"Resting" by Amrita Sher-Gil (1939) 

(picture of the artist on the header above)

"I can only paint in India. Europe belongs to Picasso, Matisse, Braque. India belongs to me." 

Exactly as I expected, Eris resumes the pattern of ignoring me. She passes by me in the halls without a hint of acknowledgement, not even sparing a glance my way in the parking lot right after class. I don't know what kind of game she's playing, but then again, what do I expect? For her to smile and wave at me like we're friends?

At least I no longer see her around with that girl... not that I care about what she does anyway. What I care about is how the deadline for the painting is approaching fast. Has she forgotten? Is she content with waiting until the last minute like she does with everything else in her life?

By Wednesday, I don't see her at all. After Spanish II—which I've only taken in order to decipher her little insults over the years—I'm the first out of my seat and rush down the hall toward the Physics class I know she has. I wait outside, discreetly watching the flux of teenagers exist the classroom, but she's not among them. Did she skip? Did something happen? I want to text her, but I can already predict her snarky response, so I don't.

I hate having to wait around for her, hate this this empty space where she had been before, taking up my attention. My only consolation is the possibility that she is still hearing my taunts, that she is still feeling the shadow of my hands along her ribs.

I've been attempting to finalize my short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals for hours—it's an exercise I do every few months, although the goals rarely change.

Short-term goal. Win the competition. Move to Toronto and study mathematics.

Mid-term goal. Find a high-paying job. Spend all my free time painting until I truly make a name for myself.

Long-term goal. Buy a house. Build my own art studio. After my death, have the house turned into a museum showcasing my paintings, pages of my journals, and photographs in the complete biographical picture of a modern prodigy. Let my essence permeate through the museums of the world on every single continent, the omnipresent Persephone Baines.

Anything less and my life will have been a complete waste.

A few years ago, when I showed a similar list to my dad, he sprung the questions: What about getting married? Don't you want to have a family?

No. I don't.

As a baby, I rarely cried or reached out for someone to hold me. Yes, I threw a lot of fits when I didn't get my way, but my mother disciplined that out of me soon enough. I must've spent so much time with Fitz in the womb that I got more than enough of my share of affection and came out ready to be an independent woman.

Instead of pinning the paper on the wall beside my bed, I rip it and throw it in the trash.

I've had the same goals for years, but there is something missing.

Maybe I need to narrow my focus. Obsessing over my biggest dreams is a recipe for disappointment, reality never quite matching to my desires. So I start small, going over my to-do list for today, but end up throwing it in the trash as well. I make a new one, this time decorating each task and habit with flowers and nice bullet points.

Even though there are five things on it just as the last, I get the overwhelming feeling that I've forgotten something. I've overlooked something essential now lost in the ripped-up pieces of paper from the old list.

So I spend ten minutes retrieving each one and assembling them like a puzzle.

It's the same five things. I compare the old list with the new with utmost scrutiny until I'm sure the two are identical in content. Before I throw the pieces in the trash again, I take a picture just in case.

The first thing on my list is to finish my macroeconomics reading, but instead of aggregate supply, fiscal policy, and public debt, my mind is on anatomy.

Instead of opening the textbook, I pick up my mechanical pencil and sketch bones. I jot down the numbers I memorized, right to the decimals. I calculate the proportions and draw the perfect replica of a skeleton from the waist-up.

And then I do it again. This time, I add flesh over the bones, decorated with scars and ink.

And that stupid white bikini.

It's the first thing I haven't wanted to rip up and discard.

▴ ▴ ▴

Fitz is releasing the song he's been working on with his friend Oscar. He asks me for help designing the cover art, and it feels so good to finally create something that has nothing to do with Eris. But even as I sketch ideas I find her realism infecting everything I do... the way her skeleton is now the anatomical default in my brain... ugh.

Fitz is far pickier than she is. I heed his instructions—he wants an image of him and Oscar standing on top of a flaming, destroyed car. While I scan my sketches to bring them to life digitally, he plays the song.

Since then I've been catatonic

Day one I've been catatonic

Catatonic shock shock shock shock

I'm not sure why he's so obsessed with reliving his trauma. The lyrics have the same surrealism as my father's paintings, like the written version of an acid trip. With a dark trap beat, high-pitched, computerized sound effects, the song is about seeing the world, experiencing chaos and transcendence and grief, yet feeling nothing. Oscar's verses, while conserving the same theme, are far more stereotypical odes to empty hedonism. Girls, cars, money, drugs—the typical male rapper rhetoric.

"Fitz, are you okay?" I ask once the beat stops.

He gives me a one-armed shrug. "Just a song."

"There's no such thing as just a song."

"I been reading a lot. Buddha says you gotta be detached, because wanting causes suffering. I think I'm already like that, just watching things pass by. Doesn't feel like there's anything special about it, though."

"I'm sure there's a difference between being numb and the compassionate detachment the Buddha talks about," I say.

"Yeah. There's gotta be something missing."

I think about my discarded list of goals. "If it's any consolation, that's how I've been feeling, too."

I finish the cover art. Oscar sits on the hood of the wrecked car while Fitz kneels on the roof, holding a spray-can, spurting blue paint clouds into the air. I drew them in an up-beat, slightly cartoonish style, foregoing sharp geometries in favor of curved lines and dramatized features.

