Freedom of Sketch

Interim

Damn. I can't draw.

I am in a state of creative constipation. My mother left my sketchbook in front of my bedroom door sometime last night. I stare at it cradled in my lap, my eyes as blank as the page. All of my failed attempts add to the massive pyramid of crumpled paper balls overflowing from my trash can. Flip. I rest my cheek against a drawing. The graphite sticks to my skin and enters my pores, but I don't mind. I've fallen asleep on my drawings before.

Sometimes I wish I only had coloring books, so I could gently fill in the predictable spaces with the soft strokes of a felt-tipped marker. Sometimes I tire of making my own pictures, of paving my own paths that frequently guide me to dead ends.

It's still so difficult to comprehend why I would be sent to a shrink for doing something I love to do. And it makes me feel just as angry that I'd get in trouble for defending my friend against one of Caberwood High's biggest, meanest assholes, especially after all of the first-day lectures the administrators conduct about how it's important to stand up to bullies. To protect the victims. "Don't be a bystander!" they say. "Speak up!" I never want to speak again, whether by mouth or pencil.

Then there's the arson investigation.

***

When I was about eight, my mother and I lived in a small, newly renovated Craftsman in a normal neighborhood with normal kids who rode bikes and climbed trees. Because I wasn't a normal kid - still "damaged from the divorce", the therapists would say - I decided to set my mother's cellulose garden gnome on fire after having a very realistic nightmare about it crawling out from under my bed to snack on my toes.

I stole a bottle of nail polish remover from my mother's medicine cabinet, then rooted around in the kitchen drawers until I found a box of matches. I'd never started a fire before, but the CAUTION: FLAMMABLE. KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN label on the back of the bottle of nail polish remover had always fascinated me. I was an avid reader back then, and used to read the labels on absolutely everything.

Armed with materials that at my age would probably suggest a future career in anarchy, murder, or sociopathy, I fetched the offending statue and carried everything into the backyard. I laid my victim face-up on the concrete walkway leading from the back door to the side yard, and doused him with the nail polish remover. I pulled my shirt collar up over my nose and mouth to keep from breathing in the harsh chemical scent.

My hands shook as I opened the matchbox. I had never touched a match, let alone lit one. But I'd seen my mother do it when lighting candles to make the house smell like cookies, pine trees, or cranberries.

I raced the head of the match against the rough side of the box. With a hiss, the white flame appeared, angry and ready. Startled that it had worked on my first try, I dropped the match. It fell straight onto the bastard statue's face, and whoosh! the whole gnome was instantly burning brightly on what had become its funeral pyre.

The back door flew open. "Shiloh!" my mother yelled.

She'd woken from her nap to see me in the backyard in my dirty overalls and pigtails, crouched over what had become a small bonfire. In her panic, my mother thought I'd set fire to the neighborhood cat.

When I turned to look back at her, the tip of my right pigtail ignited. Screaming and running out in her robe and slippers, my mother yanked me backward and threw her soft body across my face to smother the flames climbing my hair.

In addition to forcing me to go to school looking like a complete idiot,my mother spanked me until I thought I'd have to call an ambulance. But at least she never got another garden gnome.