Here Comes the Sun(14)

Thandi sits and regards the frame on Brother Smith’s desk that reads I CAN DO ALL THINGS THROUGH CHRIST WHO STRENGTHENS ME. She stares at it for a while. Surely she has been working hard, doing everything to please. Jesus Christ peers at her with sympathetic eyes that mirror the nuns’ and those of the missionaries. She’s supposed to want this. She’s supposed to be grateful. A girl like her should excel at school, because it’s the only way out—the only way to clamber up the ladder. I’m supposed to want this. Yet, year after year when she walks away with all A’s on her school report, a nagging persists. Like she’s running a race, panting on her way to a finish line that doesn’t exist.

“Thandi, what’s going on? Our class starts in thirty minutes,” Brother Smith says. Though he’s quite young, Brother Smith is prematurely balding. His bald spot shines in the natural light from outside like the silver plate he passes around during mass. He tries to cover it with four strands of brown hair combed to the side. He’s small in stature, his fair skin interrupted by brown freckles covering his entire face like a dotted mask. But his kind, chestnut-colored eyes stand out like the languid strokes of a brush, capturing everything about a person, an object, or a setting. Currently they’re steady on her face, as if trying to figure out a crossword puzzle. He leans forward to rub her arm in that paternal way she has gotten used to. He doesn’t seem to hear the slight crinkling of the plastic underneath her sweatshirt. And if he does, he doesn’t ask. It’s here, inside Brother Smith’s art class, that Thandi feels most free.

“Is it possible to be good at something even if you don’t want to?”

“Yes, that’s plausible. Why?”

Thandi shrugs, looking down at her hands. “I—I was thinking . . .” Her voice trails off. “I was thinking how much I love art. More than any other subject.” Brother Smith takes his hand away and creates distance between them. A distance Thandi feels, which momentarily creates an ache within her. He’s rubbing his chin as though suddenly aware of a burgeoning five o’clock shadow.

“My advice is for you to love all your subjects. The CXC is just around the corner.”

“I know. And I am prepared to pass it. It’s just . . .”

“Thandi, I teach art as a vocational subject.”

His response puts a sinking feeling inside Thandi’s chest like the melting of chipped ice. She looks around the room, her desires springing forth like vines across the white ceiling, coloring the beige walls. “Nothing else feels right.”

“Thandi, you have a whole life ahead of you. It’s too soon to be feeling this way.”

Brother Smith clasps both his hands as if he’s about to pray. “Think about your family, this school. People are rooting for you. You’re a straight-A student who can do more with your life than be—”

“But you said I’m good.”

“Yes, I did say that.”

He reaches across a small stack of students’ work on his desk and locates Thandi’s sketchpad. The students had to turn in preliminary materials for the end-of-the-year project. He opens up Thandi’s. “You have skills. It’s obvious,” he says. “But I’m afraid that—” He clears his throat. “I don’t see a future for you there.”

Brother Smith apparently picks up on her disappointment, because his face softens and his head tilts as though he’s about to reason with a five-year-old.

“Here is the thing, Thandi. I favor landscapes and have to say that yours is my favorite by far of all the collection that I have! But this final project should give me a better understanding of you, the artist. I don’t see that. I would like to challenge you to go deeper, reveal more of yourself,” he says. “If I like what I see, I will nominate your work to be displayed in the Merridian. You can keep drawing, even if not professionally.” He pushes her drawings that she did over the last few weeks to the edge of his desk.

The Merridian is the holy grail of artwork in the school. It was named after a white nun whose favorite pastime was painting workers in the fields whenever she came on missionary trips to the plantations. She would title her paintings Negro Picking Corn; Negro Under Tree; Negro at Sunset. Her paintings had gotten national acclaim.

“I’d like that, sir,” Thandi says, almost falling out of her chair to rise with Brother Smith. They walk together to the studio, Thandi silently contemplating what she’ll do for the final project as they pass the sewing room, where girls sit studiously behind Singer machines; the cooking hall, with its smell of cornmeal pudding; the typing lab, where keyboards take on the sound of pecking birds; and finally to the art studio. Brother Smith squeezes her shoulder firmly before they enter the class. As soon as she gets to her space around a large table that seats all six of her art classmates, Thandi pulls out her tools. Brother Smith instructs them to sketch for a few minutes, identifying objects in the room. Thandi angles the pencil in her right hand and concentrates deeply. She taps her pencil lightly on the sheet, the Merridian still on her mind. Brother Smith may say there’s no future in art, but if he nominates her and she wins, who knows? But how can she reveal more of herself when she’s so unsure of who that is? Her hand barely moves, though other images come into focus: the chipped ceramic vase with red roses that Brother Smith keeps at the front of the room for inspiration, the Virgin Mary figurine on the windowsill, a pair of slippers with the heels rubbed down on a side table, the defiance within the straight backs of the wooden chairs. Every object has character. Substance. A story about the people who made them, owned them.