Chapter 30 #2
I show him first, demonstrating the steady push-down, the way my arms anchor against my hips to prevent wobbling, the rhythmic sound of the motor and the soft, squishy noise of the clay being wrestled into submission. I make a clean, centered mound look easy.
He tries. It does not look easy. The clay lump dances and buckles, lurching violently to one side. He laughs, a burst of good-natured frustration.
“It has a mind of its own! It’s fighting me, Maya.”
“It always fights back. You have to be patient, but firm. You’re teaching it who’s boss. Think of it like… trying to hold a very slippery, angry softball under water. You have to hold it just right.”
While he struggles gamely with his rebellious softball of clay, I get my own wheel going. The rhythm is already coming back to me, the muscle memory in my hands is a miracle. I am shaping the base of our ‘big pot,’ the one for the combo lesson, and as the clay whirls, the movement is hypnotizing.
“Oh, that’s so satisfying to watch,” Zachary says, pausing his own efforts. “How fast are you spinning that?”
“About eighty rotations per minute, maybe? I like a slow, steady center. It gives me time to correct. And listen, while we’re sculpting, I can tell you about the painting I’m working on.”
“Ah, yes! The famous fall gourds. Did you bring it in?”
“No, I’m still working on the last layer of sealant.
It’s for our trailer. I realized we didn’t have any proper fall decor, just some sad plastic leaves.
So I did this still life—gourds and winter squash, mostly.
It went really well with the display outside of the cafeteria, but I actually think I’m going to keep in the trailer all year.
It’s very warm, with the deep oranges and reds and this really lush, dark background. ”
I pull the sides of my pot up, using a sponge to add water and keep the friction low. The clay wall stretches neatly toward the ceiling.
“It sounds beautiful, I can’t wait to see it. You’ve been so incredibly productive lately. It’s like a switch flipped.”
“It really has. I can’t stop. I keep seeing things in colors and shapes, and I have to get it down.
It’s the most inspired I’ve felt since college.
It feels like… me again.” I smile, running a wire cutter cleanly through the base of the large pot I just finished, lifting it gently and setting it aside.
Time to start the small ones. I grab a smaller ball of wedged clay.
“It’s great to see. I know you learned to sculpt from your mother, right?” Zachary asks, finally getting his little lump of clay centered for a glorious, fleeting second before it collapses back into a sloppy cone. “Is that where the painting comes from, too?”
My smile dims slightly. I start aggressively pressing down on the next ball of clay, feeling the weight of the moment.
I shrug self-consciously. “No. I taught myself to paint. I’m mostly self-taught, actually.”
I try to change the subject, focusing on my new lump of clay. “Anyway, I’m not exactly too happy with my mom right now. So maybe we don’t talk about her.”
Zachary is quiet for a moment, letting me work. His wheel is stopped. He’s just watching me. “What’s going on?” he finally asks.
“She called the other night. Again. To beg for my permission to submit that painting to the auction.”
“The series of paintings, where you’re the subject?”
“Exactly. The one of me after my first major flare.” I sigh, running the tip of my finger around the rim of the small, forming plant pot.
“She called to say she’d do a smaller version as a compromise.
That it wouldn’t be the full, life-size portrait.
That it would just be a small, charcoal sketch or something. ”
“And that’s not enough of a compromise?”
“No, because I didn’t even realize she’d done the painting in the first place!
” My voice is sharper than I intended, and I wince slightly.
“The last time we spoke about it, she pitched the idea of a series. She asked if I would be okay with it, and I told her no. Then, she went ahead and made the painting anyway! She made the series, and then she called to tell me about it.”
I feel the familiar heat of anger spreading across my chest. “I’m livid, Zachary. I feel like she completely went around me. She asked for my permission and when she didn’t get the answer she wanted, she did it anyway. She just decided my illness—my pain—was good material.”
Zachary leans back on his stool, letting his own untouched clay sit on the wheel. “I get why you’re angry, truly. She shouldn’t have gone ahead with the series without your permission.” He nods, validating my feelings, which already lowers the temperature in the room.
“But listen to this for a second, Maya. Think about what you just said.”
I stop sculpting, my hands hovering over the turning clay.
