The Chalk Artist

  “Technology,” said Chandra.

  “Interesting!” Look at us, she thought, as she scribbled “technology” on the board. Hey, Jeff, we’re springboarding from Shakespeare to technology. “Where else does power come from?”

  No one answered, but she tried to coax the discussion, cup her hands and blow upon the spark. “What about knowledge? Knowledge is power. Francis Bacon said that. What about language? And art? What about poetry?”

  Anton was drawing again. Girls were whispering in the back.

  “I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,” Nina said.

  Several kids looked up, startled by her sudden shift to Shakespeare’s language.

  “Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows…”

  The girls stopped talking. The three kids with heads down began to stir themselves.

  “Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, / With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine: / There sleeps Titania some time of the night, / Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight.”

  They were all staring. Even Anton stared. Jeff himself stopped typing and gazed at Nina with a mixture of admiration and alarm. She was holding her book open in her hands, but she wasn’t looking at it.

  Strange and still, the mood inside her room. She felt it happening—she had the kids’ attention. If only she could make it last. She wished she could enchant her students with the liquor of a magic flower. Cast a spell so that they would fall in love with poetry.

  “How do you know all that by heart?” Isaiah asked.

  “Well…” she began.

  What would she say if she were honest? I memorized almost the whole play in my father’s library. Your father has a library? her kids would say. I fell in love with Shakespeare when I was eleven. When you were eleven? Whoa! I was so lonely. No, she wouldn’t tell them that.

  “They barely know you,” Collin had said, and she felt a rush of pleasure, remembering his dark eyes. “They’re still watching you.”

  “I read the words over and over and over,” she told the class. “I kept repeating lines, just the way you learn a song.”

  “Yeah, but songs have music,” Sasha pointed out, “so that’s much easier.”

  Nina said, “Poetry has music too.”

  She lost some of them then. Once again, the girls started whispering, and Nina thought, as she did so many times a day, How do I lure them back? She opened her book. “Everybody start from And there the snake. Read aloud together.”

  “And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin,” the kids read together shyly, some mumbling, some faking it. “Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.”

  “Again.”

  “And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin,” they read in chorus. “Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.”

  “Again.”

  They glanced up, wondering if she was serious. “And there the snake…”

  She looked at her students murmuring together and imagined the conversation she couldn’t have with them.

  I grew up in an enormous house. What do you mean “enormous”? her kids would ask. Her father’s house had carved woodwork and marble floors, a polished staircase, rising and turning like the vortex of a storm. There was a glass conservatory and a library with a gallery. Awesome! her kids would shout. Field trip! Par-tay!

  She hadn’t always lived there. As a tiny girl, she’d lived with her grandparents on Evans Road in Brookline. Her grandmother had been pale, with powder in her creases. She set out crystal bowls filled with butterscotch candies. Her grandfather had deep, dark eyes, a raspy voice, a fearsome smile. When he walked, he dragged his feet, because they were so heavy for him. Her grandparents talked to her in Russian and read her Russian books. They beamed at Nina, spending all their warmth on her. Left to themselves, they sat for hours without speaking. They were a pair of armored lizards; they were stone.

  Slowly, Nina’s grandfather climbed the stairs, and slowly he descended. The stairs were carpeted dark green like moss, the walls papered with lilacs, the soaps in the bathroom carved like cabbage roses. Everything in her grandparents’ house looked like something else. The boot scraper took the shape of a hedgehog, the throw pillows were embroidered cats. Even Nina’s grandmother began to look like something else, the Blue Fairy in Nina’s book. She wore blue quilted slippers and a sky-blue robe. Her eyes grew paler, purer blue. When she left for the hospital, Viktor took Nina to live with him across the river. She was four years old.

  “Can I go home?” she would ask her father.

  “Later,” Viktor said, but she had sensed, even then, that he was powerful and he was mischievous. She saw her grandfather only a few times after that. She never saw her grandmother again.

  In her father’s house there were no candy dishes. Nina discovered a stone bird, instead, and a gold man sitting in a flower. A giant cartoon hung in the breakfast room. A naked lady lived in the library without arms or nose.

  There were other toys, and other women. In the library, her father kept two globes, a green and blue globe of the Earth, and a black globe of the sky. In the hall he kept a grandfather clock. Nina sat on the stairs and studied it, imagining her grandfather rising like the sun painted on the round clock face. She saw her grandmother in robe and slippers, creeping across the sky over days and weeks, growing and then disappearing, like the silver moon.

  Now she walked between her students’ desks and her class was chanting all around her. “And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin / Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.”

  “Stand up,” Nina said. The kids shuffled to their feet. Jeff stood too. “Read it one more time loudly.”

  The kids were almost shouting, “And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin…”

  “Read it one last time, softly.”

  “And there the snake…” her students whispered, rhythmically.

  “Good. Now close your books. Everybody close your books.”

  The kids closed their books like hymnals. “No, don’t sit down,” Nina said. “Say the lines with me.”

  Together they recited from memory, “And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin / Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.”

