Mine are no longer white.
54.
I’m staring at my hands, still,
hours later,
maybe days.
The planet’s stopped
or whirls around too fast
to grab on to a branch,
a hand, an anchor
that will keep me
tethered to this world.
And then:
There’s a choice to be made.
Judith stands beside me.
not an
image on my canvas
voice in my head
story of my mother’s
but so real she’s cradling
my bloody hand in hers.
Right now, in this instant
you have to make a choice.
I open my mouth to speak—
the first words I’ve uttered
since I screamed, Let me go!
(I think I screamed.
I’m almost sure
I tried to fight.
Those minutes pierce my brain
with brutal clarity
while also blurring
at the edges.)
This was supposed to be
the beginning.
It still is.
Susanna.
She’s pristine as ever,
Judith’s opposite
but just as real.
She extends a hand
but I don’t want to stain
her lovely robes
perfect skin
untarnished soul.
She did not let them touch her.
I cannot meet Susanna’s eye
or Judith’s.
Instead my gaze falls
on streaks of red
everywhere I look.
My dress.
Not just your dress.
Susanna sits next to me
on the floor,
holds out her hand again.
When did I sit?
Easels loom over me,
monsters, cages.
Easels where I’ve passed my life—
for what?
Is this all I get?
Susanna says nothing.
Just places her hand
on mine.
All my work.
All my talent . . .
Judith’s voice
is a sword
at my throat.
Right now?
This is all you get.
I wrench my hands away
—hands tell whole stories of their own—
and stumble to my feet.
Pain knifes through me
but it’s barely a drop
in the deluge of horror.
I have to get out.
I can’t be here now.
I can still feel him—
Judith stands before the window,
blocks my flight.
You’ll always feel him.
There’s nowhere to go.
If that’s true,
if there’s nowhere to go,
there’s nothing left but to feel the wave,
to let it wash over me,
drown me,
drag me under,
fill my lungs.
Come to us.
Come to us.
55.
i’ve got a secret for you
shut out the rest
echoes of the tales
my mother used to tell
her force of will
the missing color
if there are impurities
the painting will be ruined
but this is now not then
what else matters
i’m only back where i started
two things colliding
vanishing points
no idea
how much blood there would be
it means they like you
hands covered with paint
but i would know
echoes of the tales
my mother used to tell
if i burn my hands
i’ll tell you another secret
right this very moment
i can play the part
it would be over quickly.
if i wait it out
i might survive
just pigment on canvas
(portrait of
a little girl)
a sudden knowledge
like the point
on the horizon
once they’ve gotten
what they asked for
her force of will
the missing color
but this isn’t about strength
it no longer matters
nothing that can be
described with words
just an image i can’t
righteous
impurities
blood, water, paint
the line is only perceived
a trick of the eye
potentially world-altering
but then
you never see the beast
until he is upon you
echoes of the tales
my mother used to tell
her force of will
the missing color
PART IV
Sinful
Not all stories have happy endings. I cannot promise this one will either. But I am certain you will be glad you stayed with Susanna to the end. She deserves that much—a witness, one who says I see you, hear you, I’m better for knowing your story.
Right now, it is Rebecca’s story too. She shrieks, hysterical, undone. Susanna’s sister has lost all thought for decency. (And decency, my love, is sometimes better shed.) Her petty jealousies have fallen away in the face of such injustice. Her beautiful younger sister, purity itself, stands bound, surrounded, streaked with dirt. Rebecca is, herself, tearstained, aflame with fury. She tears at her hair as the village looks on. She’s never cared less what people thought of her.
Any moment stones will fly.
This is no metaphor. On the word of those two elders at the wall, Susanna is set to be stoned as a faithless wife. If Joaquim were here, he might believe her, stand for her. But without him, it is only the word of a woman against the word of two men.
Rebecca shrieks at her sister to speak. She shrieks at the crowd to show compassion, to listen. Her sister is no sinner! They know this!
But when Susanna finally speaks, her words are not what Rebecca would have her say.
“Would you like a list of my sins before you hurl those rocks at my head?”
Rebecca cannot understand why her sister would give the crowd further ammunition. Why she would ever concede a single fault. A woman accused has no room for fault.
“She is righteous!” Rebecca cries to the crowd. “She is raving and terrified, but she is righteous!”
“I am a sinner.” Susanna’s voice is steady, carrying throughout the crowd, amplified by the energy of their judgment. “I am prideful. I wear my righteousness like a shield. I feign ignorance of beggars in the street. I push away my own loving sister. I lie—but not about this.
“And now? Now I harbor hatred. Now I long to grab a rock of my own and hurl it at those who would unjustly accuse me when they are the sinners and I did nothing more than attempt to bathe in my private garden.
“These are my sins.”
Except there is one more: Susanna is a woman.
56.
Brush in hand,
I do not move.
I used to know
what it was for
but now I can’t
connect this thing
to any purpose.
57.
Wakefulness slices
through my sleep
like a shaft of light
from Caravaggio’s own brush.
I’m seized with the need
to rid my dress of the stain
it still bears.
I stumble from bed
without a care for who might hear;
I know now no one will come.
I drag behind me what I wore
that day, which Tuzia washed
and returned, rust-brown streaks and all.
I do not own a single garment
unblemished by my craft.
What’s the difference, she must think.
