I want to be worth that.
So when I get home, I close my door and make sure it’s locked. I don’t know why. I just don’t want Mom walking in and seeing this. Not that she’d mind, but this feels … private.
I sit down at my desk, and I close my eyes and think about Jordan’s lonely poem.
A shovel, digging upward. Wow. And the oxygen is running out. Wow. I close my eyes and I picture Jordan digging up, and suddenly I’m hoping someone is digging down to meet him.
I pull out my supplies from the bottom drawer. I haven’t done this since ninth grade, when Mr. Zimmer saw my saguaro tree and used it as an example of what not to do. “Maybe you’re more of an athlete, Morrison,” he said, and I smiled as everyone laughed.
It’s a black, zipped container with about fifty pencils in various colors and various textures, from hard to soft, and a kneaded eraser that’s good not just for blotting out mistakes, but also pulling apart. I used to have a nervous habit of doing that, like I couldn’t go two seconds without rolling a ball of gray eraser around in my fingers and then pulling it apart and stuffing it back together.
I open my old notebook and flip through the pages. Sure enough, the last page is the saguaro tree. It looks pretty good to me, with about six arms of varying height, all with that prickly texture of the one in our front yard. The shade of green looks just right. I don’t know what Mr. Zimmer saw; maybe he was just trying to be funny. But yeah, it definitely stopped me from drawing. I dropped the class, even. But right now, I don’t care.
I look at the page and I see a pit, like one someone might dig. Then I imagine it from different angles. Am I at a side view? I find myself scrunching and pulling at the kneaded eraser as I think. I see a guy tangled in tree roots underground.
I settle into a side view. I take a small piece of charcoal and rub it across the page, creating a place for Jordan’s loneliness to be. I don’t know what’s above and below the ground; I just need to get rid of the blank paper. I remember that from when I used to draw all the time. It was like, getting rid of the blankness gave me permission to get started.
I rough out the side of Jordan’s face. He’s underground, confined. He’s partially digging, and partially pushing against the surface. Suddenly he has a hand clawing at the surface, his thumb on the outside, which means his arm is tucked at his side. I lose my breath seeing the outline of that skinny arm, confined. Then I add his left arm, pushing up at the surface. I create the sinews in his clawing right arm, the dirt falling on his face as he tries desperately to remove the earth.
I want the edge of his face to show, just his jawline, as if he’s turned away, avoiding the falling dirt. It’s all charcoal still, sketched on the page, erasable, which is good because so far it sucks.
A hack. I’m a hack. I have no idea how to —
I shut my brain off and trace some gnarly roots that run down into the ground, like from a tree above. The roots entwine his wrists like handcuffs, and again, I’m finding it hard to breathe, staring at this thing I’m creating.
I smear some charcoal along the roots to create a shadow quickly.
No. His body should be under the roots, under the tree.
I deepen his hands, the claw feature. Then I go into the claw hand with the eraser as it’s getting lost in there. And what’s going on above the earth? This is the hard part. Seeing what isn’t there.
I like the shovel in the poem, but in this picture I see a person above there, crouching down in the dirt, just as dirty, just as invested in the scene as Jordan.
Is it me? Am I above the ground, digging down?
I turn the page sideways and charcoal sketch a boy’s face staring down, right against the ground. His hair falls forward in the face.
Shit. The damn paper’s too small.
Too damn bad. I continue.
But first I look at what I have and my heart jumps. Two boys staring at each other but unable to see, the ground separating them. It’s intense, like very.
I sketch the boy on top’s hand against the dirt. His palm is inches from the other boy’s claw.
Damn. I am the boy on top. And I’m as close to the ground as I can be. And hopeless to help, which sucks the worst. I want to help, but I can’t. I’m waiting for Jordan to dig himself out.
I turn my attention back to Jordan’s face. It’s not what I intend. Jordan looks like Jordan but not like Jordan at all, and there’s no way to make him more Jordan. There’s no space for all that Jordan-ness to be added.
I add a knee to my aboveground boy, who doesn’t look like me but I am definitely him. The first knee I sketch with charcoal is too high, so I lower and shadow it, and then I give my character strong eyebrows and I see for a second the real me crouching there on the ground, and it’s scary.
Damn. Betts and Zay-Rod would not get this at all. I would never show them this.
I sharpen a dark black pencil, its shavings twirling out like a little mushroom head.
I place a piece of white paper below my right forearm and lean in to focus on the eye. I want a very specific emotion there, like, I’m not sure what but something. It could be panicked, but it’s almost like the person on the top knows more than the person on the bottom.
Like he’s been there before, underground.
I use white pencil to pop the top guy’s eye out a bit more.
Man. I didn’t know so much about this drawing would be the guy on top. I thought it was going to be a shovel but the shovel didn’t want to be there.
I turn the page upward so I can check the perspective. It looks about right. Sometimes when you draw flat, you can’t see how things will look right-side up.
The upper character has dirt under his nails that I create with more black pencil, and sweat on his face, which I don’t want to be perfect drops of dew but more just like black lines that add to the movement of the piece.
I add some white smudges to make him more three-dimensional.
Hmm. The boy has no clothes. No clothing line. Maybe shorts? I don’t know yet.
I stand up and move over to my bed. Sometimes I need to get away so I don’t lose perspective. When I come back, what I see is a mess that might turn into something.
I focus in on the tree. Maybe it’s an avoidance so I don’t have to deal with Jordan’s face yet. I switch to a different pencil to give the tree its own texture, different from the rest.
I realize I’m drawing a tree again and I smile, thinking about Mr. Zimmer’s comment. Well, maybe I am a jock. Maybe I can’t do this. But I like it, you know? I like trying.
I can’t find the guy on the bottom. I smear some color together, and focus in on the outline, and suddenly it’s like, There you are. He shows up and what’s so funny is the guy on the bottom is darker than the guy on top, which is opposite. But somehow it just works. I strengthen the jawline with more charcoal.
I wonder if Jordan would let me draw him. This isn’t him even if it stands in for him. It would help me get beyond skin texture and eye color. Man, I need to ask him. I wonder what he would say if I asked?
I sketch in his top eye. I won’t know the emotion for sure until the eye comes through. Then I’ll know if it’s right or not.
I flare his nostril more to make him more panicky.
I erase his ear. I do not like what happened there at all.
There’s a knock on my door and I respond with a fevered “What?” as if I’m jerking off.
“Never mind,” my mom says, and I hear the smirk in her voice. She thinks she’s caught me in the act.
“I’ll be right out,” I say, trying to sound more normal and less jerk-off-y. Of course that just makes me sound more guilty. Oh well.
Damn. Jordan looks a little like a fetus. That’s not great.
I use white pencil to show more of his eye, to invoke that sense of panic.