You remember how it started on the first day of first grade, when your brother handed you your lunch and your backpack and your shades before dropping you off at the front of the building, wishing you luck and telling you that he loved you and you're pretty sure that he almost started crying when you hugged Cal and you're definitely sure he started crying when you hugged him. His voice was tight when he said, "Put on your shades," and you slid them on your face and gave him a thumbs up.
Your teacher gave you a worksheet that day, one of those annoying ones, with the words 'About Me' at the top in colorful, wonky font. She told you to fill it out and that she would be around to help you if you needed it, but you didn't need help and even if you did, you wouldn't have asked for it.
It seemed simple and direct. The first question was about the color of your hair. You answered yellow (you filled it in before your teacher informed the class that the color you knew as yellow was actually called blonde when it grew on top of your head. You kept it as yellow, though, because the idea of having yellow hair filled your 1st grade soul with pleasure and you didn't feel like changing it anyway.).
Then you came to the second question about your eye color, and you wrote the word red in big, bold letters while the others around you wrote blue...brown...green...
The rest of the questions came with ease. Favorite thing to do? Video games. Favorite food? Pizza. Favorite drink? Apple juice!
The problems started when your teacher came around to check your progress. Immediately, the word stuck out at her, drawing attention to the anomaly with big, blazing lights. Red.
Red, red, red, red, red, red...
"Eyes can't be red." She said to you. You didn't understand why she said that. She was wrong. Of course she was wrong. And you almost took off your prescription sunglasses (or at least Bro said they were prescription and that was why you could wear them in class) to show her how wrong she was. But then you remembered what Bro said the other night, and the way that he said it when he looked into your eyes with his shades off, and you knew that it was important that you listen. So you didn't bother to argue with her or try to prove her wrong because somehow you knew that that couldn't end well. Never take off your sunglasses.
It's for your own protection.
That year, your eyes were brown.
The next year they were green.
And so throughout the next few years, your eyes changed color whenever their color was demanded. You remember art class in third grade, when your eyes were three different colors in a month because of the self portraits you were forced to draw, the wax of the brown, blue, green crayons covered by the pressing darkness of the black one. It shouldn't have mattered, not when you had to draw your shades over your eyes, but you always drew your eyes anyway because you were stubborn like that.
Then came fifth grade. Your teacher was a man that year, eccentric but fun and cheerful and you took an immediate liking to him when he called out role on the first day of school and told you that your name was awesome because it reminded him of his favorite Lord of the Rings character. His name was Mr. Ken. (You remember his name clearly. You all had wondered if Ken was actually his first name, but he told you his first name was Mitch. You weren't sure if you believed him, especially since it filled your heart with 5th grade glee to think that you were able to call the best teacher in the world by his first name.)
He handed out the same worksheet you learned to despise during the last four years. Surely you were getting a little old for this. But still, he walked you through the questions, hair color first, and then he launched into a story about how, when he was 15, his best friend's hair was bright blue. Not just the ends or a few choice strands of hair, but his entire head, and even his eyebrows. The kids in your class laughed at that, and you almost did too.
Mr. Ken moved on to the second question, although it didn't seem like he had a funny story about eyes to tell you and so you let go of the hopeful breath you were holding, resigned to another year of chestnut or jade or indigo. But someone, a tall boy in the front row, had raised his hand, and when Mr. Ken called on him, he said, "Can people have weird color eyes? Because one time I saw this girl that had purple eyes...so, can people have purple eyes?"
And you remember how Mr. Ken didn't even need to think about it when he said, "People can have whatever color eyes they want!"
You remember that day as if it was a turning point in your life, because for all intensive purposes, it probably was. But still, after years of believing that the color of your eyes had to fit in between the narrow standards of society, you were hesitant. You let him read through the entire worksheet, recount every story about something odd that he knew or saw or did, before you raised a timid hand and quietly asked, "Can people have red eyes?" And you were almost sure that you had asked the wrong question, stepped way out of the invisible boundaries . You were almost sure that you knew the answer before he even said it, and that is why you were so surprised, so thankful, when he answered you with a grin and countered your question with a, "Why not?"
At the time, he had no idea how much it meant to you, and not even you had a clue how momentous of an occasion it was when you put your crappy erasable black pen to the paper and wrote 'red' in your crappy fifth grade handwriting where everyone – everyone -could see it.
That was the year when your hair was yellow as corn and your favorite hobby was writing poetry, poetry, not raps or beats or jams, but poetry. That was the year that your favorite food was everything, and your favorite drink was apple juice and your favorite movies were made by Disney and you weren't afraid to admit it. That was the year when you wanted to grow up to be a ninja and a writer and an artist all at the same time and no one would tell you that you wouldn't make it. That was the year you got scarlet paint all over you in art class, the year when your crimson colored crayon stopped being usable because you had worn it so short. That was the year that the brick colored ink ran out of your brick colored pen and that was the year when your eyes were red. Red, red as the sun, red as ruby slippers and lollipops and cherry water ice on a hot Texas day, red as the blood in your veins, on your knee when you fell down and skimmed it at recess, red as the sky and the desert at the end of the day and you didn't have to be afraid anymore, afraid of the stares and the names and the rumors, afraid of the dirty looks and the horrified faces and the comments held back on the end of their tongues. Your eyes were red, dammit, red, not blue or brown or grey, not amber or green or gold or sapphire. They were red and they were yours and no one could ever let you believe any differently ever again. No one would tell you that you were wrong, that you were a freak or a demon or the devil, no one's words would have you stare at yourself in the mirror wondering how many names your iris could go by and if any of them would ever be right. No one would ever have you be sorry for the color of your eyes, and the boy that sat behind you wouldn't be sorry for the color of his skin and the girl that sat in the front wouldn't be sorry for her crooked teeth or the fact that she had two moms and her best friend had none.
And at the end of the year, on the first day of the last week of school, when you took off your glasses and left them in your back pocket for safe keeping, when your heart was beating out of control and you flinched if anyone so much as looked at you, Mr. Ken stood at the door of the class, waiting to greet his students like he did every other day of the year. He shook your hand and when you looked up, he told you that he was happy to see you and you said you were happy to be there and to this day you are convinced that both of you had been telling the absolute truth.
And when you walked into the classroom, no one pointed or laughed or called out. No one shouted at you that you were the spawn of Satan. No one ran away in terror and no one cupped their hand around their mouth and whispered to another.
But fifth grade ended and sixth grade passed and seventh and eighth left you lost in the wind. When high school started and you had to adjust to the classes and the studies and the lack of art supplies because you couldn't fit art into your schedule that year, you remembered the color of red. And even when the red was dripping from your nose and the cuts on your cheekbones, when it was flooding from under the split knuckles and split skin, it would always contrast brightly against the black and blue bruises and the faded blue of the lockers you'd be shoved up against. But your eyes were red. They were red, and you weren't ashamed of them anymore.
Because on that first day of that last week of school in fifth grade, you went to your seat, looked at the picture sitting on your desk for you to color, and took out your art supplies. And when the girl sitting next to you asked to borrow a marker that was the color of your heart, you picked up the red one and handed it to her with a smile. She smiled back.