Read Still Life with Tornado Online
Authors: A.S. King
“You're afraid to say anything because it would be your word against theirs?” she asks.
“You're me. You know.”
“Well, you're wrong. And she should be fired. Trust me. Vicky isn't the first or the last one.”
I stop and stare at her. She's calm. Soft around the edges. She's nice and not here to mock me like twenty-three-year-old Sarah. This Sarah looks like she could draw a thousand pears. She doesn't care about how cool her shoes are because she's wearing beat-up hiking shoes. She's telling me information about Miss Smith from the future. I think about how helpful it would have been had she brought lottery numbers instead.
“I don't want to get involved,” I say.
“How much nasty shit has happened because people don't want to get involved?”
“Mom and Dad would kill me.”
“Mom would respect you. Dad doesn't matter.”
She's still calm. I don't know what to say. “How did you get in here?”
She gets up and opens the side window and climbs down the fire escape.
I look back at my ugly green walls and decide a second coat is needed. This time I work clockwise, and by the time night falls and Mom is awake again, I have painted my whole room. I have rid myself of the bile.
In my head, I now live inside a vanilla milk shake.
I put on new clothes on top of my five-day-old dirty self. I decide I am not going crazy. I do not need a psychologist. I decide I am an artist inside of a tornado that will not let me go.
Six days have passed. I still don't want to see ten-year-old Sarah. I still don't want to talk about Mexico. I want to do something fun, but I have no idea what fun is. I am the dull person who rubbed off on me. That can happen, you know.
I leave the house through the back door.
Dad would flip out if he knew I was walking by myself up 17th Street at midnight.
This is art.
I don't even bring my pepper spray. I didn't bring my phone or wallet. Mom is patching people back together again twenty blocks from here. It's a Saturday and the ER is probably busy. I walk to Rittenhouse Square and sit on a bench. I decide to sleep here tonight.
I find a good benchâwell lit but out of the way. I lie down and try to sleep but every footstep I hear makes me open one eye.
I take a deep breath and then I take another one on top of it, and then another. I think:
If my lungs burst, I won't be able to tell anyone about Miss Smith and Vicky.
I think:
If my lungs burst, I won't ever have to tell anyone about the headpiece and how I found it and how it made me cry.
I hear people walking in the park and talking to each other. I hope they don't see me, so I become invisible. I blend into the park bench. Very quiet. Blend. Disappear.
While I'm gone, this is what happens: I remember the fighting.
I see Bruce standing at the edge of the water in Mexico. I see him throwing something into the water.
Art.
When I open my eyes, it's light, but it's still night.
My face is sweating. I want to sleep but I can't sleep.
I'm in Rittenhouse Square and this is not the place to sleep. When I sit up, I see ten-year-old Sarah standing next to my bench. She says, “Sarah?”
I move over and she sits next to me. There's a college girl sitting cross-legged on the grass across from us. She's looking right at us, a huge grin on her face. Ten-year-old Sarah says, “She's been here for an hour. She keeps looking at her hands and giggling.”
I watch the college girl and she doesn't seem original. She's high on somethingâprobably something psychedelic. Giggling at one's own hands is a dead giveaway.
The art club takes LSD. They do it and go to Great Adventure and ride the Kingda Kaâthe fastest roller coaster in New Jersey and forty-five stories high. They could be lying but that's what they tell me. Sometimes they drop acid in school, too. Carmen is their weed connection. That's why they keep her around. Carmen doesn't know this. Carmen thinks she fits in, but she doesn't fit in because she's not like the others. Up until now you thought they were just normal art-snob teenagers in high school who steal my ideas. That's because I tell the truth slowly. I think that's how the truth shows up sometimes. Slowly.
I'm sitting in Rittenhouse Square watching a college girl laugh at her hands. I think about my hands. My blind drawings. I wonder if I could draw my hand without looking at the paper or my hand, the way Alleged Earl drew his chicken in University City. I dig in my jacket pocket and there's a small lump of sky-blue sidewalk chalk left. I kneel down onto the brick paving and I start to draw my hand from memory. It's hard to draw on brick pavers, but I go slowly. I keep breathing. In. Out. I hear the college girl giggling. I hear ten-year-old Sarah trying to get my attention, but I ignore her. I keep the image of my hand in my head and my eyes closed and I finish with my thumb and the curve to my wrist and, when I open my eyes, I see a disfigured sky-blue hand.
The college girl comes over to look at what I've drawn. She says, “It's beautiful!”
Ten-year-old Sarah is angry. She's saying, “Listen to me! Goddammit, listen to me!”
The college girl walks down the path toward the frog statue and all I have is ten-year-old Sarah. She says, “What the fuck happened to you?”
I'm not saying anything. My mouth is open. I close it. My eyes are open. I close them. I lie back down. I make myself invisible to ten-year-old Sarah. I don't want her to see me like this. She's ten. She'll think I'm crazy.
