Somebody Somewhere (22 page)

B
ack at the apartment, I looked in the mirror. There was a fragile realness in my face. In place of the indifference emerged a painful shyness. Shyness was a step up. I had often felt shyness but found that it so exposed a lack of control that I had always channeled it into something deeper; defensiveness, evasiveness, and indifference. I was emerging like a rose does in summer and was aware and cherished the emotions I came to own as part of me.

I bought some paints and began to paint in color for the first time since I was about thirteen. I had dabbled in painting then, always too afraid to let anyone see or understand my pictures. Everything I painted had to be highly symbolic, even the subject had to be mentally and visually intangible. Back then I had finally resorted to black and white, a bit like my view of the world, but in my opinion safer because without color it expressed the subject but not the feeling. Colors stood for emotion.

In the privacy of my apartment I took out my paints and let the pictures from within emerge. Rose gardens and hills, long grass of gold, green, brown, and black. I captured “my world” where it should have been: on the flat surface of a sheet of paper, two dimensions appearing to be three.

The ocean at different parts of the day and night, city lights, the sky reflected in lakes, and the personality of clouds conjured up
images of Manet, Monet, and Turner. The colors became brighter and brighter, the pictures luring the viewer to enter a world of color, a symbolic journey. I welcomed it with open arms as I captured it upon paper; I painted a child climbing from the depths of the Big Black Nothingness reaching upward for the light. I painted the cats that had long been symbolic representations of myself.

The expression seemed so clearly my own. I watched my emotions and moods stare back at me as something other than a mirror image albeit not yet human. I painted the seven cats that stood for the seven colors of the rainbow, the spectrum of emotions. The meaning that had long been underground, hidden within the hidden within the hidden, came to the surface—observable, tangible, and able to touch me emotionally.

I spent hours staring at the paintings as I had my reflection in the mirror. I liked what I saw and I liked myself.

I
found there was a wider choice than fear or indifference when it came to enduring ongoing friendship. In my mind I fought fear and joined Theo Marek's hallway to his house and its place in the outside world. I would now allow the lessons learned to become an accepted part of “the world” I had come to know and claim a place in.

“What are you doing?” asked Dr. Marek as I walked at a snail's pace through his hallway taking everything in. I had usually made my way through the hallway like it was on fire. Now I wanted to see and understand what was in it and what rooms went off it. I wanted to experience and understand that it was connected to the living room, where our latest discussion took place, and that it joined to the porch and the path that would take me back to my place.

On the way out I stood at the front door and looked in Dr. Marek's eyes. I smiled to myself over the secret control. I was exercising control in giving up control. “Bye,” I said, and left, fully aware that there was no wall anymore between the Marek's house, what I learned there, and the rest of “the world” beyond.

“I want you, if you can, Donna, to touch my hand,” said Dr. Marek at our next appointment. Nausea overcame me and I froze. What did this man want from me? I thought in panic as the echoes of the past hit me like a tidal wave.

My friend's elderly father entered the room. I had been able to stay here when my best friend wasn't in. My friend and I were like brother and sister: we shared the same clothes, and we could sleep in the same bed and know each of us was safe. He was sixteen. I was fourteen. He had come closer than most to uncovering Donna beneath Carol.

“I want to touch you,” said the father, sitting on my friend's bed next to my body. Carol listened for her friend's return. “Will you let me touch you?” asked the father, his hand reaching across like so many others. Thank God he had asked, for although Carol could not freely stand up for herself (because she had no self) she could, nevertheless, answer a question honestly and bluntly. “No,” said Carol, but the damage was done. She could not tell her friend so she simply walked out on the friendship.

It made no sense. Dr. Marek was on my side, wasn't he? I wanted someone else present in the room. I wanted another woman there.

As far as I was concerned I had tackled things. I had told the truth about Carol's “bedroom academy awards” and about “disappearing.” The war was over and these things were never going to happen again. Why would I want to touch anyone?

I was in a war with myself over the old “my world” strategies and the new “the world” rules. Who cares who touches me, I told myself. This body is just stuck on me anyway. NO! screamed the other part. It's me in here.

If he is trying to touch you, it won't be so bad. Smile and accept oblivion. Laugh at them for being unwitting collaborators in the art of “disappearing.” Gloat to yourself about how right you were not to trust. Dr. Marek must have known my war. He would not invade. He held out his hand and waited for
me
to touch him.

Exposed and in the absence of a want, I was frightened. Perform, perform, perform. But I couldn't because I was expected to initiate this and I couldn't bear to do so without feelings. And yet, to have feelings would be impossible. Dr. Marek's outstretched hand mocked my inadequacy.

He didn't play down or laugh at my fear. He did not push me. Seeing my face covered in tears, he left me to work through my feelings and try again another time. What for?…What for? I nagged myself in frustration, looking for an answer. Why do I want to? There was no reply.

There were four weeks till my next appointment with Dr. Marek, and I was afraid. Standing in front of the mirror, I put my face against the glass and cried.

My hand went out, and my reflection and I touched. I looked at this predictable person I had known and grown with all my life. I wished so badly that she would climb out of the mirror and be with me or become me so I could leave. My mirror image was the only person with whom I had initiated touch out of want and not compliance. She looked back at me with equal intensity and sorrow that it was not possible. She couldn't get out, not then, not now, not ever. I put my hand up against hers and looked from her eyes to our hands. “Mirror hands,” I said to her, and smiled as we cried. She smiled back, the smiling example that optimism can survive imprisonment.

T
he second teaching round arrived. It was to be in German, teaching all levels of the school, children from five to twelve years old. It would be great because the children did not speak fluent German and it was my job to maintain my own German at all times and in all situations. Where the children could not understand, I was to augment my speech with gesture, image, and materials. Speaking
through objects was my forte. When I made my words concrete and visual, they didn't fall emptily to the ground.

I wrote most of my lessons into music and arrived armed with a guitar and a voice. The topics were learned through actions and music, and expressed and expanded upon through art, craft, and science experiments.

My first class began. I was not used to the children's voices, and having too many directions to follow, I was meaning-deaf to the children. “So, can someone tell me how this works? Uh, huh…and what do you think of that, Andrew, can you explain anything else about it?” I drew upon the children constantly to comment upon and add to what each other had said. It hid the fact there was no real dialogue between them and me, and they seemed to take well to the offer of managed independence. I took well to the outsider's role of facilitator rather than teacher.