Irises Read online

  Mary thought that the extra hour of painting probably wouldn’t make much of a difference, given how she was feeling about painting. “It’s not possible,” she said. “It wasn’t a decision that Aunt Julia made. It’s something that my sister and I decided. I need to go home and take care of Mama.”

  Mr. Gomez nodded, but the furrows on his forehead said that he wasn’t happy about it. “Well, I guess one way of looking at it is that you really don’t need what little guidance I give you. You can paint on your own now, you always could, and you can always ask for my help, in the unlikely case you need it.” He smiled.

  “Mr. Gomez, I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “Por favor! I’ve learned more from you than you have from me. What you have is a gift, a don, as we say in Spanish: a way of seeing and feeling that I’ve never encountered in a young artist before.”

  It always embarrassed Mary to hear Mr. Gomez praise her painting that way. There was something about taking credit for her paintings that didn’t seem right. A finished painting surprised her most of all. Who did that? Did she do that? It was as if some other painter had used her eyes and hands as instruments. After Mama’s accident, getting complimented for seeing and feeling was particularly hard, since she knew it wasn’t true anymore. “You shouldn’t sell yourself short,” Mary said.

  “But I am short,” he said, winking.

  “You know what I mean. You taught me all I know about painting.”

  “Okay, I will grant you that. I taught you all you know. But your painting is so much more than knowing.”

  “Knowing is good,” Mary said. She thought about how she had studied every single painting that Vincent van Gogh had ever painted, all that she had learned about the substances he used to mix his colors, his brushstrokes, even how he framed his paintings.

  “Yeah, I suppose,” he said sadly.

  She stood up. “I’ll come by to say hi whenever I can.”

  “You better,” he said, perking up again. “But even if you forget about me, I won’t forget you.” He pointed at her painting of the lotus. “Oh, by the way, I’ve asked Marcos to help you.” Mary was about to ask who Marcos was when the phone rang. Mr. Gomez answered it and then immediately put his hand over the receiver. “He’s a good boy,” he whispered. Then he turned back to the phone.

  When she entered the studio, she saw the same boy who had told her how unapproachable she was. He was bent down over a desk, drawing, and did not see her. Was he Marcos? Who Mr. Gomez said was a good boy? This was the person who was supposed to help her? Help her with what?

  There was no way to get to her corner of the studio without passing him. She needed to pack her supplies into a plastic bag and grab the painting of the irises she had been working on. She would take home the paintings stored in the back room little by little. If she hurried, she could be out of the room in about five minutes. She took a deep breath, straightened herself up, and walked directly toward her painting.

  She went past him without looking at him or acknowledging him in any manner. She reached her easel and began to pack up her supplies. Then she heard the chair of his desk screech and knew he was standing up. In a few moments she felt him standing next to her. She moved away.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.

  She ignored him and continued putting brushes into a plastic bag.

  “I want to show you something.”

  He held out a piece of paper. She looked at it without taking it from his hand. It was a picture of Hi-Yo the horse.

  “I finished it the other day after you left.”

  She squinted. It was not an extremely accurate drawing, but he had captured in a mysterious way the horse’s elegance. “It’s okay,” she said, looking away.

  “Okay? I thought it was pretty good. The head was the hardest, and at first I got the front legs shorter than the back ones, but I finally got them right, don’t you think? I couldn’t get out all the eraser smudges.”

  She took the drawing from his hand. Maybe if she commented on it, he would leave her alone. “You finished this the other day?” she asked.

  “Yeah. What do you think?”

  The curve of the horse’s back was perfect. She could tell it was drawn in one single movement. “How long did it take you?”

  “I don’t know, about five minutes. Another hour to fix the damn legs.”

  She tried to hold back a smile, but couldn’t. Then her eyes caught sight of the tattoo on his hand and she reminded herself to be careful. “Do you like to draw?” she asked.

  He leaned back and sat on the edge of the desk he had been using. “I guess,” he said. “I’m always doing it. Mostly in boring classes and on walls.”

  He was trying to be funny, but she didn’t laugh. Once, someone had sprayed the side of their church with graffiti, and she remembered how hard Papa took it. “Were you sent here from detention again?”

  “Nah,” he said. “Mr. Gomez grabbed me during lunch and told me to come. I thought he wanted me to do some more drawings, but then he asked me if I had a car and I told him yeah, and he wants me to give you a ride, to help you take all your paintings and stuff.”

  Mary looked at him quickly. She had anticipated that picking up her supplies and leaving the art studio would be full of sadness, and now here she was occupied with this boy. She realized she was still holding on to the drawing of Hi-Yo. “The drawing is okay,” she said. “You drew the way a horse is supposed to look pretty accurately . . . except for the legs. But if you want to really draw well, you need to stop drawing what you think something looks like and draw what you see.” He looked as if he hadn’t understood a single word she said. “Do you know what I’m saying?”

  “No, not really.”

  She walked over to the shelf and grabbed Hi-Yo and then went back and stood next to him, holding the drawing and the horse in front of them. “Look carefully at the horse and look at your drawing. See any differences?”

