The Right Tools

BY KACI MODAVIS

The blank canvas sat idly still in the backseat as I stared at the empty highway ahead of me. The lights in the distance were faint and the city appeared to have toned down for the night. I sat uncomfortably in the seat, with nerves pinched and knuckles gripped around the steering wheel while my mind replayed the evening’s events like a warped record.

“Your exhibit didn’t pull as much attention as we hoped.”

“I’m not saying it’s atrocious. It’s just not ethereal…like you said it would be. The color scheme seems a bit wrong, my dear.”

“Have you tried the marketing department? I heard they’re looking for new hires. They can always use artists like yourself.”

Sweat bubbled around the corners of my forehead. Nausea overwhelmed my stomach, waves of vomit threatening the back of my throat. I could hear them now, the defeat echoing through the car’s interior: all the downtrodden reviews and subtle jabs, tarnishing comments proposing a lack of ability. Images of the janitorial staff removing my artwork at the end of the show, heaving the canvases onto a pushcart that would deliver them to the shadowy underground of the gallery. A fitting place for failure to ride out the rest of its days, in a cavernous hole where chipped paint and temperature control were of no concern. Watching the paintings disappear, a mediocre smile pressed upon my manager’s face.

Hours later my mom’s voice, through the static of a cell phone speaker telling me, “You’ll find it one day.”

“Find what?” I asked her, tears begging to fall from my eyes in front of a crowd full of critics.

“Your passion.”

The woman struck my car in a grievous manner. Her body bobbed alongside the highway road like a balloon in the wind. Perhaps a lover of the drink, she stumbled step from step swaying involuntary movements. As I approached her, she lost balance and stepped too far to the left, ankle crumbling beneath the weight of her bulbous stature. Her equilibrium buckled and as fast as I registered the union between the hood of the car and her body, the tires had crushed her being.

And then, silence. My hands, unsteady, popped open the door. The autumn air whipped against my face. My eyes veered across the road, readying themselves for what I presumed would be a massacre of sorts— a violent display of intestines sprawled across the pavement or worse, a crushed skull lying in the dirt. A relic of death, of destruction.

Instead, the frail woman lay off road, shoulder bones bent inward as though she was cradling herself. Her eyes were open, yet frozen in place. Constellated freckles ran rampant across her cheeks, paired with a subtle, almost invisible scar on the bottom of her chin – a quiet indentation curved in the shape of a C. Hands lay at her sides, palms open mirroring that of saints ready for sacrifice. Across her lower stomach a gash oozed with thick blood. “Shit,” I muttered, and gripped the hair atop my head. “Shit, shit, shit.”

I knelt beside the woman for a moment, nudged her body and watched as it slumped like a bag of potatoes. I lifted her shirt and inspected the wound. Blood bubbled above her skin, overflowing the side of her body, overfilling like a glass of red wine. It dripped onto my hand. I swatted it away, flickers of red speckling the brown grass.

I dialed 911, but as my fingers pressed the numbers, they blurred and morphed into a familiar pattern. No longer was it emergency services, but my awoken mother on the receiving end.

“Ebony…what in God’s name is going—” “Mom,” I wept into the phone. The initial tension seemeto cease on the line, her husky voice replaced by hesitant silence. Her breathing had stilled.

“Mom, something happened—I don’t know what—” “Are you in trouble?” she asked, voice without tone.

I faced the dead woman, a pool of blood now glistening across the dirt, the wind whipping strands of her hair through the air.

“Because,” she interjected, pulling my attention away from the corpse. “You know the consequences of poor decision-making Ebony. You get yourself in trouble, I can’t get you out. So, tell me how much trouble you’ve put yourself in.”

As I slumped in the dirt beside my consequence, the air seemed to thin and my mother’s voice echoed through my cranium. I imagined her disappointment when I’d be hauled off to prison in handcuffs meant for criminals, not artists such as me. I imagined the stories she’d tell her friends: the dissatisfaction of having not only a lackluster artist as a daughter, but also a felon. What a waste.

“I’m—”

“Spit it out. Have you written off your career?”

The ripples in her voice seemed to slice me in half. My stomach singed with hunger and nausea, indistinguishable from one another. I couldn’t recall the last time I ate. As I suffered to utter syllables into the phone, a burp erupted from my throat featuring the smallest hint of vomit. The acid burned my throat like a branding iron. My knuckles dug deep into the earth, into something wet and utterly warm.

