Orange

My grandma’s favorite color was orange. And I mean hideous, bright, neon, unadulterated orange. Every Christmas she received gift after gift in the same offensive shade. Throw blankets, cups, water bottles, sweaters. She loved it with the joy of a child, a youthful glee in her eyes every time she ripped off the paper.

My favorite color is green. The dark shade of emeralds and the pine tree in our backyard. The color of the grass after it rains. Caterpillars as they creep across tree branches. Springtime. Growth.

My mother’s favorite color is blue. A dark, cobalt blue the color of the ocean. The town she lives in is landlocked. She painted our entire house a shade of the color. The kitchen cabinets, the wall above her bed, the bathroom door. When my grandma finally moved in with us, she had boxes and boxes full of violent oranges that didn’t match a single part of my mother’s carefully decorated home. So the orange was confined to her room, the large ground-floor bedroom off the kitchen. You opened the door and it was like stepping into another world, full of slightly clashing orange pillows and orange coasters and orange rugs and orange paintings. When you stepped back out, it was almost like it didn’t exist at all.

I was sleeping on the floor in her room when she took her last breath. I woke up hours later to see my mother and her brother crying in each other's arms. I always forgot they had grown up together, lives intertwined from the moment he was born. They lived in different cities now and had different families. But they had the same mom. They all had the same light curly hair and dimples in their smile.

The next night I tossed and turned in my childhood bedroom in a house that no longer belonged to me. The closet that used to be stuffed with my thrifted and hand-me-down clothes was now empty, my worn-down t-shirts and jeans stuffed in garbage bags and moved to my new town. The few pieces of clothing that remained were only the items my mother was storing. Her blue-tinted wedding dress, my light green prom dress, my grandmother's old, orange Sunday church dress. I curled into the freshly washed blankets and I cried until my eyelids were heavy and I couldn't breathe through my nose and the collar of my too-small t-shirt was soaking wet. And still, I couldn't sleep. I laid my head in the fur of my dog. I realized she was getting old, too.

Two weeks later, I was sleeping in my dorm bed in a city a thousand miles and four states away. My roommate slept 5 feet away from me. Most nights I lay awake, staring up at the concrete ceiling and thinking about all the times I avoided my grandma, missing the stories I should’ve asked her about.

A few months later, I fall asleep in the same bed, a cocktail of sleeping pills and wine swirling in my system so I can sleep through the night. But when I wake up, I am in an unfamiliar bed, scratchy blankets rubbing my skin and an uncomfortable nightgown caging my body. I blink my eyes open and feel the panic building up behind my belly button. This is not my dorm room. The tiny twin bed I am in is pushed up against a windowless wall. A small dresser sits next to me and a tiny bedside table holds a pair of glasses. The strangest part is that in the bed across from me sleeps a girl who is not my roommate. I must be dreaming. I must have had one drink too many in search of a good night's sleep. I pinch my arm and yelp as a quick pain strikes me.

The stranger slowly sits up, blinking sleep out of her eyes. "What's the matter?"

"I-" I start to say. How could I tell this girl that I had never seen her before and this wasn't my room and this wasn't my bed and this wasn't my body?

"Did you hit your hand trying to find your glasses again?" She mutters.

"I uh- yeah," I say. As I reach for the frames, I realize that my usual perfect vision is blurry. I put the glasses on and study the stranger as she reaches for her pair. She is my age, 19 or 20. Her light hair is cropped short, barely brushing the tops of her pale shoulders. Her giant frames sit nicely on her slightly crooked nose. As she pushes back the covers and rises from her tiny bed, I see that she is tall, her long legs stretching past the hem of her orange nightgown.

I know I should be freaked out, running for the hills, clawing my eyes out. But there is a weird tranquility about my body, my bones relaxing into the bed even as my brain struggles to piece together the puzzle. Like I am supposed to be here.

The strange girl ties her robe around her stomach and puts on her slippers. She grabs a bag I somehow knew was full of toiletries and mutters that she is going to the bathroom. I think I nod. When the door clicks shut behind her, I stand up and search the tiny room for any kind of clue. I glance at the other side, the only difference being the skinny bookshelf she has wedged between her desk and her bedside table. The one window is behind her bed with the curtains closed. I start with the dresser on my side, flinging open the wooden doors. Inside are nothing but vintage-style dresses with long skirts in pastel colors and kitten heels resting on the top shelf. Weird. I move on to the bedside table. I search for a phone but all I can find is a cloth to clean my glasses and a small circular container that seems to contain lip balm. The desk is the same, not a laptop or even a charger to be seen, and nothing but books and papers and pencils litter the top. But the weirdest part is when I glance in the small vanity mirror atop the desk. Because the wide-eyed girl in the reflection is not even a little bit me. My hair is trapped in rollers across my whole head, my unfamiliar brown eyes framed by the oversized glasses I would never have picked. My skin is freckleless and acneless and a shade of brown my redheaded self had never seen. And yet, looking at my reflection feels like spotting myself in the background of a blurry photo, recognizing my face as my own when no one else would know it was me.