She says, “What
are
you?”
I ask myself what I am.
What are you?
I am a human being. I am sixteen years old.
That's it. That's all I have. I don't have any other answers. I am a human being. I am sixteen years old.
I think it's a good start.
I get up and leave ten-year-old Sarah on the bench.
I walk sixteen blocks to Mom's hospital. Past a bunch of people who say hello or don't, and I don't know what to say back so I just say nothing and pretend I'm listening to music in a pair of invisible earbuds. I am good at imagining. I hear the music. It's like nothing I ever heard before. It's traffic and doors opening and closing and it's a siren in the distance and it's got a slow rhythm that is my breathing in and out. In and out.
I don't go into the hospital. I just sit outside in the well-lit parking area near the ER. Being closer to Mom should make me feel safe. Because I don't have my wallet, if I was found right now, I'd be a Jane Doe. Except Mom would recognize me even if I don't.
I am a human being. I am sixteen years old.
That should be enough.
An ambulance comes into the ER bay with its lights on and its siren off. The lights are mesmerizing. Red, blue. Red, blue. Red, blue. It's like light-art. It's the kind of light-art that stops you in the museum and makes your heart beat faster. People move around quickly. I can't see what's going on, but I don't want to.
I wanted to be an artist once. Now I just want to be a human being and be sixteen years old.
I can't see anything wrong with this.
I can't see anything sad about it.
“Sarah?”
It's ten-year-old Sarah.
“I want to walk you home,” she says.
I don't know what time it is, but it's too late for a ten-year-old girl to be walking around Philadelphia.
“It's late,” I say.
“I want to walk you home,” she says again.
We hold hands like sisters and she walks me back to Market, back over the bridge, down through the park, and onto 17th. She doesn't say anything to me. When we get to the front door, she whispers, “I'll see you tomorrow.” She doesn't even look me in the eye. When I watch her walk east down Lombard, I can feel her shame. She thinks I'm a loser. She thinks I have shitty hair and no plans and no idea what happened in Mexico.
I stand there.
I am a human being. I am sixteen years old.
I miss my brother.
That should be enough.
Mom and Dad returned to the hotel room after the romantic dinner, and Bruce asked if we could take a walk on the beach.
It was a clear night but we didn't recognize any constellations. We were always looking for constellations because stars are individuals in Philadelphia. It's not like we could look up and see the Big Dipper or Orion or Cassiopeia from anywhereânot even the top of the Liberty Two skyscraper. Not unless there was some sort of blackout, I guess. I wouldn't know. I've never seen a blackout.
Bruce learned about constellations when he was young. He said, “That's the Big Dipper. Or the bear.
Ursa
. That's
bear
in Latin.” He squinted around the sky as if he'd lost his dog. “I can't find any others that I know.”
“They're pretty,” I said.
We sat in the sand near the water and I looked out and saw lights on far out boats.
He said, “If you lie back and look at the whole sky at once, you'll probably see a shooting star. They happen all the time.”
“People never see shooting stars.”
“That's because they aren't looking,” he said. “I'm serious. You'll see one if you look.”
I lay back and tried to look at the sky all at once, like he said. He was already lying down, so now we were just two siblings lying in the sand in Mexico on a cloudless night trying to
see the whole sky
and not talking about Mom and Dad getting a divorce.
“Why's Dad so mad at you?” I asked.
“I don't know,” Bruce said.
“You know and you think I'm too young to talk about it with me,” I said.
Bruce pointed to the sky and said, “Oh! Look! Did you see that one?”
“Shit,” I said. “I was looking that way.”
“See the whole sky,” he said. “Don't focus.”
“So why's Dad so mad at you?”
“Dad was always mad at me,” he said. “I wasn't the son he wanted.”
“What kind of son did he want?”
“I don't know.”
I didn't know shooting stars flew so far and so fast. It seemed to last forever and then disappear as if I were imagining it. I gasped and both Bruce and I pointed to it as it traveled from the right-hand corner of our view to the leftâall the way across the sky.
Seeing it with Bruce made it real.
“You didn't write me any letters,” I said to him. “I liked when you called, but you said you'd write me letters.”
“Yeah. I didn't know college was going to be so busy. I'll write you some next year.”
Another shooting star.
Bruce was right. It's not that hard to see a shooting star. I'd just seen two in under a minute.
“I'm not coming back next summer,” Bruce said. “I'm transferring to another college. Farther away.”
“How far away?”
“All the way,” he said. We both laughed. “Oregon.”
I was relieved. Oregon wasn't so far. “There are direct flights from Philadelphia to Portland,” I said.
“How do you know so much when you're ten?”
“I snoop,” I said. “And I listen to you because you're smart. And Mom and Dad say stuff right in front of me sometimes because they think I'm thinking about My Little Pony, but I don't really like My Little Pony. And anyway, Salem is the capital of Oregon, not Portland. I'm telling you that so you don't embarrass yourself.”
