Authors: Stephanie Hemphill
She cried when I showed her the drawing.
I started to tear apart the page.
“I’m sorry, Vanna.
I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“Stop! Give me that.”
She ran downstairs to find
Marino and Paolo and Mother.
I ran after her, but of course she
could surpass me
without losing a breath.
I tumbled down the stairs
as the tears slipped down my cheeks.
Everyone walled around me.
“I am sorry. I meant it to be nice.”
My tears turned to sobs.
Mother stroked my head.
“Look at me, Maria. I wish
your father could have seen this.”
She hugged me closer
than she had in a year.
“But then, he always said
you were more of an artist
than a cristallo chef.”
The next day Marino
presented me
my first sketchbook.
HOW TO BEGIN?
A large sheet of white,
pen and brown ink in hand—
my mind deserted me.
I shivered in summer sunlight.
Mother relieved me
of my morning chores
so that I could practice sketching,
and my hand cramped up.
Giovanna skipped back
into our room to grab
her second pair of work gloves.
I stared at her, hoping
she would sense my distress
and offer a light amidst my fog,
a beacon to save my ship
the rocky shore.
She scurried to leave
without an eye in my direction.
I squawked, “Giovanna, come here.”
“What, Maria? Mother expects me,”
she said as she swirled swanlike
over to where I perched on my bed.
“You have not drawn anything
this whole morning?”
“It is not for lack of will.
I can’t think what to draw.
I am a failure.
I must not be an artist after all.”
A few tears splattered my paper.
“No, no.” Vanna squeezed my hand.
“You are thinking too much.
Just draw what you see,
what is around you,
and how it makes you feel,
just like you drew me.”
She brushed her finger
over my lips and cheeks
in the shape of a smile.
“And be joyful as you do it.
Father always said,
‘A sad gaffer produces gloomy glass,
whereas a happy one creates crystal.’ ”
“I think you are the artist, Vanna.”
“No, I am many things, but not that.”
And my sister streamed off,
a wake of notes in her trail.
I shut my eyes.
When I opened them
the room tripled in size.
I drew my sister’s bed, her vanity.
I inked her painting a smile across my face.
Before the afternoon I completed
eight sketches, each one more improved
than the last. I showed Vanna my work.
“Bella,”
she said.
I crammed my first sketchbook with joy.
Not all drawings of happy subjects,
but all penned in gratitude
and excitement—
my brothers at work,
the cathedral, a fisherman
I gleaned through the window,
our maid Carlotta rolling out dough,
the
conciatore
preparing our frit,
Mother at her dressing table,
Giovanna’s brush and comb
from her perspective,
Paolo blowing his glass art;
I recorded it all.
WHY I LOVE GLASS
Giovanna loves glass
like she loves singing,
because like a melody
she enhances its beauty
with her touch.
Marino loves glass
because his investment
brings prosperity and growth.
As with a gardener,
his well-managed, well-tended furnace
produces great fruit.
Paolo creates himself
in each goblet, beaker, bowl
he blows. He cannot really see
himself without his reflection
in the glass’s eye.
Uncle Giova knows nothing
but glass; it is his past, present,
and future—the fornica
is his home.
I love glass
because I love my father.
After Father died
I worked like a nun
to prepare his sacred batches.
My father stood beside me;
his specter guided my hand.
“Maria, not too much manganese.”
After we lost him,
I turned to glass.
Mother turned away from it.
She shrouded goblets and mirrors;
we drank from clay.
At first I did not understand.
But one day, thinking about my father,
I held up a mirror
and saw my mother’s eyes.
RESTRICTED
At fifteen all doors
began to lock around me.
I could hear the turning keys.
I pounded on the walls.
No one told me why
I had to stay inside my room.
Had I mistreated the glass
I so loved? No.
What had I done?
Giovanna finally explained,
“You must be a lady
if you hope to marry a senator.”
She eyed me then as never before,
like men I witnessed about to duel.
“If it is
possible
for you to be a lady.
And if not, well then perhaps …”
Vanna’s eyes shifted back
to the sister I knew.
“Maria, is it not enough
that Father loved you best?”
But before her tears
she turned away.
For the past several months
I have been treated
more delicately
than the Doge’s chandelier.
My complexion
to remain powder white, hands smooth
and clean, no ink tainting my nails.
My virtue must be as the purest cristallo;
I can go nowhere unchaperoned.
All the while my sister’s silent sorrow
thrusts glass shards into my heart.
GIOVANNA
My sister’s long golden locks
glimmer in sunlight;
how her crown of hair
would jewel in Venice
away from Murano’s fire and ash.
She labors morning and night
to brush away this island’s soot.
When I was fourteen and Vanna
was fifteen, we decided to play
a trick on our older brothers,
Marino and Paolo.
We bound each other’s hands,
moaned as though we had burned
ourselves stoking the furnace.
Marino’s tan turned to salt.
He said, “You must stay inside
and apply the treatment.”
Paolo plugged his nose.
The treatment, a muddy goop
our maid Carlotta prepares,
consists primarily of dung.
But
it salves wounds.
