Yellow

Imagine you can only see yellow.  No robin’s egg blue.  No emerald green.  The red of a fire-truck rushing by would be a shadow passing in the darkness, black on black.

Imagine that when you look up at the sun it always appears in a midnight sky as a ball of fiery gold and that, each autumn, the turning leaves slowly appear, as if from nowhere, and fall at your feet in rustling piles of amber. 

Once there really was a boy who could only see yellow.  The boy was born in unusual circumstances.  His mother went into labour in a car on a narrow cliff-top road in the flashing yellow light of a caution sign. He drew his first breath as the red lights of the ambulance lit the backseat where he lay.  Neither his father nor his mother knew that he cried not from the shock of being born, but because each time the red light flashed, their faces disappeared.

As he was a baby, his father and mother did not know that he could only see yellow.  They were very proud of him but  thought it odd that he never looked at their faces. Instead, he would stare at the only yellow things in the nursery, stars they had hung from the ceiling.

When they finally guessed the truth, they ran to paint their hands and faces yellow and put on yellow clothes so he could see them.  They were thrilled when he smiled at them for the first time.  His parents also painted the boy so that he could see his own hands and face in the mirror.  Painting themselves was only the first of many strange things his mother and father did.

By the time the boy was one his nursery was entirely yellow.  The walls, cot, sheets and furniture were all different shades so he could see them easily.  When they fed him, his parents made his milk yellow with a touch of saffron.

As he grew older, his parents realized that one yellow room would not be enough.  They wanted to protect him from the truth and make more of the world visible to him, so they moved to a distant valley filled with yellow poplar trees. They knew the boy would only feel the trunks and branches of the trees but hoped that, sometimes in the evening when the sun was low, the trees might shimmer, like ripples, in the golden light.

They built a house in the valley, which they painted yellow inside and out.  They had a yellow picket fence to keep him safe, and grew fields of mustard, sunflowers and golden wheat.  They even planted the front yard with buttercups, which  to the boy, hovered just above the black earth.

They did everything they could to create a world both visible and safe for the boy.  Everything they ate was yellow.  If the food was not yellow, his parents made it yellow with turmeric and saffron which they imported in huge oak barrels that cost a fortune.  They had learned over one hundred ways to cook corn and lemon pudding.  The boy and his parents even bathed in yellow dye to keep clean.

Still, as the boy grew and began to wander further and further, his father knew that the yard wasn't big enough.  He started to go out at night and paint the tree trunks yellow, while his mother climbed amongst the branches and painted as many leaves as she could reach.  It was exhausting, but they were determined to protect him.

In the woods were many animals that the boy could hear but not see.  Because they loved him so much, his parents began to trap the animals and spray them with a yellow dye made from mustard seeds. Sightings of strange yellow deer and rabbits began to spread to the surrounding valleys.  Rumors flew and people stayed away.

But the boy’s eagerness to explore was too great for the parents to satisfy with painted trees and dyed animals.  One day, his mother disappeared into the cellar with a very determined look on her face. For many days she labored to find a solution.  At last she emerged pulling a large machine that could grind huge amounts of mustard seed into fine yellow dust.  The dust filled the air with a yellow haze that, swept down the valley with the wind, slowly settled and gave everything a thin coat of yellow.

The machine ran constantly and gradually a strange yellow world emerged from the blackness, and the boy could see everything.

His father told him that beyond the valley, where the dust did not go, were the black lands where nothing could be seen.  His mother told him to stay out of the rain because it could wash away his world.  Their words frightened him, and the boy never ventured too far from home. 

Time passed. Then, one day, a man came to the edge of the valley in a large red car. Everything looked very strange to him.  Through the yellow haze he could see only hints of what was there.  Curious, he drove slowly along the dusty road and watched yellow deer jumping between the trees and yellow fish leaping in the river.  Soon his car too was covered in a fine coat of yellow dust.

The boy stood in the window of the farmhouse and watched the car approach.  He grew very excited and ran out to meet it.  The car stopped.  Curious, the boy brushed his hand along the warm body of the car.  What he saw beneath the dust was not yellow.  But it wasn’t black either.

The boy was puzzled.  He stepped back and called for his father and mother.  When his father saw the boy staring at the red metal of the car he cried and his mother laughed.  They rushed to sweep the yellow dust from the car, the man inside watching as the boy’s eyes grew very wide.

When the car was clean the father and mother stood back.

“That,” said the father, “is red.”

The man got out of the car.  He was wearing a blue coat.

“That is blue,” said the mother.

The man took off his coat.  Underneath he was wearing a green shirt. A dim memory of puzzling, whispered words fluttered in the boy’s mind.

“Is that … green?” asked the boy.

“Yes!” said his father.

“Yes!” said his mother.

The boy walked over to his father whose tears had washed clean parts of his face. The boy touched his father’s cheek.

“This is you,” he said, his face lighting up like the bright gold of the sun.

“Yes!” said his father, and gave the boy a big hug.



His mother switched off the dust machine.  Outside it started to rain. The boy watched as the raindrops washed away the dust and rinsed his skin clean of dye. The green grass slowly appeared under the buttercups.  He turned to his father.

“I’ll never eat corn again!” said the boy.

But he did eat lemon pudding.


The End