True Colors
by Tricia Stirling
My best friend Kaitlin is addicted to chocolate. She can’t go to the grocery store without opening a Hershey’s bar and eating it right there while she’s shopping. She’s always been that way, ever since we were kids, although back then, it’s possible I liked chocolate as much as she did. She kept a stash of chocolate frosting on the top shelf of her closet, hidden behind the stuffed animals, and we’d sit in her room with the door closed dipping our fingers into the cardboard cartons and scooping up glistening helpings of fat.
But she’s the one who ended up with the chocolate addiction and I almost got off scot-free. I used to feel really lucky about that. I’m a little bit addicted to ChapStick, and I used to think, Well, if I have to be addicted to something, I’m glad it’s just ChapStick. Then I started eating crayons.
The first time it happened, I thought it would be the last. I was babysitting my niece over at my sister’s house, and I was on the floor coloring in a coloring book that featured pictures of angels. I picked up the cornflower blue which I was planning to use on a bird when a new feeling came over me. Cornflower blue was the color of dusk over a wheat field. It was the most beautiful blue, with more than a hint of grey. I wanted that blue inside of me.
So I excused myself and took the cornflower blue with me into the bathroom. I sat on the edge of the bathtub and looked at the crayon. I smelled it. It smelled of wax and also juice, as though maybe someone had spilled on it. Slowly, I peeled back the wrapper and licked the crayon. When I bit into it, my vision went blue.
Suddenly I was sitting in a meadow surrounded by beautiful cornflowers—not only the blue ones but the pink ones and white ones as well. There were stars in the sky and they flashed and winked and not only that, but I felt calm for the first time since my mom died.
I was still reeling when my niece knocked on the door. “The Madonna video’s on,” Dianne hollered, “and I’m not allowed to watch it.”
“Well turn off the TV then,” I shouted back, more harsh than I’d intended.
I borrowed my sister’s toothbrush to scrape the blue bits off my teeth. When I came back to the living room, I was feeling strange. What had possessed me to eat a crayon? I wasn’t sure. Now the inside of my mouth tasted filmy and thick. I drank a glass of milk and poured a glass for Dianne. I treated her as nice as I could for the rest of the evening. Never again, I promised myself. But when my sister came home and I bent to help Dianne clean up our mess, I slipped red into the pocket of my sweatshirt.
After that I found myself stopping by Rite-Aid every few nights on my way home from work. I got to where I was eating an eight-pack a day. Now I just go to Costco.
Different brands offer different results. Rose-Art crayons are waxy. The images I get are darker, muddled. Target used to have a nice smoky line but then they teamed up with Crayola, which of course is the purest and the best.
At first the taste can be tough to get past. If you go right now and eat a crayon, you won’t immediately taste the things I taste. At first, they all taste alike. Wax. You have to refine your senses. It takes a while, but ultimately you will get to know which tastes are best and which flavors go well together: razzmatazz and denim, hot magenta and purple mountain majesty.
I’ve tried quitting. I went to AA but I had to lie and say I’m an alcoholic. I’m not ready yet to admit that I eat crayons. I don’t think there are many of us out there.
But oh, people don’t know what they’re missing. The wash of color that spreads over you when you taste cerulean, wisteria, purple heart. The rush of vision accompanying dandelion, antique brass, and outer space.
Some nights, I can’t sleep, so I sit on my front porch and work myself into a coma. I promise myself that I will only have one—and I only bring three outside with me. But more often than not, I end up slipping back inside for a heartier supply, with which I line the pockets of my robe, and I eat them just like candy, careening through worlds of cobalt, azure, hyacinth, umber, lapis. Olive, emerald, absinthe, shamrock, chartreuse. Cream and bone and burnt sienna. And crimson, oh crimson, with its visions so terrifying and real you can’t help but stare, and if you try to turn away you find yourself longing for its vibrancy.
If Crayola ever wants someone to name their crayons, they should hire me. Macaroni and cheese, for one, is incorrectly named. The taste is more like chicken soup, the vision that follows is often dark and jungly. Atomic carrot is anything but atomic. It should be called jr. high school cafeteria carrot—it makes you feel uncomfortable and too tall. And I’m sorry, but naming a crayon beaver is just plain altogether wrong.
Robin egg blue is the prettiest color but it can be a scary trip. It’s one I’ll never do again without a friend and I don’t have any friends who know my secret.
This morning I woke up in the chair on the porch again, with that familiar taste of wax in my mouth. I went inside to brush my teeth and get ready for work, feeling more than a little angry with myself. I had overdone it again. In the morning, I allow myself one white crayon to whiten my teeth. The white is mellow anyway. One white and I can make it through the first few hours of work without a craving. I hate this feeling of having binged to excess. I think it’s because I feel so alone. I have looked online but I can’t find anyone else who eats crayons. There must be one or two more of us out there somewhere.
I imagine myself standing outside a playground in a trench coat lined with Crayolas. “Psst,” I’ll say to the children as they pass. “I’ve got quality crayons here. Real cheap. Go on, try it. Just try it,” I’ll urge.
Copyright © 2006 Tricia Stirling
Tricia Stirling is a writer from Sacramento, California. Her work will appear in the August issue of Literary Mama. She is working on her first novel.