  He leaned forward and peered closely at both. “Yeah!” he exclaimed. “This horse has a line on the jaw that my drawing doesn’t.”

  “Among other things,” she said. “The head of your horse is thin and his nostrils are round. This horse’s face is rounder and his nostrils are kind of oval.”

  “I even got the tail all wrong.”

  “It’s not wrong,” she said. She gave him back the drawing and placed Hi-Yo on his desk. “It’s just that if you want to learn how to draw and paint, you need to learn how to see first.”

  She saw a funny smile come over his face. He walked over to the painting she had been working on. “I’ve seen that type of flower before, and your painting doesn’t look like them.”

  “Once you learn to see, you’ll be able to feel how things really are. I’m trying to draw the flowers I feel.” She paused. “I didn’t get it right, but that’s what I was trying to do. I was trying to paint the colors I felt.”

  He thought about it for a few moments. “First you see and then you feel.”

  “Yeah,” she said, smiling at the expression of discovery on his face. “What’s out there, what you try to paint, is both the thing you see and the thing you feel.” She felt dishonest saying that. When was the last time she felt what she painted? She remembered the time she painted Kate in their backyard. You are a wonderful artist, Mama had once said to her. You can see inside a person’s soul.

  “What is it?” Marcos asked.

  “Nothing,” she said, coming back to the present. “For the time being you should try to draw the real horse and not the image of a horse that you carry in your head. You understand?”

  “Ahh, yeah, I think I do,” he said.

  The way he said it made her feel bad. He was right. She had just spoken to him as if he were incapable of understanding her. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to speak to you that way.” It struck her that even though he was in a gang, she wasn’t afraid of him.

  “Where’s all your stuff?” he asked, changing the subj
ect. “I could start loading it in my car.”

  She paused and took a deep breath while she looked at him. If she were painting him, what would she feel? Would she feel trust? She had looked into his eyes the last time she saw him, but hadn’t noticed their color. Now she looked again and saw that they were hazel. His eyes, the nose, the mouth, the forehead, the eyebrows, all these had a symmetry and a balance to them. There was nothing uncomfortable about the way he was looking at her. He was just sitting, waiting for her answer to his question.

  She went to the back of the room and took out all of the paintings she had stored there.

  They walked to the parking lot in back of the school, their arms full of paintings and plastic bags. His car was a ratty-looking black station wagon that looked like a miniature hearse. It had clearly been in an accident at some point, since the right side was caved in and smeared with the white paint of the other car. A sheet of clear plastic stretched across the space where one of the windows used to be. He walked to the side of the car that wasn’t smashed in and opened the door from the inside. He put the paintings he was carrying in the backseat and then crawled in and opened the back hatch.

  “That’s the only way it opens,” he said, sticking his head out the back end of the car. “Why don’t you arrange the paintings so they don’t get bent and I’ll go get the other load?” Before she could say anything, he had climbed out of the station wagon and was hurrying back to the art studio.

  They filled the car with ten paintings of various sizes. The framed paintings took up the most room, but they managed to fit them all in, even with all her supplies. They got in the car, and Marcos started it and drove out of the lot. Mary thought how strange it had been to hide her paintings from Papa as if they were sinful in some way. She had kept all her artwork at school except a few supplies in her dresser and an easel and some paintings under her bed. Now she’d be able to have these things at home as well. As she rode in the car with the window open and the air rushing by her face, she couldn’t help but feel a sense of lightness and freedom.

  She reached behind her head to put a seat belt on, but there was none. “I need to put one in,” he said apologetically.

  “Isn’t it against the law not to have one?” she asked.

  “Probably. I have them on the driver’s side and in the back.” He pulled his. “When I take my jefita and my sisters shopping, they go in the back and I drive like their chofer.”

  He has a mother, and sisters, and he takes them shopping. The thought made her smile. She looked at his hand gripping the steering wheel, the tiny star between the thumb and forefinger. “Are you in a gang?”

  He looked at her quickly and then turned away, his eyes fixed on the road. He seemed to be deciding whether to tell the truth or lie. “Yeah,” he finally said.

  “Oh.” She didn’t mean to sound as if she was personally disappointed.

  They drove in silence for a while and then he said, “You can ask me questions about it if you want.”

  “Questions about what?”

  “About being in a gang. You looked like you wanted to know more about it.”

  “I don’t care.” She crossed her arms and looked out her window. Then, “Why?”

  He placed both hands on top of the steering wheel and stared straight ahead. “Sometimes you don’t have a choice.”

  She shook her head. “You always have a choice.”

  “It would have been hard for me and my family if I didn’t join. My family still needs me.” They stopped at a red light and she could tell that he was having trouble speaking. “I’ve always been good at drawing, and the Calle Cuatro guys, it’s this gang, they told me I had to join or else.”

  “Or else?” The light turned green and the car lurched forward. She held on to the dashboard.

