Aurora

There's a girl at the club that I can't take my eyes off of. She's skinny and small, like she's been worn away piece by piece and this is all that's left, a tiny flesh-covered skeleton. I name her Skeleton Girl in my head and watch her dance across the floor, a wispy echo of a girl. Her spindly arms wave over her head like flames licking the sky. Her sharp hips barely keep her pants up.

I find myself wanting to paint her, wanting to re-create this living skeleton on canvas again and again until the walls are covered with her gaunt, angular face and body. I'm afraid to approach her, frightened nearly to death that she'll walk away and I won't get to paint her. I swallow hard and make my way over to her.

She pauses her dancing, arms still extended into the air, and her eyes look deep into mine, the sudden intensity of her stare surprising me. Somehow I know; she won't leave.

"I need to paint you," I say, my mouth dry. She continues studying me, then nods slowly.

_-_

We go into my apartment at the very edge of L.A. and she stares at the other paintings. She circles the room slowly, sweeping her eyes across each one, and remains silent until she reaches one of my portraits. I wonder what her voice will sound like.

She speaks and it's low, soft; a painful graveyard voice. "Who is she?"

She is a single raindrop on a sunny day, a sad angel on a grey cloud, a mermaid-goddess floating in a sea of despair. "She's my mother."

Skeleton Girl takes this in. "She's beautiful."

I nod. "She was. She's gone now." Not gone. She didn't leave only to come back later. "She's dead, I mean."

She looks at me with a single tear in her eye. "Mine too." And I knew that. I don't know how, but I could sense that. There's something in her that's so sad, something I have to capture. As if, by painting that sadness I could take her pain and put it in canvas and oil paint and take it away forever.

I lead her into my studio area, a simple sunporch with candles lining every wall and window. I go around with a long stove match, lighting them all one by one. She chooses the couch and sits sideways in the corner, looking out the window over the city, past the buildings and cars to the ocean far in the background.

I sit behind my easel. She looks small and childlike in pants that are gathered low around her hips. The clothes make her look harder, but that's what I first saw in her. I begin sketching her on the cavas. She seems to know, and doesn't move from her spot until I lay my pencil down and stand to get a drink.

I go to the kitchenette and pour glasses of cherry-flavored seltzer and when I return, she has found the radio. She is swaying gently to Frank's "New York, New York", her eyes closed. I set the glasses down on a small stone table with a base carved into the shape of a cherub. She drinks hers slowly, studying me.

"Have you ever been to New York?" I ask. She shakes her head. "It's beautiful. So many people all alone and moving so quickly, absorbed in so many different things. The whole city is so alive, not like here. It can kill you if you stay here too long."

She doesn't respond, but she dot net need to. The answer in her eyes is enough. I try to hate this place for doing whatever it has done to her, but I can't. If it hadn't, she might not be here. And as selfish as it may be, I can't stand the thought that I might not have found her. Or maybe it's her that found me..

She turns her face from me and sits on the couch once more. Ella Fitzgerald comes on the radio. I take my stool behind the cavas and mix the colors I need. Pale, pale peach for her skin, marred by too many cuts. Cerulean for the distant, calling ocean. Honey-gold hair falling in loose ringlets halfway down her back. Jade eyes far too serious for someone so young. Deep, vermillion lips pouting slightly with concentration.

I paint for hours and she sits perfectly still, shifting slightly every so often to scratch her arm or crack her neck. When she does that, I can hear the bones shifting and sliding against each other and it reminds me of my name for her.

When I am done, there is a hollow girl with too-big pants and too-sad eyes sitting in the corner of my couch forever. She asks to see it, and I motion her over. She unfolds long legs and comes, standing behind me and peering over my shoulder. The painting is sad and beautiful at the same time and I can tell thi the the first time she's ever seen herself.

She keeps a few inches between us, and I can feel little puffs of breath brushing the cropped hair on my neck aside. She whispers when she speaks. "Can you make another?"

I open a chest in the corner. Whatever money I don't spend on supplies, bills, or food, goes to the thrift stores. I buy beautiful gowns, tattered dresses, the remnants of flower-child clothing, suits and shirts and sleepwear, and they all go in this trunk for my models.

I pick out a paisley peasant top and a long, flowing rennessaince faire skirt. I hand them to her and ask her if she will take off her makeup, if she will stay the day with me. She nods, and I leave her in the apartment. I go to the deli down the street and buy sesame seed bagels with vegetable cream cheese and bottles of green tea.

When I come in, she has fallen asleep on the floor. She is lying on her side with her hands under her cheek. She's dressed in the hippie outfit, her face clean of sharp edges save for her bones, and her hair tumbles over her shoulder and down her back. I set our breakfast down on the cherub table and sit behind a new canvas, sketching her quickly, before she can move or wake up.

I take the unfished picture and place it inside a closet before waking her up. She shrinks back a little when I mention food, but takes the bagel. She eats slowly, taking small nibbles, and sipping the tea every few bites. When she has eaten almost half of it, she sets it back on the table, but continues drinking the tea.

