the color of things

COLOR OR RACE: Yellow. 

It makes color sound like a destiny. The finger of the Decider pointing at eight pounds of baby: “You will have the life of Yellow.”

If I had been able to look over the shoulder of Mr. David D. Helm, Registrar 5279, as he put his name on my birth certificate in Camden, New Jersey, I would have said I was not yellow. Bill was yellow, but not until he was bloated, jaundiced, and near death in intensive care.  That was yellow. 

I bet the registrars in China didn’t have a box for “COLOR OR RACE: Yellow”, neither in Ningbo for my father, nor in Hankou for my mother. The people at the Center of the World do not need to say what color they are.

If I had had the choice, I would have told the Decider to change that word to celadon green, a tenth-century Chinese color and the color of the sugar bowl I gave to Bill at Mt. Auburn, a Christmas gift from his little sister for when he got out of the hospital, which he didn’t.  Or apricot. RACE: Apricot.

For the first four decades of my life I lived among white walls.  Then I left a marriage and lived with color: Placid Sea, Pointed Fir, Clementine, Hawthorne, Marrett Apple, Apricot.

On the beach, Dad selected only white rocks the size of olive rolls.  He always wore a white shirt, pressed. A white shirt in the photo of him rowing a boat.  A white shirt in the photo of him riding a horse.  He wanted me to have a white coat when I was twelve, which my mother dutifully found. But where he grew up, white is the color of funerals. Uncle James got a tailor to make him a white suit for the occasion of his suicide.  A hanging white suit.

In paint sets one can choose zinc white, titanium white, flake white, cremnitz white, or silver white.  The house paint brochure shows thirty-eight whites.  But I cannot find the paint chip that matches the whites of peonies that grew in my mother’s garden – buttery white that changes when light filters through the flesh of the petals.  People say the “whites” of one’s eyes.  The whites of Bill’s eyes turned yellow. 

I grew up on white rice, often drowned in my bowl with white milk remaining in my glass and eaten like cold cereal at the end of the meal.  At twenty-two I added brown rice. I learned in China it was called “rough rice”. I was told it was for the poor.  White rice, like white bread, was an indicator of status; it matters not whether you are white or yellow.

A few decades ago, I became a “person of color”.  Who came up with this?  A Person of Color or a Person of No Color?  Nobody asked. Under the rule of “people first”, “people of color” was considered an improvement from “colored people”, yet the entire population for whom the category does not fit retains its status as nameless Default. Everyone seems to know who the Colorless People are.  Who would want to be Colorless?  White like white bread? No color, no texture, no flavor, no nutrition, no character. And yet so much power.

Yellow.  We gathered by the river’s edge. My brother Tishan was waiting with the small blue box in his arm, so I picked up my feet, and, before I could pause, he was scooping the ashes from the box and tossing them into the water. The water looked brown. I knew this river, always slow.  Everyone else directed their silence to us. I threw in handfuls of the heavy, dusty matter.  They were not like any ashes I knew. These were bone fragments and granules. They were not really “remains”.  So much more remained than six pounds of powder. I dusted off my hands on my dark green coat - Mother. 

Dear Lillian and Tishan,

I have decided to end my life today…

Continuing, I scooped and tossed, changing the arc of my arm so the ashes would spread.  Scatter, as people say. The gritty dust, both coarse and fine, sought depth.  By the bank it was only a few inches to the muddy bottom.  I squatted.

I believe this is the time for me to quit…So, goodbye.

I wish to be cremated and the ashes spread into the Charles River, as Cambridge has played a large role in our family.  I would like for this to be done when the schools are out, and everyone is home.

  The paleness of the ashes just under the surface reveals the true color of the water, and it is yellow.  A beautiful yellow, not the yellow the Decider was thinking of when he wrote “Yellow”.  Not the color of my skin, or the skin of anyone in my extended family, or in all of China for that matter.  More like the yellow of the moon cakes that Dad brought home for August Moon Festival, opening the box to reveal the elegant embossed designs and scalloped edges.  Shiny and golden, a thin crust shaped tightly around the dense black bean paste, or the tawnier lotus seed filling, or the one with the duck egg yolk in the middle.  They were like Chinese furniture, at the same time delicate and squarely solid. 

The river begins to take in my mother. But the water seems not to be going downstream.  It is swirling upstream and around in a wide circle, wandering, as one might wander when one does not want to progress just yet towards a destination.  My brother went back the next day to make sure the river had carried “it” away, and he said that the water in the area was all clear. So good, Mother was not just lingering around in the mucky shallows of the Charles. 

This year, I will give my house a fresh coat of paint. The color will be yellow.

. . .