Inkling
an online journal of poetry and prose

04/13/09

Family Portrait

Mrs. Morris was scrubbing away the chalk drawing that depicted her killing her husband.  Danni, her ten-year-old daughter, and artist of the picture, was watching, chagrined at her mother’s reaction.  The drawing had been done on the sidewalk in front of their apartment.  Apartments meant lots of people looking, knowing.  Mrs. Morris understood this.  It made her scrub harder.

Everyone will see it, she thought.

No one will see it, thought Danni.  It was a nice picture, after all.  In it Mother and Father, not stick figures either, were both holding knives.  Mr. Morris was plunging his knife into Mrs. Morris’s head, blood gushing forth in one dimensional glory.  Mrs. Morris rebounded by filleting her husband’s abdomen.  There was even a sun above them, a good one, realistic looking, not the stupid kind with lines jutting out from the center circle.  The only flaw was the blood itself, which was not red at all, but hot pink, as the red chalk had either been lost or eaten by the dog.

“Why do you keep doing these things?” asked Mrs. Morris.  “Me and your dad don’t fight.  We don’t hurt each other.  We don’t punish you in crazy ways.”

“I know,” said Danni.  She fingered a pigtail.  “Aren’t we boring?”

This hadn’t been the first drawing.  Mrs. Morris was afraid it wouldn’t be the last.  Danni knew the stuff in the drawing wasn’t true-it was just art.  So why the hubbub?  At school her teacher once became upset when Danni began drawing scenes of unneeded surgeries and human autopsies.

Sure, thought Danni, other kids can draw dogs with bodies completely out of proportion or cats with impossible fur patterns.  Purple and yellow fur.  Who’s ever heard of a cat with purple and yellow fur?  But I’m punished for drawing Doctor Johnson attaching patient Miller’s arm to his leg.  Typical.  What a rip off.

Mrs. Morris understood the implicating aspects of chalk drawings.  After all, they are slightly visible even after a rainstorm, though soupy and unclear.  Therefore, Danni’s mother wasn’t about to wait for the rain to fix this pastel fucking nightmare.  She took soapy water and poured it over the illustration. 

Down the drain, thought Danni.  It made her sigh.  But it didn’t really go down the drain at all because there was no drain nearby.  Instead it just ran further down the street, causing more attention than it would have if Mrs. Morris had just left the picture alone. 

What Mrs. Morris really should have done was gotten out a piece of black chalk and completely covered the portrait.  But when faced with this false and embarrassing depiction of their home life, she wanted to erase it, not reveal her own artistic abilities.  Plus, she knew that drawing over it would have led people to walk by and ask, “What’s the deal with the big black box etched on the sidewalk?”  This would have led to a general neighborhood discussion in which adults would have commended Danni’s creative way of expressing family issues through artwork.  Of course after everyone on the block decided that this must mean the Morrisses abuse each other with large, well-drawn daggers, someone would have called the proper authorities. The family would be sent away in chains and never heard from again.  Only the stain on the sidewalk in front of their apartment would serve as a reminder of their existence.

Mrs. Morris took out a rag to work the last of the image off of the cement.  She went back and forth and back and forth, especially on the knife parts.

And that’s where the shading was best too, thought Danni.

“This time you went too far,” said Mrs. Morris.

“What?” asked Danni.  “You think it’s too abstract?”

 “Smart ass,” said her mother, wiping sweat from her forehead.  “Can’t you draw normal?”

“Stop trying to censor me.  You just want me to play with dolls or Tonka trucks.  If you want a boring child you could always just baby-sit all the neighbor kids until you find your perfect match.”

“Should I make you get down on your hands and knees and clean this off yourself, young lady?”

“I just spent the entire morning on my hands and knees drawing it.”

It was true.  The threat of forced labor wasn’t going to strike fear into Danni’s heart.  Her legs were already red and embedded with dirt and grass and the pattern from the sidewalk.

“Just no more of this, OK?” said her mother, referencing the picture.  “No more drawings like these. That’s all I ask.  They make you look freaky.  I don’t want people to think that about you.”

Her mom was trying to defend her reputation, Danni knew that, but the whole thing was still silly.  She saw that the drawings made her seem like the stereotypical freaky-ass kid from a horror movie, but not creepy in an I’m-going-to-kill-you sort of way.  Instead, she was creepy in an I-know-wacky-shit-that-you’d-never-believe-would-you-like-to-be-let-in-on-it? sort of way.  The two were completely different.  The distinction made her cool and mysterious. 

“After all,” said her mother, “you don’t want to end up in a foster home, do you?”

Danni wondered how she was supposed to answer this.  How did she know if she wanted to end up there or not?  She’d have to know what the family was like first.  Maybe they’d have a pool table and let her watch late night HBO.  But she decided that it would be better not to say this to her mother.

“OK,” said Danni instead.  “No more pictures like this.”

“Good,” said her mother, now done disposing of the evidence.  “There are better ways to display your creativity than bloody scenes anyway.”

Danni felt that her mother was probably right, so she picked up a nearby notebook, took out an orange crayon, and began a picture depicting her mother as a whore instead.