Page 28 of Fruit
“Yes, coach, of course, coach,” she says, standing to attention and saluting me. I put my hands on my hips, but a smile peeks through.
“Come on, get,” I say, and she turns around towards the canvas. She’s one of the more confident ones in the centre. A little older than Joshua at sixteen years of age, she had found her voice when she managed to tell her family about her need to be true to her male-to-female transition. Her family, of hardy Irish stock, had been ignorant and confused, but had rallied around her as best they could. Apparently, it took some distinct growing pains, but the situation around her has improved immensely.
I watch the kids draw in silence. ‘Kids’—not because they’re immature or even that young, mostly, but because of my instinct to protect them, to give them a childhood a lot of them have been at least partly robbed of.
I’ve brought enough painting materials for each of them to choose how they want to express themselves. Some of them gravitate to the simple markers, drawing small figures that tell of space they don’t feel worthy to fill. One of them, Marja, paints with her hands, angry streaks of reds and purples. Someone else splatters their paint onto the canvas, grinning.
Joshua, of course, uses the spray cans I got my hands on. The bright grin he gave me when he saw them was its own reward. We’d practised using them before letting him loose on the canvas. Despite his love of the art style, I had the impression that he’d done little more than tagging walls. I showed him the importance of knowing how far away the can should be from the surface in order to get different effects. On a large canvas, graffiti could be like a dance. The speed of your arm and gentleness of your fingers, the distance you keep from your art, it all affects the image that blooms forth. It’s muscle and movement and proximity to create art.
Hugo comes out to join us half an hour after those who wanted to participate have started. He approaches Joshua slowly, watching him silently from a few feet away, chewing on the side of his thumb as is his habit. The mop of brown hair on the top of his head is in complete disarray, his glasses a little smudged. The kid is as sharp as a tack, but he always looks like he’s been dragged through a bush backwards.
“Hey, Hugo. You don’t wanna draw?” I ask him.
“Oh…I don’t wanna mess it up,” he says. At the sound of Hugo’s voice, Joshua turns around.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Joshua says. “Draw next to me. You can do whatever.”
“I don’t know…”
“Come on. What about what happened with those shitheads today? Just, like. Let it all out.”
I look down at Hugo.
“What’s this about…poopheads?” I ask. Joshua snorts at my wording. Not cursing around the centre is hard.
Hugo shrugs. “Nothing, just, you know. Kids in my class. Being dumb.”
“Does the teacher know?”
“Yeah, she saw them.”
“Did she do anything?”
“Yeah. It’s fine.”
I sigh internally. “Well, Joshua’s right. You could let it all out. There’s a nice piece of blank canvas right there,” I say, pointing to the patch that Joshua had not yet filled.
Hugo hesitates a moment before nodding and smiling at Joshua.
“Yeah, okay.”
I leave them to it but watch them subtly as they each get absorbed in what they’re doing. Joshua continues with his bold, high-contrast strokes of sprayed paint. Hugo paints a tangled line with thick, black acrylic and then fills the gaps he created with bright, delicate watercolours.
Each person is free to leave when they’ve had enough of painting, and they file in and out, messy and beaming, pointing at each other’s paintings happily. I can’t keep the grin off my face as I watch them. Even Marja, normally sullen and defensive, has a smile on her face, joking around with Gwyn. Joshua and Hugo are, as always, attached at the hip, and I watch as Joshua convinces Hugo to have a go at the spray cans.
Sebastián stands with me for a while, watching. There is a soft, sad-happy sort of look on his face. He looks down at me and the depth of his eyes seems to never end.
“Thanks,” he says.
“You don’t need to thank me. I’m like…here for this, you know?”
Sebastián watches me for a moment. “We could make this is a regular thing, if you wanted.”
“I mean, that would be great, but I doubt I can get my hands on this type of canvas again.”
“No, I mean, like…art. We don’t really have a good art group here.”
“Oh. Yeah, I mean. I’d be totally up for that.” I look at the kids paint for a while, chewing on my lip. “We could make it a bit therapeutic if they wanted. Like, drawing emotions, letting them out. I mean, how awesome is Hugo’s painting over there? He drew that when Joshua suggested he ‘let it out’—apparently he was being picked on today at school.”
