I'll Give You the Sun

by Jandy Nelson

  Oh, duh. Got it.

  Guillermo tries to hold back a smile, fails. He shrugs. “All models, they are the exhibitionists,” he says lightly. I nod, flushing. “We have to put up with them. Oscore is very good. Very graceful. Much expression.” He frames his own face with his hand. “We are going to draw together, but first I see the portfolio.”

  When Guillermo said to bring my sketchpad, I thought he’d have me work on the studies of the sculpture I want to make, not sketch with him. And in front of Oscar. Sketching Oscore!

  “Drawing is critical,” Guillermo says. “Many sculptors do not know this.”

  Terrific. I follow him down the hall, portfolio in hand, stomach in turmoil.

  I spot Oscar’s leather jacket hanging on a hook—yes. I slip the orange into the pocket without Guillermo noticing.

  Guillermo opens one of the doors that line the hallway, flicks on the light. It’s a jail cell of a room with a table and a couple chairs. In one corner are bags of clay stacked on shelves. In the other, hunks of stone, all different colors and sizes. There’s a shelf full of tools, only some familiar to me. He takes the portfolio case from me, unzips it, and opens it on the table.

  The thought of his eyes on my work is making my toes curl.

  He flips through quickly at first. Photos of bowls in every size in various stages of development, then the final photo of the piece broken and glued together. His forehead creases in confusion more and more with each passing page. Then he comes to the blobs. It’s the same. Each blob whole and then all broken and glued together in the final photo.

  “Why?” he asks.

  I go with the truth.

  “It’s my mother. She breaks everything I make.”

  He’s horrified. “Your mother breaks your artwork?”

  “Oh no,” I say, understanding what he’s thinking. “She’s not mean or crazy or anything. She’s dead.”

  I see the earthquake in his expression, the concern for my safety turn into concern for my sanity. Well, whatever. There’s no other explanation.

  “Okay,” he says, adjusting. “Why would your dead mother want to do this?”

  “She’s mad at me.”

  “She’s mad at you,” he repeats. “This is what you think?”

  “This is what I know,” I say.

  “Everyone in your family is very powerful. Your brother and you divide the world between you. Your mother come back to life to break your bowls.”

  I shrug.

  “This sculpture you have to make, it is for your mother then?” he asks. “She is the one you mention yesterday? You think if you make this sculpture she will not be mad at you anymore and she will stop breaking your bowls? This is why you cry when you think I do not help you?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  He strokes an imaginary beard, studying me for a very long time, then returns his attention to Broken Me-Blob No. 6. “Okay. But that is not the problem here. Your mother is not the problem. The best part, the most interesting part of this work is the breaks.” He touches the final photo with his index finger. “The problem here is that you are not here. Some other girl make it all maybe, I don’t know.” He looks at several more blobs. “Well?” he says. I glance up at him. I didn’t realize he was waiting for a response.

  I don’t know what to say.

  I resist the impulse to step back so I don’t get swatted by his hands. “I do not see the girl who climbed up my fire escape, who thinks spilled sugar will change her life, who believe she is in mortal danger because of a cat, who cries because I will not help her. I do not see the girl who told me she was as sad as me, who says her angry dead mother break her bowls. Where is that girl?” That girl? His eyes are blazing into mine. Does he expect an answer? “She is not making this work. She is not in this work, so why do you waste your time and everyone else’s?” He sure doesn’t mince words.

  I take a deep breath. “I don’t know.”

  “That is obvious.” He closes the portfolio. “You will put that girl in the sculpture you make with me, understand?”

  “I understand,” I say, except I have no clue how to do that. Have I ever done it? Certainly I haven’t at CSA. I think about my sand sculptures. How hard I used to work to get them to look like they did in my head. Never getting it. But maybe then. Maybe that’s why I was so afraid Mom wouldn’t like them.

  He smiles at me. “Good. We will have fun then. I am Colombian. I cannot resist a good ghost story.”

