by Jen Bryant
and she dribbled around those Pennfield girls so fast,
they looked like they were standing still.
You could see the other team getting frustrated ’cause
nothing they did could stop her—
she shot from way out, or she might drive right into them,
make some impossible layup
and draw the foul. Amazing.
By the end of the game, she had twenty-four points
and I lost count of how many
steals and assists.
I waited outside the locker room,
where I could hear them whooping and hollering
’cause Pennfield is our rival
and we hadn’t beaten them in girls’ basketball
in seven years. Tiffany came out of there first,
but it didn’t look like she’d showered.
I said: “Hey, I can wait—you don’t have to rush
just to get me home.”
She said: “I’ve got club lacrosse practice tonight. I’ll get
sweaty there anyway.”
I have no idea where she gets her energy. She must have
twice as much as most people…
which is a good thing, I guess, ’cause most days
she’s just getting home
when I’ve already done my assignments, had dinner,
and crawled into bed.
Her father drove us through McDonald’s across from school.
I got a Big Mac and fries, and Tiffany got
a milk shake and Chicken McNuggets, and we crammed
them down in ten minutes.
I helped her do a little math and study for French,
but when we pulled up to the entrance of the indoor
sports complex, she still had twenty problems left
and she knew only two out of thirty French verbs.
It was already 7:30.
I could tell by the slow way she was moving
that Tiffany would rather go home. But she grabbed
her shoes from the back, kissed her dad,
and tapped me on the head with her stick.
“Bye, G. See ya on the bus.”
Seeing her then made me think of Ella and how, sometimes,
she walks slow and pulls back on the rope
when Mr. Fitz takes her from the field
and into the riding ring for training.
If Ella were a person
and not a horse,
she would understand Tiffany perfectly.
16.
Remember I told you about that time last year
when Tiffany broke her wrist and got an infection
and had to stay in the hospital?
Well, Momma, by the end of that week she was getting
pretty bored and pretty fidgety.
Her jock friends had stopped visiting,
we’d watched all the game shows on TV, and we’d played
way too many hands of War. So, to keep her mind busy,
I told her the little bit I know about you
and your life in Savannah.
I started with the part about your being
sick a lot when you were young,
how twice you had to stay in the hospital in Atlanta
for some problem with your lungs,
and you took this special medicine most of your life
because of it. I told her that’s how you
started drawing—
all those days when you didn’t
feel so good and you stayed home in bed,
how Maggie, your mother’s maid, dreamed up stories
of tiny people and talking animals
and secret kingdoms under the sea,
and you would sketch the characters and the scenes,
and she’d put them up all around your room
and you’d hold an art show for your dad
when he came home (Tiffany liked that part a lot).
When the nurse came around with a cart
of newspapers and magazines, the only one that seemed
halfway interesting was a back issue of
Modern Bride. We took it and looked through it
together—me flipping the pages slowly and Tiffany’s
eyes opening wide at all the exotic places you can go
after you say “I do.”
“My mom and dad got married
in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York,” she told me.
“They spent their honeymoon skiing the Alps….
If I ever get married,
I’m going someplace warm, like Hawaii.
We’ll rent a yacht and go deep-sea fishing, and then
we’ll rent a jeep like you see in those commercials
and drive all around the islands with a guide….
So…where do you want to go on your honeymoon?”
I needed a minute to think—it’s not a subject I’m used to.
“I’ve never stayed in a nice hotel before,” I replied.
“So pretty much anywhere will be fine.”
Tiffany got that pouty look, so I made up something quick.
“But I’d like to go to New York City,” I said,
“and visit the museums and the stores and take the
subway to Brooklyn and Queens and go
to see a Broadway show.”
She liked that answer better. Then she asked:
“Where were your parents married,
and how did they meet?”
Questions sometimes run off her tongue like water off a cliff,
but she knows I don’t always answer
real personal stuff. Maybe it was because I started the subject
in the first place.
Or maybe I just felt sorry for her
with her fracture, and how her other “friends” deserted her.
Whatever it was, I gave in:
“My momma had an older brother who got
killed in a car accident. After that,
she wasn’t allowed to go anywhere alone.
Her parents kept her at home
and hardly let her out. I guess they were scared of losing her, too.
