Thursday and Friday I walk up Broad Street as far as I can and I sing. I sing anything. I sing “Jingle Bells” even though it’s May. I sing nursery rhymes. I sing songs I learned to sing when I still took piano lessons.
No one on Broad Street says anything to me. But I’m not listening so it’s not like I’d hear it anyway. By Friday afternoon, I think I might have gone crazy. I am not the Sarah I used to be. I am a different Sarah. I don’t hear people anymore. I hear birds. I try to figure out what the pigeons are cooing to each other. I eat out of trash cans even though I have five dollars in my wallet. I walk even though I have a SEPTA pass.
I don’t care about the pear I couldn’t draw. I don’t care about Bruce. I don’t care about Mexico. I don’t care if I stay this way forever.
I wanted to go to my new school one more day this week, but I didn’t manage to get there. I have no idea what I’m doing and I don’t know why I’m doing it. Part of me wants to stand naked in the middle of Broad Street with pineapple stuffing rubbed all over me while throwing imaginary vegetables at people. Another part of me wants to climb to the top of Liberty One and yodel until my throat bleeds.
I should probably see a psychologist.
I’m halfway home on Friday afternoon when I see a little girl with a dog. I’m too tired to follow them, but I want to follow them because I can’t figure out why a girl this young would be allowed out alone with her dog in this part of town.
Maybe I don’t understand the neighborhood. Maybe I don’t understand the dog. Maybe I don’t understand the girl.
Something about the girl is original.
Something about the dog is original.
I ask the girl, “What is art?” and she says, “Art is what you believe no matter what other people think.” I grunt at this. I yell, “I don’t give a fucking tangerine what you think, girl! You think I’m out here trying to make friends?”
She and her dog recoil, and I try to figure out why I just yelled at her.
I think I might have become Alleged Earl even though Alleged Earl doesn’t want me to follow him anymore.
I think I care about art even though I don’t want to. I can’t get away from myself.
? ? ?
I see ten-year-old Sarah just outside City Hall. I wave to her but she doesn’t see me. She’s talking to another girl her age. I’m happy she’s made a friend. Her friend looks like Carmen did when we were ten.
I think about Carmen and how much I miss her. I don’t miss her much. I don’t miss anything much. I think this is a side effect of whatever is happening to me.
Carmen knows about the something in “Did something happen at school?”
She’s the only one who understands what’s inside a tornado. She’s the only one who understands that what’s inside me and what’s inside everyone who ever wanted to be an artist is a tornado. She seems okay with Miss Smith’s idea about no one having original ideas. I don’t know how she does it.
She is immune to discouragement.
I stop outside of City Hall and pull out a piece of sidewalk chalk. I draw an enormous tornado. Swirls and swirls of dust and debris. I walk three big steps at the top of the tornado—it’s ten feet wide at the top. The only color chalk I have is sky blue and it’s a sky-blue tornado and inside the tornado is everything that ever mattered to me and everything that ever mattered to you and every tourist and every Liberty Bell and every hot dog with mustard and every cheesesteak and every song I ever sang and every pigeon that ever cooed. They are all inside my tornado. I don’t notice anyone watching me. No one stops to care. No one asks me to stop but if they did I probably wouldn’t hear them anyway because I am still deaf to everyone except art—art that doesn’t matter. This tornado doesn’t matter. Not even with the skin from my index-finger knuckle in it. Not even with the sweat that dripped from my nose.
Then I turn around, City Hall at my back, and face the art museum down at the other end of the parkway and I yodel the best yodel I can as loud as I can. I sound like a bad imitation of Tarzan. If yodeling is art, I suck at it. I take my sucky yodel, put it inside my sky-blue tornado, and start walking home.
I can smell myself. I am so many days old I can smell more than just my sweat, I can smell my own five-day-old dirt. Dirt is art.
? ? ?
When I get home, Mom is already at work and Dad is downstairs on the couch watching TV. He says something to me as I walk to the kitchen but I don’t hear anything.
I see his mouth move, but I don’t hear him at all.
His frown is big.
He makes an animated smile and points to it.
I realize he’s telling me to smile.
As if smiling would make my tornado go away. As if what’s on the surface matters. That’s what Carmen taught me. That’s what her tornadoes have always been about.
I smile and I get myself a bowl of Cheerios.
I take it back to my room and smile on my way through the living room and I go to sleep with my five-day-old dirt and I don’t feel like art.