, murky yet opalescent and clear, dark yet bright depths… The way it shimmers in waters, or silks over cloud cover, slides through tears, or peers round fluttering curtains of sky. Its decadence and simplicity, its complexity. Its life. My mother was, in most ways, very grey. For grey is infinitely 2D, and therefore, cannot understand me; the infinitely dimensional turquoise.

Sigh.

Aaron doesn’t attempt to say anything else, and I paint on oblivious.

The sky seems to unfold before me, so I unpick the hints of turquoise from its heights, devouring with my eyes its splendid pigment. I throw it arrogantly back onto the canvas, swiping paint across paint, slashing turquoise on shade of turquoise. My urgency fades and I twirl gently across my turquoise landscape, underlining the phrases of pigment, accenting a touch here and there.

I guess life is far better in colour.

But it’s even better in turquoise.

Every item of turquoise which my eyes have ever seen, is imitated, shaped and transported into my painting; waves, lagoons, seas, oceans, rivers, pools, fabrics, silks, jewelry, scarves, eyes, feathers, signs, embroidery, threads, pastels, oils, paints, and now this canvas. United in one colour. United in myself, in turquoise.

It takes time to get it right, but this time there are no false starts. No ripping of canvas and placing of new. Only continuous paint flowing from pot, to brush, to canvas.

And then it’s done.

My life on a thirty by thirty square. It’ll take some decoding, but it’s all there for a patient mind. All there in one shade of thousands. I sigh, breathing out the last piece of turquoise from my lungs. I no longer need to be turquoise, although it’s still part of me.

But it’s not a necessity.

I can act red now, for Aaron, grey for my mother, green for my father. I can be a rainbow now, rather than one shade…

Turquoise is finished.

“Done?” Aaron asks tentatively.

“Yes…” I breath, suddenly purposeless.

“You’ll have to find yourself a new obsession.”

I nod, smiling slightly.

“Still turquoise though?” he asks.

“I think I may have exhausted my turquoise for the moment,” I reply.

He laughs softly, gently unclenching my cramped fingers from the palette, pulling me to my feet, kissing me softly on the forehead.

Aaron is not turquoise. But he understands it.

He knows about its depths and shades, simplicity and complexity, decadence and modesty, it’s calm, peaceful nature and robust passion.

He understands my dark and my light,
my love and my life.
He understands…
Me.