  He taps his hand on the case. “I am not sure you are ready for stone. Clay is kind—it can do anything, though you do not know this yet. Stone can be stingy, ungenerous, like the unrequited lover.”

  “It will be more difficult for my mother to break it if it’s in stone.”

  Understanding crosses his face. “She will not break this sculpture no matter what it is made of. You will have to trust me on that. You will learn to carve first on a practice rock. Then together we will figure out the best material for this sculpture after I see the studies. Will it be of your mother?”

  “Yes. I don’t usually do realistic, but . . .” Then, before I know I’m going to, I’m telling him. “Sandy asked me if there was something I needed in the world that only my two hands could create.” I swallow, meet his eyes. “My mom, she was really beautiful. My dad used to say she could make trees bloom just by looking at them.” Guillermo smiles. I go on.“Every morning she used to stand on the deck staring out at the water. The wind would stream through her hair, her robe would billow behind her. It was like she was at the helm of a ship, you know? It was like she was steering us across the sky. Every day it was like that. Every day I thought that. The image is always somewhere in my mind. Always.” Guillermo’s listening so intently and I’m thinking maybe he’s the kind of man who makes all the walls in people fall down too, not just rooms, because like yesterday, I want to tell him more. “I’ve tried everything to get through to her, Guillermo. Absolutely everything. I have this weird book and I scour it for ideas nonstop. I’ve done it all. I’ve slept with her jewelry under my pillow. I’ve stood on the beach at midnight, holding up a picture of the two of us to a blue moon. I’ve written letters to her and put them in her coat pockets, in red mailboxes. I’ve thrown messages into storms. I recite her favorite poem to her every night before I go bed. And all she does is break what I make. That’s how angry she is.” I’ve started to sweat. “It would kill me if she broke this.” My lips are trembling. Covering my mouth, I add, “It’s the one thing I have.”

  He puts a hand on my shoulder. I can’t believe how much I want him to hug me. “She will not break,” he says gently. “I promise you. You will make it. You will have this. I will help you. And CJ, this is the girl you need to let into your artwork.”

  I nod.

  Then he walks over to the shelf, grabs some charcoal. “Now we draw.”

  Unbelievably, I’d forgotten about Oscar naked in the next room.

  • • •

  We walk over to a corner of the studio where there’s a platform with one chair pulled up to it. I’m feeling unsteady—I didn’t even tell the counselor at CSA the things I just told Guillermo. And so much for not being a poor motherless girl in his eyes.

  Oscar, wearing the blue robe, is sitting reading, his feet propped up on the platform. It looks like a textbook, but he closes it too fast for me to catch what sort.

  Guillermo pulls another chair over, then gestures for me to sit.

  “Oscore is my favorite model,” he says. “He has a very strange face. I don’t know if you notice. God was very drunk when he made him. A little bit of this. A little bit of that. Brown eye. Green eye. Crooked nose, crooked mouth. Lunatic smile. Chipped tooth. Scar here, scar there. It is a puzzle.”

  Oscar shakes his head at the ribbing. “I thought you didn’t believe in God,” he says.

  For the record, I’m in the
midst of a penis panic attack.

  At CSA, I’m fairly penis-neutral in life class, but not at the moment, no siree.

  “You misunderstand,” Guillermo says. “I believe in everything.”

  Oscar slips off the robe.

  “Me too. You wouldn’t believe the things I believe in,” I interject, sounding frantic, wanting to join in their repartee so I don’t stare at it. Too late. Oh my effing Clark Gable—what was that again about a dinosaur he named Godzilla?

  “Do tell,” Oscar says to me. Ha! Not telling what I’m thinking! “Tell us one thing you believe in, CJ, that we wouldn’t believe.”

  “Okay,” I say, trying to regain some semblance of composure and maturity. “I believe that if a guy gives a girl an orange, her love for him will multiply.” I couldn’t resist.

