The art room

What is wrong with Maura? Is she simply too serious to be likable? Is that why she is always on the outside of a group? At her school, the boys are into sports and the girls form cliques that are like quicksand. Who is in and who is out? Who is the first to wear lipstick? What did Susie say to Jane that made Rose so angry?

The girls all rave about a new singer, somebody called Elvis Presley. They all love him sooo much, and isn’t he gorgeous, and oh that voice... How ridiculous they are. Out of sheer orneriness, she proclaims she hates the Beatles too, although she has never actually listened to them. It is the newly emerging Rolling Stones who catch her attention. They are raw and angry, which sounds about right to her. ‘You can’t always get what you want…’ Story of her life. And she tries, but when exactly is ‘you get what you need’ supposed to happen?

She goes clothes-shopping with her mother. “Look dear, how pretty, that dress would look so good on you.” She turns up her nose. “Just try it.”

“But I hate pink!” she almost shouts.

Eventually, she is given a strict clothing budget and is sent to shop on her own. She finds funky out-of-the-way shops, where they sell anything but pretty clothes. The darker, the better is her motto - unless she finds something deliciously aggressive. She holds up an in-the-face yellow dress: it is so bright it might glow in the dark, a tent shape with a hemline well above the knee. Scandalous. She can already hear her father harrumphing, and that’s half the fun.

What she craves is interesting things to do, and interesting people to do them with. She draws and paints on her own. At least her mother is generous about art supplies, and one day, she shows her a flyer about a Saturday afternoon art workshop. “You can go if you want.” Of course, she wants to!

Maura enters a large brightly lit room with full length windows, and eight long tables arranged in an octagon. Along the walls, there is an amazing collection of paint, brushes, modeling clay, glue, paper in all sizes and colors. A teacher checks her name on a list. A dozen kids are already mingling. Some are a little younger, some a bit older. All of them greet her with open and curious faces. She does not know a soul, but she feels welcomed rather than scrutinized.

They are divided into groups. Maura gets to start with papier-mâché masks. The teacher brings out large bowls of a warm gelatinous goopy paste, and there are newspapers to tear into strips. “Yuck,” says a younger boy. “Fun, I’ve done this once,” says a teenaged girl. Maura dips her hands into the paste, then strokes each strip of paper into place with her fingers. She builds up layer upon layer, relishing the slippery feeling. There are more strips of paper to build up a nose, then curved lips, raised eyebrows. A few more pieces fill in the cheeks. She crumples smaller pieces into gooey balls that become protruding eyes.

While their creations dry, there is a lively discussion about how their masks might be used. Finally, they decorate them; hers is red and orange and yellow; she invents designs that might be tribal markings. Just for mischievous fun, she paints an unintended bump in black, above the grinning upper lip. As a final touch, she dabs a yellow dot on top of it, and it becomes a bursting pimple. Nobody disapproves when they admire each others’ work.

Then her group gathers in a cheerful reading area. They will each write a poem. It could be inspired the poetry books they can chose from or be entirely new. Pads of paper are passed around, and pencils. Maura sees the other kids concentrate, scribble and erase and write some more. An image comes into her mind, and words crystallize around it. When time is up, several of them ask for just a minute more.

She is a little self-conscious when it is her turn to share what she wrote. “Way across the river,” she reads in a low voice without looking up. When she is done, she expects to see frowns or blank faces, but the kids around her nod, and there is a smile or two.

A slightly older boy says: “I love how you describe the fog rolling in and covering everything. It made me wonder about what lies on the other side!”

“Is the other side a place you know, or maybe a place you dream of?” asks a girl. Good question. Nobody busies themselves sorting right from wrong, and every idea is taken seriously. There are no winners and no losers.

This is where she belongs. These are her people.