  “That’s it,” she said, even as the class applauded. A couple of kids bowed deeply. They were only joking, but even Jeff was smiling. Ha! Nina thought. She’d engaged every student for at least thirty seconds. Log that!

  Saturday night, while Kerry was at work, Diana lay in bed listening to her brother and his friends playing EverWhen. Their deep voices rumbled through the wall as they compared weapons, traded for gold arrows, debated their next move. Tunnel underground? Or fly?

  “Hey, Aidan.” Diana banged the wall above her head.

  Then her brother told Jack and Liam to keep it down, and the noise died away, at least for a little while.

  She had no idea how long she had been sleeping when she woke to voices in the hall. “It’s still early,” Liam was protesting.

  Jack said, “It’s the weekend!”

  “Gotta sleep,” Aidan insisted.

  His friends clattered down the stairs and barreled through the living room to find their boots. The front door slammed. The storm door snapped shut like a trap. Silence, and then a tapping from Aidan’s room. Diana sat up and listened. What was he doing? Texting. Playing with someone else, now that his friends were gone. You aren’t sleepy at all, she thought. You lied to them.

  He would rather be alone. He would rather play online with strangers than qwest with friends in the same room. He’d rather live in EverWhen than in this house.

  She knew her brother. He might lie to other people, but he couldn’t fool her. He was just two minutes older. When they were little they’d played every game together. Hide and seek, tag, and chase. They’d joined forces against big kids who wouldn’t let them onto the tire swing at Sennott Park. They had shared a bunk bed at their father’s place when he was still allowed to see them. If their dad tried to punish Aidan they would
drag that metal bed to barricade the door. They had always protected each other. The year before, when Kerry banned Liam from the house, Diana had lied for Aidan, vouching that his friend no longer came over. In middle school, when someone called Diana fat, Aidan would chase him.

  It was true, although her mother never used that word, even to describe other people. Kerry said “plump,” which sounded like pillows, or “heavy,” which sounded like uranium down at the bottom of the periodic table. Her mother always said, Stand up straight, you’re a beautiful girl. She said all this, but even Diana’s arms were fat. She hid behind her long black hair and her mother said, Don’t do that! Why do you do that? Kerry had read Reviving Ophelia and she was afraid Diana would end up starving or cutting herself, or dying, like the original Ophelia, who drowned herself with wildflowers in her hair.

  Why do you wear black clothes all the time? her mother asked in her sad, pleading voice. Because I’m in mourning, Diana said. Because I’m Wiccan. I’m practicing black magic. She never admitted the real reason, which was simply that she was trying to disappear. After all, people called her a whale—not to her face, but still. She felt guilty, because she was almost as big around as Brynna, who was six months pregnant. Diana had no excuse, because she had nobody inside her.

  She burrowed down in bed. Hibernated in a nest of blankets and limp pillows, along with her math homework and her Discovery Journal with Miss Lazare’s elaborate question. Thoreau writes: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” What does he mean by this? Why do you go into the woods?

  To this, Diana replied, We don’t go into the woods very much because my mom is afraid of ticks. Also we do not live near the woods, obviously.

  But that night she dreamed of trees. It was spring, and she was running through green leaves. Branches brushed Diana’s shoulders as she floated down the street. She was racing, flying to the Charles River, but she didn’t stop there. She took the dirt path along the water. She was warm and sweaty as she ran fast and faster. She ran past rowers with long oars, and joyriders in snarling motorboats. Running east, she overtook the sun. She ran with its heat at her back and flung her clothes onto the grass.

  She woke with a jolt, heart pounding as she fell to earth. Sunday morning. No oars, no river. No piano lessons next door. Priscilla played organ at church services on Sundays. This was as quiet as it ever got. Aidan sleeping. Their mother home from work, rustling The Boston Globe.

  In plaid flannel pajama bottoms and a giant T-shirt, Diana padded down to the kitchen, where she ate cereal and chocolate milk and two peanut butter cookies. And then a banana, which was healthy.

  Her mother said, “Do you think you should have cookies for breakfast?”

  Diana said, “It’s more like brunch.”

  The kitchen was chilly because the windows were old and cost a fortune to replace. Kerry had already bought a new boiler and rebuilt the double porch and patched the roof. Even after the repairs, there were squirrels up in the attic. Diana’s mother said that couldn’t be, but Priscilla heard them with her keen musician’s ears. She insisted, “I hear them trapped inside,” and Diana pictured rodents crazed with hunger, eating their own children.

  She wished Priscilla would move out. Then they’d have the double house all to themselves. Two living rooms, and two kitchens. Six bedrooms on the second floor! All that space, and no more sonatinas and minuets and little fugues. It was a never-ending guilt trip, sharing a two-family with your old piano teacher.

  Diana was not musical, but everyone had been heartbroken when Aidan quit in seventh grade. Priscilla still looked at him wistfully. She would catch him on the porch and say, “I wish that you’d start up again.” If Diana was around she’d add, “You too!”

  At which point Diana would tell Priscilla, “I heard the squirrels last night.”

  “Could you start the laundry?” Kerry asked now.

  “Could I have some money?” Diana replied.

  “How much?”