It drove Momma crazy, though.
She ran away a couple of times, but she never got too far.
She always came back, usually tired and sick,
saying she was sorry.”
Tiffany sat up then a little straighter in her bed.
“Go on….”
“It was her uncle Doug who finally convinced them
that Momma should go to SCAD—
the Savannah College of Art and Design—
so she could earn a degree and meet new people,
and still be close by.”
Tiffany leaned forward and scratched under her cast. She really
liked your story, and for some reason
it felt good to tell it. “So did she go?”
Momma, I hope you don’t mind…. I told her
the rest: how you and Daddy met, how you kept him
a secret for a long time, and when you finally
told them you wanted to marry, they called him
a “poor orphan,”
a “good-for-nothing handyman,”
a “drifter.”
They said if you went through with it, then you’d no longer
be their daughter.
Tiffany was really listening now. She
whistled through her teeth. “So they ran off to
Pennsylvania, and had you, and lived in a trailer
until she…”
And that’s what I like about Tiffany—
she may be pretty careless and even selfish
sometimes, but she knew she shouldn’t finish
that sentence.
17.
I’ve decided when I’m older and I have enough
money saved up, I’m going to go
and see where you were born,
where you gre
w up,
and where you went to school.
Tiffany and I had library time
together this afternoon, and we looked up
all the places in the 900s section
that we wanted to visit. She looked at books
on the Hawaiian Islands and Africa and I looked at ones
on New Mexico (to see Georgia O’Keeffe’s house),
California (no special reason, I just want to see the Pacific Ocean),
and Georgia. There was one called Unique Georgia
(Tiffany said that could be the title of my autobiography)
that had a lot of Savannah pictures, and another called
Hidden Georgia with maps of trips you could take
into the countryside.
After school I walked Blake through the fields
and watched this red-tailed hawk
circling and riding the March wind. Then, all of a sudden,
he folded his wings and dove straight down—
I was sure he’d hit the ground—
but at the very end, he swooped up, stretched out his claws,
and grabbed this little sparrow.
It was awful.
That hawk was so deadly, he knew
exactly when to dive
and what to do.
Now I’m sitting on my bed, writing, thinking how
you would understand that poor sparrow. That hawk—
like your one-week pneumonia—
must have come out of nowhere,
and before you could yell for help or do anything at all about it,
it wrapped its claws around you
and carried you off.
18.
I thought I knew what a portrait was, but I guess
I don’t. Jamie Wyeth (that’s the youngest one, Andrew’s son)
painted a portrait of his wife, Phyllis,
and all that’s in the picture
is a straight-backed chair, some kind of wild, red-berried plant,
and a broad-brimmed hat.
This afternoon, at the museum, I stood and looked at it
for fifteen minutes, wondering why someone would do that.
Then I thought maybe Jamie wanted you to
imagine what his wife was like,
and those were his hints. So, I pictured her—
thin and blond and a bit serious (the chair), but also a little
wild inside (the red-berried plant),
but kind of elegant, too (the hat).
It was a neat idea, painting someone without the person
being there.
Jamie’s regular portraits are real good, too.
He painted Draft Age in 1965, but I swear the guy who
posed for it
looks just like Michael Stitt.
He has Michael’s attitude, too—chin up, head tilted to one side—
like he’s sizing you up behind those dark lenses.
He’d fit right in with those guys
who hang out in the parking lot after school,
smoking cigarettes and acting cool.
There was another one of a man
with a pumpkin on his head (weird, but also interesting),
and the little sign said: “Pumpkin Head, Self-Portrait.”
It’s good to know that even
serious artists aren’t completely humorless.
Jamie’s portrait Jeremy reminded me a little of
Daddy. He had thick
blond hair and full lips—very handsome—
but in a quiet, pouty sort of way.
Jamie’s people are good, but his animals are
even better. He does ducks, ravens, chickens, crows,
woolly sheep, and Black Angus cows.
He has a special fondness, though, for pigs.
He’s painted them doing all sorts of things
that people do: pigs bathing and sleeping, pigs making friends
and staring out of windows, and even one trotting
beside a train. For his most famous pig painting,
he had a live model named Den-Den
who was so big, her portrait takes up one whole wall.
