Before I can paint Susanna,
dual-point perspective’s next.
My father’s principal concern
for my next lesson, though,
is that I convince Tino
to bring him in
on the commission
at the palace.
Yet again
my work, my growth
is secondary to
my father’s need.
23.
I do not paint in words.
Flattery, persuasion
are not colors on my palette.
Still it’s not preposterous,
what I must ask.
There’s no way
he can do it all himself—
assistants are expected.
Yet Tino laughs as though
I’m joking until he sees my face.
Haven’t we agreed on the quality
of Orazio’s work?
He waves at a nearby canvas,
the answer implied
in Father’s uninspired strokes,
no different from the rest.
But Father will not continue
my lessons with Signor Tassi
if there is no hope
for his own advancement.
I’ve got a secret for you.
I’m not sure
what makes me say it
but Tino whirls around,
eyes dancing.
Is that so?
I take a step back,
but the words have flown.
Papa’s name would
be on the contract.
I look him in the eye;
I must be clear.
But I would do the work.
The silence stretches
out between us.
Tino’s mind connects
the pieces. It’s not news,
surely—
what’s new is
I’ve given it voice.
Well.
That sheds
an entirely
different light
on the matter.
24.
New light
floods
the shadowy
attic of my mind.
Those ideas
shoved in storage
while I do my father’s bidding
are dragged out,
considered
with budding hope
that I might have
not only the skill
but also an eager audience
if I should take the leap.
I will show him
what a daughter can do.
In my mind,
the woman in the bath
is no exalted doll.
She is all light and terror,
the Susanna I finally summon
from stories,
from first fire,
and finally,
from paint mixed with
my own sweat.
In my mind,
so close to the canvas,
she’s not weighed down
by any artist’s shortcomings.
My actual labor of the day
is trying to breathe life
into my father’s version.
He’s seen my sketches
all around and now
he’s suddenly inspired
to tell her tale.
It doesn’t matter.
He never listened
to my mother’s stories, never bothered
to notice the fear of women.
He’ll tell Susanna
just like all the others.
I can cover the flaws
in his talent,
but can do nothing
for the flaws
in his perception.
He shares prestigious company.
The way the masters paint her,
the men are monstrous,
creeping, loathsome beasts,
obvious villains.
Yet Susanna wears
a smile that says
she welcomes their attentions.
My mother knew
this wasn’t right.
She knew the men
who paint Susanna
could not comprehend
a woman’s feelings in that moment.
She knew I’d need Susanna
when I found myself
a woman in a world of men.
Girl as prey.
25.
Now that Tino’s
given me the tools I need,
I’ll paint my own Susanna.
I’ll show these men
what I am made of, what
they’ve been missing.
As a child, I didn’t understand
perspective.
But now I know that lines
do not exist in nature.
The line is only perceived,
a trick of the eye.
A line is nothing more
than the place where two areas
of color come together.
They crash into each other.
Those places where lines are perceived,
those are the areas of tension
and excitement. Two things colliding
are always the most interesting
things to watch.
Watched
Once upon a time, Susanna sank beneath the water, then rose renewed, prepared to play her role another day.
Not this time. This time Susanna pauses under the surface with the sudden knowledge eyes are watching. And not fretting maidservants. This is different.
(You’ve brushed up against this feeling, love. And as you grow you’ll come to know it like the curve of your own breast. I wish it weren’t so. I cannot change it; I can only arm you with knowledge.)
Susanna knows immediately she is being watched by eyes that have no place in her private garden. Her husband has not returned home from his travels. A gardener has not mistaken his schedule and stumbled through the gate.
She knows before she sees them who they are.
Not by name, of course. She is no prophetess, no Delphic sybil. She could never guess that two trusted elders of her community lurk behind the wall meant to keep her safe. Though she is young, Susanna is a married woman, pure and virtuous. There is no reason she should expect a man who is not her husband.
And yet she does. (Trust your instincts.)
She feels the weight of their gaze, the expectation, and in a split second she must decide: remain concealed beneath the water, knowing they’ll still have access to her blurred form, or lunge for the robe hanging just out of reach, exposing herself as she opts for modesty.
