Chlora's Hope Chest
© 2005 Ginger Henry Geyer
glazed porcelain with gold and white gold
Box 13 1/12" x 22' x 4"
adaptations of Bernini's Apollo & Daphne, Matisse's Dance (2nd version), and Nicholas of Verdun, The Ascension, from the Verdun Altar
Spring had sprung like a Slinky and Chlora couldn't wait to get outside.
The weekend was finally here. Her treehouse was ready and waiting.
Well, it always had been waiting, but on a day like this even it
seemed new. Up there, away from people who teased her,
Chlora could sing offkey as loud as she wanted and draw until
the cows came home. Drawing was always new, depending
on what was looking back at her. Making art in a tree was impractical, but then
art always is. Her favorite fantasy was to have a two-minute shopping
spree in the art supply store. She had plotted her path many times--
first she'd hit the sketchbook aisle and prop four watercolor pads
on all sides of the shopping cart to give it more upward volume.
A couple of coffee table art books on Andrew Wyeth would
prevent little stuff from falling out the bottom. Then she'd dash over
to the tackle boxes and fill one with sable brushes and another
with expensive oil paints, mostly the reds and blues. She had checked
prices--those Rembrandt pastels in every color would be next,
followed by sculpture tools. Last, she'd load up the bottom
of the cart with clay, since it was cheap and heavy. Imagine
what greed and art could do in only a few minutes!
But since she hadn't won a shopping spree today, Chlora
grabbed all the art supplies she could find in her own room
and piled them on her bed.
She ripped off her school clothes and shoved her
shoes and socks under the bed where they bumped into her dusty
old Barbie doll trunk. Since Barbie sure wasn't going anywhere
her trunk could be redeemed as an art supply box.
Chlora dumped out all the doll clothes, revealing a naked
Ken and Barbie in there, doing their adultery.
They could come along and pose like models, maybe like
Adam and Eve with itchy leaves hiding their anatomically incorrect
body parts. Chlora stuffed her art supplies
around the dolls and snapped the bulging trunk shut.
In the sunny backyard, an old rope dangled down from her tree house.
There used to be a bag swing on it, but some fat teenager got on it
and popped it right off. But she shouldn't pass judgment. There had
also been a cool trolley that went like a zip line to the neighbor's tree.
Chlora's younger sister had fallen off of it and broke her poor
little ole arm. It was Chlora's fault, as she'd dared her to ride
the trolley with no hands, like Curious George. He might be a monkey
but at least he was a George who was curious. She tied the Barbie
case to the rope. She scrambled up the tree and hoisted the box up,
imagining all the wonderful things she could create in a divine tree studio that
connected earth with heaven. Chlora pulled the rope with all her might,
thankful that she wasn't Rapunzel with all that hair. She preferred
Rahab the harlot with her red cord, saving those spies.
The Barbie box sagged and bent out of shape as she tugged.
Chlora gave the rope a strong jerk. The box spun around and the
rope went spastic. She gave it a desperate, final heave.
The case whacked into the tree trunk and busted open.
Pencils torpedoed across the yard. Red finger paint slimed down
the bark. Her drawing paper was ripped up by the bushes,
and more bushes ate the paintbrushes. Crayons poked up out of the grass
and the peppermint scent of paste wafted upward. Her Dot-to-Dot
coloring book was bleeding in a puddle,
and stuck in the mud were Barbie and Ken.
Are we having a disaster now? Chlora wondered. Should we call in
the Red Cross? She scurried down and surveyed the mess.
A triage didn't help much as most of the stuff was ruined.
Ken had lost his head and was chasing after Barbie again.
Would that girl ever learn?
Chlora was distressed, shamed by her own stupidity.
The day was hopeless so she went inside to watch the Beverly Hillbillies.
At least they knew how to laugh at themselves.
The next morning Chlora begrudgingly went out to clean up her mess.
