Abuela Artista

A Poem by dibujera

Sometimes, my dreams run in circles. Faint ones. Bold ones. Defined. Infinite nonetheless. Each point chases its own tail and begins where it inherently ceases…only to begin again. My grandmother is the reason.

She told me not to cry.

Dorothy Mae sat on the phone, absolutely silent except occasional mutterings of ,"I see", or maybe even a faint "mhmm". She listened as I explained how Daddy, her son, broke my heart. Dorothy Mae leaned back in her recliner, touched her bony index fingertip to her lip, paused and pursed them all lemony-like.

"Don't you cry another tear."

Those words immediately calmed me. It's almost like the plopped me upright, clawed her way through skin and bone and embraced each and every heartstring I possessed. She hugged me through the phone. That's how she was, Dorothy Mae, a realist concealist. An artist.

I had known about the abortion attempt five months prior to the call. I knew that Daddy was in jail when I was born and never knew I existed. My presence was not planned behind the bars of both the prison and His mind. I was a faceless, nameless, non-existent baby. The Woman told him that it was done, so when he came home to find a baby by a child ten years his junior, he just about died. I think that's when the seizures started. I kill Daddy by being alive. And now, he chases women and bottles. He chooses like the kind of choice you make about water and juice. I quench, hey satisfy. I am obsolete.

A faceless, nameless, non-existent baby.

That's why she told me not to cry. I have to do the painting myself. She told me because even my makers would forsake me and crying wouldn't solve my crisis. God and the Artist taught me that one. My ambivalence made it stick.

I wish I could say that I listened. I wish I could somehow show her that the faceless baby does have one. That the nameless baby has made one. That the non-existent baby is here. But when she looks at me she sees catastrophe. My paint is running. Like pumas down my face. When I cry I turn back into the obsolete baby.

I lose myself so she tells me not to cry because my paint is not waterproof. Did I mention she was an artist?

Did I mention that she has wooden paintbrushes? Or that she can make an ashtray out of anything?

Her flowers, flawless. Het tapestries, tactful in design and execution. But her paint's were not waterproof and my tears ruined her masterpiece. I try to be sorry.

I can not cry anymore. I have to fight and conquer death the way I did when the Woman tried to kill me and when Daddy started having His seizures. When I walk, I set sidewalks ablaze, feet on fire, I flee. The only place for tears is on my pillow and even that, I can not hide from the Artist, Dorothy Mae.

Do not show where you hurt. Fix your face.

We gaze into the steamy, soap scum stained mirror and we giggle. My paint is running again. To the Artist this is the funniest thing because I am still the baby.

The faceless one.

The nameless one.

The obsolete one.

The only change is that I exist and that I survived death.

We paint my baby face stroke by meticulous stroke. We painstakingly progress in circles. Faint ones. Bold ones. Defined. Infinite nonetheless. Each point chases its own tail and begins where it inherently ceases…only to begin again.

We outline my eyes, then my nose, my brows next, but save my mouth for last because I complain too much.

And I am finished.