The mannequins at Esmerelda\u2019s are grateful to have an artist in their midst. They\u2019ve been alone too long in the abandoned boutique, shedding sequins, listening to the scratching of mice who grow bolder daily. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I felt some tension in them when I first tried the store\u2019s door and found it open. I couldn\u2019t blame them. The space\u2014deep and narrow, with that all-glass front and back, like a cave but somehow sunny\u2014is perfect and how could they know, just by looking at me, if I deserve it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After I finished the first mural, they started to trust me. It\u2019s this hulking tree hovering protectively over the limes scattered below it, the last rays of the sunset kissing the bottom layer of leaves. And okay, I did steal the tree. From my mother, from Sudan, from her photographs of Sudan. But I never think of taking from my mom as stealing. It\u2019s like this: she\u2019s\u2026 lighter <\/em>than me. Lighter-skinned, lighter-hearted, lighter-footed. We\u2019ve only been here for a year, but she already has so many friends whose houses she goes to for dinner, who come to pick her up and drive her to Schaefer\u2019s for work. Moms are supposed to pass something <\/em>down to their daughters. It\u2019s genetics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cShe owes me,\u201d I tell Jessie. \u201cI\u2019m just evening the score.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Jessie, who stands by the right window in a green and yellow striped dress that explains why Esmerelda\u2019s is out of business, has a way of making her eyeless gaze look like understanding. I move her sometimes, to stand next to me while I paint. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnyway, it\u2019s for a good cause,\u201d I say as I sweep the floor. \u201cI\u2019m making Sudan.\u201d I get that that\u2019s kind of a white man thing to say, like I can capture a whole culture with a handful of paints. But it\u2019s got to be in me somewhere. Growing up in Sudan was about five reinventions ago for my mom, but she\u2019s still got her sticky accent and if she didn\u2019t teach me to speak Arabic, she did at least insist I eat with my hands. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And it\u2019s not like I took all my mom\u2019s photos. I don\u2019t even like her people pictures. She\u2019s an excellent photographer most of the time, in a kind of careless way, like she\u2019ll lift her camera and capture a blue sky swelling like love out of a circle of storm clouds. Or a stone, just as it lands on a lake, spraying water with irrepressible joy. But her pictures of people in Sudan\u2014men in turbans and women wrapped in long cloths\u2014I can\u2019t stand to look at them; I hate the way my brain drinks them in as exotic. And I really hate comparing their sunburst smiles to that awkward baring of teeth I always inflict on my photos. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On the floor of Esmerelda\u2019s, I\u2019m going to reimagine my mother\u2019s photo of the joining of the two Niles. I like to play with color, but you\u2019ve got to be thoughtful about it, so I work things out with color pencils in my sketchbook. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI talked in school today,\u201d I tell Jessie one afternoon. She smiles encouragingly. It\u2019s hard to describe her smile\u2014she doesn\u2019t really have lips\u2014but once you get to know her, you can see it. \u201cI was just thinking so hard about the floor mural that I wasn\u2019t even paying attention to my mouth and it just opened and I asked Elena if she minded if I sat with her. And she likes to draw during lunch too\u2014she makes comics\u2014so she said no. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWell,\u201d I say, as I mix my paints, \u201cshe didn\u2019t say<\/em> no, she just shook her head, but she did <\/em>say she liked my drawing.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Jessie\u2019s head tilt says, well of course <\/em>she liked your drawing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThanks,\u201d I say, and get to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I know it\u2019s cheesy, but I feel like I\u2019ve been waiting <\/em>for Esmerelda\u2019s. The other day before school, I checked in the mirror, and I swear I could see some of my mom\u2019s light in my eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I was nine years old, we moved into this great house with a buttery yellow exterior and out-of-date furniture we inherited from the previous owners. I\u2019d planned to grow up in that house. My dad was still alive then, and I\u2019d heard him tell my mom on the first night we moved in, \u201cThis is the last time, Aida, I mean it. You can\u2019t get bored again.