Blood Water Paint

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Blood Water Paint Page 9

by Joy McCullough


  Mine are no longer white.

  54.

  I’m staring at my hands, still,

  hours later,

  maybe days.

  The planet’s stopped

  or whirls around too fast

  to grab on to a branch,

  a hand, an anchor

  that will keep me

  tethered to this world.

  And then:

  There’s a choice to be made.

  Judith stands beside me.

  not an

  image on my canvas

  voice in my head

  story of my mother’s

  but so real she’s cradling

  my bloody hand in hers.

  Right now, in this instant

  you have to make a choice.

  I open my mouth to speak—

  the first words I’ve uttered

  since I screamed, Let me go!

  (I think I screamed.

  I’m almost sure

  I tried to fight.

  Those minutes pierce my brain

  with brutal clarity

  while also blurring

  at the edges.)

  This was supposed to be

  the beginning.

  It still is.

  Susanna.

  She’s pristine as ever,

  Judith’s opposite

  but just as real.

  She extends a hand

  but I don’t want to stain

  her lovely robes

  perfect skin

  untarnished soul.

  She did not let them touch her.

  I cannot meet Susanna’s eye

  or Judith’s.

  Instead my gaze falls

  on streaks of red

  everywhere I look.

  My dress.

  Not just your dress.

  Susanna sits next to me

  on the floor,

  holds out her hand again.

  When did I sit?

  Easels loom over me,

  monsters, cages.

  Easels where I’ve passed my life—

  for what?

  Is this all I get?

  Susanna says nothing.

  Just places her hand

  on mine.

  All my work.

  All my talent . . .

  Judith’s voice

  is a sword

  at my throat.

  Right now?

  This is all you get.

  I wrench my hands away

  —hands tell whole stories of their own—

  and stumble to my feet.

  Pain knifes through me

  but it’s barely a drop

  in the deluge of horror.

  I have to get out.

  I can’t be here now.

  I can still feel him—

  Judith stands before the window,

  blocks my flight.

  You’ll always feel him.

  There’s nowhere to go.

  If that’s true,

  if there’s nowhere to go,

  there’s nothing left but to feel the wave,

  to let it wash over me,

  drown me,

  drag me under,

  fill my lungs.

  Come to us.

  Come to us.

  55.

  i’ve got a secret for you

  shut out the rest

  echoes of the tales

  my mother used to tell

  her force of will

  the missing color

  if there are impurities

  the painting will be ruined

  but this is now not then

  what else matters

  i’m only back where i started

  two things colliding

  vanishing points

  no idea

  how much blood there would be

  it means they like you

  hands covered with paint

  but i would know

  echoes of the tales

  my mother used to tell

  if i burn my hands

  we’re done painting

  i’ll tell you another secret

  right this very moment

  i can play the part

  it would be over quickly.

  if i wait it out

  i might survive

  just pigment on canvas

  (portrait of

  a little girl)

  a sudden knowledge

  like the point

  on the horizon

  once they’ve gotten

  what they asked for

  her force of will

  the missing color

  but this isn’t about strength

  it no longer matters

  nothing that can be

  described with words

  just an image i can’t

  righteous

  impurities

  blood, water, paint

  the line is only perceived

  a trick of the eye

  potentially world-altering

  but then

  you never see the beast

  until he is upon you

  echoes of the tales

  my mother used to tell

  her force of will

  the missing color

  PART IV

  Sinful

  Not all stories have happy endings. I cannot promise this one will either. But I am certain you will be glad you stayed with Susanna to the end. She deserves that much—a witness, one who says I see you, hear you, I’m better for knowing your story.

  Right now, it is Rebecca’s story too. She shrieks, hysterical, undone. Susanna’s sister has lost all thought for decency. (And decency, my love, is sometimes better shed.) Her petty jealousies have fallen away in the face of such injustice. Her beautiful younger sister, purity itself, stands bound, surrounded, streaked with dirt. Rebecca is, herself, tearstained, aflame with fury. She tears at her hair as the village looks on. She’s never cared less what people thought of her.