(What would you do, love?)
I don’t want to spoil the story, darling girl. But I must say this: Susanna is not helpless. What’s more, she is nobody’s creature.
When still they say nothing, Susanna speaks. Susanna, who has been taught over and over again that a woman must not speak unless spoken to, especially not to men of this stature.
“My husband is not at home,” she says. Perhaps a foolish beginning, but who can blame her in a moment such as that? With time to formulate a careful statement, she might have said, “If you’ve come to see my husband, as you surely must have, since you can have no possible business with me, he is
traveling. I’ll let him know you stopped by.”
But that is not what she said. She only confirmed what the men already knew. Her husband is not at home.
The taller one smiles. He is a widower Rebecca has her sights on, and Susanna wonders for a fleeting moment whether this will change her sister’s designs at all.
Susanna risks a glance toward the windows. For Rebecca, for anyone. The windows didn’t seem far away when she wanted to be left alone, but now the distance is endless. Are her ladies watching? They’re always watching. Why don’t they come out? Of all the times to respect Susanna’s wishes.
Still the men say nothing. Susanna does not know what she would have them say, but their silence unnerves her even further.
“Is there something I can do for you, elders?”
She is only playing a role: hospitable woman. But when they finally speak, it is clear they have something very different in mind.
“Yes.”
This man is like Joaquim’s brother. He gave a toast at Susanna’s wedding. They have shared meals, grieved loved ones.
He has a wife.
“You are expecting a child any day, aren’t you, sir?” Susanna stutters, willing the robe to cover more of her skin. “Is Moriah feeling well?”
His clipped reply: “My wife is not your concern.”
Again, Susanna has misspoken. But one is never taught how to carry on a conversation while two men stare at the wet robe plastering one’s naked breasts. Whatever this is, it has to end.
“I will tell my husband you came by—”
“I don’t think you will.”
Susanna crosses her arms across her softest parts, more to contain her wildly racing pulse than to shield her form. Her body, they have seen. They may not have her heart.
The widower speaks again. “Take off your robe.” It comes out almost like a gentle suggestion. It’s not.
His mother died last spring.
He watches, careless, but something tells Susanna if she should not comply, he would be the one to rip her robe to shreds.
She opens her mouth to scream, but no sound comes out.
“They say you are a woman of great virtue. Such a woman would not refuse the orders of two respected elders.”
Perhaps no sound comes out because there’s no one to hear. Joaquim is many days away. Susanna knows her maidservants feel no real loyalty. If they should hear her cry, see her compromised position, there’s every chance they’d spread the word throughout the village how the virtuous Susanna spends her time when Joaquim is away.
Such accusations would mean death.
A stone wall separates Susanna from the intruders, but they could leap it in a second. Would they pursue her if she ran for the house? What then?
Perhaps it’s not so much, what they ask. Only a glimpse, a second, a slice of skin. It would be over quickly. No one would have to know.
“The way your husband tells it, you are nothing if not subservient.”
Susanna’s stomach roils. Is it possible Joaquim discussed her in this way? Is that how all men talk?
But no. She knows her husband. She knows that just because many men use women like chattel, it does not mean her heart should grow hard.
She is resolved then. She will not do what they’re asking. There will be consequences, she knows. But there would be consequences to compliance, too. And anyhow, who is to say they would stop once they’d had their glimpse?
“You are not my husband.”
This time, Susanna has said exactly what she meant to say. But there are consequences.
The two men are over the wall in the time it takes the sun to slip behind the clouds.
“Today I am your husband. Today I tell you to lower your robe, and if you deny me, the world will hear how the faithless wife of Joaquim cavorted in her garden with a man who was not her husband.”
Susanna stands frozen. If she moves a hair to either side, she’ll press up against one or the other.
“Would you really rather risk being stoned than lower your robe?” the other man says.
Susanna could lower her robe to these monsters who believe they can take whatever they want simply because they have the power. (I know I said they weren’t monsters. They are. You just can’t tell at a glance. You never can.) But if she does what they ask, she will be dead tomorrow either way.
