Sariah Williamson was born purple and blue but not because she wasn\u2019t breathing. She leaked colors, warm colors when she was happy and cool when she was sad. The nurses cleaned her up cautiously and handed her to her mother, and Sariah\u2019s skin sweat shades of orange as she nursed at her mother\u2019s breast.<\/p>\n
Fearing their daughter\u2019s life would be under a microscope somewhere, the Williamsons fled. They found a back country town few people wanted to visit and made a home for themselves. And Sariah would have grown up happy there had it not been for her mother\u2019s discovery.<\/p>\n
One morning when Sariah had soaked her cloth diaper, Sariah\u2019s mother stripped her of her clothes and placed her naked on the newspaper. As her mother went about doing the laundry, Sariah leaked happy colors onto the paper. When her mother returned, she found a wonderful masterpiece under her daughter\u2019s bum. She took it into town to show a friend and a passerby bought it on the spot. \u201cIt\u2019s just so beautiful,\u201d he had said.<\/p>\n
From that day on, Sariah\u2019s mother would place her down on a canvas to nap, and as the naked babe dreamt, the canvas would fill with colors that dazzled her parents and art collectors alike. And soon these paintings were sold all over the world.<\/p>\n
Sariah grew older, creating masterpieces from her sweat and tears. Her parents built her a studio where she would strip her clothes off and ponder the day\u2019s emotions over a canvas. She\u2019d think about her poor brothers and sister who were constantly criticized by their parents for not being as gifted as her. The canvas would swirl in blues and greens. Sariah would think about learning to drive in secret, for she was the only Williamson child forbidden from doing so, and the canvas would soak in oranges and reds.<\/p>\n
After the piece was finished, Sariah would promptly then take a picture and send it to her agent who would then find a buyer. The Williamsons grew wealthy and their little cabin in the woods became a mansion with four wings, a high fence, and an Olympic-sized pool within it, though Sariah didn\u2019t swim in it often because she\u2019d dye the water for a week.<\/p>\n
But lately, Sariah\u2019s paintings were growing dim. \u201cI think I\u2019m running out of soul,\u201d she explained to her mother.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s ridiculous. How does someone run out of their soul?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d Sariah said. \u201cI just feel really tired all the time, all dried up and spent.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, you can\u2019t take a break. Perhaps you should drink more water,\u201d her mother said.<\/p>\n
Her father wouldn\u2019t let Sariah take a break either. \u201cHow will we pay for all our things? Would you have your brothers and sisters wear hand-me-downs?\u201d he asked.
\n
\nThus, Sariah was resigned to create more canvases, but sadness overwhelmed her. The artwork became grey and black with a rare slip of color or two when she thought about running away. Her parents grew angry.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe agent says your work isn\u2019t selling because it\u2019s so lifeless. Paint something beautiful. Paint something happy,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t,\u201d Sariah said. \u201cI don\u2019t know how.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cQuit that silliness,\u201d her mother said. \u201cYou\u2019ve been doing this since you were born.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t squander your gifts,\u201d her father said.<\/p>\n
But Sariah\u2019s depression did not subside. She kept thinking of her family\u2019s expectations, of her talentless brothers and sisters who depended on her, and the only color her soul let out was grey.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou will stay here until you paint something happy,\u201d her father said in desperation after a month of unsellable paintings. \u201cToo many depend on you for you to give up.\u201d He locked her in the studio for weeks at a time. Her mother insisted Sariah sleep on canvases like before when she was a baby, but there was no change. Every canvas was darker than the next until Sariah could only create pure black canvases.<\/p>\n
Sariah stopped eating. Her eyes were blank, and she\u2019d often spend hours staring at the same spot on the wall.<\/p>\n
The Williamsons started beating her siblings. \u201cWhy could you not be as gifted as your sister?\u201d they would scream. \u201cWhy can you not save us?\u201d<\/p>\n
Then one morning her eldest brother came to her side and held her hand. \u201cPlease, save me,\u201d he said. \u201cI will never ask anything else of you ever again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sariah looked into his eyes and saw purple tears. \u201cYou must run away,\u201d she said. \u201cThey will take your soul. Run away and take our brothers and sisters.\u201d<\/p>\n
Silently he packed the car, and the night they were to run away, Sariah approached her parents.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to try once more,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think it will work unless you watch me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The parents agreed, and that night Sariah made her last painting. She thought of her escaping siblings, and the canvas soaked in red.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s working,\u201d the parents marveled.<\/p>\n
She thought of her life before the mansion, and the canvas soaked in purples.<\/p>\n
\u201cKeep going,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
She thought of the gift she had never been free to use. She thought of every canvas she had ever been forced to paint, drew from that energy, and put what was left of her on the canvas, creating a ribbon of silvery black through its center.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s enough,\u201d they said, taking her worn body off the canvas.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s your best one yet, Sariah,\u201d her mother said in wonder. \u201cWhat were you thinking about?\u201d<\/p>\n
But Sariah didn\u2019t answer. She body lay silently on the floor next to the canvas, her soul used up. She was dead.<\/p>\n
The next day Sariah\u2019s agent called: \u201cAll colors on all the paintings are gone. It\u2019s as though someone has whitewashed them all. People are demanding a refund.\u201d<\/p>\n
And this was the first time the Williamsons grieved.<\/p>\n
Mandy Brown is A Room of Her Own Foundation’s 2013 Tillie Olsen Fellow. Her short story \u201cThe Last Silver Button\u201d was nominated for a 2013 Pushcart Prize, and she is internationally published. When Mandy isn\u2019t writing, she is working as a book editor in Central Texas. Follow her at mandyalyssbrown.weebly.com<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sariah Williamson was born purple and blue but not because she wasn\u2019t breathing. She leaked colors, warm colors when she was happy and cool when she was sad. The nurses cleaned her up cautiously and handed her to her mother, and Sariah\u2019s skin sweat shades of orange as she nursed at her mother\u2019s breast. Fearing …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2453,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,21,703],"tags":[704],"class_list":["post-4754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-slipstream","category-tcl-8-summer-2013","tag-the-colored-lens-8-summer-2013","entry entry-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2453"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139656,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4754\/revisions\/139656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}