As soon as the boys set to their tasks,
Giovanna declared,
“The day is too beautiful to stay inside,”
and whisked me away faster than a fierce gale
fuels clouds through the sky.
Murano’s streets curve and twist
like eels. We might have been
lost in the smoke of all the fornicas.
But the sun owned Murano
that day, the sky colored like the sea,
no rain in view. And Vanna
seemed to know where she was going.
I might have been afraid we would
get in trouble for being out,
two girls alone, but none seemed to notice.
Merchants bartered glass to boatmen.
Citizens swam through the streets
with great haste, as though they fled from fire.
Vanna serpentined me
down an alley past the cathedral
to a small shop. Inside, a painting
of Venice’s Grand Canal
hung quietly on the wall.
Meticulous in its detail,
but it somehow felt dead.
The painting celebrated the holy day
Corpus Christi and the procession
through the Piazza San Marco,
but it was as though the painter
felt not the joy of his subject
nor the joy of his creation.
Giovanna tugged my arm.
“They have charcoal and red chalk,
pink paper, just like the painters use.
I thought you might like—”
I cut her off. “I have heard of these,
but I have no coin.”
She pulled a bolognini from her sleeve.
I whispered, “Where did you get that?
We will be robbed.”
Vanna shook her head.
“You worry too much, Maria.
Select what you like.
I will manage the rest.”
I hugged her tight enough to crack
her bones. “I’ll pay you back.”
She smiled. “Yes, you will.”
NOT MY MOTHER’S DAUGHTER
I spend my days now
with a woman I do not understand.
It is as though Mother speaks French.
She presents to me a carved wooden box
painted with fine water lilies.
I turn it around in the light.
“This is exquisite,” I say.
“Thank you, Mother.
I will store my inks and quills
in here!” I move to kiss her cheek.
Mother waves me away.
She says, “No, open it up.
The gift is inside.”
A silver brush and comb,
far more expensive than any
Giovanna has owned,
lie like weapons
in the velvet-lined box.
“Vanna will love these.”
I say aloud what I meant
to keep in my head.
Mother squawks at me
like an angry goose.
“No. They are for you.
They were my grandmother’s.
You alone will use them
to brush your hair
one hundred times each day.”
Oh, Vanna will hate me if she sees these.
This brush and comb belong to her
like limbs extending from her wrist.
Her name should be engraved
on the handles.
The box alone feels like mine.
Dear Lord, why did Father
disturb tradition?
“Mother, this is better suited
for Vanna,” I begin,
but like my sister
Mother’s ears sew closed to my voice.
She directs me from her room.
If Father were here,
at least I could speak to him
about all of this.
Mother is like Murano’s stone wall,
impenetrable.
I know not
how to reason with stone,
only to crush it,
and I cannot do that.
THE BRUSH-OFF
I sneak the box into our room
and nestle it behind my dresses.
How I will stroke my hair
one hundred times
without Giovanna noticing,
I cannot fathom!
Giovanna wakes me
just as the sun eases
above the sea.
She holds the painted box.
“Where did you get this?”
“It is a gift for you from Mother.
I was supposed to hide it from you.”
Giovanna looks as though
she might sing.
“I must thank her right away.
The brush and comb set
is so beautiful, exquisitely
beautiful!”
“No.” I grab her arm.
“I don’t understand.”
She shakes her head.
“Well, you see—” I begin.
“No, I don’t. Tell the truth.
On the Virgin Mary’s soul,
is the brush set yours or mine?”
Giovanna’s eyes slay me.
I look down. “They are mine.”
But then quickly add,
“But they should be yours.
I give them to you.”
“No.” Giovanna sinks.
“You cannot do that.”
She squares herself away from me,
sets the box on my dresser,
and her voice falls dumb.
SECRET SKETCHINGS
Drawing emotional pictures
is whimsical child’s play;
I am to pack my pencils, inks,
and tablets away.
All the scenes of craftsmen
in the rain, furnace flames,
the canal, cathedral, glass boats,
and portraits of my family
that Mother so adored
she tucks under her bed
as though she buries me
beneath her mattress.
“I thought it was customary
for a girl to have talent?”
I ask Mother as she peels
the last sketchbook she can find
from my arms.
“No, Maria,” Mother corrects.
“You should have an amusement.
So, yes, you shall say that you draw,
and draw the nobleman in his glory
or other lovely things like flowers,
but none of this art
that looks like a man might have drawn it.”
PAOLO AND THE COURTESAN
Across the Grand Canal
on the weedy side of Murano,
Father said the mermaidens
reign. Beautiful temptresses
who cast out golden nets
and snare many fish.
Father never swam there,
but Uncle Giova
still fills his pockets
with glass bracelets
and comes home after moonrise
more than once a week.
Once my uncle left
a set of jade combs
on Giovanna’s dresser.
Another morning
I found a sketchbook
filled with drawings
of ladies in fine attire
looking into mirrors.
Masterful drawings
in terms of light
and perspective.
I learned to draw
in spatial dimensions
studying this book.
“Who drew these?”
I asked Uncle.
He whispered in my ear,
“A beautiful woman.”
I nodded.
“A siren of the sea.”
My ears identify the click
of Paolo’s boots as dawn blinks