Prologue
Adele
January 1942
Anger tastes like ginger root, sharp and sweet and juicy, a tang that makes your tongue burn.
At least, that’s what this anger tastes like, the anger of frustration and betrayal, of being discounted and blocked at every turn, forced from the path I’d mapped out for myself years before, exiled to the outskirts of everything I long for, cast aside, disregarded, sidelined.
So many words. But they still can’t fully express all I’m feeling, the taste of this fury.
That’s the problem with the English language, with words in general. They have no inherent meaning in and of themselves, and so many are required to explain an emotion, even to yourself. As much as I love books, I sometimes wonder how writers do it, and why. It all seems so wasteful. You can fill a page and still miss the mark of what you meant to say.
But I’ve never been very good at putting my thoughts into words. I didn’t talk until I was four. I don’t mean that I couldn’t talk, only that I didn’t. Even then, I felt the inadequacy of speech, sensed that I experienced the world differently than other people and that trying to explain this could only result in misunderstandings.
I was right.
When my mother told the family doctor that her eight-year-old daughter tasted emotion and felt color, he frowned and muttered and sent us to other doctors—a pediatrician, a child psychiatrist, and finally a neurologist, who told my mother, “Adele suffers from synesthesia, a brain malfunction in which the senses can become confused, eliciting an abnormal connection in response to certain stimuli. For example, seeing a particular color and experiencing an actual sensation of taste associated with it.”
I didn’t understand what he was talking about. But when he uttered the words malfunction and abnormal, looking at me like a lab experiment, I tasted and saw mustard.
Now, having lived for twenty-one years as a synesthete, I’m not convinced that the doctor understood what he was talking about either. It’s not a malfunction, it’s a gift, an extra portion of perception that not everyone gets to experience. Like most other people, I can talk, write, and express myself. But most other people can’t do what I do, experience emotions as something tangible and concrete, a sensation that requires no explanation or interpretation. It might not be normal, but I wouldn’t give it back.
When I feel the bite of ginger on the back of my tongue, I know exactly what type of anger I mean. It has a color too, this anger that’s been simmering during the hours-long ride from Washington and bubbles up again as the bus starts to slow: it’s the gray of spent coal shot with ink black and cinnamon.
When I was little, we had a tomcat with fur just that color, a stray who showed up to lick some cream I’d spilled on the stoop and never left. He had six toes on each front paw but only one eye, and his battle-scarred right ear was torn in three places. When I asked if I could keep him—a silly question because nobody can “keep” a cat, they come or they go—my father said, “Why? That’s the most miserable cat I ever laid eyes on.” The name stuck. So did the cat.
Miserable lived under the steps that led to the alley. He wouldn’t come inside, not even if you tempted him with tuna. But sometimes on a summer day, he’d lie on his back to soak in the sun, arms stretched high over his head, and let you rub his belly three, four, or even five times. And then, without warning, he’d collapse into himself like a jackknife snapping into a sheath and pierce your friendly hand with all twelve of his sharp little front claws, often drawing blood, then slink back under the porch with a hiss that said you should have known better.
So maybe that explains the unusual color of this ginger-flavored fury? Because the anger of the moment is coupled with conviction that someday I will have my revenge on those who should have known better than to stand in my way, not by piercing them with my claws but by proving them wrong.
I should be making art, perfecting my technique, working toward the day when I’ll see my work hanging in galleries, or even museums. Instead, I’ve been banished to the mountains to babysit other people’s paintings and sculptures for the duration of the war. The fact that my canvas and marble-carved charges are among the finest in the world offers some solace. Perhaps the talents of the masters still cling to the works they’ve left behind? Perhaps I’ll breathe it in somehow, find inspiration by osmosis? But it’s still a banishment, a grossly unfair one, my penance for the sin of rebuffing the advances of my married boss.
The bus groans and squeaks and shudders to a stop. The driver calls out, “Asheville! Asheville, North Carolina! Next stop, Montreat!”
I jump to my feet, the only passenger to do so, palming the back of my head to make sure my blue hat is still pinned on before pulling a leather portfolio of my paintings and a wheat-colored suitcase holding more brushes and tubes of paint than clothes down from the luggage rack. The mid-thirties masher in the wrinkled suit, who was offended when I moved to another seat after jolting from sleep to find his hand on my knee, scowls and crosses his arms over his chest, making it clear he has no intention of helping.
I lumber up the aisle, the suitcase bumping against my legs with every step, worried it’s going to catch on my stockings and wondering if I’ll be able to find another pair if it does. The war is only days old but already there’s talk of hosiery being rationed to reserve silk and nylon for making parachutes. I stretch my arm out as far as I can to keep my bag from banging on my legs and get to the front of the bus without incident. The kindly driver, a man with salt-and-pepper hair and a heavy Baltimore accent that marks him as a native of my hometown, who has been at the wheel since Washington and told me he makes this same trip twice a week, takes my burdens from me, sets them onto the curb, then offers his hand as I descend the steps.
“Thank you. Do you know where I can get a cab?”
“Nobody’s coming to meet you?” he asks.
I pull a folded slip of paper from the pocket of my best blue jacket, now terribly wrinkled from the journey.
“I’ve got an address for a boardinghouse on Flint Street.”
“Well, you won’t find any cabs in this part of Asheville, miss. But if I’m remembering right, Flint is over in the Montford neighborhood.” He points. “Go through that alley, take a right onto Broadway, then a left at the next corner onto Starnes. Just keep walking three, maybe four blocks. It’s not far but I don’t like leaving a lady all alone on the street.” He glances at my suitcases, then at his wristwatch and shakes his head. “If I wasn’t already behind schedule . . .”
I smile, then purposely put on the accent I’d worked so hard to rid myself of after leaving home and going to art school. “You don’t need to worry about me, mister. I’m a Baltimore girl, not a lady.”
He laughs. “Well, all right. I guess you can take care of yourself then,” before wishing me well and climbing back behind the wheel.
The bus drives off, belching exhaust.
I pick up my bags and march down the deserted sidewalk in my platform pumps, tasting raw ginger, seeing cat fur and the comeuppance to come, a gallery hung with my work and the day I will prove them all wrong.