Page 37 of No Saint

She had no college education and her file showed she dropped out of school long before graduation but she had untapped talent and potential.

I place it all back into the box along with the book, plucking it up off the floor. I grab the stuffed animal from the crib before I leave, taking it all with me.

16

Ifirst picked up a pencil when I was four. Growing up, I wasn’t allowed to do the normal things other kids did, I didn’t even know how to hold a pencil until I went to kindergarten because no one ever showed me. There were no building blocks or toys, no crayons, or pens to draw with. That first day I headed into that public school room, packed full of other children, was the first time I had any experience with things to play with and people to talk to.

People tell me I shouldn’t remember it, at least not in the vivid detail that I did, and yet I could remember every minute of that day. The noises, so different from the sounds of choking and coughing, or shouting and crying. The laughing still echoed inside my head from time to time, it was such a strange sound to my little ears, joyous now but then, I had no idea what it meant. At the time, in my innocent little head I assumed the other children that bellowed their glee were in pain. I must have laughed at some point in my very early years, but I didn’t then and didn’t for a long time after.

I sat in the corner of that room while the other children jumped and bounced and ran and I watched. Other children, there were other children just like me. But they weren’t like me at all. I realize that now.

The only reason I ended up in that room with those teachers and kids from my community, was because my mom ended up getting some city governed cheque that paid for my care. After the first week I became more comfortable.

The teachers, so kind in the face and gentle in touch coaxed me from my hiding place until they managed to sit me at a table with another little girl. She wore glasses and had freckles all over her face. Big blue eyes and pig tails was what I could remember about her. Her name, it was lost to memory now.

They placed a piece of stark white paper in front of us both, planted a pot of crayons in the middle and told us to draw.

The girl in front of me did so immediately, her little hand diving into the pot of colored crayons, pulling out a green and I just stared. I watched her, scratching onto the paper and was mesmerized by the color leaking from what I thought at the time was just a stick in a funny shape. My eyes went to the pot, at the rainbow of colors there and I selected an orange. It felt strange in my hand, like my fingers just couldn’t hold it right. It slipped and dropped and rolled off the table more times than I could count but eventually I managed to get a grip on it and finally I put the tip of it to the paper. And I drew. I didn’t draw anything but colored lines and odd shapes, but I drew for the first time in my very short four years of life.

It felt good.

I liked it.

And the next day, when my mother dumped me at the door, not even waiting for me to be taken inside, I picked up another crayon and I continued. I carried it on every day I was there until I had a mountain of paper all containing my drawings. I went from drawing lines and shapes to drawing flowers and buildings, all as good as a child could be but I was drawing with the eye, learning, gaining confidence with a pencil, with color and paper.

It felt releasing. Like all the energy within me was being propelled towards this simple white sheet in front of me.

And as I grew, I continued to draw, all through junior and middle school and onto high school where I was able to take art as a study and could perfect my skill beneath others who had immense talent in the art. It’s there I found my love for fashion.

I watched program after program on it, documentaries, I read books. I loved the detail and the style and how it wasn’t just drawing, it was a part of you too, it was what you liked, what you perceived and shaped into beautiful dresses and skirts and shoes. I’d wanted to go to college.

Of course, that was only ever a dream. Never a reality for someone like me.

I knew that long before my mother died and long after too, and the bitter disappointment forever stayed on my tongue.

It had been some time now since I’d picked up a pencil and put it to paper. I doubted you could lose your skill but when I looked at my fingers, I couldn’t see beautiful creations coming from them. I couldn’t imagine ballgowns and lingerie. The last time I had any form of inspiration was when I was still pregnant with Lincoln, after I’d escaped my stepfather and started on my own. I didn’t have much but I was free and that was enough. So, I created drawing after drawing, I read and watched people bring their own drawings to life using needles and fabric, and wanted to learn that art next, or even find someone who would do it with me. But then Lincoln was born, and the crushing reality of my life fell back on my shoulders.

I wasn’t free.

Never free.

It had taken a week after my son was welcomed onto this earth for my stepfather to show and demand from me again, I fought, and I won that time. But it wasn’t the last time it happened. It happened often and each time I fought.

That was my life.

Always fighting and running. I tried to provide for my son while battling a past longing to drag me back, and so that inspiration to create got pushed away and then further more, until it was a speck in a sea of chaos.

I had no time for it. No time for things I enjoyed when I was constantly fighting for survival for both me and my son.

Being a single mother isn’t pretty. It isn’t cuddles and giggles and happily ever after. It’s work, hard work, it’s fighting day in and day out trying to put food on the table and heat in your house. I would die for my son but there had been nights, lonely, stormy nights where I wished it never happened.

If that made me an awful mother, then I had to accept that. But those nights always passed, those thoughts ceased to exist the moment I caught the face of my son, saw those big hazel eyes and mop of dark hair and when he smiled, it was like the world stopped spinning around me because it was spinning in my arms.

I never regretted Lincoln, not one bit but I wished, often, that I could give him more.

He deserved that at the very least.

He stirs in my arms where I lay on the bed, cradling him to me. The movement is enough to bring me from my thoughts, from the memories and the past and back to the present. Slowly, his eyes blink open, sluggishly fanning the big black lashes as he focus’s up on my face.

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