Everything was pleasantly wrapped up and I was able to leave, boiling with fury. I was relieved that I wasn’t in trouble, but I felt incredibly wronged and patronized. My teacher wanted me to write about things I didn’t believe in and didn’t feel. Shouldn’t a good teacher approve of, and encourage, strength and inspired emotion? It was a creative writing unit, not a let’s make the teacher think happy thoughts unit. Shouldn’t she want to bring out the best in me? Sure, the poem had been about her, but I wasn’t actually going to walk into the class and break her neck. How na?ve was she? She had been one of the teachers I actually kind of liked.
As I walked home through the snow, I got some more ideas for poems. How bright blood would look spilled across a blanket of white snow. Ms. Voree’s and Ms. Coates’s blood. Of course, I wouldn’t be able to submit that poem to her class. I’d have to write something stupid, like how the snow sparkled, glittering, as the afternoon sun slanted across it. Whatever.
The two of you are one of a kind.
Fucking brain-dead. Fucking blind.
School’s out now. It’s time to go.
Scarlet blood on ivory snow.
SEVEN
The school year crept along. One of our art assignments was to choose a favourite piece and recreate it using a different media. You know, take the statue of David and paint a picture of it. Or make a sculpture of the Mona Lisa. Something like that.
Josephine was really into Jackson Pollock, so she decided to take one of his abstract paintings and recreate it using collage. I’ve never liked his stuff. Looks like a bunch of random paint splatters to me. It doesn’t have any mystery to it, it doesn’t tell a story, there’s no atmosphere. But Josephine loved his work. She said she can feel excitement and movement in it. Josephine was also into straw sunhats and floral print. But, hey, different strokes, right?
I was feeling pretty damned good that day. Most of the kids in the class didn’t know much about art history, so a bunch of them were crowded around Mr. Lee’s collection of books, turning pages. Mr. Lee found that depressing, and he was barking at them about how true artists would at least know one work of art from that book before they even walked into his class. Not a problem for me, of course. I’d grown up with those books. I knew who Vermeer was when I was a toddler.
And there was no question as to which painting I was going to recreate.
“That’s a pretty creepy painting,” Josephine said when I showed her my colour photocopy of Judith Slaying Holofernes.
“It’s so fucking cool. The girl in blue is Judith, and the girl in red is her maidservant,” I explained. “The guy on the bed is Holofernes. He was this war general guy who was destroying Judith’s town, really brutal. He had to be stopped, right? So Judith and her friend sneak into his camp. Some of his guards stop them at first, but these are just a couple of girls, right? What could they possibly do? So Judith and her friend hang out with Holofernes and get him drunk, and then when he’s passed out, they attack him.”
“It looks like she’s cutting his throat,” Josephine said.
“She’s actually decapitating him. Judith cuts off his head, and then they put it in a bag and take it back to their village and show everyone. They totally saved their own village and became heroes for it.” I grinned. “I love this painting. Look at them, they’re so beautiful. Look at the way the maidservant is struggling with Holofernes, holding him down. You can see how strong she is. Judith is totally into it, cutting into his neck. And the look on his face, like he can’t believe that these silly, weak women are going to decapitate him and stop all his evil bullshit. He can’t believe that he isn’t as strong as they are, and that they were able to get close enough to kill him.”
Josephine gazed at me quizzically. “You’re really into this, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yeah. I remember when I first saw this painting when I was a kid. I thought it was so beautiful, the way the blood is just streaming out onto the bed. You know, a woman painted this. I love how she also showed what great friends Judith and the other girl are. You can see how much they trust each other.”
“All I see is some guy getting killed,” Josephine said. “You’re thinking about it too much.”