Paint Me a Monster (25 page)

She watches the boys, leans over, and says, “You redirected Luke and Sam in a way I haven’t seen before. Very nicely done.” She writes something on her clipboard then compliments the boys. Before moving on, she glances toward me and taps her watch.

Redirecting play—I’ll read about that tonight. Whatever it is, it was fun.

Today in pre-kindergarten, the kids made Valentine’s Day cards.
Mrs. Fox and I had them finish the sentence, “Mommies and Daddies are important because . . . ” and then we wrote their responses on the cards. We don’t tell the kids what to write. They make it up. I’m beginning to understand what Mr. Algrin means when he says we are the authors of our lives. I watch the kids make life up every day.

Answers the “Cupcakes” gave include:

Daddy takes me to school when Mommy plays tennis.

Daddy works so we will have money for food and clothes and our dog.

Mommy is important because she loves me.

Daddy buys me candy.

Mommy is important because she helps me find Show and Tell.

Daddy is important because he calls the plumber to fix the toilet.

Mommy and Daddy are important because without them, we wouldn’t have a Mommy or Daddy and that would be sad.

I hate this feeling. My thighs are sequoia trees. Fat steamrolls my waistband. Blubber. Whale fat. I hate this. I hate me. I hate eating. I hate starving. Please, please, please. I’m on my knees. Make this go away.

I can hardly breathe in these pants.

A fold of skin blocks my stomach from touching my thigh when I bend over to shave my legs. I am disgusting.

I sit crossed-legged on the floor and run my hands down my sides, feeling the curve of each rib and then the flesh cushioning my once prominent pelvic bones. The edges are gone. I pinch the ripple of flesh. Desperation. It’s Saturday. I want to wear my baggy tunic. Please, please, please make me stop eating.

It’s easier to not eat. I promise not to overeat today. I promise to sit while I eat. I promise not to eat more than one serving of everything. I promise to eat slowly. I promise to chew twenty times before I swallow. I promise to stop when I am full. I promise to be good.

Sandwiched between poster boards under my bed is a stack of paintings. Some I painted; a couple are presents from my pre-kindergartners. I wipe salty buttered popcorn bits and grease off my hands and pull the paintings out.

As I sort the pictures into two piles—paintings that awaken joy and ones that Freud would enjoy—I hear Gaga’s voice mix with mine.

“Beautiful colors, like summer on paper, landscapey and lovely, bold and strong.”

In Freud’s pile, I notice that all but Sam’s pictures in his signature red and black, and one from a girl named Tiffany—that she made the day we ran out of yellow and red—belong to me. Paper clipped together is a series I made when the pre-kindergartners focused on families and community workers. I pull the bundle out and lay each painting on the smooth, low-piled carpet.

My work has a theme, large clumped circles and a smaller one spun far from the rest. The backgrounds in my pictures are never still. The lines have a tempo—crescendos and decrescendos—that restrict any cadence of calm.

I then turn the paintings over, restack them, and place them back between the cardboard sheets. Be patient, I tell them. Until I’m ready to do something with the thought you hold in the back of my mind. I finish my diet Coke and scoot my makeshift portfolio under the bed.

“I’d love to see your work, Rinnie, I’m flattered,” Mr. Algrin says when I ask if he would like to see my paintings.

Mr. Algrin studies them as if they are authentic pieces of Renaissance art.

“I’m making up my life, with paint—like the kids,” I tell him, hoping he will note my positive attitude.

“Ah, I see,” he says. “Though I’m not so sure you are making life up.”

“These are originals!”

Mr. Algrin looks at me and waits.

“I d-didn’t copy anything.” I know he means the paintings have meaning. I try to divert the conversation, but a “do and don’t” duel jabs the inside of my head.

Tell him. Tell him what the symbols mean.

It’s humiliating. Handle it yourself.

Now’s your chance. He’s offering to listen.

No! I don’t want to.

Chicken.

It’s too private.

Tell him.

Not now.

And I don’t.

Mr. Algrin waits a long time and then some more. The clock ticks.

“As my mother used to say, ‘You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink,’” Mr. Algrin says.

“Hey,” I say. “My mother used to say that, too.”