“Get out of my garden.”
The shorter man, whose wife may be laboring to birth a child this very moment, lunges forward, clutches at Susanna’s robe, and pulls.
There’s more than one kind of strength. You know this already, love. If Susanna had to rely on her body, she would lose this battle. But Susanna pulls back with the strength of her heart, her mind, her force of will.
“Leave her,” says the widower. “There will be more satisfaction in watching her die.”
26.
My favorite palette knife
is gone.
It should be here,
on the far right edge
of the table where I keep
my brushes,
my paints.
That’s where I left it.
And yet, somehow,
it’s nowhere to be found.
I suppose it isn’t fair
to fault my father,
though he’s the one
who used it, moved it,
claimed it as his own
because of course he did.
That’s just the way of things.
I beg and fight and scrape
for scraps while he just has to glance
upon a thing to make it
his.
27.
Father’s gaze
lays claim
to palette knife and easel,
stretcher bars, apprentice.
They all belong to him.
And now as his eyes
burn into the back
of my head,
he expects me to jump,
do his bidding
without a word from him.
We both know
But I can play
his power games.
I sit and paint in shadows
while he waits.
Finally,
Your place, Artemisia!
I stand,
cross the room
to the wrong side of the easel,
and meet his gaze
as I reach for the laces
of my bodice.
He shakes his head,
disgusted.
It’s a Judith.
A new commission.
I only need a bit of leg.
28.
He calls me an advantage,
a thing the other painters
do not
possess.
That’s true—
but I am not a thing.
Or a possession.
I hold this knowledge
in my heart
as I lift my skirt,
try to feel relief.
No nubile nude is Judith—
more a warrior
in my mother’s telling.
(No one’s asked me to paint a Judith.
But Judith wouldn’t wait
to be asked. My mind sparks
with possibility.)
My father’s version
of this Hebrew widow warrior
will be more kitten than lioness.
She’ll have her skirts hiked up
as she takes (dainty) action.
It’s just my calf.
He sees it every day
when I’m at work.
The difference is that now
he stares
analyzes
uses my body.
He does not like
for me to speak
when he is working
but:
Signor Tassi said
he will consider us
for the Quirinal.
Father’s head jerks up.
I lose my grip;
my skirts slide down.
Us?
I told him I help out . . .
I’m sure you did.
It seems I need you
to disrobe completely.
Take Action
Listen, love.
There’s a story I’ve been waiting to tell you, because I haven’t wanted you to bear its weight just yet. There are many things I hope you’ll never have to bear. But I know otherwise.
And this baby will not wait. If this birth should be my last . . .
So hush and listen. This is the story of Judith, who paces, half-dressed, consumed with outrage. You’ll feel this outrage too one day. Perhaps you already have. It won’t be for the same reasons. But you will rage, and be told you are too small, too weak, too feebleminded to be of use. You are not. Judith is not.
Her servant, always useful, sits and mends a tear in her lady’s shawl. Judith pretends not to hear the servant’s muttering about how a young woman of Judith’s station oughtn’t rip her things like a child at play.
But childhood’s murky when a girl is married off upon arrival of first blood. It’s only when her lady rails like this, impassioned by injustice, not yet hardened to the world, that the servant is reminded how few years Judith has trod upon the earth.
“A few men speak for all, sentencing an entire village to death! I only know because I overheard. Everyone else, though? They sleep on, confident their leaders will protect them!”
And how else would Judith learn important news, unless she overhears? For this young woman drifts within a netherworld, without a man to anchor her. She ought to have returned to her family of origin upon the death of her husband and taken shelter under cover of her father’s wing.
But even if the Assyrian army were not blocking all roads to Bethulia and out, Judith would be loath to throw herself upon the mercy of the father she challenged by marrying for love.
What’s more, that love will bind her here to where she built a home with Malachi (or started to). She’ll only leave if dragged away, and even then, she would not go quietly.
When Malachi left to investigate how close the Assyrians had come to Bethulia, Judith had no doubt Malachi would return.