The sound
of paper tearing, over and over, awakens Penny. The tendrils of her dreams
unwind, infecting her room with elements of unreality – there is a
constellation shining through the ceiling, there the floor is water, and there
Sara stands by the window on skinny legs with stork wings spread around her. A
few sticky blinks and the wings are the gauzy yellow curtains, the legs attach
themselves to the tray table that stands between them.
Sara in a
long tee now sits cross-legged on the floor, lit in blue from the fading bulb
in the streetlight up the block, and resumes tearing newspaper. A careless pile
of thin strips already overflows from her lap onto the floor. Her hands throw
fluttering shadows onto her chest and legs as she works, moving with
unquestioning, pristine intent.
Penny is
awake now but silent. Even her breath, she thinks, would intrude, would break
the circuit of energy running from Sara’s mind to her hands. So holding her
breath Penny watches greedily as the genesis unfolds, the first few strikes of
lightning in the storm that will culminate in the freezing of time that is
Sara’s art.
When the
newspapers are all torn, Sara sits rigid. Her bare legs are now buried in
newspaper strips. She bends forward and gathers them to her with wide sweeps of
her arms, her chin nearly touching the floor as she reaches for a few stray
pieces that have tumbled forward in the breeze from the broken window. The
curve of her back could be carved in marble.
Then as
Sara stands with her arms full of paper strips to carry them away, she stumbles
and glances over her shoulder at Penny, who shuts her eyes and tucks all these
images away like a thief.
