Ksenia has what she calls color days and red days.
Color days are good. She prefers soft hues of yellow and pastel in her clothes, so soft and loose against her skin. Big sweaters are her favorite, the knitted ones with chunky yarn are the best. Color days are when she likes hugs and cuddles from her siblings, seeking out her mama to snuggle in her lap while she does whatever it was she was doing before Ksenia interrupted her.
Red days are bad days. Red days are when she wears red. None of her sisters wore red other than some trimming in their clothes. Red clothes reminded them of Red Room uniforms, the monochromatic theme with the only splash of color being a dark crimson red just like freshly spilled blood.
Red days are when Ksenia is feeling too much. She can’t handle the touch of others right now, she can barely handle the touch of her clothes against her skin. She feels like climbing out of her body to get away from the lingering crawling feeling under her skin. On red days, Ksenia wears a red tank top and a red pair of shorts no matter how cold it is.
Her mama picked up on her choice of clothing pretty quickly. She started to mention it when she saw Ksenia. “You’re wearing red today.” She’d say as if to make sure that Ksenia hadn’t put it on by accident or simply run out of laundry.
On red days, her sisters left her alone. The room that she shared with Irina and Mischa suddenly becomes empty and if she’d go searching for them, she knew that she’d find Mischa with Varvara and Daria while Irina was with Alice or Viktoria.
And although on red days she doesn’t want to be touched, she also doesn’t want to be alone. Her thoughts become too much and it’s just much too loud in the quiet room.
Her mama brings her food. She sits at the foot of Ksenia’s bed and reads to her. She hums the one song that she always hums and brings her and her sister comfort. Her mama is there.
One red day, Ksenia just feels too much and thinks that she’s going to break apart into a million little pieces like shattered glass. “I’m made of marble.” She’d tell herself. “Marble doesn’t break.” But then she’d remember one of her mama’s many lectures in which she’d remind them that they’re not marble, they’re girls, and they have thoughts and feelings.
Ksenia thinks that she might be falling apart and she thinks she needs something more. She shuffles out of her bedroom and toward her mama’s room where her desk and computer are set up.
Her mama is doing research on the next Widow for one of her sisters to rescue. Ksenia gently shuffles forward into the room and her mama looked up at her in surprise. “Hi, Nia.” She says softly.
Ksenia approached her and her mama waits for her to say whatever it is she needs to say.
Except Ksenia doesn’t know how to tell her that she feels like she’s falling apart at the seams, that her mind won’t be quiet and she can’t think. Ksenia reaches toward her and wraps her arms around her mama’s neck.
“You want a snuggle, sweet girl?” Her mama asks and all Ksenia can do is nod into her neck. Her mama turns in her chair so she can lift Ksenia up into her lap and hold her close. Tears prickle at her eyes and Ksenia buries her face into the crook of her mama’s neck. “I’ve got you, baby.”
Wrapped up in her mama’s arms, Ksenia doesn’t quite feel like falling apart anymore. Like her mama is holding her together and sealing the cracks with the soft kiss she lays on top of Ksenia’s head.
Ksenia stays wrapped up in her mama’s embrace for a long time. Rather than go back to whatever she was doing on the computer like she usually did when Ksenia interrupted her for snuggles, this time her attention was all on Ksenia.
Ksenia asks for a story about her mama and Aunt Nat when they were little, something to get her mind off of the overwhelming thoughts. She listens close as her mama tells her about the time she tried to run away from home but only made it to the end of the driveway before she remembered she was supposed to hold an adult's hand when crossing the road. She’s heard the story before but it’s one of her favorites to hear. She suspects her mama knows that and tells it again and again just for her.
Ksenia doesn’t mean to fall asleep. Sleep was hard to come by on red days and sometimes she’d go up to two days with no sleep depending on how long her red day lasted. But here in her mama’s arms, she felt safe enough to sleep.
She stays drifting in a sleepy state, warm and snuggled against her mama as she slowly turns her attention back to the computer. Her mama works, on hand running up and down Ksenia’s back as the other types on her keyboard.
Her mama, her protector, keeps the monsters at bay as she naps. Ksenia doesn’t dream and she wakes up feeling warm and safe.
It was the first red day that she pulled on a silvery-blue cardigan over her red outfit. Her sisters stop when they see the splash of color against the outfit that told them not to touch her.
“Does that mean you’re okay with touch?” Varvara asked her and Ksenia nods her head. She expects Varvara to roughhouse or squeeze her tight. Instead, Varvara braids her hair, her touch gentle and kind as she carefully weaves two braids into her hair.
So while Ksenia still had red days, she sometimes wore something with color on it. Whether it was one of the crazy color socks that Irina had gotten her or a jacket. Sometimes she even toted around her biggest, softest knitted blanket that was a pale pastel yellow. She’d wrap it around her shoulders like a shield.
When she wears colors on red days, her sisters will ask before touching her. Ksenia doesn’t mind hair ruffles or holding hands when they ask first. On red days with splashes of colors, her sisters will share the things they do that comfort them.
Mischa watches television with her. Viktoria draws with her. Irina takes her to hunt down rocks to skip in the creek. Alice takes her to a field to make flower crowns. Daria shares from her stash of snacks. Varvara pulls out a comic book from her stash that she doesn’t allow anyone to touch and reads it to her, making accompanying sounds of explosions and fighting.
Some red days are so bad that Ksenia doesn’t think she can leave her bed to face the world. She runs her thumb along the leather bracelet on her wrist and stares up at the posters on the wall. Mischa loved hanging movie posters up on the wall while Irina preferred to pin up postcards of places she’d traveled.
On the worst red days, Ksenia wears something black and red. She needs to feel like the Widow she was before her mama rescued her. She needs that sense of structure. On days that she wears black and red, her mama will immediately put everything she had planned on the back burner and turn her attention all on Ksenia. Her mama will pull one of the guns out of the safe and will take Ksenia into the forest to shoot. If Ksenia needed it, they’d dance too.
Even on days that she wanted to be alone, her mama refuses to leave her be, always lingering and ready to give Ksenia what she didn’t know she needed.
Sometimes she’ll have color days that will change to red days. Maybe something reminded her of the Red Room or everything became too much. When she changes in the middle of the day, her mama will sit her down and talk about what happened. Ksenia doesn’t really like thinking or talking about her feelings but her mama is very big on identifying how she felt when she got triggered.
Ksenia felt odd and out of place because none of her sisters have red days. None of them get to the point that they can’t handle touch and want to claw out of their own skin. None of them do things that they used to do in the Red Room because it was oddly comforting when they were distressed.
Her mama tells her that it’s okay to have bad days. Everyone has them. They don’t call them red days and sometimes they don’t even know they’re having them.
Ksenia knows.
When her red shirt gets a hole in it then she switches it out for another. She throws the first shirt out.
Over time she will notice that she didn’t even need multiple pairs of red day outfits anymore. She had one that she always gravitated to and by the time she’d need it again then it would already have been through the washer, dried, and folded up in her dresser.
One day she puts on a red shirt without even thinking about it. Her mama frowned and as usual spoke. “You’re wearing red today.”
It would be the first time Ksenia would look down at her shirt in surprise before looking up and telling her mama that it was a color day.