  “A hundred twenty dollars.”

  “Why? What do you need that for?”

  Diana went to the front door and picked up her old silver Nikes.

  “Didn’t we just buy you shoes?”

  “Look.” The uppers were splayed open, the rubber heels warped, the laces frayed and broken.

  “What did you do to them?” Kerry gazed at Diana’s feet, afraid that they were widening with the rest of her. “Let’s go shopping this afternoon.”

  “Maybe.” Diana didn’t want to hurt her mother’s feelings and say she’d already made plans.

  When her mother went upstairs to sleep, Diana dragged her laundry bag along with her mother’s down to the basement. Two heavy sacks thumping down the stairs. She didn’t collect Aidan’s. He didn’t need clothes, since he lived in EverWhen.

  She was afraid of the dank smell and creepy toys. A sophomore at school had been raped in her own basement. A whole gang of boys—guys the girl knew—got in and forced her down. Fast as she could, Diana loaded the washing machine and ran upstairs. Breathing hard, she shut the door behind her.

  A heavy step in the living room. She whirled around and saw Brynna. “How did you get in here?”

  “I’m doing well,” said Brynna. “How are you?”

  “Seriously, wasn’t the door locked?”

  “No.” Brynna squeezed herself into a kitchen chair. Pregnancy was good for her skin. Her forehead had cleared up completely. Her green eyes were beautiful to begin with, and she wore her wavy brown hair down over her shoulders, so she looked huge, but gorgeous too.

  “I was having brunch,” Diana said. “Care to join me?”

  “No,” Brynna said. “I’m eating right.”

  “Good for you.”

  Brynna sat on Diana’s bed while she got dressed. Diana pulled an all-black sweater over her head, and when she emerged, Brynna was holding her journal.

  “Hey, give that back.”

  Brynna leafed through Diana’s black composition notebook. One single word to describe myself would be conspicuous. People in the halls are always trying to get around me. If I actually look back at them that’s considered rude, like how dare you block my view? Last year I…

  “I said give it back.” Diana snatched the book from Brynna’s hands.

  “Okay!” Brynna said. “Sorry! It’s not like I was spying on you!”

  —

  They took the bus through the slush to the CambridgeSide Galleria on the river at the edge of town. The Galleria would give anyone a headache, but it had a lot of stores.

  “What are you going to name her?” Diana asked, as they braved the shiny walkways, all glitter and glass and sleigh bells ringing.

  “I like ‘Tasha,’ ” Brynna said.

  “Tasha? Is that a name?”

  “Yes, it’s a name.”

  “Maybe for a cat.” Diana paused in front of Godiva to look at the truffles in the window. “Godiva is a good name.”

  “What? My child is not a candy company!”

  “Does Anton get a vote?”

  Anton was the baby’s father, and Brynna didn’t even answer that.

  They fingered dresses at Motherhood Maternity, but they were so ridiculously expensive that Brynna didn’t try on a single one. At Sears, they walked past the baby gear in the infant and toddler department. There were cribs and baby swings and play centers and mobiles with themes like rainbow pandas, or tropical islands. Everything was puffy, soft, and new. Brynna was curious, and at the same time afraid to look.

  “Do you want to get something?” Diana asked.

  “No!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because!”

  “Okay, let’s go home.”

  “Shoes,” Brynna reminded her.

  “Later.”

  “Just get it over with.” Brynna steered her toward Lady Foot
Locker.

  “Don’t make me go in there.”

  “Come on. You said you wanted shoes.” It was ironic that Brynna was the pregnant one, because she was so responsible. Maybe it wasn’t ironic. Brynna was already such a mom.

  Brynna scanned the walls of shoes arrayed for walking, running, cross-training. Diana sat on the polished blond-wood bench. “What about these?” Brynna held up a pair of Sauconys.

  “They have green on them,” Diana said.

  “One little stripe!”

  “I don’t wear green.”

  “How about these?” Brynna held up a pair of silver Nikes.

  Diana shook her head.

  “These are the same shoes you have on,” Brynna said. “Look. They’re exactly the same, except they’re not falling apart.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “You’re not even going to buy an exact replica of the shoes you have?”

  Diana looked down at her feet. “I hate it here. Let’s go.”

  She was almost out the door when a sales associate in a referee uniform flagged her down, asking to help. He was dark black, African, and the name on his badge was Joseph. He had an accent and a nervous look. It was probably his second day. He wanted to know what kind of shoe Diana was looking for and what sport she played.

  “She doesn’t play sports,” Brynna said.

  Joseph didn’t give up. “A shoe for exercise?”

  “She doesn’t—”

  “I do exercise,” Diana said.

  Incredulous, Brynna asked, “Since when?”

  The question upset Diana. “I could exercise. I might.”

  Brynna snorted.

  “Cross-trainers?” Joseph suggested.

  “Something black. Something like this.” She pointed to a black shoe on the wall.

  “This one is for running,” Joseph said.

  —

  That night in her room, Diana opened the cardboard box from Lady Foot Locker and took out a pair of pure black running shoes. Black uppers, black heels, black soles, black laces.