\u201d My dad, he was\u2014he was honestly so much fun. Like, I\u2019d be spinning around the living room, rattling off everything I\u2019d imagined when I was supposed to be paying attention at school that day, and he\u2019d type fast enough to keep up with me, turning my rambling into scenes and dialogue. And I really thought that was going to be it; I was going to spin and tell stories with my dad in the butter house forever. Then, right after the car accident, my mom packed everything up all over again, and this buyer came to pick up the couch and it was just\u2014I wouldn\u2019t get off the couch; I couldn\u2019t let them make a liar out of my dad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When I see the corpse of Esmerelda\u2019s, it\u2019s like all at once I\u2019m in that room again, the scratchy polka-dotted upholstery scraping away at my cheek, my mom scolding in the background, the buyer stammering uncomfortably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The murderers are standing around, unashamed. There\u2019s rubble everywhere, big chunks of Esmerelda\u2019s spread out obscenely. Bulldozer. Orange vests. The beeping like a pebble rattling around my skull.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Somebody is shaking my arm. Somebody is saying, \u201cMiss?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n I want to shout, \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d and \u201cHow dare you?\u201d I want to let out a wordless screech loud enough to make them cover their ears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But my voice doesn\u2019t work. It never does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t go to school for two days. No one notices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s nothing left but dirt the color of my skin. It\u2019s deceptively soft, like it hasn\u2019t swallowed up everything that matters to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I know I should stop coming here. It makes me cry every time. But my feet are programmed, and after school, they don\u2019t listen to me, just take us out here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I thought maybe I\u2019d find Jessie. But the murderers have cleaned up their crime scene professionally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The dirt smells kind of metallic, tastes a bit salty\u2014like blood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The ground where Esmerelda\u2019s once stood is starting to open up. It\u2019s grateful to me like the mannequins once were. That is as it should be. After all, I haven\u2019t forgotten. I keep coming. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the new gap, like a gift, there\u2019s a small pool of water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The pool\u2019s been the same size for a week. I was so sure it would keep growing. I\u2019ve kept coming. I\u2019ve stayed loyal. But maybe I\u2019m misunderstanding. Maybe it needs something more?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I try to drown in my mom\u2019s Sudan photos. The only ones left are the ones I hate, the people pictures. Those people\u2026 they look at my mom with so much love, but she\u2019d let them go so easily. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Why can\u2019t I let anything go?<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s one portrait I keep coming back to: this older lady dressed in a white cloth that\u2019s wrapped around her entire body, her bottom lip tattooed blue, her cheeks marked with long tribal scars. She is standing on a bridge, smiling with one of the Niles rushing behind her. It\u2019s not a good photo, objectively; she moved just as my mother snapped, but the water reaches out to me like a friend…<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a mark of how weird Los Suelos is that no one asks why I\u2019ve started wearing blue lipstick on my lower lip. The kids at school with their empty bovine eyes… curiosity has never occurred to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway, it works. The pool is growing again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The scars are a bit harder to pull off. I\u2019ve still got my paints and my mom has some makeup but it takes a lot of practice to make them have depth. I don\u2019t dare go back and check the growth until I\u2019ve mastered the markings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The new Nile is long enough that when I lie down beside it, it goes past my feet and my upstretched arms. I was wrong to think of the dirt as deceptively <\/em>soft. I\u2019d let my anger blind me to the ground\u2019s friendliness. And salty? No, it is sweet, the velvety sweetness of caramel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But perhaps I\u2019m being too hard on myself, perhaps it had <\/em>been cruel before, and as the Nile began to manifest, it’s become more welcoming, recognizing home in the echo of Sudan in my blood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There are red and purple highlights in the river, just as I\u2019d painted it. I let one hand hang in the water. The Nile will break it down, the brown of my skin dissolving into river clay adding necessary blackness, some chiaroscuro. I drag my face closer\u2014mud like satin brushing my cheek\u2014so that my tears fall into the river, adding to its growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Featured image by Klayton Harmon.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The mannequins at Esmerelda\u2019s are grateful to have an artist in their midst.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":3223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[86],"class_list":["post-2544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-first"],"yoast_head":"\n
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