Short Historical Fiction, Ch 2

Federal Art Project, 1935

I was a self-proclaimed ‘artist’ to mask my unemployed life, dreams of being a nurse discarded to the Great Depression. I was hired to paint murals of the American flag, propaganda for war efforts, and general patriotic themed art.

Sometimes, when painting a mural, I would collect the tears I shed when I woke in the middle of the night in a small glass jar and pour them into the thick slurry of colors. Mixing them into the baby blue, firetruck red, watching my tinted reflection swirl around with the ripples in the paint. It sounds disgustingly biological, bodily fluids contaminating something pure and beautiful, tainting visuals that were displaying utopia– but to me, it was a sign of life in something so straightforward and soulless. A symbol of labor, a silent, unseen reminder only prominent to those that knew it took place, personification of the person that painted it. It made me feel important, like a part of me was art itself, even trapped in this body that I hated. I painted murals of the American flag. I am America. I am America.

Walking past the ubiquitous Hoovervilles to my house, my wrists sore from a craft I lacked interest in, I would kneel on the ground, lift one leg up, and feel the gravel of the road dig into my skin. The uncomfortable awareness of every ridge in the ground, every jagged pebble and debris scraping my raw, papery skin. Then, I would slam the other leg down on the pavement as hard as I could, over and over, until I was in a trance of deflection, until the world around me disappeared and I was bracing for the next sharp blow.

I limped home.

Soup.

I stared down at my bowl, mesmerized with the blandness of the slurry of potato and celery stew. The way it swirled around my rusty spoon, the thin, heterogenous broth curdling at the edges of the metal arbitrarily. The way it made my reflection look unsightlier than in real life, my skin overlapped with the color of a sickening green as I peered into the ellipse of the bowl. The salt shaker lay aimlessly against the worn, ragged tablecloth, so empty you couldn’t tell if it was used for salt or pepper.

Repeat.

Awoken by the natural light seeping through the tainted windowpane. I had lapsed from the continuity of sleep, waking up at 2-3 A.M, then falling into a deep haze of exhaustion until 6.

Toast for breakfast, sometimes with jam – but only if I’m lucky. I could barely afford sourdough bread as it is, having to bake my own loaves on the weekends.

Shower at night – not in the morning. I would soil myself with paint and grease at work.

The aimless colors covered up the worn state of my dress. I felt beautiful, free, but only when I wasn’t looking at myself, only when I stared at the hem of my dress beneath my waist.

Walk home.

Soup.

Sleep.

Awake.

My ovaries lay bare in my childless, color-covered, empty shell. I would not bring a child into the world, a sweet innocent angel, to live face-to-face with life, or even worse, myself. I would be a terrible mother.

I want to die alone to spare others.

1938, Kristallnacht

The night of broken glass, such a beautiful, mellifluous title for an event of terror and devastation. Kristallnacht. The word flowed off my tongue like saccharin, sapid honey. The -K sound sharp, cutting through my throat, like broken glass illuminated, reflecting the orange light of the fire. A euphemism for the bloodshed that happened on that night.

I picked up a newspaper on the ground, desperate for entertainment. I read the news of the world around me like a child reading a horror story, a fairytale that parents would use to scare their child into eating vegetables, surprising myself with how bad the world can be. Getting a sudden fever, a sickness of adrenaline, from the shock, until I realized that the empathy-induced lows would spiral down hard. Playing with the nature of human emotions like watching the tears swirl around in my jar was an interesting pastime, to say the least. I almost blink the tears away from my eyes, but then I reach for the jar and unscrew the lid. Simply. Swiftly. Calculated.

My only humanity seemed to be from something inhumane.

Pearl Harbor

I always took everything too literal. Pearls glistening and gleaming in the light, the oyster cracking open and the flesh torn out bloodlessly. Echoes of conversations wrapped around me like a rumination. “Pearl harbor.” “Japan.” Slurs for the Japanese. The world is a pearl, and the people are the oysters. Cracked open, torn apart in every direction, fleshy and gray. Plucked from the ocean, the stars polluted with a thick layer of smog in the night sky. Hawaii. Harbor. Pearl. Soup. All different lives, different perspectives of reality. Suddenly, my boring life felt peaceful. I have the privilege to crave action, not search for reprieve, to slow down and stop and look at the shacks on the side of the road, to seek pain instead of escape it.

V- day

Celebrations on the street, beer and broken glass and confetti. Kristallsun, Kristallsugar, Kristallwine. Even though I got drunk, to put it bluntly, a pit of emptiness was never filled.