“She was right. Your mother knew what she was talking about.”

Mom was right? She knew what she was talking about? “How can you say that? Whose side are you on?” I hear myself yelp. “Is it right to be mean to children? Is it right to lie? How can you say that?” I’m on the attack. It’s almost time for me to go, and I swoop up the paintings, crushing them in my arms. I’m sorry I brought them in.

Mr. Algrin stands up and extends his arms. “Whoa, there. We’re a team. Remember? It’s not about sides. Wrongs have been committed. You hurt, and rightly so.”

I stand, tapping my foot in time to my anger.

“Breathe,” he says.

I take a deep breath, a second, one more, and exhale fumes of frustration.

Mr. Algrin’s voice is metered and steady. “I made an observation. It got linked to things you’ve experienced. The statement and your experiences are separate. It wasn’t a judgment.”

Maybe Mr. Algrin is right. I still want to shout or punch something to shut out my feeling of I want, I want, I want. It’s gross, like a two-year-old having a tantrum and not knowing exactly what it is I want.

“This is so hard. I want a different life. No one else comes and talks to you week after week, month after month.”

“You don’t know that. That’s why I was hired. People need to share, to know someone cares, to trust. It is hard—maybe the hardest work you’ll ever do. Think about your name, Rin Tin Tin. Why did you choose it? Think about it,” he says, opening the door for me to leave.

I want to slam the door so he’ll know talking to him didn’t help. But I don’t because I’m a good girl, and he’d say the anger isn’t about him anyway.

“Mrs. Fox says my pictures are expressive. She says they speak for me.”

“I agree, and it’s good to see you today,” Mr. Algrin says in a fatherly way. “But that doesn’t mean you get a pass. Here, with me, is where you get to share your thoughts.”

It’s strange that Mr. Algrin welcomes me back in his casual open way. I thought he’d be insulted after my last outburst.

I unroll a painting and lay it on the floor. Mr. Algrin swivels in his chair, and his eyes navigate through the islands of color.

“Tell me about your painting,” he says.

I remind myself, I’m Rinnie, like Rin Tin Tin, the strongest, bravest, fastest dog in the world. I save people. And I begin.

“I call this
My Life
. The big dark circles represent me, my parents, and my siblings—real and step. They’re purple and black because that’s how I feel around them—bruised. The linked circles represent my activities: School, tennis, boys, art—that sort of stuff. The colorful swirls everywhere else are the things that happen in life, they’re always changing. I can’t control them.”

“Change is certain. Change breeds change.”

I want to tell him that sounds redundant, but he continues.

“What would you like to control if you could?”

I want to say, “My life,” but Mr. Algrin will say, “Life’s a blanket. Look under the blanket.”

So I say, “My family.”

“That’s a big one. How’s it feel not to have control?” Mr. Algrin asks.

I stop to think. “Tense. Really tense.” The dry sting that happens before tears bastes my eyes. “No matter how hard I try to make things good, to be good, I can’t. I’m never enough.”

Mr. Algrin says softly, “What do you do to try?”

YAH, Rinnie
, I order myself to keep going. “I try to be the person people want me to be. Skinny and cute for boys, pretty and funny for Dad, competitive with Alana for Mom, attentive and obedient for Pop Pop, cheerful for Gaga. It’s so hard.” I take a tissue from the box next to me.

“You’ve got yourself entangled in a straitjacket of trying.”

His voice is sad, and it pushes me to look away from him.

“It’s OK to be sad. It’s OK to cry,” Mr. Algrin says. “Being all those things for other people doesn’t leave much time for you to be yourself. It must be frightening and lonely to give yourself away piece by piece. It would make me want to run away.”

“Have you?”

“Run away? No. I’ve tried it, but I’m always at my destination.”

“I’m always at my destination, too,” I say. “It takes so much control to hold on to all the parts. That’s the problem. I used to be able to do it. Now, I can’t control anything.”

“I don’t think whether you can control or not is the problem. I think it blocks out the problem.”

“Then what is the problem?” I ask smartly.

“Try this on. Controlling is a means to an end. The end you’re seeking hasn’t paid off. Pursuing control isn’t working. Ever hear, ‘What you resist, persists’?”