"That tasted different." Her voice is a little bit louder than it has been so far.

"Whole wheat bagel. Vegetable cream cheese. It takes some getting used to.."

She's quick to answer. "No. No, I liked it." It's quiet while I finish mine, then she looks at me. "What's your name?"

"I don't really have one."

"Doesn't everyone have a name?"

"Oh, everyone's given a name," I say, gathering our trash. "But most people's don't really fit them. It's not like the Native Americans. They named their children for the way they were, things they did, or how something was when they came into the world. What's your name?"

She watches me, entranced by the discussion, and offers me a thoughtful look. "It doesn't really fit. What would you name me?"

"Aurora."

"Like Princess Aurora, from Sleeping Beauty?" Her face turns a little sour then, as if she'd been called a princess her entire life and was more than sick of it.

"No," I answer truthfully. "Like the sky phenomenon. A curtain of greens, reds, blues and purples rippling and moving across the sky, with bright spots spinning like a pinwheel. The most beautiful thing nature can create."

Her face softens with surprise and she looks bashful, as though no one has ever told her this before. Maybe no one has. It hurts me to think of that and I feel like I need to paint her again, right then. But the hippie ou is is just all wrong. I watch her as she runs her finger along the edge of her bagel and licks the cream cheese off.

"Aurora?" Her jade eyes peer up at me from beneath thick lashes at the sound of her new, fitting name. "Let's go to the beach."

_-_

Her ankles wobble in the platform sandals I found for her as we walk down the beach. It's warm for September but the beach is nearly deserted anyway. A few people dot the sand, but it's a weekday and anyone else who would have been there was probably at work.

She falls and I catch her. She takes off the sandals and walks beside me, her delicate feet sinking into the sand as if trying to pull her into it with every step. The sunlight's reflection on her golden hair is blinding. I drop our things to the ground and take a picture of her back. She hears the whirring of the camera and spins around.

"Why are you taking my picture?" she asks, her voice tinged with concern.

"Because I don't have my paints, and I want to remember you this way."

She glances at her feet shyly and sits down. "What way?"

"Brighter than the sun."

She considers that, then lays back in the sand, arms and legs spread out like she's making a snow angel. Her eyes squint and finally close under the sun's persistent glare. I watch her for awhile before I realize she's fallen asleep. I reach for my camera and snap a picture of her face, sad even in sleep, and then a full-length one. Her arms and legs are bent and she looks as if the sea has cast her aside accidentally and will creep up to reclaim her as soon as it can.

I take picture after picture and toss the camera in a bag when the roll of film is finished. I lay next to her and put a blanket over both of us from head to foot so we don't burn. I close my eyes and fall asleep.

When I wake up, she's laying on her side watching me. "You look like an angel when you sleep," she whispers.

I shake my head. "You look like one all the time."

She looks down and traces a heart in the sand. "Why haven't you touched me?" she asks, her voice soft and hurt.

I sit up , tenting the blanket, and frown a little. "I didn't know if you wanted me to."

She sits as well, her eyes burning into mine so strongly that it almost hurts. Her voice still low, she responds quickly and firmly. "I do."

I touch her cheek and underneath the blanket we kiss gently, my hands cupping the back of her head and tangling her hair around my fingers. I pull away and study her, running my fingertips over her sharp jawline, down her long neck and over her birdbone shoulders. I hold her arm and trace over scars of every shape and size. Long, deep cuts. Short, shallow scratches. Large blotchy bruises and small round cigarette burns.

She sits quietly and lets me gaze at her, taking in and memorizing every detail. A single freckle on her right cheek just below her eye. Eight tiny studs running up the right ear, six in the left plus a tiny rainbow hoop in the cartilege. Naturally shaped golden eyebrows with a tiny scar on the left one from an old piercing.

Her eyes follow my hand, then slide up to meet my gaze, afraid and challenging at the same time. "Do they bother you?"

I bring her arm to my lips and kiss one of the many bruises, closing my eyes briefly before looking into hers. "Yes." She widens her eyes, surprised. I continue kissing each mark on her arm, running my thumb lightly over her skin. "Because I wish you didn't have any reasons to do this."

We make love there on the beach before returning to my apartment.

She falls asleep on the couch and I go around the corner to drop off the film. The day is nearly over and it feels like something much larger is coming to an end.

When I paint her on the beach with a mermaid's tail, I see something. Her angles and marks match my own. Strange phenomenon, like her name. The name I chose for her. Hours pass and the painting stands, finished, my own eyes reflected. I curl next to her and sleep.

When I wake, she is gone. I knew she would be. I wonder if she was ever really there in the first place. Half a bagel sits uneaten on the cherub table. Eyes stare back at me from the painting. My eyes. My mother's eyes.

Aurora. An explosion of magnificant color. I don't need to know her name. I know her already, I have all along.