The puzzle is beginning to come together when the door opens again, revealing the still sleepy form of my roommate. "Are you dressed yet?"

I know she is asking because our class starts soon. "Oh not yet, I was- Oh I was going to take out my hair." I start pulling the rollers from my hair as she opens her own closet. Nancy. Her name strikes me suddenly.

"What are you going to wear, Carolyn?" She only has a few dresses, but she is anxiously picking through them like the choice is impossible.

I infer I have to be Carolyn. I recall the image of the vintage dresses I had seen in my closet and pick one I hope is a good choice. "I think my orange dress."

"Oh that dress is so pretty," she sighs. "I think I'll have to wear the pink one again." She pulls out a dress covered in white polka dots, the hem frayed.

"Do you want to borrow it today?"

She turns to me, a wide grin splitting her face. "Oh, are you sure?"

As she smiles, I feel the final puzzle piece slip into place. The way her smile tugs at her cheeks, the way her gray-green eyes light up, the way her face creases in a dimple on just one side of her lips. This is a smile on a face I had seen in dozens of old photographs, well-worn pieces of paper slung together in mislabeled piles through my mother's home. A memory flashes through my head. A crisply printed program with this face smiling from the front page, pictures hung on the wall for family members to smile that same smile at, tears pricking their gray-green eyes. Nancy Miller, beloved Mom, Sister, and Grandmother.

Today, her name is Nancy Driscoll, and she is 19 years old. It is 1959 and she is in her second year of school at Iowa State University. I am in the body of Carolyn Thomas, her college roommate whom she used to drive around with and sleep on California beaches next to and who stood by her at her wedding and held her hand when she had my mother.

The next question should be, how did I get here? But it doesn’t even cross my mind. "Of course," I smile at her and nod towards my dresser. She races across the room to grab it as I pull the final roller from my hair, the dark curls bouncing up into a style I have no idea what to do with.

"Here, why don't we switch today?" She hesitantly holds out the grass green dress I recognize from the back of my mother's storage closet.

"I love it," I stand up and pull the knee-length dress from her hand, watching as she turns away to change into my pale orange dress, her small hands running over the fabric I know is nicer than anything she had had before. I smile as I hold the green chiffon in my hands. I pull on her dress, which perfectly fits this stranger's body. We decide to switch shoes today (both a size 8) and then tumble through the door, arm in arm.

It’s an odd experience, to walk side by side with her so intimately but before she became the woman I grew up with. As we walk towards the red brick building I know to be Moore Hall, Carolyn’s memories seep into my own so that I can laugh at the jokes Nancy makes and remember the stories Nancy is talking about. I know what to say, where to go, where we sit, I know I have done the homework, and what week of class we are in. My body moves instinctively and without hesitation so my brain can lag a few steps behind.

Nancy is bubbly and always smiling with her one-dimpled smile. She flirts with the boy sitting next to her (who I know is not my grandfather,) and answers almost all of the professor’s questions. She walks quickly, speaks smartly, and laughs loudly. I watch in awe as she bends down to grab her dropped pencil, a feat my Grammy was incapable of.

After class, we stroll through the grounds to the dining hall in the center of campus. The warm April air blows our tight ringlets around our faces and the sun tans my skin and burns hers. We take our shoes off and bounce down a grassy hill, tripping at the bottom so we collapse in an orange and green pile on the ground. I smile up at the sky, a brilliant shade of uninterrupted blue. My mom’s favorite color is blue.

Two boys witness the incident and laugh right along with us. I recognize them as friends we sit with in Tuesday afternoon math class. They help us stand up, stretching out their hands adorned in expensive watches. Both boys have taken off their jackets and pushed up the sleeves of their collared shirts.

“Thank you,” I laugh as I brush off the grass stain on my borrowed skirt.

“Where are you ladies headed?” The taller one, Benjamin, asks.

