Free What I Remember Most by Cathy Lamb

wrapped around it stuck straight into the edge of the canvas. Beauty and terror, mixed. I was told a man bought it who owned a knife and gun shop.
    When I’m stressed, I draw and paint lilies. I have sold hundreds of paintings and collages with lilies somewhere in them.
    In one lily collage, I painted a huge glass bottle. Inside the bottle was a storm at sea. The black and blue paint was super-thick, waving like the waves. I added a pirate’s ship, listing to the side. I found a miniature captain’s wheel and used sticks to form part of the mast, black fabric for the sails, and mirrors for the windows below deck.
    I also painted rocks and a lighthouse. The lighthouse was tilting as if it was being blown over, but somehow I drew it to appear threatening, ominous. Where is that lighthouse, I asked myself. Where? Then I asked, What did it matter anyhow? It didn’t. But it did. Lighthouses are supposed to guide and illuminate. My lighthouse offered nothing but darkness. Was it from that night?
    Around the bottle I painted lilies. The buyer, who said he had an ancestor who was a pirate, said it looked like the lilies were alive and going to eat the bottle.
    Once I painted an eight-foot-tall white calla lily on a nine-foot canvas. I outlined the whole flower with gold, shimmery paint. I put tiny gold flecks of glitter in the center. That was it. One huge lily that looked like it wanted to talk. A hotel bought it when one of their employees saw it at a show I had at the local college and commissioned twenty more.
    I lost myself in lilies. Sometimes it was sweet, sometimes it made me emotional, but the world was gone and it was me and the lilies only.
    I often make collages in which I put something that is troubling me. Like the knife or the lighthouse or fog or a forest. I feel compelled. I must do it. Sometimes I hate it, but I must add those dark, painful questions to the canvas.
    I have many questions.
     
    Bajal called me the next day from Hendricks’ Furniture when I was sitting on a park bench like so many homeless people do. I was, however, trying hard not to look homeless. I was wearing my red coat, a scarf with a swirly pattern, and earrings with three silver hoops each. One of the hardest parts about being homeless is finding somewhere to be all day. It’s exhausting having to wander. You can go to the library, a mall, or a park. Unless it’s snowing. Then the park’s a problem.
    I had my sketch pad on my lap, drafting the next collage I would make when I had my own table. I drew four glass, rectangular terrariums next to each other. On the inside of each terrarium I drew glass balls that I would later watercolor with vivid colors. The weather in each terrarium would be different—fall, winter, spring, summer. I would use the pages of books I’d bought at garage sales to make cutouts of snowflakes for winter, fall leaves, spring raindrops, and a garden for summer.
    “Hi, Grenady!”
    “Hello, Bajal.” I crossed my fingers. “How are you?”
    She was still pregnant. Kade was too busy to see me until next Wednesday at one-thirty.
    “You’ll be applying for my position. He’ll tell you it’s temporary, but it won’t be. I’m outta here. You’d be great for the job. I already told him I liked you. Oh, hang on, Grenady. Braxton Hicks . . . hold on . . . hold on . . . whoo, whoo . . . popping melon, Watermelon-Head Kid. I hope I don’t need another episiotomy. There’s something worrisome about a knife so close to my ya ya. You know what I mean?”
    “No, but yes.” Listening to Bajal holding her breath, her voice tight, made me feel woozy. I put my colored pencils down.
    “Anyhow, Kade’s a straight talker. Be up-front, honest, tell him what you can do to help the company. You know what you can do, right?”
    “Yes.” Not really. “I hope.”
    “Tell him about your office skills, people skills, organizational talents. You have those, right-o?”
    “Yes.” No. That was a partial lie. I have no