Girl

By Liz DeJesus

She has one year to decide whether to join the rest of the world, beginning life anew, or to remain a painting forever.

Girl is the moving story of a work of art that comes to life and of how she affects the lives of those around her. After several miscarriages, Rachel Ramirez, a brilliant but tragic artist, secludes herself and begins a series of paintings based on her lost child, naming each painting 'Nina'. One of them comes to life inside her canvas. She is able to see and hear the world around her. Even though Nina has innate wisdom, there are still many things that she doesn't understand. When Rachel commits suicide, Nina is thrown into the confusing world, and her painting is passed around to others. But as Nina progresses from Rachel's mother to a buyer named Anna, she keeps learning, and eventually is able to leave her canvas and enter the world. She meets Elijah (mostly in dreams or inside her canvas), who acts as her guide, and tells her of her fate. She has one year to decide whether to join the rest of the world, beginning life anew, or to remain a painting forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Liz DeJesus
• Release date: Aug 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781516842896

Liz DeJesus

Liz DeJesus was born on the tiny island of Puerto Rico. She is a novelist, freelance writer, writing coach and a poet. She has been writing for as long as she was capable of holding a pen. She is the author of the novel Nina (Blu Phi'er Publishing, October 2007), The Jackets (Arte Publico Press, March 2011) First Frost (Re-realeased through Indie Gypsy Summer 2015), Glass Frost (Re-released through Indie Gypsy Summer 2015), Shattered Frost (Indie Gypsy, Summer 2015) and Morgan (Indie Gypsy, July 2014). Her work has also appeared in Night Gypsy: Journey Into Darkness (Indie Gypsy, October 2012), Twice Upon a Time (Bearded Scribe Press, Winter 2015) and Someone Wicked (Smart Rhino Publications, Winter 2013). Her articles have been featured in Southern Writers Magazine.​Liz is currently working on a new novel and a comic book series titled Zombie Ever After (Emerald Star Comics, Fall 2014).

Book preview

Girl-1400.jpg

Girl

a novel

by

Liz DeJesus

Copyright

Copyright © Girl by Liz DeJesus, Second Editon

Issued by: Unexpected Spark Studios

Smashwords Edition

Print ISBN: 978-1516842896

Digital ISBN:

Editor: Shonell Bacon

Cover Design: Kate Cowan

Interior Layout: Kelly Shorten

First Publication by Blu Phi’er Publishing, August 2007

Dedication

To anyone that has loved someone with all their heart...

Finally, I’m finished, a deep, feminine voice said.

Opening my eyes, I saw my creator for the first time. Her short brown hair was pulled into a loose ponytail, and she wore old, comfortable-looking overalls that were paint-splattered in a rainbow of hues and colors. She stood in front of the canvas with her arms crossed over her chest, examining me, trying to detect any flaw that didn’t meet her standards of perfection.

The purple in the background is perfect. The black-brown in her hair matches the other paintings. Bone structure resembles mine. These thoughts belonged to my creator. There were other things in her head, too, like lyrics to songs from her childhood, Spanish phrases, a grocery list, and memories of her father. They slowly swam along my mind and became one with the rest of me. I felt as her memories connected with everything in my being.

I gazed at her face and her body. I began mimicking her movements. They were small gestures. A hand on her hip, tapping her index finger against her lips or the way she arched her eyebrow. I let out a light giggle as I tilted my head to the side the way she tilted hers.

She was the first person to see me. I knew the depths of her soul just as she knew mine. Her chestnut eyes twinkled when she smiled at me. She was my creator. Looking around, I found that my vision was limited to the four walls of her studio. At the other end was a tiny, square window that was close to the ceiling. There was a neatly stacked pile of blank canvases in a corner of the room. There were three easels, all of them covered in paint. A rust-colored couch was beside me with a coffee table in front of it. The top of the table was covered in magazines. Underneath the tiny window were several shelves with dirty jars full of brushes and tubes of paint. It made me happy to see the paint. There was always potential hidden inside the tubes of color.

The sound of footsteps came from up above. It startled me. I took a few steps further inside my canvas and waited for the noise to stop. Carefully I peeked at the person who was making the loud noises.

I saw that it was a man who walked into the room. He wrapped his arms around my creator. She turned to him and brushed a kiss across his lips and then turned back to me to continue her appraisal. I came to the conclusion that they couldn’t see me moving inside the canvas. I allowed myself to relax a little.