  “Sorry,” he said. “The clutch isn’t working that well either. Or else my life and my family’s life would be hell. So I joined a gang for protection. I didn’t join the Calle Cuatros, because they were bad, bad people. I joined a small gang around my house called the V Tiguas.”

  She couldn’t help giggling. The names of the gangs made her think of comic books and little boys playing games.

  “I know. It seems like a silly name.”

  “I know where Tigua is, but what does the V stand for?”

  “It stands for barrio. It means that our territory is Tigua.”

  “Barrio is spelled with a B and not a V,” she said. She sounded like a teacher, she realized, and smiled. She wasn’t exactly the best speller herself. “What do you do exactly? Besides spray the sides of buildings?”

  “Mainly we protect ourselves and our people. We’re Little League, really. Strictly self-defense.” He took out a red bandanna from his khakis and wiped his forehead.

  “Do you have guns and get into fights and kill people?”

  He let out a long stream of air that almost turned into a whistle. “We protect ourselves. Mostly we try to act tough and we stay together in a group, always. Sometimes there’s fights and stuff, but we don’t go looking for it.” He was staring at her when a car suddenly stopped in front of them. He slammed on the brakes.

  “Gosh! Do you even have a license?” she asked when they started moving again.

  “Believe it or not, I do. I got it this summer.”

  “You’re seventeen.”

  “Yeah. And you’re sixteen.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know. But you haven’t even asked what my name is.” They stopped at a red light. The light turned green, but he didn’t move, apparently waiting for Mary to speak. But she felt shy all of a sudden, and turned to look out the window.

  “My name is Marcos,” he said after someone honked at him.

  They drove in silence the rest of the way to her house. She didn’t feel the need to speak further. He helped her take the paintings and other things to the wooden shed in the backyard. Papa had used it to store a lawn mower, a few old hoses, cans of paint, and Mama’s garden tools, which they still kept. Later she would organize the things in the shed so there would be room for all her artwork.

  They walked back to his car. She knew she should say “Thank you,” but her body was filled with a strange mixture of chills and heat, and all she could do was smile and nod.

  “Good-bye, Mary,” he said. He turned around to leave and then stopped, as if remembering something. “I wish I could get out.”

  “What?”

  “Of the gang. I wish I could get out.”

  “Maybe getting out is like a painting,” she said. “First you see and feel every detail of what you want to paint, then you proceed very carefully, sketching with a pencil first before you put down the paints.” She stopped herself. What did she know about being in a gang? Where were all these words coming from anyway?

  “You mean, like I first need to imagine what’s it’s like being out, then imagine how to get out.”

  “Yes. Something like that.”

  “Got it. Oh, I forgot to tell you I was sorry.”

  “Sorry about what?”

  “Last time I saw you over at the studio, I said stuff to you. Then I found out your old man had died the week before. That stunk on my part. Sorry about that. I mean, even if your old man hadn’t died, I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

  “What did you say? I forgot.” She was pretending not to remember.

  “I said that you were that hot girl who thought she was too good for everyone.”

  “I don’t know about the ‘hot girl’ part,” she said, “but what did you mean by ‘too good for everyone’?”

  “As in you don’t let any guys get close to you.”

  “If that’s what you meant, then you were right.”

  She wasn’t joking, but he smiled anyway.

  Kate had expected Aunt Julia to object to the trip to the mall on Saturday morning, but Aunt Julia thought it was a wonderful idea. She even volunteered to lend Kate money, to be paid back when the insurance check arrived
. Kate told her she would take whatever money was needed from their father’s savings account, which was also in her name. She waited for Aunt Julia to ask how much was in the savings account, but for once, she didn’t seem to be interested in money matters. Instead, she said, “It’s okay to go to the mall with your friend, but you need to take Mary with you.”

  “Mary is in the backyard painting. She’s happy.”

  “She spends too much time by herself. It’s not right for someone her age to be so solitary. She’s either painting by herself or keeping Catalina company. It’s not normal.”

  “She’s always been that way.”

  “She’s been that way because your father was so . . . I don’t even know what the right word is. He was abusive in his own way.”

  “That’s not true.” Kate thought her objection did not sound convincing.

  “Well, I’m not going to argue with you. But I’ve seen the way he was with Catalina before you were even born, and I know how he was with you when you were too little to notice anything.”

  “He was strict, but he wasn’t abusive,” Kate said calmly.

  “There’s such a thing as being too strict,” Aunt Julia said with finality.

  Kate stood up and went to the television to turn the volume down. “Bonnie’s coming in fifteen minutes,” she said.

  “I’m going to tell Mary to get ready,” Aunt Julia said, also standing up.

  “Fine, but you shouldn’t make her go if she doesn’t want to.”

  “Oh, she’ll want to, all right.”

  Kate went into her room to change. The clothes in her closet seemed so meager. A few dresses for school and church, some skirts and blouses, a few of which were hand-me-downs from her mother. She turned and saw herself in the full-length mirror that hung on the back of the closet door. She pulled her T-shirt off over her head and looked at her body. Bonnie was right. She had a body full of beauty. There was no need to hide it any longer.