It was so beautiful. The girl laughed at an unknown admirer, her face tipped up as if toward the sun, and her hair flew around her shoulders. It almost made me jealous, and I was ashamed of my small feelings. But Moses had seen her like this. How that was possible, I didn’t know. But he was the artist, and she was his muse, however briefly. And I didn’t like that. I wanted to be his one and only. It was my face I wanted in his head.
I sat staring at the laughing girl, brought to life on a lonely underpass with spray paint and the genius of a modern-day Michelangelo. Or maybe Van Gogh. Hadn’t Van Gogh been the crazy one? The girl Moses had painted was so full of life I was certain she couldn’t be dead. But Moses thought she was. The thought made my stomach clench and my legs feel like cold jelly. Not because she was dead—that was horrible—but because Moses seemed to know. No one looking at it could possibly think Moses was mocking someone’s grief or that his art was violent. But it was weird. And nobody knew what to do with him. He never denied any of it. But he didn’t defend himself either.
And last night. Last night, I was scared and angry and confused. He had seemed so unattainable. So frustratingly distant! So when he turned on me suddenly and kissed me, holding me so tight that there was no distance at all . . . something inside me gave way. And when he tossed down his coat and we fell to the ground, hands and mouths and cumbersome clothing pushed and pulled aside to uncover the something beneath that kept us apart, I didn’t protest and he didn’t stop.
I grew up on a farm with horses. I had a very clear, graphic knowledge of the mechanics of the act. But nothing prepared me for the feelings, for the need, for the intense sensations, for the power, for the sweet agony. We occupied a space so primal and so ripe with the present that our heartbeats became a deafening metronome, denting time, marking the moment. I was so filled with wonder that I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t even close my eyes.
“Moses, Moses, Moses,” my heart cried and my mouth echoed behind.
His eyes were as wide as mine must have been, his breaths as shallow, and when his lips weren’t pressed to my lips, they were parted, panting as we clung to each other, hands clasped and eyes locked. Bodies moving in a rhythm as old as the ground we lay upon.
I knew myself enough to know that later on I wouldn’t be proud of my lack of restraint. I wouldn’t like the litter-strewn concrete edifice nearby and the weeds beneath my back. I knew I wouldn’t be able to look my dad in the eyes for a while. But I also knew that the moment had been completely inevitable. I had been hurtling toward it from the second I laid eyes on Moses. My parents were religious people, spiritual people. I thought I was. I’d been raised going to church, week after week, counseled on the sins of the flesh. But nobody told me how it would feel. Nobody told me that resisting would feel like trying to breathe through a straw. Futile. Impossible. Unrealistic.
So I’d pulled the straw away and filled my lungs with air, filled my lungs with Moses, pulling him in with great big gulps, unable to slow down or focus on anything but the next breath.
Maybe I could have stayed away from him. Maybe I should have stayed away. But last night I couldn’t. Last night I didn’t. And by the light of day, sitting in the faded sunshine of an October afternoon, with another girl’s face peering down at me, painted by my lover, by the boy who owned me body and soul, I wished that I had.
Moses
THE POLICE QUESTIONED ME. It wasn’t the first time I’d been questioned by the police over one of my drawings. I didn’t offer anything. I didn’t say much. There was nothing I could say, and they had nothing on me. The truth was, I didn’t know anything. But I knew she wasn’t alive. People who were alive didn’t come visit me at odd hours and invade my thoughts. I just told them I’d heard about Molly missing and wanted to draw something for her. It was the truth. Kind of. The truth wasn’t anything most people wanted to hear. People liked religion but they didn’t want to have to exercise any faith. Religion was comforting with all its structure and its rules. It made people feel safe. But faith wasn’t safe. Faith was hard and uncomfortable and forced people to step out on a limb. At least that’s what Gigi said. And I believed Gi.
My grandma came rushing into the police station with frizzy grey curls flying and a look on her face that warned of trouble. Not trouble for me, luckily, but for the police officer who hadn’t called her while I was being questioned. I was eighteen. They didn’t have to call her, but they backed down pretty quickly under her wrath, and I was released within the hour, after agreeing to paint over my drawing. Hopefully Molly wouldn’t come back when I did. It wasn’t until we got home that Gigi unloaded on me.
“Why do you keep doing that? Painting walls and barns and drawing on white boards? You made Ms. Murray cry, got yourself arrested, and now this? Stop it! Or for hell’s sake, ask permission first!”
“You know why, Gigi.” And she did. It was the dirty little secret in my family. My hallucinations. My visions. The meds I’d been on most of my life made it a hundred times worse. They were meds made for people who had totally different problems, and when one medication didn’t work, they would try something new. I’d spent my whole life in and out of doctor’s offices—a ward of the state, an enemy of the state. Nothing had helped, and it wasn’t until coming to live with Gigi that I had finally been free of the medication. No one ever considered that maybe they weren’t hallucinations. They hadn’t thought about the fact that maybe it was exactly like I said.
“I can’t ask permission, Gigi. Because then I would have to explain. And people might tell me no. And then where would I be?” It was a legitimate argument as far as I was concerned. “Forgiveness is usually easier than permission.”