Rites of Passage, Emma Heckel

132 RITES OF PASSAGE Emma Heckel

I.

It is eight thirty in the morning and my father’s rough, calloused hands are learning the art of braiding. I stand obediently on a chair in front of a streak-stained mirror that is too tall for my five-year-old body to see into. My father’s clumsy hands repeat the same pattern with three uneven strands of hair. Left. Middle. Right. Middle. Left. Middle. Right. Two pink-and-yellow hair bows are tied in at the base of my neck. Two tiny sunrises wrapped like silk around thick braids. Here, I learn how gentleness can manifest itself in heavy ways. Under tough, stop-bathed skin. In two matching sets of grayblue eyes. In hair bows. I wobble on the chair and a hand steadies it.

II.

There is a tree in the backyard of the house I grew up in. It grows apricots from tangled limbs that reach out like arms. I watch the silhouette of the tree move back and forth at night from my bedroom window and I think that the tree is going to grab me when I fall asleep. My mother fastens a blanket across my window with clothespins. I watch the tree from between the blanket and the splintered window frame and wonder if it can see me too.

In the summer my father pays me to pick the apricots up off the ground. A penny each. The rotting fruit gets stuck underneath my shoes and dribbles sticky orange honey onto my hands when I pick it off.

Sometimes I climb the tree and hide in the tallest branch so nobody can see me. I pull green apricots off their stems and watch them fall to the ground with a thud. That summer my knees turn a dull shade of green.

III.

The first time I learn how to balance is on a bicycle with one training wheel. My father doesn’t trail behind me with his hands on my hips like the others do. My father taught me to be self-sufficient. My body leans to the left, all my weight on one small white wheel. I ride in circles in my driveway because I’m not allowed to ride in the street and I leave a trail of black skid marks on the pavement.

IV.

I spend three weeks each summer running barefoot through the forest that envelopes the back of my grandparent’s farm. It is here that I learn to run without stopping even when it hurts and how to swallow honeysuckle stems. I talk to trees and pirouette around ant hills. I catch frogs in an old litter box container and forget to let them go.

My grandfather builds me a circus in the middle of a clearing. I drag him out to watch me cartwheel in the meadow and he watches, grinning in the big, goofy, close-mouthed way I hope I do someday too. I am applauded by my grandfather and every tree in the forest. I bow and thank the flowers and get poison ivy walking home. My grandmother makes me wear her too-big galoshes when I go outside from now on.

V.

I turn eighteen and move to a big city because I only know how to fall asleep to the sound of cars passing by. I turn twenty-one and rent a studio apartment

and learn how to build a home with screws between my teeth. I cuddle with the radiator and cry on the carpet. Dishes pile in the sink.

VI.

I move into a house because it has a willow tree in front. We buy an expensive dining table but cannot afford to buy chairs. The table is mahogany and scratched from being thrown in the back of a pickup truck to travel 462 miles to our front door. Without chairs, the table becomes a couch. A mattress. The floor. A wrestling ring. A boat.

Sometimes I say a prayer for the mahogany tree that was uprooted from its fancy Florida home just so people could eat off of it. I wonder if it misses the weather.

VII.

It is seven o’clock in the evening and three people I love have died this year. I learn that it is a shame not to dance when there is music and so I fall in love again with my feet on the windshield of a Subaru Outback while the canyon walls turn from pink to blue and the sun crawls away looking embarrassed. I learn that the sun, like everything else, disappears slowly and without a goodbye. I wonder how the sun chose what colors to paint, and if it had training wheels too. I wonder if I can ever learn how to burn without apologizing. I wonder if I can bury it, bury the sun with two hands, under wet dirt in the backyard crawling with worms and rotting fruit.

ARTWORDS

2020 ARTWORDS WINNERS

FIRST PLACE “Situated Between a Hamlet and a Village” Macie Rasmussen Inspired by Untitled 13, Teo Nguyen, 2017 acrylic on vellum, 54 1/4 × 102 1/4 inches Weisman Art Museum, Intended gift of Mary and Bob Mersky

SECOND PLACE “How My Husband Makes a Jackson Pollock” Catherine Retica Inspired by Marathon, Sam Gilliam, 2003 relief monoprint on paper, 29 5/8 × 39 5/8 inches Collection of the Weisman Art Museum, Gift of Steven M. Andersen

THIRD PLACE (tie) “Around Here” Joey Gotchnik Inspired by Lift, Rhonda Willers, 2018 earthenware, terra sigillata, wire, nails, screw, OSB, acrylic, 37 1/8 × 24 × 4 5/8 inches Collection of the Weisman Art Museum, The Nancy and Warren MacKenzie

Fund

THIRD PLACE (tie) “Real Colorful Creatures” Samantha Sanvik Inspired by Green Woods, B.J.O. Nordfeldt, 1950 oil on canvas, 40 1/4 × 52 inches Collection of the Weisman Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. B. J. O. Nordfeldt

Untitled 13, Teo Nguyen, 2017, acrylic on vellum, 54 1/4 × 102 1/4 inches, Weisman Art Museum, Intended gift of Mary and Bob Mersky