  He cracks up, falling out of the pose Guillermo just positioned him in. “Oh, I absolutely believe you believe that. I have evidence to support you believe it quite fervently.”

  Guillermo taps his foot impatiently. Oscar winks at me, sending my stomach on an elevator ride. “To be continued,” he says.

  To be continued . . .

  Wait. Who’s Sophia? His little sister? His great-aunt? The plumber?

  “Quick sketches, CJ,” Guillermo says to me, and a brand-new set of nerves kicks in. Then to Oscar, “Change position every three minutes.” He sits down in the chair next to me and starts to draw. I’m aware of his hand flying across the page. It’s stirring the air. I take a breath and begin, telling myself it’s going to be okay. Five minutes or so pass. Oscar’s new pose is stunning. His spine’s arched and his head’s hanging backward.

  “You go too slow,” Guillermo says quietly.

  I try to sketch more quickly.

  Guillermo gets up and stands behind me, looking over my shoulder at my work, which, I see through his eyes, is dreadful.

  I hear:

  “Faster.”

  Then:

  “Pay attention to where the light source is.”

  Then, touching a spot on my drawing:

  “That is not a shadow, that is a cave.”

  Then:

  “You hold the charcoal too tight.”

  Then:

  “Do not take the charcoal off the paper so much.

  Then:

  “Eyes off the page, on the model.”

  Then:

  “Oscore is in your eyes, in your hands, your eyes, your hands, he travels through you, do you understand that?”

  Then:

  “No, all wrong, everything. What are they teaching you at that school? Nothing, I think!”

  He squats by my side and his smell overwhelms me, a sign at least that I haven’t died of mortification. “Listen, it is not the charcoal that draws the picture. It is you. It is your hand, which is attached to your body, and in that body is a beating heart, okay. You are not ready for this.” He takes the stick of charcoal out of my hand and throws it onto the floor. “Draw him without it. Use only your hand. See it, feel it, draw it. All one thing, not three things. Don’t take your eyes off of him. See, feel, draw. One verb, go now. Do not think. Above all else: Do not think so much. Picasso, he say, ‘If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.’ Pull out your brain, CJ, use only your eyes!”

  I’m embarrassed. I want an eject button. At least, mercifully, Oscar’s eyes are fixed to the opposite corner of the room. He hasn’t looked over at us once.

  Guillermo is back in his chair. “Do not worry about Oscore. Do not be self-conscious because of him,” he says. Is he telepathic? “Now draw like you mean it. Like it means something. Because it does, you understand this, CJ? It has to mean something. You hop a fence and climb up on my fire escape in the middle of the night. It means something to you!”

  He begins to sketch again next to me. I watch how ferociously he’s attacking the paper, the lines so bold and certain, how quickly he flips the page, like every ten seconds. We do thirty-second drawings at school. But he’s lightning.

  “Go,” he says. “Go!”

  And then I’m paddling through the break, watching a big wave swelling, coming toward me, knowing that in a moment it will sweep me up into something enormous and powerful. I would count down like I’m doing now for some reason:

  Three, two, one:

  I go. With no charcoal in my hand, I go.

  “Faster,” he says. “Faster.”

  I am flipping the pages like him every ten seconds, drawing absolutely nothing and not caring, feeling Oscar come alive in my hand.

  “Better,” he says.

  Then again:

  “Better.”

  See feel draw: one verb.

  “Good. That is it. You will see with your hands, I promise you. Now I contradict myself. Picasso he do too. He say pull out your brain, yes, he also say, ‘Painting is a blind man’s profession’ and ‘To draw you must close your eyes and sing.’ And Michelangelo, he say he sculpts with his brains, not his eyes. Yes. Everything is true at once. Life is contradiction. We take in every lesson. We find what works. Okay, now pick up the charcoal and draw.”

  After a few minutes, he takes the scarf from around his neck, wraps it around my eyes, and blinds me.

  “Understand?”

  I do.