“Ebony?” she asked. I felt the phone slip from my fingers and lay amongst the softened ground. “Ebony answer me goddamnit.”

My left hand had submerged itself in the pool of blood leaking from the woman’s belly. It cleansed my hardened calluses, dipped around my ripped cuticles, and emphasized the indentations in my palm. A shine of incomparable nature glistened on my flesh.

But the color. I had seen blood before: I had surgery, scraps and cuts and slices from tools. This was different. Shining upon my tissue, but not lacking in saturation. It was thick and soft, and somehow neither. I couldn’t quite feel it, but the blood upon my hand felt much like the sun on my skin after a harsh winter.

I couldn’t hear my mother’s voice anymore, though it had disappeared long ago into the howling of wind. She was drowned out by this woman’s life painting my hand. My heart rate quickened as I uncovered the ocean of blood she carried inside her, carefully yet consistently exiting its vessel. The palpitations ran my lungs dry, heart overworked, mind dizzy from the urgency to run. To abandon— whatever this was. Swallowed by my own fault and her body’s laziness.

Yet, drenched in brisk air with nowhere to turn, I stayed alongside the woman, eyes trained on her fixated body that would cease to breathe again. What a waste, I thought.

A symposium of failures gathered together. What would our mothers think, if she had one? What would the critics say of me ruining my career in a single night— a failed exhibit and a manslaughter charge under my belt? Ghastly would be my family, my name stripped from plaques and plastered on newspaper headers.

I wished for a different outcome, an idealistic future in which we both reaped success. Her body, my body, a culmination of talent and riches and admiration. Bending down again, grazing my fingers against her damp cheekbone, her blood continued to trickle out like faucet water.

I looked behind me, back at the car I left running, and stared at the blank canvas.

In the studio apartment I occupied far too long, the floor mimicked an operation room. Utensils – paintbrushes, palette knives, and spatulas, all littered the ground amongst the saran wrap I had laid down, careful to scrunch up the corners and double layer any loose sections. The canvas sat untouched on the easel, taunting me from across the room.

The woman lay across the saran wrap, blood slowly filling flattened paint cans. I propped cylinders against broken pieces of plastic from storage bins, slowly transferring blood from the slits of her body to the cans. The reflection of light in the liquid was enough to make me gag. The trash cans had already been changed three times and with all the energy I could muster I carried on with my work while she supplied me the tools.

When I say the color was different, it was indescribable. To an extent it replicated the usual oil paint, but at the same time it managed to emphasize the gloss. The blood blurred the colors of original paint it was mixed into, offering an almost incomprehensible glistening of the canvas. I found myself both horrified and spellbound. The rotten browning of its dryness wasn’t happening and if it was, it was masked to the naked eye.

As I dipped the brushes in and out of the blood, onto the canvas, and into paint tubs I began to harvest a hatred of myself. Wholeheartedly, there was never a moment more inhumane than that one. My hands were creating pure art out of tragedy. Out of someone. What did it take to make a monster? Was it truly art or a masquerade of guilt?

“I’m sorry,” I whispered to the woman. “I won’t hurt you. I promise.”

As I spoke the words, I realized how idiotic they sounded aloud. I couldn’t hurt her any more than I already had, starting with the crunch of her bones underneath my car. But I needed her. The moment her blood brushed my hand I knew we were meant as one.

I found her wallet after I stripped her body bare. I piled the clothing in a trash bag and plucked at the sections of skin left untorn, poking and prodding for any last drippings. Her skin grayed and muscles strained into an immovable feature. Bending a limb meant crunching and snapping a rubber band of tissue.

As I discarded my last roll of paper towels, a photo peered up at me. The woman’s driver’s license was face-up, the wallet propped open like an illustrious omen. Her name was Kendra. She was thirty-three, four years older. Five-footfour and a normative one-hundred-forty pounds. Nothing about her was special or signifying. I searched for anything peculiar, anything worth characterizing her life, but she was unbearably average. Two ten-dollar bills and a coupon card for the local supermarket occupied the sleeve of the wallet, along with a sunflower pin. No photographs of family, no index cards with scribbled phone numbers, not even a giftcard to symbolize her interests. I scraped through its bare bones and returned it back to the trash. Kendra wouldn’t suffer any longer. Her life had purpose, and soon enough the canvas wouldn’t mirror that of her wallet.