“Patrick Hall for lunch,” Nancy combs through her tousled blonde curls.

“Mind if we join you?” The other boy, James, pipes up.

Nancy and I turn to each other, gray-green eyes meeting brown. We share a quick, almost telepathic look, a shrug, and a tilt of the head. Nancy tells the boys they could tag along if they must, and the four of us set off, falling into conversation as quickly as we’d rolled down the hill.

Lunch is fun and playful and exciting, but I find myself wishing to be back in that tiny dorm room, to have Nancy all to myself. I can't help but study every movement, every word, every inch of her face. I watch as she exiles each food to a corner of the plate. She oversalts the meat and puts pounds of butter in the potatoes. She eats delicately. She takes small bites and covers her mouth with her napkin as she chews. When she speaks, she always waits until we are at the end of our sentences. She laughs freely, both boys tripping over themselves to hear the sound again.

We have Biology at 1:30, so we drop off our plates and bid the reluctant boys goodbye. We stride back across campus, our feet habitually taking us through the well-worn shortcut between the Liberal Arts buildings. I think I should ask her some questions, but I can’t think of any. I can think of too many.

“What do you think of Benjamin?” She asks after a hesitant silence.

“Do you like him?” I smile as her cheeks fill with pink.

“I don’t know,” she laughs.

“He likes you.”

“How do you know?” She turns to me.

“It’s so obvious!” I smile.

“It is not.”

“James likes you too.”

“No, he doesn’t!” She covers her mouth.

“Okay fine, he doesn’t!” I hold up my hands in fake surrender.

We giggle through the entrance to the sciences building, we giggle through the grass, and we giggle on the way to dinner. My grandmother never smiled, much less giggled. She was stoic and unmoving. Nancy is bubbly and restless. I want to wrap my arms around this version of her and never let go.

I want this day to last forever, to spend years in these last drops of sunshine. We eat our dinner and our ice cream outside in the mild spring heat. She gets chocolate ice cream on my dress and promises to wash it and I know she will.

But the sun always sets. A beautiful, deep orange paints the sky. My grandma’s favorite color was orange. The light begins to disappear and the students dwindle until we’re the last two outside.

“Ready?” She stands up and tosses her napkin in the nearby trash bin.

No. “Sure.”

We lazily meander back towards our dorm, arm in arm, and begin to shiver from the cold air without the sun to warm our exposed skin. I already miss her and she is standing next to me. I don’t know how to tell her.

“Hey, promise me, when you marry Benjamin or James, I get to be your maid of honor,” I bite my lip as tears suddenly cloud my brown eyes.

“Oh please, I’m not going to marry either one of them,” she rolls her eyes.

“Okay, but when you marry someone then.”

“I promise.” She holds out her pinky finger, a solemn promise contained in such a small vessel. I notice on Carolyn’s finger is the blue ring my mother wears around her neck.

I try to prolong the inevitable for as long as I can. I say we should go watch the stars, but she has an early test. I say we should read some, but she’s just finished a book. So I follow her to the bathroom and stand as close as I can to her at our neighboring sinks. We set our hair in their rollers. When there is nothing left to do, we pull back the blankets and slip back into the beds perfectly molded for our young, teenage bodies. She whispers goodnight across the room that suddenly feels so big.

I know she’s asleep when her breathing slows. I listen to her light snores as I fight back the heaviness settling in my eyes. I look around the small room, memorizing the small details. The overflowing books on her shelf and the pictures taped to her wall. I wonder if I should wake her up, drag her outside, and just talk to her until the sun comes up. But she has a test in the morning and so do I. My eyes begin to burn with exhaustion so I know my time is up.

When I close my eyes, I know I will wake up in my cold and small dorm room on the other side of the country, clutching the teddy bear she gave me. I will stay in the warm confines of my green blankets, staring at the ceiling and remembering the reality I’ve awoken to. I will eventually tear off the blankets, put the orange pillows back in their place, and make the bed I want nothing more to return to. I will dress in my well-worn blue sweatshirt and do my makeup and walk into the harsh January morning, missing the warmth of her presence. Her room was always a hundred degrees, even in the summer, so we were sweating and sticking to her leather couch. I will never feel completely warm again.

But for now, I am in the warm confines of the dorm bed that is not mine. My grandma, young and healthy and not my grandma yet, is sleeping peacefully in her bed. For a brief second in time, a gift granted to me by whatever exists in the sky, we are together at the same age at the same time.

I am happy. She is happy. I close my eyes.