Wow, the man said when he saw me. He stood in front of me, hand on chin. I can see why you spend more time down here than you do upstairs, Rachel. He took a step toward me and reached out to try to touch my face. I drew my face back slowly. I feared that he would smear my paint, therefore ruining my face. Luckily, Rachel slapped his wrist.

You silly ass, she said to him. Don’t touch, the paint is still wet.

Oh...yeah. Sorry, he said as he took a step away from me. I felt myself sigh with relief as I watched him leave. I didn’t like him.

You need a name, my sweet, Rachel said as she sat on the blue-gray floor in front of me, her brow furrowing. I was quite entertained because she had a bit of black paint on the left side of her forehead and some light blue on the other side, and as she frowned, these two colors met each other in the middle of her face ever so slightly.

"La Nena. La Nena preciosa," she said. The Girl. The Precious Girl. That’s what she was saying in Spanish.

Nina. You are my girl, aren’t you? At least you would be if you were real. She let out a heavy sigh, her voice sad as she spoke. Since I can’t have children, the only thing I can do is paint what I imagine they would look like if I had them.

Rachel walked away, leaving me to my thoughts.

I spent the next few minutes looking around the studio. There were dozens of paintings, and all of them were different versions of me. From left to right, there were portraits of me as a newborn child, a toddler, me at six, and so on. I realized that I was the latest in the series. I looked at the other versions and came to the conclusion that I’m pretty or at least as pretty as I can be in a two-dimensional sort of way. I have brown hair just like Rachel’s, but my eyes are not like her brown ones. No, my eyes are almond-shaped, larger than Rachel’s and dark green. My lips are full, but not overly large. In every painting, there is a different color chosen for background. In one, there was a light pink, in another deep purple, looking about myself in my current version, I was standing in a royal purple room, wearing a simple outfit of white blouse with black pants.

I took a bit of pigment from my hair and drew myself a bed and an armoire, and from the purple on the wall and white from my shirt, I created a lilac color. This is the color I chose for my sheets. I sat down on my bed and thought for a moment and tried to think of what else was missing. What else did I need? I drew a chair and a window. Now all I needed was a good view. But what kind of view does one choose when all you have ever seen is the inside of an artist’s studio?

The following week, Rachel was in the studio trying to work on another painting. Something wasn’t right though. She hadn’t sung any of the off-key songs she usually sang as she painted.

My chest tightened in pain as I watched tears fill her eyes. Big droplets slowly rolled down her cheeks as her brush touched the blank canvas. She had yet to choose a color from her pallet. She could not decide whether to use lime green or robin’s egg blue. No, neither of those. Nor cherry red, and definitely not earth brown. Not one single color touched her brush, or made its way to the surface of the canvas.

I could tell by the look on her face that this was the most difficult moment in her life. The grip she had on the brush threatened to break it in half. Her hands shook, and her knuckles became white. She stared at the canvas as though it was her enemy, and she could find no way to attack it. I looked away for a moment. I couldn’t bear to see her in pain any longer.

However, there was nothing else for me to see from my perch on the easel on which I had been created. Turning in one direction, I could see the same faces, the ones that had been painted by my creator, or turning the other way, I could look at a window without a view. What was I supposed to do? It’s not like I could tap on my other window and ask Rachel to give me the issue of National Geographic that was sitting on her table.

Why!? Rachel screamed.

She punched the wall time and time again. After a minute or so, I saw pieces of skin and smudged blood on the wall. I flinched every time her fists struck the wall. She might as well have beaten her fists against my heart.

No. Don’t do that. Please don’t do that, I whispered.

Rachel stopped in mid-swing, her fist inches from the cracked drywall. There were bloodstains on the walls. She had made a series of fist-sized dents, and long cracks had formed in the drywall.

Who...who said that? she asked.

That was the first time I’d ever said anything out loud. My first words, a little sad I think.

My poor Nina. I’m so sorry. Why can’t I have a baby? Rachel whispered. Her hands glided gently to her belly, cradling the barren womb inside. I wanted to touch her. Hold her. Take away her pain. I just didn’t know how.

Suddenly, I heard a thumping sound coming from upstairs. Rachel frowned and let her gaze travel up to the ceiling. As if doing so would uncover the source of the sound. I followed her eyes and strained my ears to hear what else was going on.

What the ...? she whispered as she stood and raced up the stairs.

I heard shouting and glass breaking. I couldn’t make out the words; everything was muffled. I came to the conclusion that Rachel was arguing with the man.