It’s oil and water
and all the impurities
settle at the
bottom.
I could discard it, burn it.
But I will not allow him
one more thing of mine.
As small as it might seem
a worthless dress
in this moment
nothing has ever mattered more.
If Tuzia cannot remove the stain
if my father cannot keep monsters from my home
if my brothers will not come when I scream
then I will do it for
my self.
I shove the stained cloth against
the ridges of the washboard
with so much force
my hand
will be sore tomorrow.
It doesn’t matter;
it’s not like I can paint.
What good are hands?
Despite the blooming ache in my fingers
the familiarity of the task
soothes the ragged edge inside.
I kneel here every month.
Tuzia does my washing,
except for when I bleed.
(You’d think she never bled
the way she turns her nose up,
acts as though I’ve soiled myself.)
If she were to rouse herself from sleep
and see me now
she’d just assume
I fight against
the stain of womanhood.
But—oh God—
oh Holy Mother—
I have not bled
in many weeks.
I choke on a sob of realization.
There now,
you can’t be sure.
Susanna kneels beside me.
Judith takes over my labors
at the washboard.
You’ll know soon enough.
I cannot—
Of course not.
But there are other ways . . .
Ways to die.
Ways to bear
the eternal guilt
of mortal sin.
Ways to line the pockets
of herbwives claiming
to hold the cure
for unwanted lives, coercion, regrets.
I’ll never be rid of him.
And never have I
wanted more to bleed.
58.
The night my mother
finally slipped
from pain
to nothingness
I slumped to sleep
with tear-drenched sheets
and woke to blood.
Streaks of muddy red
on dingy gray—
the remnants on a palette after
painting battlefields.
I was no soldier, only girl
without a mother
or the sense to understand
this world without her.
I groped
without a mother
to find a source
for the blood
but the only wound was
my severed heart.
Perhaps the wreckage
had seeped through
my pores, my tears, my sweat
to stain the sheets.
Without a mother,
I thought at first
I’m dying too.
(I was. I am.
But this expiration
will linger and stretch,
meander across the
months and years
until there’s nothing left
of me to drain.)
Any other day
—a day that still contained my mother—
I would have realized sooner
what I finally came to know
without a mother:
I bled as she did
with the moon,
not illness or infirmity.
On that morning, though,
I was addled
by exhaustion
and grief
and so instead
I wept myself to sleep
again amidst the blood.
Without a mother.
59.
I sleep-walked
through the first few
motherless days,
a trail of blood reminding me
I’d have no guide
through marriage
childbirth
womanhood.
When Father called me to the studio
I climbed the stairs in certainty
he meant to send me to the home
for inconvenient girls.
Enclosed within the convent
he’d be spared the shadow of
his wife’s
cheekbones, heavy jaw,
defiant gaze at every turn.
He swore at the canvas
as I reached the top
(how was he painting then,
my mother barely cold,
the sister that she bore
an echo of the life she might have lived?)
and beckoned me forward
without a glance.
Fetch me a palette knife,
I did not know a palette knife
from kitchen knife, not then.
Right there!
The flat, round blade!
I held it out, an offering.
He clutched my hand
for just a moment
as he took the knife.
Prudentia . . .
My heart stood still.
I thought it might be better
to betroth myself to Christ
than stay, remind my father
what he’d lost.
Remind us both.
He cleared his throat.
Burnt umber.
Father?
I need more pigment ground!
Can you manage that or not?
I could.
And so I was betrothed
to art instead.
60.
I am a wife
unable to fulfill
her duties.
Every day I sit
before the canvas
hoping maybe
hand or heart
will make the leap.
And so I’m sitting, staring,
when I hear a clomp upon the stairs.
Father will nag—
why am I not doing
the work that pays the bills?
Instead:
New technique?
I scramble off the stool
fly across the studio,
as far as I can get
from Agostino.
His voice
His breath
His breadth
are always in my thoughts
but why
is he here
in the flesh?
He should be covered in my blood.
Get out.
He smiles, as though
we’re lovers, and
I’ve made a little joke.
Don’t be mean.
Tuzia is down below.
If I call out,
she’ll come.
Won’t she?
What’s wrong, darling?
Is it your father again?
He reaches out a hand
but pauses
when I flinch.
You know I’ll never
let anything happen to you.
I snuck out of the palace
as soon as I could.
I’ve been buried in work.
Are you angry?
You know I never
stop thinking of
my Artemisia.
61.
I told him no
I said stop
I screamed
I clawed
I know I did—
I never stop
thinking of
my Artemisia.
— I think
But now he speaks as though
we shared ourselves,
the only blood the product
of our pounding hearts—
That’s not right.
Susanna’s gentle voice
insists I listen.
You know who you are.
You know your truth.
I take
Susanna’s hand.
My darling—
— No.
I am done thinking of you.
And you are not welcome
in my studio.
He chuckles.
It is my studio.
You’re the master, are you?
At seventeen years of age?
I understand perspective.
And that’s all you had to offer.
He settles onto
my stool, familiar,
leans forward, earnest,
my confidant.
He rearranges
my brushes.
My darling girl.
Why are you so determined
to push me away?
Your father believes
your lessons should continue—
My father is a blind fool
who wants to keep me
a student and a child,
and I’m no longer either.
His gaze skates over my dress.
You’re not a child.
My stomach roils.
I hold fast
to the anchor