OH MY, O’KEEFE

Nine mornings out of the ten I’ve been in this rented house, the sun has come thru the sheer curtains to warm my face. Each time I throw off the only cover on my naked body, a washed out blue sheet. It’s a left over from when we had twin beds and lots of arguments. Now I have neither but my king sized bed has plenty of room for company. So far nobody’s interested in testing the mattress. And I still argue with the t.v. and my psyche. The automatic coffee machine is perking. I’ll take my English muffins out of the refrigerator where they are safer than on the counter top.

I just love it here, almost isolated. The few white adobe houses are foolers. They aren’t white at all. I recall my high school art teacher trying to get the class to understand that black is the absence of color and white is the perfect blending of all colors. Finally I see what she meant. My eyes have been opened, my mind is still closed, locked in anger and hurt. I go outside, shake my head to brush away the ugly gray spider webs. It can’t be, the sky is falling. The rolling, tufted pink clouds move swiftly from the horizon, directly over my head. Surely, the marshmallow fluff is going to fall and smother me. The white houses are almost on fire. Blue gray shadows, yellow sun beams make an arced rainbow on my front door.

OK , Georgia, here I come. I’ll never out paint you but I’m going to dig in and see what comes up on my canvas. Look, look at that, I say to the breeze. Santa Claus is in a yellow chariot, pink horses push him East. There is only one narrow paved road to this little dot of nothing that lets me cling to my sanity. Yesterday I couldn’t even find it. Sand covered it with sand pellets that sounded like a machine gun as they pelted my house, numbed my sun burned face.

I look at my varied tubes of paint and squeeze the cadmium red onto my pallet. The slight squeeze sets me thinking about a woman, any woman, just not my ex. How soft and pliable they can be and how cold and cruel when they are empty, crushed and tossed away. All of the beauty I was going to capture, dried up and died. The red is blood. Marie Antoinette has quickly lost her head. I quiver in the heat and the ugly image is gone. Am I getting sick? I take my canvas chair, pallette and paint back to the ugly little house, I hate it. It’s emptiness, its loneliness destroys the colors, the glitter. The sun is high and I run inside to hide myself. My footsteps echo on the rugless floor. The beautiful day I planned has gone topsy turvy. What an idiot I have been to try to match Georgia, such nonsense.

A light tapping at my door and I remember the Mexican girl that is to straighten my house, wash a few clothes. Consuela has a mop, bucket, broom, fairly clean rags, plus a shopping bag. On top is a small tan wooden box. ‘What have you got there, Consuelo?’ ‘Senor, I have my oil paint, brushes, pallet, canvas and would like to paint the houses here when I am finished cleaning. Hokay, wit chou?’

And so Consuelo cleaned, went outdoors to paint and I went with her. She was a god send. I watched her splash the canvas with things I didn’t recognize, but her freedom, the sensuous feelings that came from my little housemaid brought me back to reality. We painted together every day for two weeks. My work looked like garbage to me but not to her. My confidence took hold.

Consuelo took hold, too. On the 14th night my too big bed was no longer too big. The faded little blue sheet wasn’t even missed.