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Show Moon - 6 "Your grandfather on your father's side was a famous judge out west, and before that, the Revolution. You go back. You go back." "To convicts, no doubt." "She is my most wicked child," Ruth said, smiling and shrugging at Anne, who listened in silence. "What does this have to do with selling railroad tickets?" Esther might have said then. And Ruth might have replied, "Everything." Esther, the baby, was still in middle school and occupied with being precocious. Anne, who was going to be an artist, wore loose smocks smeared with charcoal and wrapped her braids around her head like a dark crown. Her art teacher was David, a young man who seemed to be built out of wood, the muscles of his arms in planes, jutting hips, tight round buttocks. His dark hair hung over his eyes like a horse's and his eyes were like Michael's, large and wet and ripe. He was not a kind teacher. He would grab the charcoal out of her hand and slash across her drawing. "You're too tight with it. Too small." Another stroke across her painstaking work. "Like this. Exaggerate. Not like life. Make it big." His words and his strokes on her paper were like blows to her body. She felt the heat rise up to her eyes and kept her breaths shallow until she was home alone and could tear at her pillow and lament aloud her inadequacy at the one thing she had kept herself alive for. But she went back to the class because it was the only thing there was, and she began to understand what he was trying to get her to do. Sometimes David stood back and watched her at work and seemed to like what he saw. Sometimes he touched her shoulder, and his eyes demanded |