We walk the rest of the way in silence, our foreheads creased in thought. Really, there’s not all that much thinking to do. The colors have meanings. Terrible meanings, like the mark of Cain. Or the scarlet letter.
My grandmother detested things like this, any sort of badge or button that defines a person. As a girl, I only thought she was being mean when she tore off the green shamrock I came home with on St. Patrick’s Day, when she tossed the little Mexican flag our Spanish teacher gave us on Cinco de Mayo into the kitchen trash bin.
“Don’t wear those, Leni,” she said. “Don’t ever wear them.”
We never had symbols in our house. No crosses or crucifixes, no flags, nothing like that. A few of the girls at school wore pendants—a silver cross, a gold star, a shiny crescent. They seemed cool, but when I pointed to one in a shop window, Oma whisked me away.
“Not for you, Elena. Never for you.”
At eight, I didn’t understand. Green shamrocks and Mexican flags were what you pinned on for holidays. Sparkling jewelry, what you got to celebrate a first communion or a bat mitzvah or the end of something called Ramadan. For the next three years, I wore what I wanted during school, making sure to hide the forbidden things in my book bag before the bus dropped me off in front of our house.
The fourth year, I stopped wearing them. It was the year Oma sat me down and told me about the colored patches.
Yellow patches. Star-shaped patches. Pink and purple and brown and black patches in the shape of inverted triangles. Bars for repeated offenders.
Lissa snaps me back to the present, to the dining hall now filled with children. “Remind you of anything?” she asks.
Oma’s words ring in my ears. Where do you think my great-uncle Eugen got the idea?
It doesn’t matter anymore whether Oma’s stories are her own or someone else’s. What matters most are the ideas that take hold, that move through cultures and time, repeating themselves with the help of people like Madeleine Sinclair. And Malcolm. And Sarah Green and everyone else, including me. I feel a sense of disgust when I think about humans turning against humans, one cold shoulder and one “my kid is better than your kid” at a time.
Breakfast displaces my disgust, or at least transfers it. I wait in line for runny eggs (they must be powdered), orange drink from a mix (also powdered), and toast so dry it turns into powder when I try to butter it. The meal is a far cry from the offerings back at my silver school, where faculty and students happily dined on organic greens and free-range chicken.
We take our seats at a free table, and no one joins us. I work on ignoring cold stares from the other teachers and audible whispers designed to reach my ears. That’s her, sure enough. That’s the one married to Mr. Education Reform. Serves her right to get demoted to this place. All the while I’m searching for Freddie at the long table of girls. She’s there, and I smile at her because it’s all a mother can do. Like the last time, Freddie brightens for a quick moment, and the light disappears from her face as she faces forward, head down, eyes on her plate.
I don’t want to see her like this. I can’t.
I want to see her in the high chair I took out of the attic. I want to see her smiling through a mask of puréed peaches, reaching out with a tiny hand for the Peter Rabbit spoon I bought before she was born. I want to see her happy and innocent, a baby who hasn’t yet been crushed with the weight of our world.
“It’s a money thing,” Lissa says, bringing me out of the memory. “It has to be.” She takes a pen from her breast pocket, clicks it twice, speaks a few words into it. “Accounting. And document colors.”
“What?” I say.
“Never mind.” Lissa puts the pen away and pushes some rehydrated egg around her plate, the way Freddie sometimes does until bits of meat and