“A new beginning,” I whispered.

“It’s finished,” I said to no one.

The painting sat against the wall, a glorious thirty-two by fifteen inches. Its contents were abstract yet a thick depiction of a woman’s body escaping the portrait, each section of the painting formed while simultaneously listening to the greats: Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, amongst many others as my mother had trained me to do. Layering the blood created dimension, curving the theoretical woman’s body to bend as though escaping the canvas she was born into.

The oil paints and charcoal had all been contaminated with the woman’s blood, henceforth creating a shimmery, yet glue-like effect. Far away it appeared to be another piece of garbage - another existential piece of bullshit passable as “experimental.” Up close it felt euphoric, as if no longer elusive to the audience’s eye.

I took a step back from the art, turning my attention to the woman now wrapped in the corner of my apartment. I did my best to preserve her. I closed her eyelids, scrubbed her skin, even tried to stitch her wounds. A stolen pack of electrical tape then mummified her body. It felt incriminating to say the least, although I wore gloves to cover any prints. Yet, a prickle of guilt lingered in my stomach.

As I stared wondrously at Kendra’s preserved body, I heard the sounds of footsteps approaching the front door. They were heavy like thunderous booms above the clouds, intention behind every step. My eyes couldn’t choose which mess to combat first. The saran wrapped floor, the unmasked canvas propped against the wall, the deceased body wrapped in the corner.

Undoubtedly it was the woman, but my hands shook as I attempted to think of a plausible hiding place. There wasn’t a place large enough to cover my mistake.

“Ebony!” a voice rang out.

“Mrs. Byrne, please,” another voice replied behind the door. I recognized the rhythm and ruffled voice of my manager, whom I hadn’t seen since the disastrous exhibit which placed my career on hold.

I pressed my hands to the door, looking through the peephole. My mother stood buried in a heavy fur coat, cheap and irrefutably old, but her own nonetheless. She always had a flare for the dramatic, even when we couldn’t afford it. Class was never something we couldn’t afford, even food had its limits. Her face was wrinkled but powdered heavily, her eyelids painted with a sort of cream shadow. Beside her stood Eileen, a stout but confidently held woman with thickframed glasses and a blazer that nearly reached her knees. She attempted to push aside my mother, but to no avail.

“Ebony, honey, we need to talk. Your mother has some concerns—”

“They’re not concerns,” my mother interjected. “She’s having some sort of episode. Of course you know she can be, always prying for attention.”

I propped open the door enough to see a sliver of their faces. Both held their mouths open as if surprised by my hesitancy.

“Ebony, can you just open the door?” My mother placed her palms on the metal and began to push forward. I kept my foot locked behind, halting her attempt and intensifying the rage behind her eyes.

“Mom, you need to leave. Now,” I told her. Eileen raised her hand as if to summon me forward.

“My dear, what is this all about? I don’t have time for this and I’m sure your mother has other places she could be—”

The hair on the back of my neck began to rise, as if the corpse rotting in the apartment was warning me of such discovery. I grit my teeth together, pressing harder on the door.

“Ebony! It was enough hanging up on me the other day. I can see now you’re being ridiculous,” my mother shrieked, finally giving up on gaining access. She covered her face with her hands, pretending to be upset. “Do you know how insulting it is to have to bring your boss down here—”

“Mrs. Byrne, I specifically remember you asking me to check up on Ebony. I’m capable of—”

“It’s horrendous,” my mother said. “A complete embarrassment.”

I took a deep breath and propped open the door a bit wider, just enough to expose my face.

“You look—Ebony dear you look tired. What have you been doing?” Eileen asked, squinting as if to examine my blemishes. I touched my face for a sign of grease or old makeup, something to indicate her perplexed demeanor.

“I’ve been—”

“Not sleeping I assume,” my mom muttered.

“Would you stop?” I growled, feeling my stomach swell with fury. “I’ve f inished a piece. A real one. And this one’s the one. I can feel it.”

They both stood confused as though I spoke gibberish. My mother scrunched the crooked tip of her nose and Eileen cocked her head to the side, a hint of interest on the surface of her complexion.

