s p l i n t e r e d

chapter o n e

"Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen." - Leonardo da Vinci

-

R u t h is talking, and I am elsewhere. It begins as a few seconds. Then moments. A minute, or maybe two. I don't know how long, exactly, but I blink, and I am there, again, sitting on the olive green couch in front of her, but I couldn't tell you a single word that left her lips. It's like the last ninety seconds have been erased from my mind.

"Asia?" Ruth frowns. She says my name as Ah-siya instead of Ah-see-ah, but it is close enough, and I have spent a lifetime correcting people. Ruth has the face of a pixie. Slight and angular. Short, cropped hair that curls behind her ears. A sharp, jutting chin, and eyes that are cornflower blue, and remind me of a Cezanne painting.

I clear my throat and adjust my position on the springy couch that I salvaged from a house auction last spring. Baba had turned his face into a scowl when I insisted we shove it into the back of the van. "Yes?"

Her startling eyes narrow into thin, sceptical slits, lips falling open in a slight scoff. "You aren't listening to a word I'm saying, are you?"

I think about lying, and just as the thought occurs to me - I think about how much Baba hates lying. An apologetic pout rises to my lips. It is an attribute I cannot quite consolidate my feelings for - whether Baba's brutal honesty is a gift, or its counterpart. Baba always says not to ask a question if you don't want to hear his answer. I can't remember what I was thinking about, just that it was something other than Ruth's conversation. "Not really, no."

Ruth gives me a pointed look, but she isn't angry. She isn't even irritated. She simply releases a breath from talking to a brick wall for two minutes straight, and sits back into her corner of the couch, toying with the remote in her hands.

Ruth is patient, and kind, I'm learning. I put out the ad for a female roommate thirteen days ago. Ruth moved in eleven days ago. It feels like I have known her for a lifetime, yet everyday I learn something new about her.

An apartment was Baba's one condition.

When I showed him my acceptance letter from NYU Institute of Fine Arts, he looked as if I had presented him with the moon itself; something so sacred and luminous that it had stolen his breath for several moments. I could see his unspoken words in his small, beady eyes; in the way his horn-rimmed glasses steamed up.

NYU has been our dream since before I could ever remember. Baba and I used to take trips to New York City regularly when I was younger. It was only a two hour drive from Hartford, two and a half if the traffic was bad, and we would wake up at the crack of dawn to get here as early as possible. We would spend the day walking through the streets, finding the tiny little bookshops and the small art galleries that were tucked away into unassuming corners of busy streets. Baba liked flicking through the pages of old books, and I liked staring at the colours and shades of paintings, and the day would pass just like that. When the University hosted open art exhibits, Baba and I would wander through them. Baba never truly understood art the way I did, but it didn't mean he didn't appreciate it with me. And if he didn't understand the meaning of art, he knew that I did - that it was a part of me as much as an organ. If he didn't understand that in as many words, then he showed it. Baba spent the last twelve years saving for NYU, and now that I am here, it barely feels real. It barely feels possible for the stars to have aligned in such a manner.

It feels like I should keep pinching myself, should count the seconds as they tick on past so I don't miss a single moment of being here, in the city people dream of.