“You’re telling your mother that she cannot release her art into the world because you are unhappy with the subject matter and the timing, and because you feel exposed by it.”
I feel myself bristle. “Yes! She’s using my face and my illness without permission!”
He smiles gently. “I wonder if, in some ways, you are asking your mother to censor her art in the exact same way Trevor is asking you to censor yours with the Halloween gourd display,” he says, with no accusation in his tone.
The comparison hits me like a splash of cold water. I stare at the whirling clay, the logic of his argument making a nauseating, slow spin in my head. “That’s different,” I argue weakly.
“Is it?” He asks kindly. “She’s an artist, Maya,” Zachary continues, his voice soft but firm.
“The way you use your painting and your clay to process how you feel about your illness, about being told no by the doctors and your body—doesn't she need to do the same? She’s your mother. She watched you go through that first flare. It must have been terrifying and awful for her, too. Maybe she needed to make that painting to process her feelings around your illness, her fear, her grief, her helplessness. And being told not to is as stifling for her as Trevor’s demands are for you. ”
I open my mouth to argue again, but the words catch in my throat because he’s right. That heavy, churning, creative pressure I feel—the one that wakes me up at three a.m.—that doesn’t belong exclusively to me. It’s an artist’s burden, and my mother is an artist.
“I hadn’t thought about it like that,” I whisper, running a wet finger across the rim of the pot. It feels strangely cool, grounding. “But why didn’t she just say that? Why didn’t she say, ‘I had to paint this because I was scared and this is how I process things?’”
Zachary shrugs slightly, leaning his elbows on his knees. “Well, let me ask you something. Have you always been able to express how you feel about your illness? Up until recently, when you met, say, an overly curious, extremely handsome science teacher?”
I pull a face, but I know the answer.
“No,” I admit with a chuckle. “No, I haven’t. I buried it. All of it. Deep inside. I avoided looking at it, talking about it, acknowledging it. It was easier to pretend the lupus didn't exist than to face the fact that my body betrayed me.”
“Exactly,” he says, his tone still gentle, not victorious. “It’s hard. Maybe she’s dealing with the same block. The subject is too painful, so she focuses on the practicalities: the auction, the compromise, the size. Not the why.”
He gets up, walks over to the sink, and starts to clean the clay off his hands.
“So, instead of a total ban, maybe you try to find a middle ground,” he suggests, wiping his hands on a nearby rag.
He walks back over and settles beside me again.
“You want control over the narrative. You want to give permission. So give it to her, but on your terms. Maybe instead of her using the photo of you back then, when you were sick and vulnerable and didn’t even know you were being documented, she uses one you take now, during your next flare.
A picture that you control. You get to choose the angle, the setting, the expression. She uses that as her model.”
The idea is revolutionary. Control.
“That way, you are collaborating,” he says. “You’re giving her the emotional material she needs for her process, but you’re owning the image. You’re giving your consent, and you’re empowering yourself in the process.”
I stare at him, feeling a sudden rush of warmth that has nothing to do with the studio temperature. “I love that,” I breathe out. “That’s brilliant, Zachary.”
“I’m happy to take the picture for you, too,” he says, a playful smirk twisting his lips. “I can make it very dramatic. Maybe we can get Frida in the frame, looking mischievous.”
I burst out laughing, the tension finally snapping. The absurdity of a portrait of my lupus flare, featuring my ornery ferret, is exactly the kind of levity I needed.
I reach out and hug him tightly, my clay-covered fingers brushing against his neck again. “You always know how to make me feel better. Like I don’t have to hide this—any of it.”
I pull back, ready to launch back into the joy of the clay, determined to throw all thirty of the little pots tonight because he’s got my back.
But as I reach for the switch to turn the wheel back on, a loud, distinct sound cuts through the quiet of the studio.
It’s coming from outside the locked door to the studio that leads to a small supply storage area that you walk through when you first enter the building, before you can go into the main part of the studio where Zachary and I are.
The metallic, rhythmic sound of someone violently rattling the door handle, twisting and pulling it, as if desperate to get in.
We both freeze. The studio, usually a place of warm, dusty comfort, suddenly feels cavernous and cold.
“What is happening?” I whisper, my heart immediately thudding against my ribs.