  Any moment stones will fly.

  This is no metaphor. On the word of those two elders at the wall, Susanna is set to be stoned as a faithless wife. If Joaquim were here, he might believe her, stand for her. But without him, it is only the word of a woman against the word of two men.

  Rebecca shrieks at her sister to speak. She shrieks at the crowd to show compassion, to listen. Her sister is no sinner! They know this!

  But when Susanna finally speaks, her words are not what Rebecca would have her say.

  “Would you like a list of my sins before you hurl those rocks at my head?”

  Rebecca cannot understand why her sister would give the crowd further ammunition. Why she would ever concede a single fault. A woman accused has no room for fault.

  “She is righteous!” Rebecca cries to the crowd. “She is raving and terrified, but she is righteous!”

  “I am a sinner.” Susanna’s voice is steady, carrying throughout the crowd, amplified by the energy of their judgment. “I am prideful. I wear my righteousness like a shield. I feign ignorance of beggars in the street. I push away my own loving sister. I lie—but not about this.

  “And now? Now I harbor hatred. Now I long to grab a rock of my own and hurl it at those who would unjustly accuse me when they are the sinners and I did nothing more than attempt to bathe in my private garden.

  “These are my sins.”

  Except there is one more: Susanna is a woman.

  56.

  Brush in hand,

  I do not move.

  I used to know
>
  what it was for

  but now I can’t

  connect this thing

  to any purpose.

  57.

  Wakefulness slices

  through my sleep

  like a shaft of light

  from Caravaggio’s own brush.

  I’m seized with the need

  to rid my dress of the stain

  it still bears.

  I stumble from bed

  without a care for who might hear;

  I know now no one will come.

  I drag behind me what I wore

  that day, which Tuzia washed

  and returned, rust-brown streaks and all.

  I do not own a single garment

  unblemished by my craft.

  What’s the difference, she must think.

  It’s oil and water

  and all the impurities

  settle at the

  bottom.

  I could discard it, burn it.

  But I will not allow him

  one more thing of mine.

  As small as it might seem

  a worthless dress

  in this moment

  nothing has ever mattered more.

  If Tuzia cannot remove the stain

  if my father cannot keep monsters from my home

  if my brothers will not come when I scream

  then I will do it for

  my self.

  I shove the stained cloth against

  the ridges of the washboard

  with so much force

  my hand

  will be sore tomorrow.

  It doesn’t matter;

  it’s not like I can paint.

  What good are hands?

  Despite the blooming ache in my fingers

  the familiarity of the task

  soothes the ragged edge inside.

  I kneel here every month.

  Tuzia does my washing,

  except for when I bleed.

  (You’d think she never bled

  the way she turns her nose up,

  acts as though I’ve soiled myself.)

  If she were to rouse herself from sleep

  and see me now

  she’d just assume

  I fight against

  the stain of womanhood.

  But—oh God—

  oh Holy Mother—

  I have not bled

  in many weeks.

  I choke on a sob of realization.

  There now,

  you can’t be sure.

  Susanna kneels beside me.

  Judith takes over my labors

  at the washboard.

  You’ll know soon enough.

  I cannot—

  Of course not.

  But there are other ways . . .

  Ways to die.

  Ways to bear

  the eternal guilt

  of mortal sin.

  Ways to line the pockets

  of herbwives claiming

  to hold the cure

  for unwanted lives, coercion, regrets.

  I’ll never be rid of him.

  And never have I

  wanted more to bleed.

  58.

  The night my mother

  finally slipped

  from pain

  to nothingness

  I slumped to sleep

  with tear-drenched sheets

  and woke to blood.

  Streaks of muddy red

  on dingy gray—

  the remnants on a palette after

  painting battlefields.

  I was no soldier, only girl

  without a mother

  or the sense to understand

  this world without her.

  I groped

  without a mother

  to find a source

  for the blood

  but the only wound was

  my severed heart.