“You’re saying I’m resisting being happy?”

“I’m saying you’re resisting being who you really are. Your interpretation of life is based on experiences that have skewed your vision.”

“Is this like the
Mona Lisa
and the Kandinsky.”

“Yes. This is exactly like the
Mona Lisa
and the Kandinsky.”

I blow my nose and make room in my head for listening.

“You’ve shown me that there is an exception to what I just said. Times you act from your heart, that’s not planned. Do you know what I’m referring to?” Mr. Algrin asks.

“When I’m with the little kids and when I paint?”

“Yes,” he says. “Do you know why that is?”

“Because,” I bite the inside of my cheek to help me think, “Because I feel free.”

“And why do you do you feel free?”

I bite harder. “Because I’m not judging me, and they’re not judging me.”

Mr. Algrin springs from his chair. “Yes, Rinnie! It’s because something in you has made it OK to be you. Like the paintings, there’s more to pleasing than meets the eye. In art terms, you’re using one-point perspective. Life needs multiple perspectives.”

“I only have my own perspective. It’s me that’s experiencing things. How do I get other perspectives?”

“By doing what you’re already doing: talking about your experiences, questioning what happened, considering circumstances and the circumstances of people involved in what happened. And by refusing to be at fault for everyone’s bad behavior.”

Mr. Algrin repeats each point pausing in between to read my expression.

“But a lot
is
my fault. It has to be. Why would people who are supposed to love and protect me knowingly hurt me? That’s sick.”

“Sick and egocentric,” he says with a sideways shake of his head.

“Maybe, but my parents are educated.”

Mr. Algrin chuckles. “Self-absorption is an open passport for anyone. Some, particularly in your family, Rinnie, go abroad more than others.” He pauses. I watch the light in his face fade. “Everyone carries shame. Some of us just have to blacken others with it. That’s when shame becomes destructive,” he says.

Every one carries shame. Some of us just have to blacken others with it.
I think of Pop Pop introducing Liz and me as his two morons: More On and More Off. We rolled our eyes at each other in embarrassment. It hurt. I think of Mom growing up with him as a father.

“Blackening others with shame is destructive,” I say.

The words drift around me like aimless ghosts, and I wonder if I will be haunted by the darkness of my mother and father forever.

“Give me an example of a swirl,” Mr. Algrin says.

“Being in the same class with my stepsister Alana is a swirl.”

“Explain please.”

I knew that was coming. “At school, Alana is Alana and not my sister. She has her friends, the loud girls, the ones who party and break rules. I have my friends. They’re more, umm, individual, less lemming, more cat.” I pause. “They act more independently. We don’t travel in a pack. We don’t leave people out.”

Mr. Algrin tiptoes forward with his body. “So you and Alana don’t speak or interact at school?”

“Not much.”

“Ow, that must be uncomfortable.”

“It’s how it is.”

“What about when you visit your Dad?”

“We have to talk then. Dad tells me to spend time with Alana until he’s finished whatever he’s doing.”

Mr. Algrin raises his eyebrows.

“Usually we bake brownies and talk about assignments or tennis. We have the same coach. By the time the brownies are out of the oven, Dad’s ready to do something. It’s the weekend. The steps have their plans, and Liz and I have ours. Jake usually has his friend Rocky over, Amy plays with a neighbor who’s her age, and sometimes Alana has a friend over, or she goes out. Evan practices his guitar. It’s weird, trying to spend time with Dad and be a part of that family.”

“It sounds weird.” He fumbles for a pencil to write something down and hands me the cup filled with white slips of paper.

I take a slip of paper.

“No control,” I say. “A swirl.”

Telling the truth to Mr. Algrin and myself is good. I haven’t binged in almost three weeks—or starved.

P.S. I have my fortunes thumbtacked inside an empty picture frame in my bedroom.

“Think about her last words. Paint them. Paint a picture of them and bring it to me next week.”

I’m used to “Algrin Homework.” It takes effort, but unlike in math, I usually feel better after figuring out what the factors mean. Mom’s last words, “With you I created a monster,” are words I don’t want to think about. But I want change. I finger the slip of paper I pulled from his cup last week. It’s a quote from President Franklin Roosevelt. “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.”