The Color of the Letter A

The rain meant no recess, so Mr. Okafor handed them brushes and pointed at the wall.

"The old alphabet mural is peeling," he said. "Repaint the letters. Any colors you like. I will be grading essays and trying not to cry." He went back to his desk and did not look up again.

Maya dipped her brush. "A is red."

"A is yellow," Soren said.

"It's red."

"It was never red. A is pale yellow. Like the inside of a lemon."

Maya laughed, because he sounded so sure. "There's no inside-color of a letter. A letter is just a shape."

"Then why do you want it red?"

She opened her mouth. Closed it. "Because it is. A is red, B is sort of brown, C is white."

Soren put his brush down. "C is light blue."

They looked at each other.

"Say more letters," Maya said.

"Five is green," Soren said.

"Numbers too? Five is green for me as well. But seven is yellow."

"Seven is black."

The rain pushed against the window. Somewhere down the hall a door banged.

"Okay," Maya said slowly. "This is weird. We agree on five. We don't agree on seven. But we both have a seven-color. We both have a five-color."

"I never told anybody that," Soren said. "I thought it was just a thing I did. Like how some words feel round."

"Words have shapes?"

"Tuesday is a long thin word. Wednesday is lumpy."

Maya didn't have that one. She had colors. She painted a red A on the wall while she thought, and the red felt correct in a way she could not argue for. It was not that A reminded her of red. It was that A simply was red, the way grass simply is green, no reminding involved.

"Test it," she said. "Quick. Don't think. M."

"Orange," Soren said.

"Orange for me too."

"O."

"White," they said together, and grinned.

"O is easy," Soren said. "O looks white. But A doesn't look red. There's nothing red about an A."

"I know. That's what's strange. I'm not seeing it on the paper. I'm seeing it somewhere behind the paper." Maya pressed her knuckles to her forehead. "Behind here."

They kept going. R was the worst argument. Maya said R was a deep red, almost the same red as A. Soren said R was green, no question, green like a pine tree, and how could she possibly mix it up with A.

"Because for me they're cousins," Maya said. "All my R words and A words live in the red family."

"Mine don't," Soren said, and he wrote a little chart in the corner of his notebook, a column of letters with a color word beside each one, his and hers in two lines so they could compare.

Halfway down the alphabet they stopped pretending they would ever agree.

"It's not random, though," Soren said, studying his chart. "Look. I'm always the same. A is always yellow for me. Every time. You're always red. We're each consistent. We're just consistent differently."

Maya went very quiet and stared at the painted A, the one she'd made red because red was true, and the wet yellow A he'd started underneath it.

"So whose is right?" she asked.

"Neither," Soren said. "Both."

From across the room Mr. Okafor said, without looking up, "You two have been arguing about the color of the letter A for ten minutes."

"Yes," they said.

"It's black," he said. "It's printed in black ink. They're all black." And he went back to his essays, certain, and wrong about something he didn't know was a question.

Maya and Soren looked at each other again, and this time neither of them spoke, because the same thought had arrived in both of them at the same speed.

"He doesn't have it," Maya whispered.

"He thinks A is just A," Soren whispered back.

"He thinks everybody sees nothing. He thinks the letter is empty."

Maya felt the room get bigger around her, the way a room gets bigger when you find out it has a second door. There were people, lots of people, most people, walking around inside a plain black alphabet, never knowing that a few of them were carrying a secret rainbow no one had taught them and no one could take away. And among those few, no two carried the same one. Her red A. His yellow A. Both real. Both built quietly inside their own heads before either of them could read.

"Wait," Soren said. "If you have it and I have it, and we found out by accident on a rainy Tuesday painting a wall, then how many other people are walking around right now with a private color for every letter and have never once said it out loud, because they think it's just a thing they do?"

Maya didn't answer. She picked up the green and the red.

"Paint your A," she said. "I'll paint mine. Right next to it. Same letter, two colors."

"Mr. Okafor will say it's wrong."

"Mr. Okafor sees black," Maya said. "He's missing the best part."

So they did. Soren painted a yellow A. Maya painted a red one beside it, the two letters touching, the same shape twice in two truths. Then they went down the wall doing every letter double, his color and hers, and where they happened to agree the letter got painted once, bright and shared, and where they disagreed the letter got painted twice, side by side, neither one giving in.

When the bell rang the wall was louder than any alphabet has ever been, twenty-six letters wearing two opinions each, and Mr. Okafor stood up to look at it and frowned and opened his mouth to say something about following directions.

Maya pointed at the double R, green and red, leaning against each other.

"Which one looks like a tree to you?" she asked him.

He stared at it for a long time and did not answer.