I’ll Give You the Sun(60)
Author: Jandy Nelson

I glance up and down the quiet street. See in the distance the back of an old-looking woman in a bright-colored dress . . . who actually may be floating. I blink—she’s still floating and it looks like she’s barefoot for some reason. She’s entering a small church. Whatever. Once she’s inside, I cross to the other side of the street, then easily and quickly monkey up and over the fence. I bolt down the alley, climb carefully up the stairs of the escape, trying not to creak the old metal, grateful there’s some kind of construction going on nearby to cover up any sound I may be making. I scoot across the landing and peer around the side of the building, realizing the ear-splitting sound I’m hearing is not coming from a construction site, but the courtyard below, where I believe the apocalypse has just occurred, because whoa: It’s the scene after the aliens have launched a chemical attack on Earth. All over the yard, there are rescue workers in hazmat suits and face masks and goggles, wielding power drills and circular saws, emerging from and disappearing into white billowing clouds as they attack hunks of rock. This is a stone studio? These are stone sculptors? What would Michelangelo think? I watch and watch and when the dust settles, I see that three massive pairs of eyes are boring into me.

My breath catches. From across the yard, three enormous stone men-monsters are staring at me.

And they’re breathing. I swear it.

My ex-sister Jude would freak. Mom too.

I need to get closer to them, I’m thinking, when a tall, dark-haired man walks out of the building through an entire wall that’s pulled halfway up like a garage door. He’s talking with some kind of accent into a phone. I watch him throw his head back in supreme happiness, like he’s hearing that he gets to choose the colors for all the sunsets from now on or that Brian’s waiting for him in his bedroom naked. He’s practically dancing around with the phone now, then he laughs a laugh so happy it blasts about a billion balloons into the air. This must be the barking mad artist and the scary-ass granite men-monsters across from me must be his barking mad art.

“Hurry,” he says, his voice as big as he is. “Hurry, my love.” Then he kisses two of his own fingers and touches the phone, before slipping it in his pocket. Total whale dork move, right? But not when he did it, trust me. Now he has his back to the courtyard and is facing a pillar, his forehead touching it. He’s smiling at the concrete like a total whack job, but I’m the only one who knows, due to my stellar vantage point. He looks like he would give all ten fingers too. After a few minutes, he pivots out of his delirium and I get the first clear shot of his face. His nose is like a capsized ship, his mouth the size of three, his jaw and cheekbones hefty as armor, and his eyes are iridescent. His face is a room overstuffed with massive furniture. I want to draw it immediately. I watch as he surveys the apocalyptic scene before him, then raises his arms like a conductor and in an instant every power tool goes silent.

As do the birds, the passing cars. In fact, I can’t hear a rustle of wind, the buzz of a fly, a word of conversation. I can’t hear anything. It’s like someone pressed mute on the whole world because this man is about to speak.

Is he God?

“I talk very much about bravery,” he says. “I say to you carving is not for cowards. Cowards stick to clay, yes?”

All the rescue workers laugh.

He pauses, swipes a matchstick on a column. It bursts into flame. “I tell you, you must take risks in my studio.” He finds a cigarette behind his ear and lights it. “I tell you not to be timid. I tell you to make the choices, make the mistakes, big, terrible, reckless mistakes, really screw it all up. I tell you it is the only way.”

An affirmative murmur.

“I say this, yes, but I still see so many of you afraid to cut in.” He begins to pace, slowly like a wolf, which is definitely his mirror animal. “I see what you are doing. When you leave yesterday, I go from work to work. You feel like Rambo maybe with the drills, the saws. You make lots of noise, lots of dust, but very few of you have found even this much”—he pinches two fingers together—“of your sculptures. Today this changes.”

He walks over to a short blond-haired girl. “May I, Melinda?”

“Please,” she says. I can see how much she’s blushing even from up here. She’s totally in love with him. I look at the faces of the others who have gathered around them and realize they all are, male and female both.

(PORTRAIT, LANDSCAPE: A Man on a Geographic Scale)

He takes a long drag on the cigarette, then tosses it barely smoked onto the ground and steps on it. He smiles at Melinda. “We find your woman, yes?”

He studies the clay model beside the large rock, then closes his eyes and combs the surface with his fingers. He does the same with the hunk of stone next to it, examining it with his hands while his eyes are closed. “Okay,” he says, taking a power drill off the table. I can feel the excitement of the students, as he, without any hesitation, plows straight into the rock. Before long, a dust cloud forms and I can’t see any more. I need to get closer. I mean really close. I think I need to live on this man’s shoulder like a parrot.

When the noise stops and the dust clears, all the students start clapping. There in the rock is the curved back of a woman identical to the one on the clay model. It’s unbelievable.

“Please,” he says. “Back to your own work.” He hands Melinda the drill. “You will find the rest of her now.”

He goes from student to student, sometimes not saying a thing, sometimes exploding into praise. “Yes!” he cries to one of them. “You did it. Look at that breast. The most beautiful breast I ever see!” The kid cracks up and the artist cuffs him on the head like a proud father might. It makes something pull in my chest.

To another student, he says, “Very good. Now it’s time to forget everything I just say. Now you go slow. So, so slow. You caress the stone. You make love to it but gently, gently, gently, understand? Use the chisels, nothing else. One wrong move and you ruin everything. No pressure.” Same head cuff for him.

When he seems to determine that no one needs him, he goes back inside. I follow him, walking to the other side of the landing where the windows are, standing to the side so I can see in without being seen. Inside, there are more rock giants. And on the far side of the studio, three naked women, with thin red scarves veiling their bodies, are modeling on a platform surrounded by a group of students sketching.