“Only if you’re five! Not when you’re eighteen with a police record. You’re going to end up in jail, Moses.” My grandma was upset, and that made me feel like shit.
I shrugged helplessly. The threat wasn’t new to me, and it didn’t especially scare me. I didn’t think it would be much worse than the way I lived now. There were a lot of concrete walls in prison, or so I heard. But Gigi wouldn’t be there. And Georgia. I wouldn’t ever be able to see Georgia again. She thought I was crazy though, so I didn’t know why I cared.
But I did.
“It would be such a waste, Moses. Such a huge waste! Your art is awe-inspiring. It’s wonderful. You could make a life for yourself with your gift. A good life. Just paint pictures for heaven’s sake! Just paint quietly in a corner! That would be amazing! Why do you have to paint barns and bridges and walls and people’s doors?” Gi threw up her hands and I wished I could explain.
“I can’t. I can’t stop. It’s the only thing that makes it bearable.”
“Makes what bearable?”
“The madness. Just . . . the madness in my head.”
“Moses was a prophet,” she began.
“I’m not a prophet! And you’ve told me this story before, Gi,” I interrupted.
“But I don’t think you understand it, Moses,” she insisted.
I stared at my grandmother, at her round face, her adoring smile, her guileless eyes. She was the only person who had ever made me feel like I wasn’t a burden. Or a psycho. If she wanted to tell me about baby Moses again, I would listen.
“Moses was a prophet. But he didn’t start out that way. First he was a baby, an abandoned baby in a basket,” Gigi started up again.
I sighed. I really hated the story of how I got my name. It was completely messed up. It wasn’t cute or romantic. It wasn’t a Bible story. It wasn’t even Hollywood. But it was Gigi. So I stayed silent and let her do her thing.
“They were killing all the Hebrew baby boys. They were slaves and the Pharaoh was worried that if the Hebrew nation got too large they would rise up and turn against him. But Moses’s mother couldn’t allow him to be killed. So to save him, she had to let him go. She put him in a basket and let him go,” Gi repeated with extra emphasis.
I waited. This wasn’t the place she usually stopped.
“Just like you, sweetie.”
“What? You mean I’m a basket case? Yeah, Gigi. I know.”
“No. That’s not what I mean. Your mother was a basket case, though. She made a mess of her life. She got so deep and so sick that there was no way she could take care of you. So she let you go.”
“She left me in a laundromat.”
“She saved you from herself.”
I sighed again. Gigi had loved my mother, which made her more forgiving and compassionate. I didn’t love my mother and I was neither compassionate nor forgiving.
“Don’t mess up your life, Moses. You’ve got to find a way to save yourself now. Nobody can do it for you.”
“I can’t control it, Gigi. You act like I can control it.” Even as I spoke, the heat started rising up my neck, and the tips of my fingers felt like they were pressed up against an ice-filled glass. It was a feeling I knew all too well and what came next would happen whether I wanted it to or not.
“They won’t leave me alone, Gi. And it’s going to drive me crazy. It is driving me crazy. I don’t know how to live like this.”
Gigi stood and wrapped her arms around my head, pulling my face into her chest like she could stand between me and everything that was already inside me. I kept my face pressed against her, my eyes closed tight, trying to think about Georgia, about last night, about how Georgia had refused to look away from me, and how my heart had felt like it was going to explode when I felt her come undone. But even Georgia wasn’t enough. Molly was back. She wanted to show me pictures.
“Moses parted the waters of the Red Sea. You know that story too, right?” My grandmother spoke urgently, somehow understanding that I was fighting with something she couldn’t see. “You know how he parted the waters so the people could walk across?”
I grunted in response as flashing images flipped through my head in rapid succession, like the girl who lingered nearby had opened a thousand page book in my head and made the pages turn at a dizzying speed. I groaned and Gigi held on tighter.
“Moses! You have to bring the waters back down, just like Moses did in the Bible. Moses parted the waters, just like you can do. You part the waters, and people cross over. But you can’t let everyone cross whenever they want. You have to bring the waters back down. You can bring the waters back down and wash all the pictures away!”
“How?” I moaned, not even fighting anymore.
“What color is the water?” she insisted.
And I tried to imagine how that much water would look, rising up in enormous walls, held back by an invisible hand. Immediately the flipping images Molly was shoving into my skull slowed.
“Water is white,” I bit out. “Water is white when it’s angry.” I was suddenly so angry my temples throbbed and my hands shook. I was so tired of never having a minute’s peace.
“What else? Water isn’t always angry,” Gigi insisted. “What other colors?”
“Water is white when it’s angry. It’s red when the sun sets. It’s blue when it’s calm. It’s black when it’s night. It’s clear when it falls.” I was babbling, but it felt good. I was fighting back and my head felt clearer. Just like the water.
“So let the water fall. Let it come crashing down. Let it flow through your head and out your eyes. Water is clear when it washes the pain away, clear when it cleanses. Water has no color. Let it take the colors away.”
I could almost feel it, the walls tumbling down, being spun up inside it, the way I’d been churned in the surf the time I’d gone to the ocean when I was twelve. I had gotten beat up by the waves. But there had been no pictures inside the waves. No people. There had been nothing but water and breathlessness and raw, natural power. And I had loved it.