Spin - Chapter Two

Noah - Then

“Noah, it’s time to go.”

I heard my mother's call but I couldn’t move. I was too busy watching the old gypsy woman that stood across the street.
Maybe stood was too strong a word. She looked about a hundred years old, her shoulders hunched, her knees knobby and crooked.

Her clothing looked homemade, her dress, faded and tattered. A shawl wrapped around her tiny shoulders, nearly swallowing her. Her gray hair was held back by a gauzy scarf, and jewelry adorned every inch of her skin. I wondered how such a frail old woman could stand to carry the weight of all that metal.

On the folding table in front of her was a velvet cloth and in the center sat a stack of large playing cards. Only I knew they weren’t for playing. They were for reading the future. At least, that’s what my brother Reid once told me.

The gypsies fled their homes during the war, like so many others. A lot of them ended up in Midnight simply because there was no fighting here. There wasn’t much of anything here, let alone anything worth fighting for.

I shielded my eyes from the hot summer sun and studied the woman, taking note of the red and gold wisps radiating from her. I knew no one else could see them. No one ever did.

Just then, the woman’s eyes met mine. They were dark and piercing, radiating a strength that didn’t match the frail woman before me. The corners of her mouth turned up ever so slightly.

She knows.

I took a step back and faltered, but my eyes never left her. Does she know? About the things that I see? Or, was I imagining the look in her eyes? A look that said, I know your secrets. I eat them for breakfast.

“Noah.” A gentle hand wrapped around my shoulder. My mother’s warm face and light came into view, bringing me back to myself immediately. “Let’s go, we’ve got to get home.”

“I’m coming,” I replied.

My mother smiled her sweet smile, the colors around her glowing and warm, but buried underneath was the concern she tried so hard to hide whenever she looked at me. I didn’t blame her. I knew that I was different and that she was afraid for me. Or worse, of me.

I followed after her, only pausing for a moment to take one more look at the old gypsy. To my surprise, she was gone, her table left abandoned. I glanced around, sure she couldn’t have gotten far, but she was nowhere. Not on the sidewalk, or near the general store.

She was gone.

I hurried after my mother, knowing that if we weren’t home soon, my father would be angry. Not that there was a time when he wasn’t, but it was better to appease than to provoke him.

I climbed in the passenger side of my father’s old pick-up and placed the bag of groceries on the seat between us. I waited for her to start the engine, but she didn’t. She just sat there with a strange look on her face, an uneasiness filling the silence.

“Ma?” I questioned, wondering why we weren’t moving when she was just hurrying me a moment ago.

She sighed, the sound falling somewhere between longing and resolve. Her gaze was fixed straight ahead, but her eyes were unfocused like she wasn’t really there with me, but somewhere else entirely.

After a long moment, she turned to me. “What if we just drove away, you and me? We could get out of here... leave this place. Go somewhere else and never look back.” A glimmer of hope shown in her eyes. But, something was wrong with it. It felt... unhinged.

I watched her in stunned bewilderment. Leave?

“What do you mean? What about Reid and Wyatt?” I asked.

The hope in her eyes faded just as quickly as it appeared. She dropped her eyes and turned her face away. An odd laugh came out of her and she shook her head as if trying to rid the thoughts from her brain. I watched as her demeanor changed and the woman I knew, my mother, was back again.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Forget I said anything. It was just a silly, stupid thought.”

Concerned, I watched her for a long moment and then reached across the seat to grab her hand. She looked down and smiled. With her free hand, she cupped my face and stared into my eyes. She looked tired and worn, but she was still beautiful, and I wondered how it was that she came to be with a man as miserable as my father.

“My sweet boy. I know you think that you’re different, and you are. But, that’s not a bad thing, Noah. The colors you see are a gift. Don’t ever let anyone tell you different.”

I listened intently, hanging on every word. But, to my utter disappointment, that was all I got.

After that, she started the truck as if nothing had happened, as if she hadn't just tried to talk her nine-year-old son into absconding to some-magical-better-place.

Yeah, ma. While we're at it let's find bigfoot, ride a unicorn, and lasso the moon.

Instead, we headed off in the direction of the-same-shit-place-as-always.

On the way home, I could help but wonder what the hell just happened.

We had only ever talked about my colors one other time.

I remember it was raining. I was sitting at the kitchen table, her standing. For the first time in my life, I explained how when I looked at a person, I would see colors around them. Sometimes dozens of them. Like a moving mural. A fingerprint, making them different from everyone else. I didn’t know if I was actually seeing them as much as I was feeling them. Or, if I was just crazy and my brain was making it all up.

