zhang191

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“One more, muchacho,” Wireman said
I flicked back the picture of the screaming man
Old dried watercolors rattled like bonesBeneath
the screaming father was the ship again, only this
time it really was my ship, my PerseElizabeth
had painted it at night, and not with a brush – I
could still see the ancient dried prints of her
child’s fingers in the swirls of gray and black
This time it was as if she had finally seen
through the Perse’s disguiseThe boards were
splintered, the sails drooping and full of holes
Around her, blue in the light of a moon that did
not smile or send out happy-rays, hundreds of
skeleton arms rose from the water in a dripping
saluteAnd standing on the foredeck was a baggy,
pallid thing, vaguely female, wearing a decayed
something that might have been a cloak, a winding
shroudIt was the red-robe, my redrobe,
only seen from the frontThree empty
802
sockets peered from its head, and its grin outran
the sides of its face in a crazy jumble of lips
and teethIt was far more horrible than my Girl
and Ship paintings, because it went straight to
the heart of the matter without any pause for the
mind to catch upThis is everything awful, it
saidThis is everything you ever feared to find
waiting in the darkSee how its grin races off
its face in the moonlightSee how the drowned
salute it
“Christ,” I said, looking up at Wireman”When, do
you think? After her sisters – ?”
“Must have beenMust have been her way of coping
with it, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know,” I saidPart of me was trying to
think of my own girls, and part of me was trying
not to”I don’t know how a kid – any kid – could
come up with something like that
“Race memory,” Wireman said”That’s what the
Jungians would say
“And how did I end up painting this same fucking
ship? Maybe this same fucking creature, only from
the back? Do the Jungians have any theories about
that?”
803
“It doesn’t say Perse on Elizabeth’s,” Jack
pointed out
“She would have been four,” I sai