Get out! she screamed. Two sets of footsteps walked out the door. The door opened and slammed shut. A few moments afterwards, Rachel came down to her studio. She looked different. Her eyes were bloodshot, her jaw was tight, and she was grinding her teeth back and forth.

I noticed something in her hands. I wasn’t exactly sure what it was because all I saw was a quick flash of silver. She stepped toward one of her canvases and raised her hand. When she brought it back down, I heard a rip. I gasped in horror as I witnessed what she had done.

She started with a painting of the newborn, Nina. That painting was truly the most innocent and beautiful of all with her pink, wrinkled body and a tuft of brown hair shooting straight up into the air that defied gravity. That painting had been a masterpiece all on its own. I wept as I watched Rachel...my creator, slash the thick canvas. By the time she was done, more than half of the paintings in her studio had been destroyed, and most of the unpainted canvases in her studio had been slashed and the wooden frames broken into irreparable pieces. Only four of the Nina’s survived the massacre intact.

I wondered how many of them were like me. Did my other selves have a soul as I did? Had they also weep for their sisters as I did? And what about Nina number five? Did she scream in horror as she watched Rachel come for her? That version of me, forever trapped at five years old. What if I was the only one with a soul? What if I was the only one that could see, feel, hear, and think? Why hadn’t I died as well? What was I still doing here?

The next day, Rachel came into the studio to clean up the mess, furious at herself for what she had done. At least she bandaged her hands. She flinched every time she tried to close them.

Stupid Stephan, she mumbled as she stuffed a piece of canvas in a big black trash bag. That’s what her hard work had now amounted to, garbage. My bright future. I couldn’t even look at Rachel for more than five seconds at a time. I, too, was furious. But my fury was directed at her.

Look at this mess. God, I’m so stupid, she said as she held the remains of Newborn Nina in her hands. How dare she hold her? That painting represented everything that was innocent and beautiful to me. Now it was nothing but tattered strips of color. For a few seconds, my vision was blood red.

Don’t touch her! I shouted from my prison. Every word carried with it an explosion of anger.

The red disappeared. The fury went away. It was only when I saw the look on Rachel’s face did I realize the mistake I made. The tattered canvas slipped from her hands. She walked toward me with a slow and delicate grace I had never seen in her. Then Rachel saw me. For a flicker of a moment, she saw me as I was. The real me. Our lips parted at the same time as though there was some greater unknown secret that only we could know, and I tried to reach out to her, past my barrier to let her know that I would always be here for her. But just as quickly as the moment had been given to us, it was snatched away.

She shook her head, told herself she was being crazy, and walked away. My heart sank. How could she think such a thing? How could it be that she could create me, instill so much of her own life force into me, to the point where I could think, and then deny the existence she herself had given me? I watched as she finished cleaning up the massacre and all the while I wondered: if she no longer thinks I’m real...then why am I still here?

The window was open. Rachel was on the couch, her sketch book open on her lap. She deserved the rest. The invisible fingers of the wind touched Rachel’s brown hair, curling it and twisting it ever so slightly.

I found out that all of that thumping noise Stephan had been making a couple of nights ago had been him with another woman on the living room floor. I overheard Rachel talking to her mother as she described the whole situation.

I tried not to think about Stephan anymore. He’s gone for now. He still had to come back and get some of his things, although I heard Rachel say that she was going to take everything to a place called Goodwill.

I listened to the newspaper on the floor rustling in the breeze. The curtains moved as though there was someone dancing behind them. The magazines came to life as well, the pages flipping back and forth. I was thankful for this small mercy. Every image engraved itself into my mind. I had some ideas for places I wanted to visit.

Then...something amazing happened. A butterfly flew in. I had never seen one before, but I knew what it was. The butterfly had butter yellow wings with black tips on the edges, almost like black lace. It was fluttering around the room, up and down, left and right. Maybe it was drunk; drunk on life, with no sense of direction. Oh, well, who was I to judge? A butterfly simply is.

Oh! Rachel sat up, surprised at our little guest. Finally, a smile.

I was glad Rachel was able to see this. I often thought that she missed out on a lot of things by staying in her studio. She flipped to a blank page on her sketchbook and began to draw the scene that played out before her. She drew with an energy I didn’t realize she possessed. Her hands worked quickly even though they shook from her self-inflicted wounds. Rachel drew everything in the studio. She started with the small window and her hands moved in quick short strokes as she added the coffee table that held the magazines and books that were my personal window to the outside world. Finally, as if it were an afterthought, she added the butterfly.

She also drew the other items in the studio, like her brushes, paints, easels, and crumbled up pieces of paper.