Blue Sun, Yellow Sky Page 8

  “I’m in heaven,” I said.

  “We can tell,” Rati replied as she and Jeff stood at the edge of the tent.

  “Isn’t this the same stuff you have in your apartment?” Jeff asked, squinting to read a label off one of the pans. “Is Anthra-qui-none blue really that different from cobalt blue?”

  “Anthraquinone,” I corrected. “And yes, it is.” I feigned insult before turning my back on them with a smile and going back to scooping mounds of color into twist-tie bags.

  Color pigments were worth more to me than gold. Running my fingers along the edges of the shallow wooden containers where bits of pigment had fallen, I felt the different colors between my fingertips. The organic pigments were rich and smooth, a nice departure from what I was used to.

  Excited at the prospect of working with new colors, I tried hard to keep thoughts of going blind at bay. Forcing myself to stay in the moment and focus on what I’d create when we got back to Rati’s house, I did my best to keep up with Rati and Jeff, but I was already hardly paying attention to where we were going when I spotted a couple of kids jumping on what used to be a mini trampoline. I stopped to watch.

  The springy surface material had been ripped and shredded, leaving only the metal ring and a few dangling pieces of green fabric. A group of seven or eight children were playing some sort of game that looked like a combination of Hop Scotch and Jacks with dice. Whoever’s turn it was would throw the pair of dice and then jump into the center while balancing on one foot. The number on the dice would dictate the number of times the kid had to spin around inside the trampoline before picking up as many pebbles as he could in one hand and then hopping out. If they lost balance and fell they were out. It wasn’t a complicated game but they seemed to be into it.

  Careful to keep Rati in the corner of my eye, I continued after her and Jeff haphazardly as I watched the kids play.

  When I was nine years old, my dad installed a trampoline in the backyard and I used to jump up and down on it for hours on end. I loved the euphoric feeling it gave me. To be up in the air, detached from the earth, was the greatest feeling. I became so good at flipping around on it that numerous family friends suggested my parents sign me up for gymnastics. But the two activities couldn’t have been more different. I didn’t like the rigidity of form and posture in gymnastics and those stupid poses they made me strike so as to “stick” the landing. All I wanted was to be free, which didn’t require any kind of training, focus, or ridiculously tight leotard. To master the trampoline, I needed the exact opposite of calculated flips: I had to learn to let go of my inhibitions and trust that I when I flipped, I would land somewhere on the large, springy surface.

  The very first time I made the flip was truly an exercise in conquering fear. I stood at the edge of the mat with adrenaline pumping through my body as my heart beat a mile a minute. My dad looked up at me from the edge of the trampoline and said, “All you need to do is lean in at the crest, and the laws of motion will take care of the rest. I promise you.”

  “Stop, dad,” I said, concentrating. He laughed and waited patiently for me to jump.

  I knew I had to trick myself into believing it was easy at the exact time I needed to hurl my body forward. So for 15 minutes I bounced up and down, waiting for the right moment, and then in a split-second decision mid-air, I did it. I landed on shaking knees but I had completed the flip unharmed. The fear of becoming a paraplegic was gone and then I did it again, landing a little more gracefully; then again, and again, until an hour had gone by and the fear was a distant memory. That kid who was always saying, “It’s easy, just go like this,” before effortlessly doing what everyone else was afraid of—that was me. Fearless.

  That momentary decision, made in a microsecond, to trust myself—and the makers of my trampoline—was so powerful that I tapped into it a second time, and after some false attempts, I learned to do the flip with my eyes closed.

  When I was nine, the darkness was freeing. I’d close my eyes, and the world held endless possibilities. Now, nearly two decades later, darkness had become my greatest fear.

  When I pulled out of my daze I was walking on autopilot behind Jeff and Rati, who seemed deep in their own conversation.