  • • •

  Later, I’m in the jail cell room, fetching my portfolio, waiting for Guillermo, who needed to run an errand, when Oscar, once again buttoned and zipped, with camera at the ready, sticks his head in.

  He leans against the doorframe. Some guys are born to lean. He’s definitely one of them. James Dean was another. “Bravo,” he says.

  “Be serious,” I say, but in truth, I feel electrified, jangly, awake. I’ve never felt this way at CSA.

  “I’m quite serious.” He’s fiddling with the camera and his dark hair’s fallen into his face. I want to push it back.

  I zip up my portfolio to busy my hands. “Have we met before, Oscar?” I ask at long last. “I’m pretty sure we have. You look so familiar.”

  He lifts his eyes. “She says after she’s seen me naked.”

  “Oh God . . . No, I didn’t mean . . . You know what I mean . . .” Heat’s radiating off of every inch of me.

  “Whatever you say.” He’s amused. “But not a chance. Never forget a face, especially not one like yours—” I hear the click before I realize I’ve even been shot. It’s weird how he maneuvers the camera without even looking through the viewfinder. “Did you ever go back to the church after we met?”

  I shake my head. “No, why?”

  “I left something for you. A photo.” Did a flash of shyness cross his face? “With a note on the back.” Not breathing. “It’s gone. I went back to check. Someone else must’ve taken it. Probably for the best. Too Much Information, as you lot say.”

  “What kind of Information?” It’s amazing one can speak and be stone-cold passed out at the same time.

  He doesn’t answer, lifts the camera instead. “Can you tilt your head like you just did. Yes, that’s it.” He moves away from the wall, bends his knees, angles the camera. “Yes, perfect, God, so damn perfect.” What happened to me in church is happening again. When glaciers break up due to rising world temperatures, it’s called calving. I’m calving. “Your eyes are so ethereal, your whole face is. I stared at pictures of you for hours last night. You give me chills.”

  And you give me global warming!

  But there’s something else, something beyond chills and calving and global warming, something I felt from that first moment in church. This guy makes me feel like I’m actually here, unhidden, seen. And this is not just because of his camera. I do not know what this is because of.

  Plus, he’s different than the boys I know. He’s exciting. If I made a sculpture of him, I’d want it to look like an explosion. Like kapow. />
  I take a long deep breath, remembering what happened the last time I liked a guy.

  That done, WHAT KIND OF INFORMATION WAS IN THE NOTE AND WHAT PHOTO?

  “So can I take pictures of you sometime?” he asks.

  “You are taking pictures of me, Oscore!” I say it like Guillermo, packed with exasperation.

  He laughs. “Not here. Not like this. At this abandoned building I just discovered by the beach. At sunset. I have an idea.” He peeks around the side of the camera. “And not with your clothes on. Only fair.” His eyes are bright as the devil’s. “Say yes.”

  “No!” I cry. “Are you kidding? So creepy. Ax-murderer Avoidance Rule Number One: Don’t go to the abandoned building with the total stranger and take off your clothes under any circumstance. Jeez. Does that line usually work for you?”

  “Yes,” he says. “It always works.”

  I laugh, can’t help it. “You’re such bad news.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “I think I do. I think they should arrest you and lock you up as a community service.”

  “Yes, they tried that once.” I feel my mouth drop. He really has been in jail. He reads my shock, says, “It’s true. You’ve definitely fallen in with the wrong crowd.”

  Except I feel the opposite. I feel like Goldilocks. Everything is just right here as it is wrong at home.

  “What did they arrest you for?” I ask.

  “I’ll tell you if you say yes to my invitation.”

  “To be ax-murdered?”

  “To live a little dangerously.”

  I practically choke on his words. “Ha! Wrong girl,” I say.

  “Beg to differ.”

  “You have no idea.” Our rapport is so easy. Why is it so easy?

  Grandma answers, sing-songing in my head, “Because love is in the air, my blind little bat. Now get a strand of your hair into his pocket. Immediately.”

  As long as a man has a lock of your hair on his person,