When I was done, she didn’t respond right away, and when she finally did, it wasn’t what I was expecting. “Don’t let your father hear you talking about that,” she said. She walked away and that was that.

At first, I thought she was afraid of me, that I had scared her. But, I quickly realized that not acknowledging it was her way of protecting me, not only from my father but from people in general.

You see, it had gotten to the point that sometimes I would slip and call my brothers by their "colors" instead of by their names. My mother thought it was cute at first. But, my father... well, he didn’t think anything was cute. He only saw strength and weakness. And by strength, I mean how much a man could work, drink, and fuck. By weakness... I mean everything else.

The last time it happened, I was in the sitting room with my brother, Wyatt. We were fooling around, playing some game or another. My father sat in his usual spot in the recliner, with a stiff drink in his hand.

My mother had warned me before, but that day I slipped and called Wyatt green.

I knew as soon as I said it that I messed up.

My father was out of his chair and over to me a second after the word left my mouth. He snatched me up by the hair and brought his face down close to mine. He reeked of pine, sweat, and liquor. Dust and dirt settled in the pores of his nose, and the lines of his forehead, a typical result of a long day working at the mill.

“What the hell did I tell you about that, boy?” he growled, accentuating that last word. He loved to remind us all how inferior and puny we were in his presence. “Do you want people to think you’re some kind of fucking retard?”

He didn’t wait for me to answer. Instead, he tightened his grip on my hair and drug me out of the room and down the hallway.

I knew where we were headed and what would happen when we got there. The same thing that happened to all of us when we did something to annoy him. By then, I had learned it was better not to fight it, so I stumbled behind him trying my best not fall.

We reached the back bedroom where he and my mother slept. He shoved me through the doorway and stepped in after me. I backed away from him until I felt my legs hit the bed, never taking my eyes off him.

I watched as he unfastened his belt and yanked it from its loops with a single pull. He wrapped the buckled end around his hand, gripping it with a firm, anchor-like fist.

“Take off your shirt,” he said.

I did as I was told. I tugged my shirt over my head and balled it in my fist. I turned around, placing my palms flat on the mattress, and waited.

I heard and felt each of his footsteps on the hardwood, everyone bringing him closer. I could picture the cold fire burning in his blue eyes... the same blue eyes I saw every time I looked in the mirror.

There was a moment of perfect silence before the whoosh of the belt and the sound of skin breaking apart filled the room. The pain was blinding, and flashes of light danced in my vision, not unlike the colors for which I was being punished for.

The irony was not lost on me.

I don’t remember how many times he hit me before the sound of my mother's voice resonated over the ringing in my ears.

“That’s enough, Ezekiel,” she said, in a voice I didn’t recognize. She was trying to sound bigger than herself, but through the cracks, I could hear her fear.

I stayed hunched over the bed, waiting for the bite of the belt to find its mark, but to my surprise, it never came.

I heard my father’s heavy footsteps leave the room and wander down the hall, most likely returning to his cooshy spot on the recliner. As soon as the sound faded, my mother's arms were around me, trying their best to comfort me.

I was in too much pain to cry, too much pain to do much of anything other than let her hold me.

That was the last time I mentioned my colors around anyone, let alone my father, which suited me just fine. It was easier that way.

Until the day I met Lilah.

I’d never seen such beautiful colors as I did the day I first laid eyes on her. She was like a breath of fresh air, blasting her way through the dull, through the darkness that had become my young life. It was the first time in a long time I found myself wishing I could tell somebody.

Summer was over now, and the wounds from my father’s lashing had long since healed, replaced with wretched scars that covered the length of my back.

It was the first day of fourth grade, and I was just as glum as anyone about the fact that summer had ended and a new school year was beginning.

Midnight was a small town in the Mississippi Delta, too small to have its own school, so they shipped the kids from Midnight and some of the surrounding towns all the way to Silver City. That meant the bus ride was forty minutes each way, another fact that I wasn’t too happy about.

I followed my two older brothers, Reid and Wyatt, onto the bus feeling the typical first-day nerves.

“Find your assigned seats,” the bus driver spoke in a bored monotone like she’d repeated the phrase all morning. I walked down the narrow aisle, reading the names written above each window.

Ahead of me, I watched my brothers share a shitty grin, realizing they were assigned to sit together. Bastards. Figures I’d be the one left out. As the youngest of the three, it seemed like I was always the one who got left behind.

Knowing the seats were assigned alphabetically, I glanced above the one in front of them and saw my own name scrawled in messy handwriting. I didn’t bother reading the name of the person I was assigned to sit with, because she already had my full attention.

