Paint It Red by Jacob Malewitz

Paint it Red
By Jacob Malewitz
subbed glimmer train

I was awakened by the shaking of my bed and immediately I heard a voice. All I could see when I first looked was the long red hair, our eyes didn’t meet, I was to focused on the hair, it was so beautiful and it covered what had to be a girl’s face. She was saying something, and I couldn’t quite make it out, in my youth I thought it was French, yet if asked today I would say it was Latin. She achieved a concept of beauty, that I had never really seen before, and, all in the hair. I stared into it thinking of all the possibilities of her face, perhaps blue eyes, maybe green, and a nose that cut through the concept of beauty I might have had then.
I jumped out of bed and immediately she disappeared. It couldn’t have been a dream, but, how did she just disappear. I wanted to stare at the hair more, and get a look at that uniformed face.
I noticed I was standing on a stack of comic books and basketball cards and stepped away. I looked at the clock and saw my mom had forgotten to wake me up—I had a therapist appointment in ten minutes. I ran down the stairs, almost collapsing over a stack my sister’s school books, and ran into my mother’s room.
She woke up immediately and got on her feet. She was an unnatural blond with all the signs of age and smoking one could find—the wrinkles, the stained teeth that had been bleached many times—and she quickly dressed right in front of me, while I looked away.  Clothes often define a woman, and my mother put on casual clothes for her, which would have suited a female CEO in any age, and we quickly walked out the door. Before she unlocked the doors to her brown minivan I checked my hair to make sure it wasn’t standing up, even as a kid I was consumed by looks like my mother, and as we drove down the road I saw I had five minutes before my appointment by the fast clock in the van.
Why was a ten year old seeing a therapist? For the same reason I was taking medicine, I had problems since the rocky divorce between my parents.
As we drove fast down the road, my mother applying some makeup over her wrinkled face, I thought of the girl again. Something about her excited me, and at that time I was too young to understand love, yet, I could feel my heart beat rise as I thought of her long hair.
“I saw a girl,” I was already talking to him when I walked in as he ushered me into his office, “and she was beautiful.” He gestured for me to take a seat, and sat down with his notebook, and I continued. “She was really pretty.”
My therapist name was Jim—he made sure I called him by his first name—and at he time I thought nothing of his beard and understanding eyes, that look of interest that was forever stuck to his face. “What was her name, Bobby.”
I thought for a minute, then answered. “Her name was Casandra. She is really pretty.”
“When did you meet Cassandra, Bobby, what is she like?’
I answered in another lie, telling him all sorts of things about her, making it up as I went along. Why was I hiding her?
“Do you think she could be your first girlfriend?”
“No.”
“And why not?”
I thought about it for a second. Was she really real? “I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet, Jim.”
He looked at his watch. “Bobby, I think you’re doing well. Your interest in girls is natural, and though we don’t have to talk about everything, I want to talk more about this girl next time.” He leaned forward and smiled. “Cuz I’m here to help you.” I noted his realness, but I wondered why I had lied to him in the first place.
After we shook hands, he escorted me out to my mother, who seemed half asleep and stood up quickly trying to hide that.  He nodded to her and the door to his office was shut. I looked into her eyes, past the hair that shielded them, and thought of reading something. She didn’t make me go to school on days I had appointments—something I often wished extended forever—and I was ready to utilize my time by having fun.
She dropped me off at the comic shop and preceded to fall back in her seat into a land of sleep. I walked into the store, just wanting to look at the covers of cool stuff, hoping to kill some time. But I found myself looking at the cards next to the register with a greed no child should act upon. I took one, then another, walked to the back of the store, past the undiscovered adult section, and preceded to put each pack of cards in my pocket.
When I walked out I felt a cold stare on me, yet didn’t slow down, I reached the gum machine, slowed, and reached into my pocket for a quarter.
“Hey there, kid. What happened to those cards you were looking at?” He was a black man, short, with a look like he knew everything that was about to happen.
“Oh. I put those back. The Magic cards, right?”
