Repeat After Me

Chapter 50

I spent Tuesday and Thursday evenings at Pigmentation's studio after school. I'd stay up past midnight most nights studying. It was the only way I could fit everything into my day. I drank energy drinks and ate tablespoons of instant coffee and I read and wrote until words were gunpowder residue in by brain. At school, I sometimes found it hard to concentrate with tiredness stillborn in my mind, and worry an overdue payment in my gut. My teachers seemed like ventriloquist dolls, mouthing the words of a curriculum that was neither interesting, sincere, or useful. I longed for a day when I could be at university and have a studio of my own, where my work would also be play, where I wouldn't be graded on what I could learn by rote, but by the individuality I could display.

Pigmentation's studio was my happy place. It was my Aladdin's cave, full of treasure, and using my hands was as satisfying as being an alchemist turning straw into gold.

We were already noticing changes with my grandmother. She spent more time in bed and when she was up she'd say she was tired. She often paused mid-sentence, trying to remember what word she was going to say next. She was getting dizzy if she stood up too fast. She never complained to Josh or I. When we were in the room, she was upbeat. But then I'd overhear her talking to mum in quite a different way, 'I just feel ordinary all the time ... No, I don't want to see another specialist. There's no point. I just want to go to sleep and not wake up again.'

50.

Pigmentation asked if I could do more work for her. She now had a date for her solo show at Gallery Squared.

I was helping create tree trunks out of long cardboard tubing ­– it would be like a forest in the middle of her exhibition space. She taught me how to frame her smaller works. She was also doing a series of artworks drawn onto pencils. My job was to sand back one side of the pencils to bare wood. I stuck them together in a row with glue, preparing them as a surface for her to draw on.

I'd almost finished selecting photographs of the Manila art tarp project. I'd reduced the images down to one hundred. While she worked, I asked questions about her time in the slums and I typed up snippets for posts on Instagram and Facebook. We planned to print these short statements to be hung alongside the photographs in the exhibition.

'Ask me questions,' Pigmentation said, when I came up with the idea of having text alongside the photographs. 'I hate writing artwork text. It's crazy that people expect artists to be able to write artist statements. It's like asking a writer to paint a picture for the cover of their novel.'

I told Pigmentation about my grandmother and how her health was deteriorating rapidly.

'My dad's cousin had a brain tumor. I'm so sorry. I know how terrible it is. He came to live with us at the end too. I can't remember it very well, I was just a kid, but I know that it can go downhill very quickly. I'm sorry to say that. But that's what happened with my dad's cousin. Just be prepared.'

I picked up a pencil from a glass jar and put it down on the table again, sadness engraving a tombstone with a metal chisel.

'How's Asten?' Pigmentation asked.

'He's okay I guess. It's kind of complicated.'

'Alicia?'

'Yeah.'

'He's been trying to break up with her for years. They're like a divorced couple living under the same roof. Except they don't live under the same roof. It's really strange.'

'You know her?'

'I've met her a few times. She has something unhinged about her. You know those women who just seem unhinged? There's a few of them around. Especially in my age group. But I've always given Alicia a wide berth. She's never seemed approachable. She has this "fuck off" attitude about her.'

'Yeah, I know.'

'So you've met her?'

'Just once,' I said. 'She kind of tracked me down.'

'Jealous stalker?'

'Something like that.'

'Well, be careful. Better to not get involved, I guess. Let them sort it out. He should have left her ages ago. He's been talking about it for years. I can't understand why it takes so long. How some couples can spend years in misery together. I've never been like that. If something doesn't feel right, I'm out of there.'

Pigmentation scraped her side tooth with her forefinger. 'It's a shame, because I think you two would make such a great couple.'

It was a well-meaning compliment, yet instead it felt like sheets of pain being shoved through my return shute. Lately, I'd been trying to distance myself from Asten. When he messaged, I'd take a day or two to reply. I didn't want to jump on every message he said anymore. I didn't want him to know that his name popping up on my screen was like a hot air balloon rising in the air, a miracle every time. That the idea of him just thinking about me, enough to send a message, fed my starved heart. That sometimes I lay awake at night, imagining him breaking up with Alicia, appearing on my doorstep, and saying 'Let's do this. Let's be a thing together.' That we could never be cancelled. That together we could overcome any challenge together, we could outlast crazy girlfriends and global pandemics and psychopathic world leaders. We could outlast and last.