Chapter 1 #5
Ms. Robichaud shaved her hair to an inch above her scalp, like a crew cut.
She wore giant owl glasses, chunky combat boots, and men’s ties.
She never suggested that I try to make friends or eat in the cafeteria.
I guessed that when she was my age, she might have stood out like a sore thumb, too.
But although we were incredibly different, we spoke a common language.
She could stand behind me, one eye winking closed as she considered the perspective of the landscape I was painting, and with a simple suggestion transform the piece into something striking.
What we did not talk about was my home life.
Once, the day after my father had spanked me particularly hard with his hairbrush, I went to school like always.
I had art class first period, and we were painting a still life set up on a table in the middle of the room.
The bruises on my bottom and legs, though, made it hard to sit.
I twisted and shifted in my seat, unable to get comfortable.
Ms. Robichaud asked me, then, to help her hang a sheer curtain across the window with thumbtacks, ostensibly to create shadow for the fruit.
She had me stand on a chair with the fabric in my hands.
“Higher,” she instructed. “Higher . . .” I had to rise on my tiptoes, and as I did so, the hem of my knee--length skirt lifted.
I realized too late my teacher wasn’t looking at the light and shadow.
Her attention was fixed firmly on the welts along my thighs.
She asked me to stay after class. “Eloise,” she said carefully, “if there’s anything you ever want to tell me . . .”
“I’m fine,” I told her.
“You’re not fine. As an educator, if I think you’re being hurt, I’m required to report it.”
I forced myself to look her in the eye. “I fell,” I lied.
The next day, I didn’t go to art. It was the first time I’d ever cut class. I pretended to have cramps and spent the time in the nurse’s office.
The day after that, I cut class again. This time I sat outside the school building, reading.
The third day, Ms. Robichaud found me at my locker. “If you don’t come to class, I’m going to have to submit a detention.”
I knew that would not go over well with my parents. So I went back to art, and Ms. Robichaud did not give me a detention, and she didn’t ask me again about my bruises. I think it was her way of letting me know her room could be a safe space for me.
On Open School Night that year, the cafeteria became a gallery of sorts, with student art for parents to peruse.
Ms. Robichaud asked me to participate. At the time, I had become obsessed with Canova, particularly his sculpture of Cupid and Psyche.
I wanted to create something on a canvas that illustrated that same moment when the god kissed Psyche back to life.
In my painting, the field was feathered, and the lovers peeked out from between those beating wings.
As in the sculpture, Cupid’s hand covered Psyche’s breast. The distance between their lips was the space of a secret.
Ms. Robichaud loved it. She said that she’d never had a student with my raw talent. She wanted me to use this as the first entry in a portfolio I’d build for college applications.
Until then, I hadn’t even thought about going to college.
On Open School Night I proudly brought my parents to the cafeteria and led them to my painting, which had a small group of people admiring it.
But my father grabbed the canvas and yanked it off the wall.
Ms. Robichaud ran over, but my father was having none of it.
“What is this filth, Eloise?” he demanded.
“It’s Greek gods, Daddy,” I said. “It’s art.”
“There is one God. And this isn’t it.” He tucked the painting under his arm and started walking, dragging me behind him.
“Reverend.” Ms. Robichaud’s firm tone stopped him. “Your daughter has extraordinary skill. I’ve never seen a student piece like this before.”
“This is pornography.” He looked at my teacher. “And you . . . you are an abomination. My daughter will be homeschooled.”
The crowd began to whisper. My father took the painting and broke it over his knee.
My mother had been standing with her hands folded in front of her, silent. My father started to drag her out of the cafeteria. “Eloise,” he commanded. “Come.”
For a moment I didn’t move. I looked at my ruined painting. Dimly I registered Ms. Robichaud falling back from my line of sight.
“Eloise!”
My feet started moving of their own accord. Suddenly Ms. Robichaud was at my side again, face drawn, her hand pressing something into my palm. “If you ever need anything,” she said, folding my fingers around a Post--it note.
Numbly, I followed my parents out the front door of the school. “What am I supposed to teach her?” my mother asked.
“The Bible,” my father replied.