She used a damp rag to wipe off the dolls. Then she stood them up in the mud.
It was good, sticky mud, like clay almost. Better than mud pie mud,
she could actually sculpt with this stuff. It sure beat Play Doh, as God too
had learned when he first made clay snakes.
Chlora made Barbie and Ken pose like that white Bernini statue she had seen
in the big art book, the one where a scared lady was turned into a tree.
She plucked some mountain laurel leaves and poked them into
Barbie's matted hair. Some bark curved around her legs. Barbie was becoming one
with nature. Chlora wouldn't mind being turned into a tree either.
Ken had been genitally mutilated by Mattel, so she covered
him up with a rag. His legs buckled and he was knee deep
in the muck. Were they were running from God, like Adam and Eve did?
Or maybe they were chasing a dream, as Chlora was prone to do.
Maybe Eve was just jumping up to pick an apple and he was going to
beat her to it. You could always blame your own sins on a few bad apples
and get away with it. Chlora's favorite was a crisp Jonathan apple.
Probably it was named after King David's best friend,
the one he loved more than any woman. She would urge David and Jonathan
to come out of the closet. Why not, if those two adultering dolls did.
She salvaged some art supplies and headed toward the house.
She set her sculpture onto the picnic table to dry.
She went inside for her snack and wandered into the living room
to look for the big art book. It lived beside the breakfront full of figurines.
Her new sculpture would jazz up that collection, give some thrills
to those prissy gals in petticoats and pastel guys in knickers.
Somebody really should rig up a guillotine and lob off their porcelain heads,
French style. Someone had bookmarked the art book with a poem and the book
opened up to the Bernini sculpture page. It wasn't the fall of Rome afterall,
it was just Greek theatre. The two fleeing people were named Apollo and Daphne.
With a name like that, the poor lady probably got teased about being Daffy Duck,
just like kids called Chlora Clorox or Chlorine.
On the third day she spraypainted the sculpture white.
On a whim, she took the poem and the art book up
into her Tree of Life. She would be transformed by the renewing of her mind,
both the left and right sides of it. That poet also liked Apollo.
He must've written the poem in a tree or in a museum because it ended with
"Here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life."
Chlora pondered that until her eyes crossed.
When she came to, she focused upon one small section of the tree bark right
under her nose. It wasn't just rough and black, it had all sorts of textures
and shades of color. An ant made its way through the valleys and hills,
its tiny bottom wagging, its mouth holding an impossible load. A minute spider
had spun an impossible web that connected more than she could see.
Chlora wondered how many squirrels and birds and beetles had
touched this very spot before she had. Every twig looked back at
Chlora as if she was known. Like the poem said, she saw
herself as the apple of God's eye. Like a wave, the breeze lifted her hair
alongside the leaves, and the leaves whispered assurance. And the sun
was enough, and her own hands were enough.
Chlora looked down at the mud puddle, which held some promise.
But hope wasn't down in the bushes, it was up in the trees.
Her feet dangled in mid air like the painting of Jesus
ascending while below the disciples were looking up, up, up
at the soles of his feet. Chlora hoped for her own ascension
one of these days, since she had always yearned to fly.
She left the book propped in a V in the branches and climbed down.
She went in her room, downsized her art supplies, and refilled the Barbie case
with only the bare necessities. She connected it to the treehouse rope.
This time she pulled slowly and let the tree help her.
As the box swayed and twirled and danced, Chlora warbled
"This Is My Father's World". (She had no problem
with gendered language for God since her own Daddy was good.)
"All nature sings and round me rings the music of the spheres..."
She rested in the thought....quit looking for the box, and it just came
to the surface, as gifts always do, accompanied by a redbird.
With an aching heart as big as all outdoors,
Chlora reached into her pocket for sunflower seeds.
The book had opened to its centerfold, big and bold, and
Chlora knew the world needed that picture more than the book did.
She opened up her art box and got out the rubber cement.