  I thought about picking up my pace and rejoining the conversation, but I chose instead to keep to myself and focus on the city all around me. Delhi was captivating and I stopped often to photograph the details. On the sidewalk in front of a newly renovated store, I found leftover drippings and splatter of blue-green paint. Most people probably saw it as messy or a mistake, but it made me think of Jackson Pollack. The guy somehow figured out how to convey movement and action on a canvas that looked like five and six-year-olds were given dripping paintbrushes and told to run around. That is what I should aspire to, I thought. Changing the way people see art. As we continued walking, I moved at a leisurely pace. I looked for other images to inspire me and stopped to take a photo of the only fire hydrant I remember passing in Delhi. It was yellow.

  When I looked up, I saw Rati turn a corner and I ran to catch up. “Hey! Wait up!” I shouted, but as the girl turned to face me I realized she wasn’t Rati. “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else,” I said. Panicked, I spun around, heading back in the direction I had come.

  SCREEEEEEEECH! HOOOOONK! A car barreled toward me out of nowhere to make a right turn. Instinctively, I jumped back, tripping over the curb behind me.

  “Hey!” Jeff yelled after the driver, who was long gone. “Are you okay?” he asked, helping me up off the ground. The smell of burnt rubber lingered in the air.

  “Yeah. I’m okay. I just didn’t see the car coming,” I said, catching a look of concern from Rati.

  “This is my fault. We shouldn’t have been walking so far ahead of you,” Rati said. “This kind of thing happens all the time in India.”

  “No, no. Trust me, it was my fault,” I said, trying my best to sound nonchalant.

  Physically, I was completely fine. What jolted me was a realization: How many times had a driver turned in front of me only to apologize halfway through the intersection for not seeing me? This was the first time I realized there was a danger to going blind.

  “You scared me half to death,” Jeff said, giving me a squeeze and smile. I scared myself half to death, I thought.

  “It’s not a big deal,” I said, trying to hide the fact that my legs were shaking.

  The distance from the market to Rati’s house was just over a mile, so we were right around the corner when I had nearly been run over. When we entered the house, the aroma of spices filled my nostrils. My stomach grumbled.

  Dhairya made us basmati rice, kebabs, kofta, and paneer cooked in spinach. He also toasted naan for us to eat with the dishes. We ate in silence mostly, the events of the day finally settling in.

  Afterward, we moved upstairs to the balcony where Rati and Jeff roasted marshmallows over a propane stove, and I thumbed through a set of postcards I’d picked up at the Taj Mahal gift shop. I wanted to find an angle I could reference as I painted. My inspiration for the painting was the abundance of color in Delhi. I started with a sketch of the Taj Mahal and added hundreds of locals, all to be covered in my newly acquired pigments. We had missed the famous festival of color, Holi, which happened a few months before, but standing among the throngs of pigments at the color stall made me wonder what it would be like to watch a celebration of color splashed across the white landscape of the Taj Mahal.

  “So you’ve known Aubrey since kindergarten,” Rati said. “That’s a long time.”

  “You’ve known Aubs since college, right? So that’s what, four or five years?” Jeff asked.

  “Holy crap. Has it really been five years? Wow, yeah I guess it has,” Rati ruminated. “But I knew we were going to be friends the second I met her. I mean, look at her. Most people backpack around the world in hiking shoes, cargo pants, and tank tops. She looks like she belongs in a French cafe with a cigarette in one hand and an espresso in the other.
”

  I laughed. The implication was that all artists dressed like bohemians, and though I wasn’t by any means shopping on Rodeo drive, I liked to think that I made good fashion choices with the little money I had.

  “Aubs is definitely one-of-a-kind,” Jeff smiled.

  “Speaking of which, I hear you were her first kiss,” Rati asked.

  “What?” Jeff asked, confused.

  I could tell where this was headed and did my best to catch Rati’s eye and get her to stop, but she kept her face glued to Jeff’s.

  “Weren’t you?” Rati asked.

  “You count Spin the Bottle as your first kiss?” Jeff said, looking at me.

  “I mean, it kind of was, wasn’t it?” I replied.

