Black Out

The bead of sweat threatened to descend into her eye, but she decided not to capture it in the oil she spread about the canvas. After first creating a background of refulgent yellow, she added the fulsome outline of her face and filled in with meticulous, quiet energy the contours of her cheekbones and the full depth of her broad shoulders. She carried after all on these shoulders all the trauma fit for the artist, the deep despair itself a necessary concomitant to the bliss, the bliss. She did her best to mask the slight unequal frame of the cheekbones. The one having been caved in by that lout created a subtle lack of equilibrium of which she was deeply aware every time the imperfect form glared at her in the mirror, in the car window, in the eyes of a lover. As she blotted more, she felt weaker, more prone to pat her brow with the hanky that was her father’s. He would never hurt her, would at the museum somehow guide her movements as he kept his hand indiscernibly at her shoulder. He spoke in dulcet tones unequaled by anyone. She heard him every time she took brush in hand, describing the grandeur and nobility of fine art, meant to elevate the soul and bring us closer, but never quite touching, the divine, and in so doing drag this numinous being down to earth that some lucky creature might gaze and be uplifted, might have their soul caressed by tender strokes of art.

She found it necessary to stand just so to hide the scar. Is it possible to hide it really? Her scarves, a whole panoply of color to match any garment as sartorial accent, were needed always: even as she sweated, even when she wept, even when she was alone, even after he was gone. His hectoring voice also penetrated. She heard him scream about dinner; she heard him, drunk as always, slurring that it was all the better she hadn’t prepared a meal that even she felt palatable that that unflattering waistline might be deflated somewhat. When she stood and smashed the vase, he stood and smashed her face. When she grabbed the knife, he wrested it from her hands and sliced at her throat. The police were kind in their way. Even though they always tend to speak in monotone officialese, she could sense their less stentorian concern, their assurances that the wound was not too deep. In her hospital room these men came to tell her that they found him gassing up two towns over. He slept on an uncomfortable cot and ate food that made him yearn for hers. When he first awoke he asked why on earth he was there: he remembered nothing. 

She raged. But with her art she breathed differently, more deeply, more slowly, more methodically, not the quick shallow huffs when she thought she spotted his car. It was everywhere; why did so many people have to buy that model? It is ugly, plain, just like me. How can I do it: make the scar, the uneven quality of the whole badgering countenance less plump and unappealing? She chose shading that soon trespassed on chiaroscuro; fond shadows were also added under the chin to hide perchance the drooping deposit of flesh that some say quivers when she laughs. Seldom at least she thought upon that remark, for she seldom laughed. What is there to laugh about? 

The bright yellows moved from golden, to an agonizing brown, to black. Her cheekbone was covered first with shadow that soon became opaque. She painted faster now. Now watch your breath Virginia, her father said. It was hours she stood there, slowly adding more shadow and more black till she stood back, breathing fast, and found there staring at her but a solid black canvas, and she was satisfied.