“You mind emptying your pockets, kid.”
My heart skipped a beat and I reached in and pulled the cards out. “Oh. I don’t know how these—“
“Right … right.”
I handed the cards to him and walked away as fast as I could. How could I be so stupid? Why did I stop for gum? The thoughts increased and I ended up sprinting back to the car. Stealing wasn’t something I was good at, I found, but I wasn’t ashamed that I had done it, just feeling the fear of having been caught.
“Hon, you can buy something if you want. Here,” she reached into her purse.
“No, mom, I have enough comics.”
“Are you sure, Bobby?”
“Can we go home?”
“We have to stop at the store real quick so I can get the stuff for the stir fry.”
As we drove, my pulse lowered, and when we walked into the store I found myself eyeing the candy at he register. Then, as I followed in my mom’s footsteps, I saw her again. It had to be her, I stopped, put my arm on her, and the looked underneath the hood of the coat.
It was just some girl. Her hair was red, just like the girl in my dream, but everything else about her I sensed was different. I shook my head, as she looked at me with expectant eyes, and caught up with my mom.
When we left, I eyed the candy again, but my mother wasn’t rich, I didn’t feel like stealing again, and we had candy at home. We entered the minivan, and I got a glance from the woman I had thought to be the girl. Whether she thought me just another crazy boy or was just lost in thought, I wasn’t sure.
As we drove, I found she wasn’t going back home. “Where are we going?”
“I’m taking you to your grandma’s for a few hours. Usually, I would have been excited by this event, but not today.
“But I don’t want to go there. She’ll just tell me stories forever.” I bit my tongue after I said this, knowing it would cost me. But she didn’t respond, just kept driving, and just when I was getting comfortable watching civilization move, we arrived. The house itself looked like a shop from the outside, I had been told once it was a candy store, but my grandfather, who had passed away, had used it as his office when he was practicing law. Above the office was where they had lived for twenty some years, was a small apartment.
We knocked on the door and heard a yell from inside—my grandmother hated getting up once she was watching TV—and walked in. I ran in and gave her a kiss, my eyes wandering to the books. There were all kinds: biographies, memoirs, romances, even, to my glee for many years, fantasy titles by authors with cool names like Tolkien and Lewis.
Grandma had hair so fine, one might think it was a wig, but she had naturally beautiful hair—I had seen pictures and it was beautiful since birth—and it coalesced with her blond demeanor, which was a contrast to the smarts she hid. “Well, well,” she said, “My favorite person is here.”
“I just need a few hours, mom.” It was my mother. “I’m having sleep trouble again.”
There was a brief conversation, over her job, but I could tell she was hiding something, made me wonder if she was sick of me. I could never put my finger on just what about me disrupted her being, but sometimes I sensed her spirits were low and she needed time to think. There again, I thought her problem was she thought alone too much.
Grandma watched The Price is Right and flipped through magazines, as I meandered through the library, which was overflowing with books, and was glad I had learned to read fast. I opened up several, read a few pages, and wished they had more pictures, so that I could put them to work in my drawings.
There, setting next to the bookcase, was the one book she wouldn’t let me borrow, and it was the one with the most books. I didn’t know the author—likely you wouldn’t either—but what really made the book, which was called Keeper’s Choice—was the maps. I could sit and stare at them for hours, flip through the book, find how they were emplaced in the story, then look back to the pictures demanding more. It was as close to a comic as one would find at Grandma’s house, and I reveled in looking at it.
I had to take the book; she wouldn’t let me borrow it so I planned it all out, from how to hide it to what my story would be. I bided my time, pacing the house, pretending to be entranced in the books, occasionally talking to my grandma, other times just staring at the floor with a combination of excitement and boredom.
I hated boredom.
When mom came back, the tragic events went in motion, the hiding of the book under my shirt, the peck on grandma’s cheek, the hand on her shoulder, and the hasty exit.
