 |
| Author | Post |
|---|
Chicawawa
Newbie
| Joined: | Feb 14th, 2008 |
| Location: | Ontario Canada |
| Posts: | 3 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: |  |
|
Posted: Apr 2nd, 2008 04:12 PM |
|
This was my entry for my school's short story contest.  Wish me luck!
Reconcile
I cocked my head to the side and stared intently at what I just painted on my canvas. It was supposed to be an ocean shore, with a dead man’s corpse lying in a position with his legs spread apart. I used different shades of dark green to create the pieces of kelp hanging off him like discarded organs. There was a fat seagull poking at his empty eye socket. It seemed too much like a horror movie poster to me.
The sun was setting. I could see it from the window of my grubby one-bedroom apartment. I had a rented space on the top floor, and the world below was beginning without me. People headed out of their homes to the nightclubs and bars, preparing to drink away the stress of a hard week’s work. Parents carried their children on the shoulders or had them trot behind; pointing at the Niagara Falls or ignoring their children’s screaming demands for ice-cream. There was a party going on in the loft downstairs. I could feel the slight rumble under my feet.
I’m nineteen years old and living alone. As disorganized and clumsy as my present life may look, it was finally starting to resemble who I am. During the daytime I attended classes at the University, studying art and art history. Nighttimes were unpredictable. I would either disappear into my grubby apartment and paint, or I would allow the few friends I have to pull me into social activities. It was as though I was living two separate lives and both were corresponding with each other like soul mates.
Father would be disappointed in me right now. He had been disappointed in what I was becoming ever since Mother walked out when I was fifteen. This portrait of me is everything but the kind of perfection he had wanted; painting in my underwear, my unclean apartment with boxes of Chinese food piled on top of my small gas stove, not studying at every free moment I had, the lack of To-Do lists pasted on the wall in sticky notes, painting. He was telling his friends that I was going through a discovery phase, which meant in his mind that I would be an artist for less than a year before going straight back to his original plan for me to be a lawyer, or an accountant, or an engineer like himself. He had no confidence in me whatsoever. He took my creativity as a joke and was playing the waiting game as though my personal career plan was a time-bomb, ready to go off any second.
“Amelia, artists don’t have a steady paycheck.” This was the automatic response from him when I told him about my desire to be an artist. It was such a typical thing for him to say, it was ridiculous. Father saw the world as a system where everything has to fall into place all the time. What ran this system, in his mind, was money.
“Who says I want a steady paycheck?” I said back. I took a sip of the green tea I had made for both of us. “I’ll manage. I’d rather be happy with a horrible job than miserable with a job with a steady paycheck.”
“You’re wasting your potential, Amelia.” This was his back-up attack on me. He was trying to guilt me out of my plans. “You want to be…an artist? Amelia, you’re very lucky to be living in a world where the work force offers endless opportunities for women. You’re a smart girl, and you want to spend the rest of your life painting pretty little pictures like a first-grader?”
“I’m going to study art. This conversation is over, Dad.” This is a sentence he had used countless times on me. Now, it was my turn.
“No, it’s not over until I say it’s over!” He slammed his fist down on the table. He made me flinch so hard that I dropped my cup of tea on the floor. It smashed and let the green liquid ooze out. I was seriously scared that he was about to hit me.
He didn’t. The look of anger burned in his stern face and he let his hand sit obediently on his lap. “An artist is no job for a proper girl.”
“I guess I’m not a proper girl, then.” I said.
“You’re going to be coming to me every month, asking to borrow money to pay your rent because your artist job isn’t getting you what you need. I won’t have it, Amelia. I raised you to be able to stand on your own two feet. It is going to work like this. You can be an artist, but you will stay here with me. Or, you can come to your senses and study to become something real in this world. Then you can move out. Do we have a deal?”
“No, we don’t.” I said. My cheeks were flushed with anger. How dare he make these decisions for me? I was not a chunk of clay that he could mold into any shape or form he wanted. If you ask me, it was him who really wanted to be the artist.
I somehow made it out of that house without his help, earning my own money and attending school on an arts scholarship. I don’t plan to leave this lifestyle anytime soon. What else would I have? Father never calls me, and I haven’t called him since Christmas. His housekeeper had picked up and told me he was out. She said she would tell him to call me back. He never did.
I left my amateur painting as it was and slipped my torn kimono robe over my plain cotton underwear. The paint on my fingers stained the silk, but I didn’t dare reconcile it. It was the mark of the artist, and I was proud of it.
THE END.
____________________
"I'm not mad because I'm a woman. I'm mad because you're an asshole." ~~~Elaine, Cat's Eye.
|
|
|
Current time is 11:52 PM | |
|
|
|
|