“Don't be a show-off.”
I beat Bruce in the capital game every time we played it. He never learned his capitals or his eleven and twelve times tables because his third-grade teacher only believed in states and multiplication up to ten.
Another shooting star. And another.
“Are we out here because Mom and Dad are having sex or something?” I asked.
“I doubt it.”
“They're probably fighting or watching TV,” I say.
“Do you want to go back in?”
“I'm a little cold.”
Bruce handed me his sweatshirt. “I worry about you, Sarah.”
Another shooting star, but I only caught a glimpse because I was putting Bruce's sweatshirt on.
“Growing up around Dad,” he said. “I mean, and the stuff that's on TV. And the Internet. Not all boys are that bad, okay?”
“Dad's not bad,” I said.
“Dad is typical,” he said. “I don't want you to end up with some typical guy.”
“I know the state capitals and the twelve times tables,” I said. “I'm ten. I don't even want to get married.”
Day Four: over. Day Four: ruined ruins, lied lies, and shooting stars.
I don't sleep. I dream while I'm awake, but my eyes are closed. I am Lichtenstein's sleeping girl. I am a series of dots. I am my own constellation. Sarahâthe big question mark.
I dream about Carmen's tornadoes. I dream about all the things I've ever heard when I stand in random places. I dream about all the things I've seen that I wasn't supposed to see. I dream of nothing and everything all at the same time and they cancel each other out. My dots get all mixed up. I am Lichtenstein's mixed-up sleeping not-sleeping girl.
And then suddenly, I wake up, the sun is up, I know I slept, my body aches, my head is fuzzy. My room is not a vanilla milk shake. My room is still the ugliest green ever invented.
I remember the sky-blue hand I drew in Rittenhouse Square.
I remember sitting in the hospital parking lot in the middle of the night.
I remember ten-year-old Sarah walking me home.
I remember Mexico. Parts of it. Enough of it. I remember what I need to remember.
I want to call Bruce but I text him instead. I pull out the scrap of paper from my wallet and enter his number into my contacts. I don't put his name on the contact; just the letter B.
I want to call you later. Will you be home? This is Sarah.
I get a reply almost instantly.
I'm home all day. Please call.
I've never had a more invigorating shower. It feels like I was reborn last night. Like staying up all night changed me. I feel like I am more than I was. I feel like I am less than I was. It's very hard to explain.
Everything fell apart a month ago.
Over silliness and drama. Over something so stupid.
But who's to say what's stupid and what's not stupid when your life falls apart? Some people fall apart over TV shows. Some people fall apart over a breakup. Some people fall apart over someone eating the last bowl of Apple Jacks. I fell apart because of the annual art show. No one noticed I was falling apart before then.
I stay in the shower for a long timeâenough time to get the week's dirt off me. I think about asking Mom to find me a therapist or something. I can't talk to anyone about anything. I can't talk to Carmen because she's the weed connection. I can't talk to Dad because he doesn't mind the sliver of tissue stuck to the TV. I can't talk to Mom because she wants us to have fun now. I can't talk to anyone in school because I don't go there anymore. I wanted to talk to Alleged Earl, but I lost my chance, and if I would have taken the chance I would have asked him all the wrong questions anyway.
Bruce.
Maybe I can talk to Bruce.
I decide it's best to talk to him outside of the house.
Dad isn't around when I go downstairs. Mom is just stirring after her night shift and I hope I didn't use all the hot water.
I walk out the door and to Rittenhouse Square. I sit on my benchâthe one with the disfigured hand drawn in front of it.
I watch a bunch of kids who are my age walk the path up the middle of the park. They are a pack. Boyfriends and girlfriends. Holding hands. Giggling. Having fun. Too young to be like the college girl in the park last night. Too old to need supervision. I hear one of them mention a movie. I decide they've just gone to see it. I decide they've all been friends since primary school. I decide that they will all be at one another's funerals. They have something I don't have.
It's not as simple as the art club fissure or the shit Miss Smith did to Vicky. It's not about the art show even though it is about the art show.
It's about lies and trust.
I've never had a boyfriend. I've never wanted a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend for that matter. Bruce had it all wrong in Mexico. I won't end up with a typical guy because I'm not going to end up with anybody. Since I can remember, I wanted to live alone and make art. Selfishly. I wanted to make art and not care about anything or anyone else. I know this is abnormal for a sixteen-year-old human being.
I'm supposed to be like them.
I don't trust anyone. Not even myself.
I dial Bruce. It doesn't ring even once.
“Sarah?”
“Hi, Bruce.”
“Oh my God, Sarah,” he says. And then I can hear him cryingânot sobbing because Mom and Dad never taught us how to sob. But he's emotional.
“Hi,” I say, because I can't figure out anything else to say.
He sniffles. “Hi.”