Gotta get out of bed get a hammer and a nail, learn how to use my hands,

[genny-duvall.livejournal.com]

Wednesday, August 4
Afternoon

We're havin' a Summer Sun Day next week. Gotta do somethin' different, I guess, to keep people comin' in. So the gates're all draped in yellow and I'm makin' pictures of suns to put on all of the rides and booths. Some of 'em are just paint, and some of 'em I put tears in so they've got rays that glow and shimmer like the real sun.

It ain't enough. It ain't never enough.

I gotta do somethin'. I want to move is what I want. It ain't right that we're comin' on more'n a year here! It's summer, and we should be goin' north to them towns all full of pine trees where we set up on land that used to be farms next to lil white churches. Not everybody cares. Momma likes it here. She likes sittin' still.
But I feel like we should be goin' somewhere and we ain't.

I should be doin' somethin' big and I ain't.

Maybe it's because I ain't got nobody to be a priestess to no more. Maybe it's just that I want to move on.

Used to be that some nights I'd go to the corner of my room where I keep all the best pictures, the ones I made look the most real, and look at 'em. Now I don't 'cause lots of 'em just make me sad. That's where I put the pictures of Nu and Abzu - tore 'em right out of my sketchbook 'cause it hurt too much to look at 'em and put 'em way in the back. All the paintings I done while I was all wrong in the head are there, too. Don't wanna look at 'em.

Put the painting of Zann and the Carousel there too, 'cause it makes me sad to think 'bout her not bein' all the way right. I helped her, and I made it so's she didn't have to see the world wrong no more, but it still didn't fix it all, and it didn't make us right. We don't talk like we used to. We don't hardly talk at all, 'cause what'd we say? We smile and stuff, and say hey when we see each other in the cooktent, but that's it.

Still makes me happy to see her actin' all normal-like. She's still goin' into town to see all the friends she made there, 'cause it's Zann and she's got a hundred friends. She's still jokin' with all of the family folk and workin' on her machines, too.

I finish another sun, all shiny and flat, and grab my sketchbook. I gotta get out.

I go down to the river, down to my favorite spot, where I can see the river stretchin' far off into the distance, and I start to sketch.

[Open to Zann]

Comments

[tereixa-zann.livejournal.com]

"Maybe? Ain't never tried paintin' over what someone else done, neither. Might be easier for you to take the photo, 'cause I don't know how I'd get in to see 'em. Momma could see 'em, but I don't wanna ask her, and…"

"Yeah," I say, and I do get that, I can imagine what I'd say to Xabela if she tried to help on this and it's... uhm... well, it would involve a lot of loud words and I would be thinking very hard about possibly a locked door, which I know is not entirely fair, but still. "Maybe there'd be a time that'd be better... Maybe I can ask the twins about that, at least." Maybe even ask them without telling them what I'm asking about, and keep them clear of trouble, for what it's worth. Or ask Syl, or...

"Um. I don't wanna do it if it ain't gonna work," she says, and that brings me back to things that are a bit more fundamental than what's running through my head. "I think…I think I'd better try doin' a photo of somethin' else first to make sure it works. And then we can see if you can take a photo of somethin' else and I can…you know, do stuff with the chemicals."

I groan a bit at the suggestion and slap my forehead, because yes, really, that's a sensible sort of thing to try first and I have no idea why it didn't cross my mind. "Yeah, that'd be best," I say. "I'm not sure what we could do it on... maybe the Carousel? I mean, I at least know her well enough that if the picture turns up anything, I can help guess if it's turning up what's actually there, you know?"

[genny-duvall.livejournal.com]

"Maybe there'd be a time that'd be better... Maybe I can ask the twins about that, at least."

"Yeah. Askin' the twins what a good time'd be - that's better. It's somethin' small, and it ain't really 'bout Management, not like askin' what their plans'd be. Long as you can ask without none of you gettin' hurt! I don't want nothin' bad to happen to none of you.

"Yeah, that'd be best," I say. "I'm not sure what we could do it on... maybe the Carousel? I mean, I at least know her well enough that if the picture turns up anything, I can help guess if it's turning up what's actually there, you know?"

