I scooped up a helping of mashed potatoes, closed my eyes, and spooned it into my mouth. I waited for the burst of green, the taste of leaves, or grass, or cucumbers. But nothing came. Just mashed potatoes. When I opened my eyes, she was smiling at me.

“It tastes the same,” I said.

“Really? Let me try.” She plucked her finger into the potato, dipped it into her mouth, and closed her eyes. “Mmmm. Tastes green to me.”

“It does?” I asked in disbelief.

She nodded.

“What does green taste like?” I asked.

“Franny, sometimes you have to be open to surprises. Things aren’t always the way you expect them to be. Sometimes you have to find the courage to take a risk. Like eating green potatoes.”

I ate another forkful, but it became thick and sticky in my mouth and I couldn’t talk.

“Color is a risk,” she said.

I swallowed. “Then why is your kitchen all white?”

It flew out of my mouth and then she was quiet. And even though I didn’t know why, I knew it was a question I wasn’t supposed to ask. I felt alone, like I was standing in the middle of an empty room while she hid in the closet. But I needed to know why she scrubbed the kitchen clean every night. Why every exposed surface was painted a stark and antiseptic white. Why, sometimes before we went to bed, she knelt on her hands and knees and scoured the floors with a sponge, going over one spot on the tile over and over again. Sometimes she scrubbed so hard, she made herself bleed, but I ignored the band-aids I saw on her fingers the next morning.

Now, she looked as though she had forgotten that I was sitting there and was quiet for so long, I briefly thought that maybe she hadn’t heard me.

“You make me want to be brave.”

Then, she took the container of fluorescent orange yogurt and dumped it on the floor; it sounded alive as it splattered around the table legs. She got down on the ground and spread it all over, like she was finger painting. When she looked back up, she was smiling. I watched as she continued to spread the bright orange goop on the floor, into the crevices of the grout. It seeped into the valleys of her fingers and turned her skin the color of apricots.

I thought about courage. Matilda was the brave one. Matilda wasn’t scared of anything. But now, there was no Matilda.

There was just me.

Matilda

“Did you get my message?” Lavi asked, twisting a curl around her middle finger.