Not long after arriving in Boulder, a big green blot showed up on Clio's new, polka-dotted pillow sham. A similar smudge of green started turning up on the shoulders of Dave's shirts. Then we started noticing little trails of green around the house- as if we had a mouse, and it had gotten into the food coloring. Finally, when washing Clio's hair in the tub one night, we saw the water flow green and thought -- yes!-- we found the source. And in fact, there was a large green patch on the back left side of Clio's head, buried deep, really the bottom layer of hair. This explained the pillow and Dave's shoulders (just about head height when holding her), but what about the bright little worm trails in the kitchen? And why, exactly, was Clio's hair green in the first place?
We thought of the obvious sources: she loves watercolors; could she have gotten the green cake loose from its case and somehow mashed it into her hair? Were they only using green tempera at school? Was it, in fact, the food coloring, which was at the time (but not longer) housed in the lazy susan and fully within Clio's reach? When pushed on the subject, Clio seemed as mystified as us. The green patch stuck around for a while, but it no longer had the power to change the hue of the bathwater. Was it semi-permanent hair dye? Was she really thirteen and getting her hands on some Manic Panic to torture us? To experiment with her identity? (But no, at three she is hopefully a decade away from such things; she would not understand several of the words I just used in that sentence, much less would she go out of her way to articulate the concepts behind them.)
And so the hair faded to its normal color, and my curiosity waned. But tonight, while I stroked Clio's head in my lap, I saw it again. Same green patch, same exact spot in her hair. And my musings grow crazy: is our little girl somehow radioactive? Did she ever swim in the Gowanus canal? Are there aliens at work here, marking her to be taken? It does, in a way, remind me of the bright orange paint that marks places to cut, things to take: a tree to come down, a road to tear open.
And I think of the last line of a poem that I came upon that year in Switzerland when I was seventeen, a quote that has always set me on edge: at the end of the day we must accept that not all mysteries are solvable.
But really: any ideas?
3 comments:
Guess you know her favorite color at least, eh?
I would guess...slept on a marker?
This reminds me of when I was in college and upon returning to my apartment after a weekend away, my sink would bleed when I got water on the counter. Literally looked like blood. Turns out my roommates dyed their hair red in my sink and didn't tell me. It was hilarious at the time.
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