  “No. Yeah, I mean it was the first time I’d kissed anyone, but it’s not like we were girlfriend and boyfriend or anything.”

  “Well whatever, it was awkward anyway, right?” I said.

  “You thought it was awkward?” Jeff asked.

  “You don’t even count it as your first kiss,” I argued. “It obviously wasn’t that good.”

  Jeff didn’t say anything, which I took to mean that he agreed.

  I set down the stack of postcards before adding a few more details to my sketch.

  “Do you still do that thing where you collect postcards? Like used ones, with messages written on them to other people?” Rati asked.

  “You still did that in college?” Jeff asked me.

  I shrugged, “Old habits die hard.”

  “You mean she did it in high school?” Rati interjected.

  “I was there when it started. We were 14, I think? On our walk home from school we passed by a yard sale where she bought her first one. From then on, it was every estate sale in the Houston area,” Jeff boasted.

  “Postcards are meant to read by others. Why else would they not have envelopes?” I said. “I like reading the messages and making up stories about the people who send them. Kind of like my dad used to do with his photos.”

  “It’s a little weird, Aubs,” Rati said.

  I sighed. “Alright, y’all need to stop distracting me. I have to concentrate.” They laughed.

  “I’m going to get some more tea. Anyone want anything?” Rati asked.

  “I’ll come with you,” Jeff said as they both stood up.

  “I’m okay, thank you,” I said.

  After they left I leaned back, examining my sketch one last time before mixing the color pigments onto a plate Rati let me borrow. The bags of color were vibrant compared to my usual tones, and the more I looked at the sketch the more I felt like it was a more accurate reflection of myself. I liked juxtaposing images, but I also viewed the world as a colorful and fun place, even if I didn’t paint it that way all the time. Lifting my brush to the canvas, I took a deep breath to calm my nerves. Even after so many years as a painter, I still got the jitters right before adding the first layers of paint.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Luminosity

  “OH my god!” I yelped. Jerking upright, I knew my eyes were open but everything was black. I quickly touched my face, and then breathed a sigh of relief as I felt the face mask I wore to block out the brightness of a streetlamp outside. Ripping it off, I jumped out of bed, tossed my hair into a bun, brushed my teeth and washed my face—the bare minimum of personal hygiene—and quickly threw my things into my suitcases.

  “Are we late?” I asked, opening my door for the first time. It seemed far too bright out, and I had forgotten when our flight took off. I thought it was pretty early.

  “We’ve got three hours. I’m sure if we get there in two we’ll have plenty of time to check in,” Jeff shouted from his room.

  “Oh,” I said, taking a deep breath.

  “Do you need help with anything?” Rati asked, appearing at my door.

  “I don’t think so,” I smiled. “Thank you so much for having us. It’s been really fun.”

  “Are you kidding? I’m so happy that I got to see you. Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” she asked.

  “Yes. I’ll be fine,” I assured her.

  “Will you let me know if there is anything I can do? I know I live literally halfway around the world, but you shouldn’t be alone during this transition. You say the word and I can be in LA in less than twenty-four hours,” she said, and I could tell she meant it.

  “Thank you, but I have some time to process it all and I really think I’m going to be okay,” I smiled, with more confidence than I felt.

  “We really need to stay in better touch. I’m gonna have Dhairya pack you guys some food to take on the plane,” Rati said.

  “Oh, you don’t need to do that,” I said, but she waved me off and disappeared.

  The ride to the airport seemed shorter than the ride from it before. Her driver stopped and helped us with our suitcases as we said goodbye to Rati: Jeff first, giving her a hug and kiss on the cheek. Then I gave her a hug and asked, “When do you think you’ll come back for a visit?” I asked, squeezing her tight.

  “I don’t have any plans as of right now, but it’s been awhile so I’m definitely due for a trip. Soon I hope.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’ve missed having you around.”

  She smiled and gave me another hug before I headed for the security checkpoint.

