Still Life with Tornado(33)

Cheesesteaks are art. Some art is Rembrandt. Some art is Rothko.

I find a place on the sidewalk to doodle with my chalk. I’m still in yesterday’s clothes. Some people throw me a quarter around noon. They just toss it like I’m a fountain and they made a wish.

Here’s what I decide they wished: They wished they knew which cheesesteak place was the right one.

If they would have asked, I would have told their fortune. Beware of any cheesesteak with bright orange liquid cheese.

I draw nothing. Just big blobs of color. Nothing comes to me. Did you ever see those people who draw those 3-D masterpieces with sidewalk chalk? I want to draw that. But I don’t know how to draw that. I don’t even know where to start. So I just rub the chalk against the sidewalk and I make dust. This doesn’t feel like art—probably because I’m not enjoying myself at all. At least the breakfast sandwich couple love what they do. Or maybe they have to. Or something. Either way, this doesn’t feel like art and I don’t care. I am relieved that I’ve gotten it out of my system. Pesky art. Who needs it?

? ? ?

At dinner, Mom and Dad notice I’m still wearing the same clothing I’ve had on since Monday. Mom says something about my washing my hair. Dad says that my shirt is filthy and points at the chalk markings on my jeans.

No one asks me where I was all day.

Mom and Dad both look exhausted like they do sometimes. It’s not work exhaustion. It’s something else. They have exhausted each other. This is clear because they don’t make eye contact. Maybe it was one of those parental meetings they do. I assume it’s where they make those parental deals. From here it looks like they spent the whole day at the tilt, wearing hundreds of pounds of armor and racing toward each other on horseback. If I was to guess the outcome, Dad won.

? ? ?

Thursday and Friday I walk up Broad Street as far as I can and I sing. I sing anything. I sing “Jingle Bells” even though it’s May. I sing nursery rhymes. I sing songs I learned to sing when I still took piano lessons.

No one on Broad Street says anything to me. But I’m not listening so it’s not like I’d hear it anyway. By Friday afternoon, I think I might have gone crazy. I am not the Sarah I used to be. I am a different Sarah. I don’t hear people anymore. I hear birds. I try to figure out what the pigeons are cooing to each other. I eat out of trash cans even though I have five dollars in my wallet. I walk even though I have a SEPTA pass.

I don’t care about the pear I couldn’t draw. I don’t care about Bruce. I don’t care about Mexico. I don’t care if I stay this way forever.

I wanted to go to my new school one more day this week, but I didn’t manage to get there. I have no idea what I’m doing and I don’t know why I’m doing it. Part of me wants to stand naked in the middle of Broad Street with pineapple stuffing rubbed all over me while throwing imaginary vegetables at people. Another part of me wants to climb to the top of Liberty One and yodel until my throat bleeds.

I should probably see a psychologist.

I’m halfway home on Friday afternoon when I see a little girl with a dog. I’m too tired to follow them, but I want to follow them because I can’t figure out why a girl this young would be allowed out alone with her dog in this part of town.

Maybe I don’t understand the neighborhood. Maybe I don’t understand the dog. Maybe I don’t understand the girl.

Something about the girl is original.

Something about the dog is original.

I ask the girl, “What is art?” and she says, “Art is what you believe no matter what other people think.” I grunt at this. I yell, “I don’t give a f*cking tangerine what you think, girl! You think I’m out here trying to make friends?”

She and her dog recoil, and I try to figure out why I just yelled at her.

I think I might have become Alleged Earl even though Alleged Earl doesn’t want me to follow him anymore.

I think I care about art even though I don’t want to. I can’t get away from myself.

? ? ?

I see ten-year-old Sarah just outside City Hall. I wave to her but she doesn’t see me. She’s talking to another girl her age. I’m happy she’s made a friend. Her friend looks like Carmen did when we were ten.

I think about Carmen and how much I miss her. I don’t miss her much. I don’t miss anything much. I think this is a side effect of whatever is happening to me.

Carmen knows about the something in “Did something happen at school?”

She’s the only one who understands what’s inside a tornado. She’s the only one who understands that what’s inside me and what’s inside everyone who ever wanted to be an artist is a tornado. She seems okay with Miss Smith’s idea about no one having original ideas. I don’t know how she does it.

She is immune to discouragement.

I stop outside of City Hall and pull out a piece of sidewalk chalk. I draw an enormous tornado. Swirls and swirls of dust and debris. I walk three big steps at the top of the tornado—it’s ten feet wide at the top. The only color chalk I have is sky blue and it’s a sky-blue tornado and inside the tornado is everything that ever mattered to me and everything that ever mattered to you and every tourist and every Liberty Bell and every hot dog with mustard and every cheesesteak and every song I ever sang and every pigeon that ever cooed. They are all inside my tornado. I don’t notice anyone watching me. No one stops to care. No one asks me to stop but if they did I probably wouldn’t hear them anyway because I am still deaf to everyone except art—art that doesn’t matter. This tornado doesn’t matter. Not even with the skin from my index-finger knuckle in it. Not even with the sweat that dripped from my nose.