She was smaller than me with a head of long, tangled hair the color of corn silk. Her skin was pale, which was unusual for someone living that far south of the Mason-Dixon line. But, that’s not what caught and held my attention.

It was the blazing, vivid colors dancing around her. So many colors. I had never seen that many on one person before.
I was so taken aback I just stood there, staring in awe while she peeked up through her mess of hair. Her pale, gray-green eyes watching me intently.

It wasn’t until the bus started moving that I finally snapped out of it. I sat down next to her, trying like hell to keep my eyes to myself. My mamma always said it was impolite to stare. Luckily, I didn’t have to try for long.

“What’s your name?” she asked.
Her voice was small like her but carried a drawl like mine. It was the sweetest thing I’d ever heard.

I took her question for the gift that it was and turned to her immediately. “Noah,” I answered, letting my eyes flicker back and forth from her face to the luminance engulfing her. “What’s yours?”

She smiled. “Lilah.” Then, her eyes fell to the floor. She was shy. “Lilah Mayberry.”

Lilah Mayberry.

I stared at her for a long moment, taking in the whole scene while her name played over and over in my head.

Pale lilac made up her base. Overtop of that were the boldest reds, purples, and blues. Like someone picked every kind of berry they could find and smashed them all over making little brilliant bursts. And, peaking through all the cracks was the most perfect shade of yellow. Like the sun shining on daffodils in the Springtime. Then, fading into lemon sherbert. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

And, so was she.

Growing up in Mississippi the palette was always the same, but she was an explosion of color in my dull, muddy world, like the month of May offering a reprieve from the bleak winter. Or, the burst of flavor on your tongue when your teeth first break the skin of a sweet summer berry. To me, her name painted a picture, one that perfectly matched the swirling tones she carried.

Yes. Lilah Mayberry was the perfect name for her.

My nine-year-old mind couldn’t articulate just how perfect I thought it was.

“I like your name,” was my only response.

Her cheeks turned pink and the colors around her flickered.

“Most people make fun of it cause of that old TV show. I never saw it, but that boy Justin Mills said his momma watches it all the time and there’s someone on there with that name. He says it’s a stupid name.”

I noticed the way her eyes stayed glued to the floor when she talked. The same way I looked whenever I had to speak to my father. Suddenly, I felt anger towards Justin Mills.

“Well, I like it,” I said, boldly.

This made her look up, so I decided to keep going.

“Justin Mills is dumber than dirt. My brothers said so. They beat him up last summer cause he tried to steal Wyatt’s bike. He’s just a jealous fool.”

She thought about this for a second and then lifted her head slightly. “You really think so?”

I nodded.

Her smile glowed, and I felt an odd sense of pride that I had been the cause of it.

“How old are you?” I asked her.

“Seven.”

“I’m nine.” Almost ten, not that I was counting.

I studied her face again, sure that I had never seen her before. I would’ve remembered her. “Are you new?”

She nodded. “Me and my momma just moved here. I used to live in Jackson.”

“Why’d you move?” I asked, wondering why the hell anyone would want to move to a place like Midnight. The way I heard adults talk, Midnight was a place you tried to get away from.

Her expression fell into a frown and I immediately wished I could take it back.

“Me and momma lived with one of her friends, but he wasn’t very nice. They got in a fight and now we live here.”

“Oh.” It’s all I could think to say. I knew about living with someone who wasn’t very nice, but I didn’t think it would be polite to say so. Instead, I tried to change the subject. “Where do you live in Midnight?”

“In the tiny, green cabin by the creek.”

“You mean Silver Creek?”

She shrugged. “I guess. I don’t know what it’s called.”

There was only one creek in Midnight. And, there was only one house that would fit that description. I knew the place she was talking about. No one had lived there for years. It was more of a shack than an actual house.

And, it was within walking distance of my own, which gave me an idea.

“If you want, I could come over to your house after school? I could show you the creek.”

Her eyes widened for a second and then flickered back to the floor. “I don’t know. My mamma doesn’t really like having people at our house. Not in the daytime, anyway.”

“Oh.” Not in the daytime? What are they... a bunch of vampires? “Well, that’s ok. You could still come over to my house sometime.”

She gave me another small, half-smile. “Ok. Maybe.” The pink in her cheeks was the exact same color of her lips.

I considered myself to be an expert on color, and hers, I would never grow tired of looking at.

Right then and there I decided I had to find a way to spend more time with her. Suddenly, the forty-minute-each-way bus ride didn't sound so terrible anymore.