Page 3 of Paint Eater
Sofia Monroe had not always been an ambitious person. When she was a teenager, she’d thought such high hopes were a spear people used either to eliminate competition or to fall on. Her mother was the sort of person that blamed the world for her ails, that was angry and resentful and directed these emotions at those who weren’t in a position to defend themselves—a trait that, as Sofia grew older, she began to find pathetic.
She could very starkly remember the emotion that had come over her when she realised that, at seventeen, she was pregnant with Joe’s kid, some white boy from her school, a dumb eighteen-year-old she’d just been wasting time with, and had very suddenly been tied to in a way so primordial that she couldn’t even fully comprehend it.
That urine-baptised stick had crystalised her life before her. In prism, she could see her decisions split and split and split again. Could see the path they were taking her down, one not unlike her mother’s, or at least just as pathetic.
She hadn’t told anyone. The thought of abortion had been immediate and obvious, but where the fuck would she go for something like that? With what money?
Time lost all passivity. It awoke as some greedy creature, prowling constantly around her, its fetid, damp breath reminding her of the decision she was putting off, and off, and off. Two months, three months, four, until it was too late, the lumbering beast turning ravenous and snapping the decision right from her hands.
The relief that came over her then had been both strange and a revelation. Even years later, she couldn’t quite explain why she had the baby and kept it, but she suspected it was for selfish reasons. She needed something to fight for, and she just hadn’t been enough.
In retrospect, even her career choice had been a big ‘Fuck You’ to everybody who knew her. “A doctor? Really?” her mother had said, voice mocking and incredulous. Sofia hadn’t replied—not because the comment had hurt her, but because there was no point. This wasn’t something she could prove with words. Only actions would do.
Joe, predictably, had fucked right off at the news of her pregnancy. He’d first just assumed she’d get rid of it, which Sofia hadn’t blamed him for, and the subsequent expression of terrified horror that crept over his face when she told him that, nope, she wasn’t having an abortion—well, that, frankly, had been comical.
There were so many poems and books and films about maternal love that Sofia felt like there was barely anything she could add to them. All she knew was that it was the most feral, the most desperate love she had ever felt. It was a love that could kill anything, that was vigilant for danger, that stalked the perimeter every night to make sure all was safe, all was secure. It was the most exhausting emotion Sofia had ever felt, and it was utterly relentless.
Every subsequent decision could be fed to the ruthlessness of this love: Her sleepless nights with the small, soft body of her child curled up against her. The determination to be better than she or anybody else thought she could be. The years of study to become a doctor that had been thrilling, tortuous, a trial by fire she had come out of scarred and victorious.
Jayden, her boy, the creature that she had made of her own earth and water, had been a million joys and a million pains. Watching him grow up, being part of who he was and who he was to become, had been like nothing else she could imagine. And she could say with all certainty that her boy was, at his core, a good person, something which she didn’t know could be applied even to herself.
She had made a lot of mistakes in raising Jay. First and foremost, the thing that she had difficulty forgiving herself for, was how she had listened to Jay’s teachers for so long when they told her that he was just disobedient, that he was unruly, that she must be doing something wrong. And yes, she could see how he struggled to sit down for long periods of time and, even then, would wiggle in his seat like a worm caught on a hook. How he interrupted everybody he talked with, how loud he was, how his sense of risk seemed to be so underdeveloped that she’d screamed at him once, something she tried desperately not to do, when she thought he was about to run straight onto the road.
Deeper, more concerning, was the way children seemed not to like him. They didn’t like how boisterous he was, how he would take over a game only to abandon it a moment later, how he talked incessantly. Even the kids would call Jay rude, and Sofia hadn’t known how to argue against such detailed evidence even though sheknewthere was no malice in Jay. Quite the contrary, his capacity for empathy was so deep that she often wondered where it could possibly come from, for neither she nor what she had known of Joe displayed anything similar. Jay was capable of being moved by anything—people, animals, insects, fish. Sofia could stick googly eyes on a curtain rod and Jay would suddenly turn sympathetic, would wonder if it didn’t grow stiff and bored, jammed in one place all day, or if it was content that way, looking out into the world, a calm observer.
Rudeness, in her mind, was not just a lack of manners, but a disregard for other people in favour of self-interest. Jay, even as a little boy, however, often seemed to have the opposite problem. If the children he was playing with wanted him to be ‘it’ all the time, he’d do it. If they played Red Light, Green Light and someone declared that Jay had moved and had to go to the back again, he wouldn’t complain, even when he clearly hadn’t, even if he was one step away from winning. He wasdesperateto make friends. He just didn’t seem to know how to.
At home, she tried to cultivate all of Jay’s interests. When he wanted to be an astronaut, they made glowing stars and stuck them all around their tiny loft apartment, turning off the lights and floating through space. When he wanted to be a sailor—no, a pirate, no, a sailor—they crafted a ship out of cardboard and would set off after dinner, looking for land and treasure. And all through this, his love for drawing was constant. She would do gallery showings every month on one of their walls, interviewing a giggling Jay as to his process, his inspiration, his materials.
She tried to nourish Jay as much as she could and withstood how the world would take this away from Jay, would feed him poisoned things instead so that Sofia had to try and extract the venom at night.
But she was never fully successful.
She knew that there were things lurking in Jay that had been planted and watered by other people that she could do little about. But even as Jay grew older, a teenager, and older still, that feral need to protect and nourish never left.
She could only hope that Jay would meet people who would see the resplendent beauty Jay had to offer.
CHAPTER TWO
JAY
It was only because of his mom’s exasperated glance that Jay noticed the way he was shovelling cereal into his mouth, a mysterious puddle of milk by his elbow, Cheerios scattered everywhere.
“I’ll clean it up,” Jay promised through a mouthful. His mom gave him her patented ‘you’d better’ look.
“How was last night?” his mom asked, and Jay made sure to swallow before replying.
“Good. Fun. I mean, a bit weird, but good and fun.” Here, Jay kind of knew, other people would wait for a ‘weird why?’ but Jay didn’t see the need for this step, and he barrelled on. “I saw Nisha there, which isn’t weird, but she was with Logan, which I guess also isn’t weird, but we talked, which—but anyway, he kind of asked me to help him with a photography project, and I accepted?”
His mom poured a cup of the coffee Jay had made her. “Do I know Logan?”
“Kind of—you probably don’t remember, but in, like, seventh grade he came over a few times to do a project, and he stayed over for dinner.”
His mom leaned back against the counter, looking thoughtful, but Jay knew there weren’t many memories to sift through—it wasn’t like Jay had invited many people over during high school.
“Ah. Yep. I remember—he offered to clean the dishes.”
Jay laughed. He’d forgotten that. In retrospect, Logan had been sort of awkward. Not around Jay, but around his mom. For a horrifying second, he wondered if Logan had been crushing on his mom then. She was slim and tall, her braided hair currently in a high bun, eyes dark and assessing, and was young for how old Jay was.
