Boring Girls(15)

As I walked home through the snow, I got some more ideas for poems. How bright blood would look spilled across a blanket of white snow. Ms. Voree’s and Ms. Coates’s blood. Of course, I wouldn’t be able to submit that poem to her class. I’d have to write something stupid, like how the snow sparkled, glittering, as the afternoon sun slanted across it. Whatever.

The two of you are one of a kind.

Fucking brain-dead. Fucking blind.

School’s out now. It’s time to go.

Scarlet blood on ivory snow.





SEVEN


The school year crept along. One of our art assignments was to choose a favourite piece and recreate it using a different media. You know, take the statue of David and paint a picture of it. Or make a sculpture of the Mona Lisa. Something like that.

Josephine was really into Jackson Pollock, so she decided to take one of his abstract paintings and recreate it using collage. I’ve never liked his stuff. Looks like a bunch of random paint splatters to me. It doesn’t have any mystery to it, it doesn’t tell a story, there’s no atmosphere. But Josephine loved his work. She said she can feel excitement and movement in it. Josephine was also into straw sunhats and floral print. But, hey, different strokes, right?

I was feeling pretty damned good that day. Most of the kids in the class didn’t know much about art history, so a bunch of them were crowded around Mr. Lee’s collection of books, turning pages. Mr. Lee found that depressing, and he was barking at them about how true artists would at least know one work of art from that book before they even walked into his class. Not a problem for me, of course. I’d grown up with those books. I knew who Vermeer was when I was a toddler.

And there was no question as to which painting I was going to recreate.

“That’s a pretty creepy painting,” Josephine said when I showed her my colour photocopy of Judith Slaying Holofernes.

“It’s so f*cking cool. The girl in blue is Judith, and the girl in red is her maidservant,” I explained. “The guy on the bed is Holofernes. He was this war general guy who was destroying Judith’s town, really brutal. He had to be stopped, right? So Judith and her friend sneak into his camp. Some of his guards stop them at first, but these are just a couple of girls, right? What could they possibly do? So Judith and her friend hang out with Holofernes and get him drunk, and then when he’s passed out, they attack him.”

“It looks like she’s cutting his throat,” Josephine said.

“She’s actually decapitating him. Judith cuts off his head, and then they put it in a bag and take it back to their village and show everyone. They totally saved their own village and became heroes for it.” I grinned. “I love this painting. Look at them, they’re so beautiful. Look at the way the maidservant is struggling with Holofernes, holding him down. You can see how strong she is. Judith is totally into it, cutting into his neck. And the look on his face, like he can’t believe that these silly, weak women are going to decapitate him and stop all his evil bullshit. He can’t believe that he isn’t as strong as they are, and that they were able to get close enough to kill him.”

Josephine gazed at me quizzically. “You’re really into this, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yeah. I remember when I first saw this painting when I was a kid. I thought it was so beautiful, the way the blood is just streaming out onto the bed. You know, a woman painted this. I love how she also showed what great friends Judith and the other girl are. You can see how much they trust each other.”

“All I see is some guy getting killed,” Josephine said. “You’re thinking about it too much.”

I didn’t agree, and shrugged. We got to work on our projects. Mr. Lee was still at it with the other clowns, so I tuned them out and focused on recreating the painting in oil pastels.

Mr. Lee came by after a while to observe, moving from table to table. “Josephine, I love what you’re doing with those small bits of paper. You’re really capturing the movement of the Pollock.” Looking at mine, he said, “Rachel, I am absolutely in love with the fact that you know Artimesia Gentileschi. And I love that painting myself. But I wonder if you’d reconsider your choice of oil pastels. I’d like to see a completely different take on the work, perhaps sculpture or even watercolour. The painting is so dark as it is, and a lighter, softer perspective could be more interesting. Think about it.” He moved on to the next table.

But that was exactly why I had chosen the pastels. The colours were dark and bold. Mr. Lee didn’t understand that I was going to make my version of the painting even darker than it already was. If all Josephine could see was a guy getting killed, if that’s all everyone else saw when they looked at this painting, I wanted them to see the rage and passion and intensity.