The Rose Garden, Chapter 10 – Art Lessons

Tricycle, Author NobbiP (GNU Free Documentation License Verson 1.2 or later, CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic, and 1.0 Generic)

WARNING:  Graphic Images

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me, and know my anxieties; And see if there is any wicked way in me…” (Ps. 139: 23-24).

Early on, one of the older boys in the neighborhood did something unforgivable.  He borrowed my shiny, red tricycle without permission.  Outraged, I was not permitted to tell the grown-ups my side of the story when the tricycle overturned in the street, injuring him.

This small — now amusing — incident left a lasting impression on me.  It just may be the reason I became a lawyer.

Obedience and Authority

I attended a Catholic grammar school, run by the parish.  The Dominican nuns there emphasized obedience as the highest virtue.  Though I now recognize the spiritual significance of that virtue, their intention was likely more practical.  Class size for years exceeded sixty students.

I felt at some fundamental level that there were things more important than obedience.  Consequently, I developed a rebellious streak in response to this well-intended tutelage.  It was easier to rebel in school than at home.

My first grade teacher was universally lauded by parents and universally despised by the children under her care.  She ruled with absolute authority in her small universe, so much so that bathroom breaks were not tolerated if unscheduled.  Consequently, accidents in the classroom were frequent and deeply humiliating for the children involved.

I could not at six have said why these situations so angered me.  Nor could I understand why the adults around me seemed incapable of recognizing that the teacher was the one actually responsible for them.

Inauthenticity

My second grade teacher was a woman in her early sixties who encouraged the children in whom she saw intelligence or talent — at least those children who conformed to her expectations.

I was quick to perceive this, thriving on the added attention, though it served to drive a wedge between other classmates and myself.

I began in the second grade to experience a feeling of inauthenticity, and a sense of failure which pervaded my life for years [1].  I attribute this in part to the weekly art classes the teacher arranged for me at a nearby school.  Rather than a pleasure, those classes became a burden.

I had learned while I had measles how to make paper dolls.  Designing and drawing clothes came easily, and seemed a way to share in the glamor I associated with my mother, even when she was absent.

It may be that an interest in art ran in the family.  In Hungary, Grandma was renowned for her breathtaking paper flowers, extravagantly displayed at religious festivals.  This avenue of expression was unavailable to her in America.  Cut off from it, she drew inward.

My interest in art offered Grandma the chance to reconnect with a part of herself otherwise buried.  This was not something I realized at the time.

My art classes — if they could be termed that — consisted of little more than proximity to paints, pastels, and canvas.  The so-called classes were presided over by a nun we were instructed to call “Mother.”

I never knew the details of Mother’s life.  But, from the outset, I could feel her contempt.

Throughout the year, Mother collected students’ drawings and paintings for the ostensible purpose of compiling individual portfolios.  What she failed to disclose, either to parents or students, was that she independently re-worked each student’s output, herself.

Without doubt, the resulting pieces were less amateurish and more polished than when they had been submitted to Mother for safekeeping.  There were, also, forgeries.  The pieces reflected the level of her skill, rather than the aptitude of her pupils.  For me, this was another violation.

Though I repeatedly attempted to explain to adults that the art work was not truly “mine,” I was consistently praised for it.   My discomfort was compounded by the fact I was called on to show the work to my class at the end of each year.  That ultimately led to my abandonment of art.

Having purchased a costly mail order course for me shortly before her death, Grandma more than once asked, plaintively, “Anna, don’t you want to finish your art work?”  It breaks my heart that I disappointed her.

Art Appreciation

My father prided himself on his appreciation for art.  He first exposed me to that at Manhattan’s great Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I had difficulty keeping up with him, as we traversed the museum’s cavernous interior.  It was not the physical effort, however, which caused me distress.  Rather it was my father’s focus on the nudes.  Why this produced such intense shame I could not at the time have said.

Nor did my father’s discussion of nudes end when we left the museum.  He repeatedly after that urged me to attempt drawing nudes on the children’s blackboard we had at home.  “Can you draw ladies like in the museum?” he would ask.

At his request, I more than once made the attempt, but came to hate the blackboard.  That it was not readily receptive to chalk impressions intensified my hatred, regardless of the cheerful animal figures painted along the blackboard’s edge.

I could make as little impression on my father.  Somehow, I had lost his love.  So it seemed to me.

By the seventh grade, my sexual precocity manifested in graphic “fashion” drawings at school, with nipples prominent or breasts partially revealed.  This still did not give rise to concern on the part of my teachers.

Astonishingly, I never lost my love for beauty, whether in art or nature.  I could easily spend hours in an art gallery or garden, even today.  Such is grace.