I glanced down at the note Ms. Robichaud had given me. Seven digits—-her phone number. I crumpled it up and let it fall to the ground, just as my father turned.
“Eloise,” he said. “Don’t litter.”
“No, sir,” I murmured. I picked up the Post--it and slipped it into the pocket of my skirt.
I am inventing colors. These are hues that have never been recorded, ombrés that waver in front of my eyes and metallics so sharp I can taste them.
I start writing down their names. The three--dimensional ivory twined with white—-I call that “westminster.” The green slide to brown: “crepuscule.” The bubbling orange of the sun as it melts into night: “fervent.” One day, when Molly is older, I will mix these in paints, so that there can be a visual record of them.
Although I am still not sleeping, it is no longer an issue. It was almost as if I had to hit rock bottom before I could hit my stride. As it turns out, I don’t need sleep; my body only had to level up, unlocking new reserves. I now sense when Molly is going to wake to feed seconds before she cries.
I’m buzzing, all the time, my skin conducting electricity. I am suddenly so aware.
I do wonder if it’s just me, or if all women who have babies become so superhumanly attuned. But the one time I get up the nerve to ask someone—-a stranger at the pediatrician’s office with a baby roughly the same age as Molly—-a thought curls like smoke in my mind: We do not speak of this.
I remember once hearing that autism is the brain’s inability to filter out stimuli—-that people on the spectrum experience everything all at once, unable to tune out the extraneous bits.
I, too, am being bombarded. Stimuli come at me in tidal waves; it’s all I can do to stay afloat.
As a result, something has to give. So while my mind is spinning like a pinwheel, I sometimes forget which buttons to push on my washing machine to do laundry.
I can’t remember how to roast a chicken, although I’ve done it a hundred times.
The flip side of this hyperfocus is that, now, I also am aware of everything that can go wrong.
What if there is a fire and I can’t get Molly out of our building?
I pull the couch away from the window because twice a year or so a bird smacks into the glass, and who knows if the next time it will smash through.
I am so scared of tripping when I’m walking down the front steps of the apartment with Molly in my arms that yesterday, I sat on my butt and scooted down.
I put away all the glass tesserae of the unfinished mosaic—-choking hazards.
There are a million and one ways that I could inadvertently hurt my child.
You could, says the smoke in my head. You might.
Five days after Molly is born, Evie asks to visit.
Adam is still in California, and I haven’t seen anyone but the pediatrician.
I am about to say no—-I want to make sure Molly has a little more immunity from disease before I expose her to the world—-but I cannot force the word out.
“Eloise?” Evie says, worried. “Don’t move. I’m coming.”
Don’t move. As if I could! Where would I go?
I find myself laughing uncontrollably, while Molly’s tiny face peers up at me.
And then, the laughter coagulates, and suddenly it’s dripping down my cheeks.
Molly starts crying, too. I should walk with her—-motion soothes her—-but what if I drop her?
So instead, I rock back and forth as her cries get louder, sharper, spiked.
Evie lets herself in with her key—-she takes care of our apartment when Adam and I go away—-and finds me sitting on the floor with Molly shrieking. She plucks the baby out of my arms. Molly immediately stops wailing.
You see? You are bad at this.
“Why are you sitting on the floor?” she asks, her eyes cutting to the couch, which is still pulled far away from its spot beneath the window.
I am about to say So I would not hurt her when I realize how that will sound.
Evie may be my best friend, but she is practical, and if I tell her the truth—-that I’m being watched, that I have so much energy I can see it moving around me like an aura, that I’m afraid of injuring my child—-she will think I’m insane.
She will tell Adam, and I’ll get taken away from Molly.
I don’t know how long I sit there in silence, but Evie touches my shoulder. The baby is not in her arms anymore, and I startle. “She’s just over there,” Evie says, and I see Molly on the couch.
(She could roll off.) She can’t roll yet. (It could still happen.)
Evie strokes my hair off my forehead, the way she did the first time I drank at RISD and spent the night projectile vomiting into the toilet. “When was the last time you ate?” she asks.
“She nursed twenty minutes ago . . .”
“I asked when you ate. Never mind. Molly and I are going to whip you up something while you take a nap.” She hugs me. “I’ve got you.”