  Perhaps the wreckage

  had seeped through

  my pores, my tears, my sweat

  to stain the sheets.

  Without a mother,

  I thought at first

  I’m dying too.

  (I was. I am.

  But this expiration

  will linger and stretch,

  meander across the

  months and years

  until there’s nothing left

  of me to drain.)

  Any other day

  —a day that still contained my mother—

  I would have realized sooner

  what I finally came to know

  without a mother:

  I bled as she did

  with the moon,

  not illness or infirmity.

  On that morning, though,

  I was addled

  by exhaustion

  and grief

  and so instead

  I wept myself to sleep

  again amidst the blood.

  Without a mother.

  59.

  I sleep-walked

  through the first few

  motherless days,

  a trail of blood reminding me

  I’d have no guide

  through marriage

  childbirth

  womanhood.

  When Father called me to the studio

  I climbed the stairs in certainty

  he meant to send me to the home

  for inconvenient girls.

  Enclosed within the convent

  he’d be spared the shadow of

  his wife’s

  cheekbones, heavy jaw,

  defiant gaze at every turn.

  He swore at the canvas

  as I reached the top

  (how was he painting then,

  my mother barely cold,

  the sister that she bore

  an echo of the life she might have lived?)

  and beckoned me forward

  without a glance.

  Fetch me a palette knife,

  I did not know a palette knife

  from kitchen knife, not then.

  Right there!

  The flat, round blade!

  I held it out, an offering.

  He clutched my hand

  for just a moment

  as he took the knife.

  Prudentia . . .

  My heart stood still.

  I thought it might be better

  to betroth myself to Christ

  than stay, remind my father

  what he’d lost.

  Remind us both.

  He cleared his throat.

  Burnt umber.

  Father?

  I need more pigment ground!

  Can you manage that or not?

  I could.

  And so I was betrothed

  to art instead.

  60.

  I am a wife

  unable to fulfill

  her duties.

  Every day I sit

  before the canvas

  hoping maybe

  hand or heart

  will make the leap.

  And so I’m sitting, staring,

  when I hear a clomp upon the stairs.

  Father will nag—

  why am I not doing

  the work that pays the bills?

  Instead:

  New technique?

  I scramble off the stool

  fly across the studio,

  as far as I can get


  from Agostino.

  His voice

  His breath

  His breadth

  are always in my thoughts

  but why

  is he here

  in the flesh?

  He should be covered in my blood.

  Get out.

  He smiles, as though

  we’re lovers, and

  I’ve made a little joke.

  Don’t be mean.

  Tuzia is down below.

  If I call out,

  she’ll come.

  Won’t she?

  What’s wrong, darling?

  Is it your father again?

  He reaches out a hand

  but pauses

  when I flinch.

  You know I’ll never

  let anything happen to you.

  I snuck out of the palace

  as soon as I could.

  I’ve been buried in work.

  Are you angry?

  You know I never

  stop thinking of

  my Artemisia.

  61.

  I told him no

  I said stop

  I screamed

  I clawed

  I know I did—

  I never stop

  thinking of

  my Artemisia.

  — I think

  But now he speaks as though

  we shared ourselves,

  the only blood the product

  of our pounding hearts—

  That’s not right.

  Susanna’s gentle voice

  insists I listen.

  You know who you are.

  You know your truth.

  I take

  Susanna’s hand.

  My darling—

  — No.

  I am done thinking of you.

  And you are not welcome

  in my studio.

  He chuckles.

  It is my studio.

  You’re the master, are you?

  At seventeen years of age?

  I understand perspective.

  And that’s all you had to offer.

  He settles onto

  my stool, familiar,

  leans forward, earnest,

  my confidant.

  He rearranges

  my brushes.

  My darling girl.

  Why are you so determined

  to push me away?

  Your father believes

  your lessons should continue—

  My father is a blind fool

  who wants to keep me

  a student and a child,

  and I’m no longer either.

  His gaze skates over my dress.

  You’re not a child.

  My stomach roils.

  I hold fast

  to the anchor

 

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