Falling Under by Danielle Younge-Ullman Page B

a—” You feel your chin start to tremble and press your lips together.
    “Sorry? I didn’t hear that last part,” Mom says in a hushed, flat voice.
    You know better than to push when you hear that tone, but tears are leaking out of your eyes, running down your cheeks. And she’s actually paying attention.
    “You’d have to give a shit,” you say.
    There is a short, dark pause before she stands up out of her chair. It falls over and crashes onto the floor.
    “You self-centered little bitch,” she says in a whisper that sounds like a howl.
    She grabs your arm and yanks you from your chair. “Upstairs,” she says, and pulls you along behind her,
    jerking at your arm.
    In your bedroom, she pushes you against the door and glares up at you, face red, eyes fierce. All at once she jerks away like your skin has burned her and you slump against the door, knees weak.
    She grabs your suitcase and starts shoving your belong- ings into it, ranting all the while.
    “You want me to join the fucking PTA? You want to make me responsible if you fuck up your life? Who pays for the damned house? Who works overtime and gets treated like shit all day long and has to fight for every- thing she gets? Who pays for the dentist and the doctor and your books and your clothes and your food? Who does fucking EVERYTHING for you so you don’t have to live in a slum with your useless, loser, asshole of a fucking father!”
    “Mom—”
    “Don’t you tell me what I give a shit about, don’t you fuck- ing dare. You know nothing. You don’t think I had dreams? You don’t think I wanted a better life than this?”
    “But—”
    She slams the suitcase shut, picks it up, and hauls it downstairs. You follow with shaking, rubbery legs, and a roaring panic building in your heart.
    At the front door, she confirms your worst fear. “Get out,” she says.
    “Mom, no!”
    “Go live with your father, see how you like that.”
    You’re crumbling from the inside. You sob her name again, but her eyes are cold.
    “Come back when you’re grateful,” she says, then pushes you out the door and locks it behind you.
    6
    Sal is gone and I’m back to thinking about Hugo and the fact that I might be falling in love.
    I really should have known better. I should have tied myself to the sink, run away to Tibet, cut off my ear rather than let myself fall in stupid, dangerous, duplicitous love.
    But what did I think would happen?
    I figured I could control the progression, that’s what. I thought I’d step cautiously toward love, walk around it a few times, maybe poke it with a stick before I got too close.
    I am a fool.
    And now I’m all fluttery, wanting to paint hearts, flowers— even birds, for God’s sake!
    But there’ll be none of that.
    Perhaps today, I’ll take a crack at something different. Somehow, I can’t bear the thought of another circle, square, or triangle. Perhaps I will take the old route, the deeper, darker path...
    I stare at the green blob from this morning and take a deep breath. It’s been a long time.
    I turn off the music and shut my eyes. I feel odd, almost trancelike, as I prepare.
    Brush to paint, paint to canvas. I expand the blob. It creeps outward in snakelike tendrils, threads. Then the threads wrap around objects. They squeeze, pull, trap each object and then move inexorably out.
    And then the canvas is full, but the blob is hungry—it needs more.
    Second canvas, sits left of the first. Objects get larger and some are people. Stick figures tangle with the threads, fight, are sliced down, squeezed, squashed. Remains fall and gather in piles. They are shards of bravery, hope, the stuff of loss, heaps of loss, failure, grief.
    It’s no longer me painting. My fingers, the brush, nothing seems my own. I simply watch the canvas fill up and provide another when the last is full. Fingers to brush, brush to paint, paint to hungry, hope-eating blob. The brush be- comes inadequate, and fingertips take its place.
    The sun sets