"Okay." I grin some, 'cause Zann thought it was a good idea! But I gotta think more. Gotta make sure I thought of everything… "Um…Better do it when there ain't people on it so's we can make sure it's just the Carousel. Don't think it would mess up nothin' if there was people, but I just wanna be sure."

There. Done. We made a plan.

Headache's clearin' a lil, and I blink up to Zann. "Um. You wanna try now?"

[tereixa-zann.livejournal.com]

"Better do it when there ain't people on it so's we can make sure it's just the Carousel. Don't think it would mess up nothin' if there was people, but I just wanna be sure," and I nod and it's odd how simple it's all starting to seem--not easy, maybe, fine, but simple. Genny blinks up at me. "Um. You wanna try now?"

"Yeah," I say, squeezing my arm around her and then shifting my weight and getting up. I'm grinning; it feels good to be getting ready to do something, at least, even if we're not sure it'll work yet, and I hold out a hand to help her up. "Come on, honey."

My mood starts to sag again when we're back at the midway. I could stand to see it so empty on a morning, sure, but it's afternoon, and the fact that I know that just by looking, because I've gotten so used to the sun and shadows being the same day in and day out... well, it doesn't help. And it's a nice enough day, I guess, but with the warm light and the dust of the ground, I swear my Carousel already looks too much like one of those old photos for me to be happy about it. She's supposed to move, my baby, even during the day--turning and piping her pattern out into the air.

"You mind if I start her up?" I say kinda hesitantly to Genny. The picture won't be as clear, I'm pretty sure, but she moves and turns--it's what she does, it's how she is, and that's what we're trying to get an idea of. It seems like it should matter.

[genny-duvall.livejournal.com]

Zann grabs my hand and I grin back at her as she pulls me up. It feels good to be workin' together on somethin' with Zann. It feels really good.

We run back to my trailer to get the camera, and it takes a couple minutes to make sure it's all workin' and loaded right, and then we head out to the midway.

Zann's face kinda sinks when we come up on the carousel, and so does mine, and I know she's thinkin' the same thing I am. There ain't nobody here. The carousel ain't even goin' 'round 'cause there just ain't no people on it. I was thinkin' we'd have to wait for everyone to get off 'fore we could take the picture, but we don't have to wait 'cause there ain't no people. Don't think even that darn Summer Sun Day is gonna get folks out here. We been here too long! We should be movin'…

"You mind if I start her up?" Zann asks after a sec.

I frown a little, lookin' harder. "Yeah," I say, real slow. "I think it'd work better that way. 'Cause that way if I can make the photo move, we'll know it really worked."

[tereixa-zann.livejournal.com]

"Yeah," she says, like someone going through her steps in slow-motion before stepping into the dance. "I think it'd work better that way. 'Cause that way if I can make the photo move, we'll know it really worked," and I nod and touch her shoulder, step up and forward and around her as I go up to my baby, start her spinning.

She's slow, for a moment. The air's slow and almost heavy, and it makes me think of honey and old glass. But she moves, she does, with a creak in the bones of her to start and then she shrugs herself awake, yawn and a rumble and the gears mesh into each other, and then the thin and fine piping of her starts coming out through and into the air.

[genny-duvall.livejournal.com]

Zann touches my shoulder, just a little, and I smile over at her as she goes off to get the carousel goin'. I like havn' a plan with her.

The camera feels big and heavy in my hands while I wait for the carousel to spin up, more'n I remembered it bein'. Is it s'posed to be that heavy or is somethin' extra happenin' 'cause it knows I want to take a picture that's gonna be more'n just what it looks like? The paintbrushes feel different sometimes, and I can't tell with them neither.

Spinnin' starts, music starts. There goes the carousel.

Takin' a photo's halfway to one of my special paintings already, 'cause it's takin' what's already there and tryin' to make somethin' better out of it, tryin' to make real life into art.

I bring up the camera and wait…there's the light, there's the angle. Watch it go, round and round…

There! That's what I was waitin' for. My favorite white horse comes 'round the curve, and I grin at it, and snap the picture. "There! Got it." I blink out into the light again and hold the camera out to Zann. "You wanna try now?"