"I Want It Back" by Epiphany Ferrell
I Want It Back
I’m here at the community center to teach a one-off art class. Watercolor. My first student has shown up with charcoal pencils, which, she insists, are her only medium. I shrug to myself. Some watercolor techniques work great with charcoal. My second student comes in with her nose in her phone, and she doesn’t put it down even while she sets out her paints. The final two students are older women, and they arrive together, talking about some other art teacher whom they like very much.
This isn’t my first rodeo, I’ve already consolidated the space. If more students show up, as I’ve been told they might, then I can make space for them as if I’m letting them in out of graciousness.
“This is nice, just us girls,” I say. And start my class. Wet on dry. Wet on wet. Washes.
“I’ll show you some basic techniques,” I say. “Try them all. Find the ones that work for you, that please you.” I’ll tell them about my upcoming six-week watercolor class after they are finding their way.
Phone-Girl paints half-heartedly. She appears to be in a text argument with someone. She sets down her brush, stabs at her phone. The Twin-Ladies concentrate so much on what they are doing I’m sure they can’t be enjoying it. Charcoal hangs on my every word. Blending. Lines. Gradient color.
After the break, I put out a tableau for them to reproduce: a glass jar of marbles, a candle (which I light, though it’s against the rules as the Twin-Ladies inform me), a vase of hydrangeas past their prime, chosen for that reason.
Charcoal begins to cry 10 minutes in. I walk slowly behind my artists, nodding at their easels, murmuring praise, making no suggestions though I certainly could. Phone-Girl is slashing at her paper, the pastels she’s chosen failing to represent the aggression she seems to be feeling. I come at last to Charcoal, who is sniffling quietly.
“Those are hydrangeas,” she says. “We had them at my dad’s place.”
I look at her paper, thinking I might suggest she combine charcoal and watercolor, recommend some combination artists for her to investigate.
She has drawn my father’s house. The sagging porch, the stones he set for a walkway disappearing into the grass, the hydrangeas in their wild overgrowth submerging the porch rails. My father’s house from eight years ago, when we first had to talk to him about leaving that house and moving into assisted living. The house where he would have preferred to die.
“You seem really nice,” Charcoal says to me, and tears spill from her eyes. “I’m sorry.” I get the notion she’s mixing her tears onto her paper.
I’m exhausted by the end of the class. Drained. Often, teaching is invigorating. Not tonight. I barely remembered to pitch my six-week class, scarcely acknowledged Twin-Ladies enthusiastic avowal to take it.
Charcoal has left something on her easel, a nearly complete painting. She has left the representation of my father’s house. I pick it up, and as soon as I do, notice a few drops of bright red seeping into the paper. Somehow I’ve gotten a sliver, something. The hydrangeas in the painting absorb my blood — that’s the only way I can describe it. In front of my eyes, they bloom. My father’s house appears now in glorious color as it was in its heyday, when the hydrangeas were among many other flowers.
My eyes grow dim. I don’t mean that I feel faint. I mean that the world around me dims, the colors fading, the light weakening, sounds muted. The only color is in the painting I hold in my trembling hands.
I walk into the parking lot like an old woman. It’s raining. I don’t notice the car until I see the reflection of its headlights in a puddle. It’s Charcoal. She looks at me mournfully as she drives past but doesn’t put down the window. Her face and her hair are the only color I see. When she’s gone, she takes all the color with her.
I drive home, the traffic lights meaningless. I’ll go to the doctor in the morning, but I already know there’s nothing wrong with me that he can understand.
Inside, I go at once to my studio. Gray flowers. Silver sunsets. Landscapes in slate, ash, and stone. I weep, and my vision wavers.
I don’t know what she’s done to me, or how she’s done it. I feel her sorrow inside me, but even that is fading. Shadow and gloom are mine now, my joy, my peace, gone.
I want it back.
Tomorrow, I will buy charcoal pencils.
Tomorrow, I begin the hunt.
Epiphany Ferrell
Epiphany Ferrell lives perilously close to the Shawnee Hills Wine Trail. Her stories appear in more than 70 journals and anthologies, including Ghost Parachute, New Flash Fiction Review, Bending Genres, and Best Microfiction. She is a two-time Pushcart nominee, and a Prime Number Magazine Flash Fiction Prize recipient.
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Headshot: Epiphany Ferrell
Photo Credit: Staff