Page 80 of The Ground Beneath Our Feet
WHAT!?
Then my phone rang, and in a whispered voice while sweat beaded on my brow, I explained what I was doing, with my eyes closed and my hands shaking.
She’d caught me while sitting in a small, darkened anteroom over at a local art college, wearing nothing but a red silk sheet wrapped around me. Behind the door, the class chattered as the students filed in and took their places at the easels.
Lucy had been having Braxton-Hicks contractions, so I’d agreed to take over a session of her nude modeling gig. She was due any day now, but she’d insisted that Jake come to class. Mikey fully supported me doing the modeling. With a wink, he offered to come, but I told him, quite seriously, that I needed to do this alone. I could tell from the look in his eye that he got it.
Talk about the ultimate test of whether I accepted my body. I’d lost some weight, maybe twenty pounds. But more than the weight loss, I felt more confident about my body. I felt more loving about my body. I felt strong and powerful.
And I felt like showing my skin to a room of complete strangers—and handsome Jake Slausen.
I was either going crazy or going sane. Maybe both.
The teacher had said that I didn’t need to be fully nude, so she was going to drape the sheet around me like a toga. But still, plus size woman showing skin. Red alert.
Monica spoke with admiration in her voice. “Girl, when I told you to go live your own life, I wasn’t thinking about this. But I’m so proud of you. You’ll slay them.”
The door opened. I hurriedly said goodbye to Monica, and the instructor came in quietly, smiling at me. “Are you ready?”
I nodded, but a lump caught in my throat. I wasn’t sure I was going to be ready for a room to stare at me. I’d made so much progress, felt so much better in my own skin. But this was a quantum leap.
She led me into the room and pointed to a plain wooden chair in the middle for me to sit on. I walked in, head held high, red satin sheet pulled up hiding my breasts, and wrapped around my waist. I sat and looked around at the art students.
None of them looked at me in horror. In fact, they looked interested, and even excited about being able to draw me. Jake, sitting in the back in a T-shirt and jeans, gave me a smile and a thumbs-up.
The teacher bustled about, arranging the sheet, keeping my breasts covered while she did it. My entire back was bare, my legs exposed, the sheet draped over my shoulder on the one side, and across my lap on the other. My long hair was loose down my shoulders.
I took a deep breath. I tried to ground myself in my body. To feel the cool linoleum floor under my feet. And I let them draw me for an hour in this one, seated pose.
Every so often, I’d catch an eye of a student intent on capturing my body on paper with pencil or charcoal. After a while, I got used to it and relaxed.
During that hour, I had never felt moreinmy body. I was aware of the expansion and contraction of my abdomen with every breath. The little itch on the back of my thigh. The way the part underneath my upper arm hung down.
I was determined not to shame myself, though. This was my body, and it was strong. I was strong. I was the strongest person I’d ever met. A survivor.
And if that wasn’t art, I didn’t know what was.
At the end of the class, I’d accomplished something major. I’d let people look at me, look at my nakedness—or almost nakedness—and I’d been proud of it. I went back into the anteroom and changed, and when I returned to the classroom, the students gave me a round of applause. “I told them this was your first time modeling,” the teacher explained. “And they all agreed you’re a lovely subject. Please come back and do it again.”
Jake came over to me, tall and strong, with dark blue eyes, carrying his notebook. “Jessica. Lucy told me you were subbing for her. You did a great job. I want to give this to you.”
He ripped out a page from the notebook, bent over the desk, scribbled something, and handed it to me.
It was his sketch of me, of course, which he’d signed and dated. I looked voluptuous and sensuous, my curves highlighted with a simple mark here, a stronger line there. The drape of the red silk sheet artfully covered me and kept me modest, even though I’d felt so naked.
He wrote, “It was an honor to capture your beauty on the page.” With tears, I reached up and gave him a hug.
“Thank you,” I whispered, “for showing it to me.”