“Haven’t you run out of chances, Ebony?” my mother asked. Her otherwise husky voice softened into a plea. “Don’t do this to yourself. It’s over.”

“I have somethi—”

“It’s okay to stop now, kiddo. Perhaps this isn’t your time.” “I’m not lying.” I reassured them. “I’ll show you.”

The gallery was packed to the brim. All around me, people held wine glasses and eyed the pieces layered amongst the walls. They swayed intimately at the pieces they admired, and sped past those they deemed incompetent. The patterns were all the same.

My throat ached and my fingers trembled so terribly I was forced to tuck them underneath my armpits. Every so often my eyes blurred with tiny dots and a haze overcame my consciousness. I leaned against the walls for support and slid my fingertips across the sunflower pin locked into place on my chest. I was on top of the world and yet I was smothered.

I slumped against the wall when Eileen approached the front of the crowd, congregating near the uncovered centerpiece. My ears began to ring. I clutched my forehead. This was it, this moment, this second.

“Ebony, aren’t you so proud?” my mother whispered, her hand wrapped around my forearm. She was dressed elegantly in a modest cream-shaded dress which slipped off the tops of her shoulders, paired well with a pearl necklace, fake pearls of course. I brushed her arm away.

I watched through the plethora of people as Eileen pranced around the gallery, stopping at my uncovered piece. Her fingers gently gripped the satin covering. I swear somewhere in the midst I could hear my own name. Eileen seemed to move at a slower pace once the curtain unraveled, falling to the ground like snowflakes in December. All at once, the room lit up.

The painting never looked so glorious. For a moment the world was quiet and all I could see was the woman. Her own being existed upon that wall, permanently fixed against a patterned canvas meant for toxic chemicals. She was alive, and being celebrated, crawling out of the canvas even. The molded fingertips seeped into the edges, searing in history Kendra’s life. The applause, the roar of the appeasement— it was all her. I imagined her hearing the applause from where she now rested, somewhere along the river just outside the city. If we celebrated just loud enough, she too would applaud.

“Ebony, this—this is it.”

“It’s stunning.”

“After all this time, I knew you had it.”

“Finally—this is the ethereal you were telling us about.”

A man dressed in a velvet suit approached me soon after. Clean-shaven, he smelt of pine as he rested a hand upon my shoulder. A smile enlarged on his face. The sweat had subsided and I was beginning to see straight again. A cool breeze swept over my skin.

“I’m pleased to be here tonight, Miss Byrne. My name is John Quell. I’m a freelance critic, so for now I can’t give you a title” he said. I extended my hand. He shook it egregiously.

“I’m pleased you’re here as well. Did you enjoy the piece?” I asked. He tilted his head forward, laughed a little as though it were a joke. Something felt uneasy about his face, so solemn and unkept.

“If I can ask, what was the inspiration behind the piece?”

I turned away. Heat flowed through my face and I knew my cheeks were swelling with red. I envisioned the woman’s face: carved cheekbones, hazel eyes, a mole on her left cheek to compensate for the C shaped scar on her chin, the splash of freckles consuming her paleness; all the teeny details art could never show you.

“Tragedy,” I replied. “It’s inspired through tragedy.”

“Well,” he began, “Have you begun thinking about your next piece? Assuming there’s going to be a next piece? I sense this could be a collection.”

The goosebumps resurfaced, though I didn’t feel the nausea which typically accompanied such feeling. It was an omen, a call to something I didn’t realize was possible before. Perhaps this piece was the passion my mother knew I’d find. One day, she said, and that one day was here.

“If you do,” he said, reaching into his suit pocket. “Here’s my card—”

He jerked backwards, dropping a small card onto the ground. He hissed through his teeth and gripped his hand, a tiny drop of blood lingering on the tip of his pointer finger. It glistened under the light.

“Fuck,” he laughed. “Paper cut.”

In the gallery walls it seemed like a gift presented to me. It was sinful not to take it, not realize what I had to do. All I’d ever wanted was to find my passion, to give the people art I knew could beautify the world— one way or another.

“So, do you?” he asked. “Have another piece?” He shook his finger back and forth, a droplet of blood still excreting from his flesh. It looked just like hers.

“Yes,” I said, grabbing his finger. Paint oozed from his skin. “I do.”