The next day, after staring at the book, I did go to school, much as it pains me to say. And through it all, I began to feel the guilt weighing down on my shoulders, as though I had already died and was paying the price for my misdeeds. When my mom picked me up, after doing everything I could to avoid talking to anyone, which included much doodling and staying inside during recess, I was thinking of the girl. Too young to be doing that, I know, should be playing soccer after school, sure, but I had the book with all the cool pictures.
She came to me, when I was looking at the book. It reminded me of The Indian in the Cupboard, where I was living out some fantasy I knew couldn’t be true, but was.  I saw her face, this time, the big lips with no lipstick, the face I would now call Irish, the grin I knew then to be wicked; her demeanor was different, and she didn’t speak in some tongue I couldn’t understand, this time.
“Where’d the book come from.” She had the grin of a witch, yet, was to beautiful to be considered one.
“I borrowed it from my Grandma.”
“Good. Good. Do you remember me from before, Bobby?”
“I remember you. What’s your name? How come your not real?”
“I am real, in your mind, like an angel. Ya, an angel. Will you listen to me?”
“I told my therapist about you, but he thinks your real.”
She brushed her hair, revealing her neck, which my dad told me was the way girls showed interest. I became very interested.
“You remember when you got caught stealing but didn’t tell your mom?”
“Yes. But—“
“That was very good, Bobby, I was impressed.”
“But I was caught.”
She stepped forward. “That doesn’t matter, you—“ I heard my mom calling, and the girl disappeared before I could find out who she was. My mom was telling me to go to bed, something I despised in those years, yet I found I could sneak my notebook under the covers with a flashlight and she wouldn’t know, though I couldn’t do that too much, sleep was a hard thing to live without.
For a few hours I drew a sketch. The next day I went to school---and was bored out of my mind. I was reading stuff about a boy who had cried wolf too many times when my Grandma appeared at the classroom door. I pretended to smile, knowing she likely knew of my theft, hoping she wouldn’t bring it up. She gestured for me to come closer, then, told me my mother wasn’t feeling well—again—and grandma had taken a pile of my clothes and some comics and said I didn’t need to stay in school. At that moment, nothing could’ve made me happier, no success would have matched it, for, as I’ve said, I despised school.
My grandmother had a car that really fit her: an old BMW my grandpa the lawyer had bought, that was barely holding together and reminded me of Rocky when he had taken too many punches. We drove, and for a while I was thinking of my mother. I was seeing things, she was having personal troubles; I was stealing, she was caught in the grip of life.
Grandma let me watch Teknoman when she found it was on TV—luck was with me then—and the whole time I was feeling the weight of my theft. When the show was over, we talked. First, she told me a story of how my grandpa had his baseball collection stolen by a friend. “They had so much in common, but your grandpa really put a lot of work into making that collection complete; it meant the world too him.”
Then she told me another story, of how grandpa had been playing monopoly with the same friend—who was losing—and preceded to pull out a stack of five hundreds so that he could buy everything on the board.
“What happened, after that?”
“He never invited him over to his house again, Bobby.”
“If I bring the book back will you let me borrow it?”
“No. I knew one day you would take it. Remember when you found that fool’s gold in the  back yard and thought it was real?”
“Ya.”
“You hid it from everyone. I’m not here to lecture you, Bobby, but when people just take things, and they don’t earn it, it isn’t a good thing.
 “If you really have to have that book then keep it, but, remember, it’s my favorite.”
She quickly, changed the subject, offered me ten dollars to mow her lawn, which took about a half hour, and I asked her  if we could go to the comic shop.
“The one just down the road?” she said.
I told her it was. She said I could walk down, but only stay for an hour. Her eyes had glazed over while she talked and, realizing she needed a nap, I left with the ten bucks in my pocket. As I walked down the straight, noticing the curvatures of each house, I thought of how stupid it was to go back to the place of my theft. I had stolen a lot as of late, but this time I had the money to pay for the comics, and I wasn’t going to let shame stop me.