Academic Achievements Dismissed

As my father’s sexual interest in me grew, his attitude toward my intellect became progressively dismissive.  Perhaps that made the molestation easier for him.  That I was regularly at the head of my class in school made no appreciable difference.

Acutely sensitive to my father’s assessment of me, I ascribed the discrepancy between his treatment and the compliments from my teachers to misjudgment by the latter.  With time, I became certain that my teachers must have been taken in by a façade I was unaware of projecting.

The discrepancy only contributed to my sense of inauthenticity.  As a consequence, I strove the harder to be perfect — both in an effort to regain my father’s love and to appear normal.  Normalcy seemed to have slipped away.

Terror

Children must believe in the inherent goodness of the adults on whom their lives depend.  Since my father had to be a good man, I decided it was my reaction to his attentions that could not to be trusted.

However, my terror during the lessons by my father continued.  At times the fear became so thick it threatened to engulf me.  I suffered, in fact, from a recurring nightmare about suffocation.

A more diffuse anxiety expanded to cloud my life.  I regularly bit my nails to the quick.  I developed an unaccountable aversion to the sight of my father’s mouth and the odor of his undershirts, as well as a near compulsion for cleanliness.

Compulsive cleanliness is an attempt to reduce anxiety by ridding oneself of “contamination” [2A].  Though not aware of it at the time, I was attempting to cleanse myself of the molestation.

I remain extremely organizational.  I assume this is a trait I inherited from my grandmother.  But an excessive desire for symmetry and order can, also, be consistent with a history of trauma [2B].  Of course, my grandmother had experienced trauma of her own.

It was from my father that I first heard an off-color joke.  I was about eight at the time.  The joke referenced the George Washington Bridge and Martha Washington’s virginity.  It merely confused me.

I was less confused at my first sight of a homeless man, sprawled senseless in a doorway.  This was clearly someone in need of assistance.  My father, however, took no notice.

Working in Harlem, my father ranted regularly about the drug addicts with whom he came into contact at the store.  I had no idea the term “junkie” was not in the vocabulary of other nine-year-olds.  Since I was expected to know the word’s meaning and did not, the term reinforced my feelings of inadequacy whenever my father used it.

Early Writing

I always enjoyed helping my younger sister with her school compositions.  When asked on a religion exam to tell the story of creation, I interwove Genesis with the theories of evolution and the “big bang.”

In the eighth grade, I was permitted the “honor” of writing the valedictory address a boy in our class would deliver.  To my immense satisfaction, the church sound system went out during the poor boy’s delivery, and the speech could not be heard.

It was the year before this that I wrote the composition my grandmother most prized.  The class was told to write about a great person.  Compositions were handed in on Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and a multitude of other great figures from history.  I chose to write about my grandmother.

Cowardice and Courage

Over time, I came to view myself as responsible for preserving my father’s sanity.  It was unthinkable to me that my father could intentionally inflict on me the degree of emotional pain his “lessons” routinely evoked; and incomprehensible that he might be so self-absorbed as to be oblivious to my pain.

Accordingly, I came to believe that it was necessary I mask my feelings, and endure his advances without complaint.

Helpless, I never as a child saw my father’s “lessons” as the test of courage they were for me.  I endured them out of love for him; out of a desire to protect him from destructive knowledge about himself; and out of the simple lack of any alternative.

For years I suffered from a recurring nightmare involving the lights at our house.  In the dream, I would wake at night to a darkened house.  On reaching for the nearby lamp, I always found it did not function.

Frightened, I would run to the nearest light switch only to encounter a similar problem.  Lamp after lamp failed to work.  Room after empty room, I ran through the house until I reached the front yard.

There, under the stars, at last I felt safe.

I did eventually manage to conquer my fear of the dark.  Since there were monsters living underneath the bed, I was careful to sleep with my hands away from the edge and my feet safely tucked under the covers.

If I did have to run down the hall to the bathroom at night, I would sing until I could turn on the light.  Monsters were deterred by singing.

Notwithstanding these precautions, I awoke one morning with my arm slung over the side of the bed.  I took the fact that the arm was still intact as proof the monsters had departed.  My fear of the dark left with them.

For the most part, I saw myself as a coward.  Nonetheless, I continued to function — every year making the honor roll, to my grandmother’s great pride.

—

[1]  LinkedIn, “The Connection Between Emotional Abuse and Imposter Syndrome” by Monique Corzo Torres, 5/20/24, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/connection-between-emotional-abuse-imposter-syndrome-corzo-torres-nxecc.

[2]  HealthLine, “OCD:  When Cleaning Is A Compulsion” by Rebecca Stanborough (medically reviewed by Timothy Legg PhD), 8/4/20, https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/ocd-cleaning.

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ISBN: 978-1-60247-890-9

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