  Exhausted after a late night of chatting with Rati, Jeff and I didn’t say much the entire way to Jordan. Even after I woke from a short nap to find my feet wedged underneath him, I smiled at him but didn’t engage in conversation. Deep in thought, Jeff didn’t seem to mind.

  “Wow,” I said, breaking the silence as we entered the Queen Alia International Airport in Jordan. Jeff nodded.

  Sleek and modern, it had pod-shaped roofing, beautiful lush green grass outside, open-space architecture, and simple, uniform seating at the gates. The airport was brand new—posh and rich with pride. After stopping in the post office to ship my two completed paintings home, we made our way through customs and baggage claim, then hailed a cab. For miles and miles along the road, there seemed to be nothing but desert and other passing vehicles. But before long, we made a right turn down a beautifully paved road and pulled onto a wide and extended driveway lined with palm trees and lit by recessed floor lights.

  A modular building made up of three symmetrical rhombus-shaped sections, the Kempinski Hotel had two square archways linking the structures together and a roof that was flat like the top of a graduation cap. The entire facade, including the walkway, was made of white stone and marble, and the giant rotating glass door opened up into a long regal hallway, at the back of which stood the reception desk. Walking through in a long maxi dress, sandals and my hobo bag, I felt underdressed against a backdrop of beautiful women wearing long chiffon cover-ups over bikinis designed for maximum sex appeal rather than swimming. Men wore long robes with either board shorts or Speedos.

  “This place looks pretty pricey,” I said.

  “This one’s on me,” Jeff said.

  “What? No.”

  “It’s not a big deal Aubs, they were having a deal online so I bought it. You can buy me a drink or something later,” Jeff said.

  “Do you remember what happened the last time you tried to buy me ice cream?” I warned in jest. My dad had taken us to the Kemah Boardwalk during the summer after eighth grade for some roller coaster rides and carnival fun, and he’d given me some money to go buy ice cream at a nearby stand while he rested on a bench. But when we got to the window, Jeff took out his own money and paid. Instead of being grateful though, I put my hands on my hips and accused him of being sexist. He protested as the lady handed us our cones, saying that he was just being nice. But I rolled my eyes, asking, “Why don’t you buy ice cream for every guy in line then?” That shut him up. My dad, hearing the entire exchange, came over and scolded me for not being gracious and then forced me to apologize to Jeff. I attempted to argue because I could tell my dad was amused and not really mad at me, but his stern look put me in my
place and I apologized through gritted teeth.

  “People don’t easily forget being chastised in public,” he replied.

  I smiled. “You’re not paying for this.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said with finality. We had just about reached the front desk as Jeff leaned toward me and whispered, “Just one more thing: in order to get the deal I had to tell them you were my wife, because they frown upon non-married couples sharing a room. So just go with it.”

  Before I could say anything we were greeted by the receptionist—an older, matronly woman who said, “Welcome, Mr. and Mrs. Anderson.”

  I tried unsuccessfully to suppress my smile. Jeff put his arm around me and I squeezed his hand a little too tightly.

  “You’re all checked in. Here are your keys. Enjoy your honeymoon,” she said. I looked at Jeff and it was all I could do to keep from bursting into laughter.

  A huge smile spread across the receptionist’s face. “You two definitely have that newlywed glow. You must be so happy.”

  I couldn’t help myself. Returning her smile, I said, “So far, it’s not bad!”

  As we made our way up to our room, it dawned on me that everyone we came across spoke English.

  “What’s the national language in Jordan?” I asked Jeff.

  “Arabic, but the language of commerce and banking is English, which is why most everyone speaks it. I thought it was odd too when I called to check on prices for hotels and most of them said ‘Hello?’”

  I laughed. “Hold the elevator,” a voice called, as a slender hand sliced down in-between the closing doors. A beautiful, exotic, woman stepped into the elevator mouthing, “Thanks,” as she finished up a phone call: “Yes. Okay. I’ve only seen one or two,” she said, looking Jeff up and down with a smile. “Meet me there at 8. Bye,” she finished, hanging up and turning around to face us. “Did you guys just arrive?”