“ ’Cause it’s a painting of you,” he says. “He told me to give it to you if he got delayed or whatever. Want to see it right now?”
30
Turns out thepainting is in Meer’s room. We climb the stairs in Chalk Tower to the fourth floor, where my brother and Tatum both have their bedrooms.
“Does it have a name?” I ask Meer as we go up. “Your room?”
“Like the Iron Room? No. It’s just called Meer’s room. But we do call our floor Top of Chalk.”
Meer’s bedroom walls are wooden, like the rest of the castle. His bed is just a mattress on the floor. On the shelves are several mason jars filled with his collections: purple rocks, shells, sea glass. The carpet is littered with dirty clothes and cups of water. Stacks of folded laundry are piled against the wall instead of put away in the closet. The walls are dense with art, the pictures layered on top of each other. There are a couple weavings, deeply textured and folksy; a series of tattoo-art photographs; some pictures of chickens cut out from a catalog.
A painting of me leans against one wall.
“Sorry I’m chaotic,” says Meer. He points at the picture. “I think Kingsley got a photo of you off Instagram? But then obviously he did his thing that he does.”
My legs feel weak and I sit down heavily on Meer’s mattress. The painting is indeed based on a photo of me I posted a couple months ago. But it’s also nothing like that photo, at all.
—
My hair swirlsaround me in the wind,
lifted away from my head as if I’m in a
cyclone.
My face is solemn. I kneel
dead center on a
poorly constructed wooden raft.
And like Odysseus in the painting downstairs,
I am in the middle of a ferocious sea.
My fingers dig between the boards of the raft,
tense with effort, the muscles of my arms straining.
I look like a scared little girl, without parents.
And like a warrior, bereft of weapons.
—
“What’s it called?” I ask.
“Lost.”
I put my hand to mouth, my throat choked.
My father has painted me lost. Because he lost me, before I was even born.
When he made the painting, he hadn’t reached out yet.
And now he wants me to have this piece of his heart.
He’s giving me the gift of him seeing me. Understanding me.
