Photography by Cassandra Dygert
In dreaming, Bonaparte found all of her lost friends waiting. She had left them behind when her family moved to London, Ontario, a city known for its many trees and forested areas. The setting of the dream – her old, red-bricked school – was familiar, though her memory of it was only half-formed and rife with inconsistencies. For one, there seemed to exist only one classroom, yet burning in the back of her sleeping subconscious was a sense of infinite others surrounding it; for another, she always remained the same age as her physical, conscious self, which tallied to eleven years of flesh on earth. Her friends might have appeared developed beyond what she remembered of them, or remained unchanged, like those depicted in a photograph once glanced over; she would have been hard-pressed to decide which it was, both within her cocoon of memory and upon waking.
Some details would stay with her long after the dream was over, particularly the clothing that the children wore: those of faded greens, blues and yellows – those of a careless summer’s day.
Represented in this dream was the fourth grade, where she had sat in the chair in front of her teacher’s desk so that he could easily help with the schoolwork that most confounded her – specifically that of math and more specifically that of multiplication. While the other children had played outside during recess, Bonaparte had stayed inside with the teacher, who helped her with continuously reciting her multiplication table. Much to her surprise and her teacher’s delight, she soon became exponentially better at problem solving.
When she eventually moved to London, her newfound love and knowledge of ascending numbers blossomed in the fifth grade class of her new school, but then waned in the following summer: she had not won any friendships with her classmates, resulting in her first experience with depression. By the time she was in the sixth grade, she could not solve a complex math equation for the life of her. So where did that part of her brain disappear to? Was it so connected to her old life that she had left it behind?
In the dream’s classroom the students were asked to discuss politics; while they did so, Bonaparte huddled under her desk and unwrapped a cube of gum. She chewed it methodically, savouring the taste that issued forth from each saliva-flooded bite. The laughter of children then rose around her like the sudden erection of time-lapsed flowers – a giggle trailed off, a petal fell and Bonaparte opened her eyes. She pulled her mouth away from the pillow.
Yesterday was her birthday, but no one showed up as there was no one to be invited. The festivities consisted of simply herself, her parents and a vanilla ice cream cake. While she smiled sincerely and enjoyed her cake, she felt decidedly silly afterwards when left alone to retrospection.
A present had been given to her and she was at least somewhat happy with it: a large block of clay. As a small child she had always eagerly participated in the arts, beginning with finger-painting on construction paper and leading into the mandatory interpretations of her dull life through awkward sketches. This love of art came with a hitch, however, that being an obvious lack of skill and talent on her part. She eyed the still-wrapped clay by her alarm clock pensively.
Sitting up in bed, Bonaparte rubbed her eyes and shielded them against the sun’s rays which spilled horizontally through the open blinds. Her mother must have come in and opened them earlier that morning while Bonaparte was still sleeping. As the blankets fell away from her knees, she slid out from under them altogether and set foot onto the carpeted floor, feeling the cushioned warmth between her heels and toes. Stepping sleepily to her wooden dresser, she soon felt the sun’s warmth transfer from her heated pyjamas to her skin – a blown kiss from the burning star.
Situated next to the clay and alarm clock was a seemingly empty olive jar: upon closer inspection it housed a twig, a leaf and a lone caterpillar; this caterpillar was named Andre and was Bonaparte’s recently captured pet. She thought that he would feed on the leaf but no nibbled holes were to be found upon its smooth, glistening surface. With notable defiance, Andre lay unmoving upon the twig; Bonaparte would have shook the jar to discipline him if not for her mother’s voice calling from the kitchen to announce breakfast. She left her room at that.
The wall opposite the railing along the hallway was littered with countless photographs of herself with her mother and father, leading parallel with the staircase towards the first floor. Bonaparte followed the walls and furniture which eventually led her to the kitchen table. She pulled up a wooden chair and sat there quietly, keeping her arms beneath the table while looking down at the embroidered place mat, waiting for her plate to appear.
The smell of just-cooked food heightened her anticipation of impending satiety, and the watering of her mouth increased tenfold with the clinking of plates and utensils. Sitting to her right and looking just as hungry was her father, who had never entirely grown out of his hippy phase. The same could be said for her mother but she let them be; there was, of course, no one for them to embarrass her with.
Something slipped into her line of vision then, but it was not bacon and eggs; she looked down at the folded newspaper as her father’s hairy, ringed hand pulled away. Looking over the paper, she noticed that the third page of the Arts and Entertainment section displayed a black and white photograph of the London Art Gallery, which was situated above the headline The Amateur Art Exhibit Returns. Below was an article detailing the exhibit’s intent, progress, and a list of the entrees submitted so far. A contest was being held in which the work deemed greatest would find a permanent home within the gallery.
Bonaparte looked from the article to her father, who gave a small encouraging smile. She immediately thought back to her birthday present before the newspaper was swept away, leaving a plate of steaming bacon and eggs in its wake; the fork was soon filled and she proceeded to indulge herself.