Imagine, Momma—
a life-size pink pig with fourteen teats and four small split
feet and fuzzy ears as large as visors.
I overheard a guide telling her tour group all about it:
“Jamie Wyeth fed Den-Den molasses and oats
to keep her still, and he played classical music
to keep her calm.”
I never thought of pigs as particularly pretty, but
Den-Den is one beautiful hog. When you walk into that room,
you just have to look at her.
I want to paint like that someday.
In the meantime, I’m trying
to learn all I can from these Wyeth guys—
I am trying not to compare my plain little pencil sketches
or my charcoal drawings to their
gorgeous framed paintings (but it’s hard).
19.
When we first moved here from the trailer park,
our landlord, Mr. Kesey, used to invite me over after work
to sit on the porch (he has one of those big wicker swings).
Sometimes I’d bring him my school papers and my
drawings. He would look at them and ask me questions
about my teacher or the kids in my class.
He made me feel special and good, like I imagine
a grandfather would,
and once in a while I’d pretend
he was my grandfather.
On warm days we sat in that swing,
watching the horse graze
and sipping the lemonade he poured for us
into plastic cups.
According to Mr. Fitz, Mr. Kesey was married once,
a long time ago, but then he got divorced
and has lived alone ever since. I think he’d have made
a good father, but it doesn’t seem like he’ll ever
be one. Mr. Kesey runs a trucking business (the farm was
his father’s—he keeps it as an investment, Daddy says),
and in the last few years he’s gotten so busy
we hardly see him.
Yesterday on the shuttle bus, the driver was
sipping from a plastic cup, and I got to remembering
how Mr. Kesey was always nice to me, and how
he used to ask to see my drawings
and my schoolwork—and I wondered
if maybe he might be
anonymous.
20.
I tried to sketch Ella in her stall.
But every time she saw me, she came over to
nuzzle my pockets for treats. I spent all today
trying to find a way to keep her still.
I figure if Jamie Wyeth can call his painting Portrait of Pig,
then I can call my drawing
Portrait of Horse.
But you can’t keep feeding a horse like you can
a pig. Horses don’t know when to stop.
If they eat too much, their intestines get all twisted up
and they can die.
I tried music. We don’t own any classical stuff,
so I played some of Daddy’s old Springsteen tapes,
but they just made Ella nervous.
Momma, you know I can be really patient when I want to be…
but that darn horse almost out-stubborned me.
By four o’clock, I’d pretty much given up.
That’s when Daddy sent me to the convenience store for more
milk and bread, and at the checkout they had
a stack of those disposable cameras—
twenty-four exposures for only $7.99.
Mr. Fitz had just paid me for last week’s grooming,
so I bought one.
Back home, I dropped off the food and ran to the barn, where I
&nb
sp; took twenty-four photos of
Ella standing,
Ella chewing,
Ella rubbing her neck,
Ella pawing,
Ella doing her laughing trick,
and I’m hoping a few will come out
good enough to sketch from.
I’ve noticed—
from reading those little white signs at the museum—
that a big part of making art
comes from being patient. When a Wyeth decides
he really wants to paint something,
he paints it, no matter what.
For example…when Andrew was young, he sketched nothing
but skeletons for months, to teach himself anatomy.
And once, he sketched his neighbor’s house
in the midnight moonlight, then ran
back to his studio to make a painting from it (he finished
at four in the morning). Jamie sometimes paints
from inside a cardboard box so he doesn’t get distracted,
and once he spent six months in a New York morgue
studying dead bodies
(personally, I’d prefer the skeleton method).
So I didn’t give up either. I think I can make
a pretty decent drawing of Ella,
once those photos come back. I might not have a lot of talent,
but waiting is something I do
naturally.
21.
Every August, Daddy fills out these long blue forms
so I can get vouchers
for free food at school. Even so, I usually pack my own.
This morning, though, I was late. I grabbed one of the slips
from the cupboard and sprinted to catch the bus.
At lunch, I stood in line with the other
three hundred kids who buy, including Amanda Ray.
She rides my bus and lives five houses down from Tiffany,
and is just about the snobbiest (and therefore most popular)
