Esther’s hand raced over the paper as if the colored pencils
might be snatched from her, the quivering inside her wild,
foreign, thrilling. All this time she hadn’t known that “blue”
was actually seven distinct shades, each with its own
name—azure, Prussian, cobalt, cerulean, sapphire, indigo, lapis.
She pressed the waxy pencils on the paper, amazed by the
emerging hues: the ornaments curving on the Armenian vase were
lapis; the purplish contours of the Jerusalem mountains were
shrouded by indigo evening clouds. In this stolen hour at
Mademoiselle Thibaux’s dining-room table, she could draw without
being scolded for committing the sin of idleness, God forbid.  A
pale gecko popped up on the chiseled stone of the windowsill and
scanned the room with staccato movements until it met Esther’s
gaze. Her fingers moving in a frenzy, she drew the gecko’s
raised body, its tilted head, its dark orbs focused on her. She
studied the translucency of the skin of the valiant creature
that kept kitchens free of roaches. How d