“Er, ‘He will die and we will laugh. You, my love, my other half,’” I recited, feeling stupid. Josephine was listening. I didn’t like having to talk about my work in front of her and her little cut ’n’ paste project.
“Did you write those words yourself?” Mr. Lee asked.
“Yes, I did.”
“Well, the rest of the class is hard at work,” he said, raising his voice to quiet some assholes who were guffawing about some dumb shit. “So why don’t you come up to my desk, and we’ll have a chat about what you’ve created? Keep that up, Josephine, I’m loving it so far.” We walked up to his desk, him carrying my drawing.
Great. Maybe we could have Ms. Voree in here too and have a round-table discussion on lighter themes.
“This is a wonderful drawing,” he said quietly, allowing the class to continue to work and not overhear our conversation. “Tell me about it.”
“Well, it’s always been my favourite painting,” I said. “Judith Slaying Holofernes.”
“Do you know the story behind it?”
“Yes, my mother told me when I was little. About who Judith was and why it was very important that she kill Holofernes.”
“What emotions did you feel while you were drawing this?”
“I was very excited because I love the painting. I wanted to try and express the scene with as much emotion as I could.”
“And this resulted in emphasizing the violence and pain,” he said, gesturing, “but also focusing on the strength of the women.”
I nodded. “Yes, that was an important part of it for me. I’ve always sort of admired Judith and her friend for being strong women.”
“Artimesia Gentileschi was pretty strong herself,” Mr. Lee said.
“I know. My mom’s really into art, she taught me a lot about it.”
“Well, Rachel,” he sat back, “I love it. I love that you incor-porated creative words into it. It’s obvious to me that you have a great passion for the painting. And I like that you took a dark approach to the dark subject matter. I didn’t expect it.”
“I wanted to make it darker,” I said.
“Well done. We’re going to be doing this project for the rest of the week, and since you’ve finished early, you can work in your sketchbook for a while.” As part of the class, we were to hand in a sketchbook at the end of the year for bonus marks.
I took my seat, careful not to rustle any of Josephine’s stupid paper scraps.
xXx
I ended up hanging that drawing on my wall, next to the pictures of Marie-Lise and DED. It made me feel good, looking at that wall. Empowered. I could tell Mom and Dad hated it, naturally, but how could they complain? I was doing well at school, I had a friend, and I was still being creative, which they approved of. I didn’t get any more lectures that winter from anyone. Not from Mom and Dad, and not from Ms. Voree. Of course, that was because I lightened up the things that I wrote for her class. She totally approved of nature and snowflakes and the moon and soft deer in the snow and all that shit. In Mr. Lee’s class, I knew I could create whatever I wanted and he would approve. I could express myself at school through art, and I could express myself at home through writing in my journals, which were quite rapidly turning into page after page of what can only be described as lyrics.
Even Ms. Voree had been forced to concede: I was a good writer, a creative person. And I knew it myself. I might only have had one friend, and she didn’t understand me, and the cutest boy in school thought I was a loser, but I was still better than the other kids. My dad had been right. I was smarter than them. I got it. I understood real feelings and I knew how to convey them. And I had my music. Fuck, it was such a comfort to me. I kind of liked that no one else I knew would ever be able to understand it. It was mine. To quote DED’s song “This Sad Earth”:
Me and myself
That’s all I need
To destroy this earth
To make it bleed
And if I’m alone
I feel no pain
Because the blood will purge
This sad earth again
That’s the stuff that carried me through the winter. And I felt just fine.
EIGHT