Page 95 of Jackson
“My mom. She’s inprison.”
“Metaphorically?”
“If I knew what that meant, I’danswer.”
I chuckled and saw a ghost of a smile on his lips. He was an intelligent boy, forsure.
“In art, we can take the bars away, Dylan. There doesn’t have to be any barriers, we can express exactly how we feel. Come with me, let me show yousomething.”
I stood and waited. After a little while, he pushed his chair back, scraping the legs against the wooden floor. I caught the social worker’s eye as I walked to the door. Dylan followed and I took him into thebar.
He walked straight to the wall without any prompting and stood. I watched his head as he started at one side and scanned the whole piece. He then took a step closer to study it. I watched as he reached forward, placing his finger next to myfather.
“He’s out of place, so I guess that makes him significant,” hesaid.
“You’re only the second person to see him without him being pointed out. Tell me what yousee?”
“A man in a suit, not that hard to see him, is it?” There was a slight challenge to hisvoice.
“The whole thing, what do yousee?”
He walked the length of the wall, stopping to study small areas as hedid.
“I know what this is, but I don’t know the name. Something to do with God and all that shit. But it’s all in hell, isn’tit?”
“Yes. That’sThe Last Judgement. The souls rise, or fall, depending on Christ’s decision. Do you know why they are allnaked?”
He shook hishead.
“It makes them all equal. It doesn’t matter what clothes we wear, where we live, what car we drive, underneath we are all thesame.”
“Why have you put it inhell?”
“Because for a long time, and especially when I was your age, that’s what my life was like. To the outside world it was heaven but it wasn’t really. Now step back and look from adistance.”
He shuffled back a few paces. “Now what do you see?” Iasked.
“It’s not so scary, Iguess.”
Dylan made his way back to the centre; I followed. Silently he took a seat at the table and picked up an eraser. As careful as possible, he rubbed out the vertical lines across hismother.
“She shouldn’t be in prison. She was just trying to take care of me,” hesaid.
I didn’t speak or press for further information. Instead, I helped him draw. We corrected the contours of his mother’s face to make her more proportional. After a half hour, he sat back with a small smile on hisface.
“I’d like to learn to do that,” he said as he pointed to thewall.
“If you can draw, you can do street art. Why don’t you take a sketchpad and a couple of pencils home with you and design something. I might even let you paint nexttime.”
He looked at me, and although his expression was one of suspicion, he at leastsmiled.
“Time to go,” Iheard.
His social worker and Dexter walked across the room. Without a goodbye, he headedoff.
“He’s a nice kid,” Isaid.
“In temporary care, at the moment. Sad story really, but you seemed to have gotten on well with him. According to Sally, the social worker, he doesn’t speak much. She hoped he might find it fun cominghere.”