When I went inside the store, I noticed that there was a different person working—not the black man—so I quickly went to work looking for something that could be traced and added to my collection of sketches. When I saw the red headed hair of a warrior princess, on the cover of an independent comic, I had to step back and take a breath. The breasts were bigger, suiting a comic of its type, yet almost everything else about her fit. The smile of a girl in her youth with that touch of innocence; the eyes of a hardened warrior; the menace that intruded on all these other thoughts, as she held the sword tight. I grabbed the book, continued looking for about half an hour, and ended up just purchasing the comic, on the basis of the cover.
As I walked back to grandma’s home, I went through each page. The girl was from another land, some place called Iberia, and she was seeking to gain silver to regain her house. In twenty-two pages that was about all that was said, yet, something about the imagery spoke to me.
Grandma was snoring when I walked back in the door, watching some game show, and after I hit the dead bolt, I went to tracing the comic I had just bought, panel by panel. I stopped, sickened, and began to draw the evil girl. Something about her body, reminded me of falling angel. I tried to draw wings on her, and it seemed to fit in with her face. Yet something was missing—I wasn’t sure what—and I stopped again, burned out after hours of work, and decided I should get a real career.

The conversation with my therapist the next day, was all about a career, things ten year olds should only dream about. I was determined to make enough money, so that I wouldn’t have to steal ever again. I told him about the book I had stolen from my Grandma.
“Do you plan on returning it?”
“Yes.”
“Then you have nothing to be worried about.”
“Do therapists make money?”
“They do. If I were you I would stick to comics; hearing other people’s problems isn’t a wise career for some of us. I just had the college credits and … well, I would just stick to comics.”
We talked forever, I looked at the clock many times and it seemed to be moving slower than it should have. I was bored, what kept me going was the desire to make money, to become rich and famous.
When my mom picked me up, she seemed to be feeling better. Her eyes showed bits of insanity hidden underneath, yet she still seemed genuinely happy when she first saw me. I gave her a kiss on the cheek.
By the time we got home, an uneventful drive in which the weather outside seemed good, I decided to go for a walk. I tried to explain this to me my mom, but she didn’t like me going out. She passed out on the couch, I went for a short walk. It was supposed to be a short one, though, it seemed to extend the more I thought about things.  Boredom can be defeated, I thought then, and its all about pictures.
I saw her on a swing set at the park. I was at least twenty yards from her, walking slowly, and she waved to me and I approached. As I closed the distance, I thought of all the things that could go wrong in this situation. I had read of witches, with beautiful faces, and she was definitely beautiful. “I saw you,” I said, “In a comic.”
“Oh how wondrous. I heard you stole again. Do you want a kiss?”
“How did you know.”
“Because I do.”
“Are you a witch?” I asked, only a few steps from her, noting how odd she seemed playing on something meant for little boys and girls. For she was far from a regular girl, I decided, something about her scared me.
She laughed. “No. I’m not a witch. You think I’m a bad girl. You never answered my question. Would you like a kiss.”
I saw her eyes, and she licked her lips once, which aroused me in a bad way because, then, I didn’t understand everything about sex, or kissing.
“I’m going to give it back to her, the book.”
“You shouldn’t. It would go against your nature.”
“I don’t want to see you any more. You scare me.”
I walked away, hearing a loud laugh coming from her, a loud laugh that spoke volumes about whom she really was. Perhaps she was too pretty to be a witch, she was also too pretty to be real, not in my imagination. Even then, I understood that.
When I got back home I received a lecture, from a terrified mother. “Where did you go?” she asked several times. Though, I never responded too it, only apologized. I went to my room, noting it needed to be cleaned because of all the clutter laying on the floors, comics and clothes and other things my mom didn’t have the time to help me with. And when I looked at the sketches I had made of the girl, I through them in the trash, and started a new image. I was looking at my grandma’s book, ready to be found by my mother, thought of all the stealing that had emptied my heart, and began a new sketch of the girl.
In the end, it was my best sketch. It showed her hair for what it was; those enticing eyes; the demeanor that spoke volumes; the way she grinned that witches grin. I captured who she was, and to this day I think it was my best image. It wasn’t until years later that, upon finding the sketch, I added a set of red horns.