Upon clearing her plate and placing it in the sink, Bonaparte quietly departed the kitchen and returned to her room. She grabbed the block of clay and again felt the surprising weight of it in her frail arms, reminding her of when she had lugged it up to her room just last night. A corner of the wrapping came undone as she sat down on the edge of her bed and she pulled on that corner to fully unwrap it, revealing the starkly grey and slightly damp clay.
She stared down at it and wondered if God had as hard a time creating the Earth and its populace as she did then, struggling with her own imagination. The clay looked like nothing more than clay to her. Without really thinking she pressed into its left side, leaving small clumps of the sedimentary material on her thumb and a slight spiral on the clay’s surface. She found herself mesmerized by both the overwhelming dullness of the material and the boringness of the situation.
Outside of this trance existed a blur which, when focused upon, became an olive jar. Suddenly brought to her attention in this manner, Bonaparte regarded the jar fully, thus breaking the anomalous spell that had been cast upon her. Putting the clay aside, she pushed herself away from the bed and headed to the olive jar. She picked it up and looked beneath the label to eye Andre, who had still not moved a single millimetre upon his twiggy perch. Frustrated, she tapped the glass thrice with her index finger – nothing. She turned the jar upside down and Andre fell lifeless to the lid.
Anxiety suddenly took hold of Bonaparte as she realised that her cherished bug was dead. She unscrewed the lid with Andre niched between the twig and leaf and picked him up, inspecting him with her fingers. Poor caterpillar. He deserved a tribute, she thought – she who knew him if not best, then well enough, as a rather skinny caterpillar who refused to eat his leaf.
Bonaparte dressed herself and brought Andre’s empty vessel outside. The sun’s warmth embraced her body as she entered the backyard and made her way towards the vined wooden fence where she had first discovered her late pet. She kneeled on the pointed grass which tickled and scratched her legs; after gently setting Andre on a flat, spade-shaped plant, she began to dig.
Although her hands were not the most effective of shovels, the willfulness of her scraping and digging soon produced a reasonably-sized hole. Brown dirt darkened the tips of her fingernails and marked her hands along with the smeared green streaks of torn grass.
She carefully placed Andre in the natural cushioning of his final resting place and pushed the dirt back in overtop him. She found a twig and stuck it atop the mound as a marker. With her work accomplished, she continued to sit before the grave, gazing down in mourning.
After a long interval of silence she sullenly returned to her room. She flopped down on her bed and pressed the pillow to her face, searching desperately for the comfort of nothingness. The pillowcase grew moist and warm as she breathed against it, and she felt her nose run onto the material. She pulled away to see red spots soaking into the fabric, steadily appearing as they dripped downwards from her nose.
She quickly held her head up and placed a finger to each of her nostrils, then headed to the washroom; she broke off two squares of toilet paper from the roll on the dispenser and stuffed them up her nasal passages. Then she washed her hands in the sink, watching as the pink and muddied water swirled down the drain.
After toweling herself dry, she wetted a washcloth and carried it to her pillow. She then proceeded to rub the fabric fervently with all of her tiny strength: her fear of being disciplined might have been invalid, but her conscience still took hold of her in the swell of panic.
Once she had cleaned the pillowcase as well as she could, leaving it a pink mess, Bonaparte brought the washcloth to the washroom and rinsed it clean of second-hand blood. She left it on the rack to dry and returned to her room; there, the events of the day suddenly caught up to her, causing her to feel strangely disconnected.
In this state she found herself inspecting her room from an objective viewpoint: she looked first at the empty olive jar that had once housed Andre, then the bloodied pillow where she had dreamt of a time now lost to her; from there her gaze settled on the unwrapped clay. She climbed atop the bed and sat sprawling before the cadaverous grey block, eyeing it as one does something foreign and unfamiliar.
Hesitantly, she placed several fingers upon the unmolded surface, which had already caked from the sun; she pressed down, breaking the thin, hardened surface layer, and felt a mild chill within. She slowly slid out her fingers and stared at the holes they left behind. She then placed a hand on either side of the clay and crushed it, thus beginning the creation of art: first came the body, subtly cone-shaped with the exception of a swollen mound; then the head, a featureless ball fitted with short hair that was set atop the body’s apex; thirdly came the legs; and fourth and finally came the arms, curved and set lovingly to hold its pregnant stomach.
With a wistful smile and admiring eyes, Bonaparte added finishing touches, such as the impression of fingers, before accepting that the doll was complete. She picked up the doll and carried it downstairs to the kitchen, where the newspaper now resided on the counter.
Standing on her tiptoes, Bonaparte placed the pregnant doll on top of the newspaper, which was still opened to the article about the amateur art exhibit. She wondered if she had a chance of winning and decided that it did not matter; in his own unique way, Andre had taught her that only life mattered, and unlike those of math, this was a lesson she would undoubtedly remember. For the first time in a year, Bonaparte felt truly happy.
“Seven times seven is forty-nine,” she said, and then left to the calls of her parents.