They drop the song at midnight. It gets a few thousand views in the first day, and Fitz doesn't stay off his phone—his eyes are glued to the screen, watching the streams and comments and likes roll in, and he gets all excited about getting up to 200 monthly listeners. Oscar goes on a promotion campaign, utilizng his moderate social media following as well as other rappers in the scene to drive traffic.

"Got a feeling it'll be a sleeper hit, especially after we launch the music video," Fitz tells me. But as the days pass, and the views stagnate, his puffs of smoke in the backyard, which I can see from our bedroom window, get increasingly numerous. He's not exactly a man of many words, but he goes completely quiet, barely talking to me or even Dad, who's been streaming the song on repeat to get the views up. Blazed to oblivion, Fitz passes out on the living room couch in the early evenings and doesn't get up until we have to get ready for school.

He no longer covers his face tattoo with my concealer, theorizing that the attention at school would help promote his music. It works—I hear the song playing from bluetooth speakers during breaks and underclassmen fist-bump Fitz in the halls, asking when he'll drop the music video. I also give him a shout out on my art account, but even that barely makes him crack a smile.

▴ ▴ ▴

To Eris 🤮:

The painting is due in four days.

She doesn't respond. I've spent days mustering the courage to text her—only for her to leave me on read.

It's raining in San Diego, fat clouds unloading their weight onto the parched landscape, and I'm livid.

After school, as I'm about to climb on the back of Fitz's motorcycle, rain dotting the visor of my helmet, Eris pulls up beside me with her white car and rolls down the window.

"You coming?" she asks, as if this is routine.

I don't take off my helmet. "Excuse me? You didn't even answer my text."

"And?"

"You have to schedule a time with me. I'm busy." It's not technically a lie—I do have a record-long to-do list planned for the afternoon.

"This is the only time I can give you."

"So you expect me to drop everything and go along whenever you feel like it?"

"Take it or leave it. I'm free this afternoon y punto. You're not the most important girl in my life."

I take off the helmet and stare at her, head tilted to the side, a sneer on my face to show her exactly how I feel about that entirely unnecessary comment.

"What is that supposed to mean?" I demand. "You've been messing around? Breaking your vow of chastity?"

She lets one arm hang out the window, her bejeweled fingers drumming along the door. "Don't worry, princesita, I'm saving that for you. For our honeymoon in Monaco."

What the hell is up with that name? I almost miss pendeja.

Fitz, sitting in front of me on the motorcycle, turns around to give me the side-eye from behind his helmet, as if asking: since when does she talk to you like that? I have definitely not filled him in on the fact Eris and I's banter has evolved into... whatever this is. But we're doing nothing but mocking each other; she's trying to embarrass me now, referencing the ridiculous little show she put at the last Lugo family dinner.

"I never asked to be your priority," I say with venom. Here I've been anguishing over potentially crossing a line with her, yet she has the audacity to speak to me like this. "But the competition should be."

"Some of us have more important things going on than just a competition."

"If that's the case, why are you here? Why don't you go attend to your more urgent matters?"

She bites her lips—I've noticed she does that a lot, biting the dry skin off them until they bleed. From picking at her scabs to pulling out her hair to cutting herself and God knows what else, the girl can't stay still for a minute.

Without breaking my gaze, she revs the engine on the car, getting it hot as if she's about to accelerate out of here.

"Last chance," she says. "I won't ask again."

And what choice do I have? Tell Ms. Montoya we don't have a finished painting for the next round? Give up just because I'm annoyed with Eris? I've tolerated her for this long, and I'll have to keep tolerating her until those fifty-thousand dollars are in my bank.

▴ ▴ ▴

It's still raining in San Diego, and I'm still livid.

I sit in Eris' car, fuming, arms crossed like a petulant child. Having to submit to her whims and sacrifice my carefully-planned afternoon goes against every standard I've set for myself.

Other than the faint rap music from her stereo, the drive is silent. I wonder if she's listened to Fitz's song. I'm not going to ask—I'm not here to make small-talk. She seems to be on the same page. For the entire time, there are no jokes, no annoying comments, no insults, and absolutely no mention of what happened the last time we were alone in her art studio.

Her car is pristine compared to her messy room. Not a speck of dust on the dashboard, no whiffs of marijuana—only the momentary clicking of the beaded rosaries hanging from the rearview mirror.

We soon start painting. The memory of our anatomical escapade hangs thick in the air, as if we've left the studio for five minutes instead of almost two weeks—every forged face in the canvases littering the room stares us down.

"This place needs to be cleansed with sage or something," I say.

Eris snorts. "Yeah, from your negative energy."

"My energy? I'm not the one who's a murderer here."

She shakes her head, not even looking at me—since the moment we got here, her entire demeanor is tense and on-edge. That, added to the cluttered, claustrophobic atmosphere, is starting to make me nauseous. I wish we'd gone to my house to paint instead.

I pick up where I left off—re-measuring and adjusting La Santísima's bones. I brought the sketch of Eris' skeleton. Only her skeleton. I would never recover from the embarrassment of her knowing I drew her in a bikini. Even though it was strictly anatomical practice, putting the muscles and skin over the bones, purging the image of her exposed body from my mind onto paper, I'm aware there is no heterosexual explanation that would convince her.

The last thing I need is for her to start accusing me of being a lesbian again. Sure, I may have a slight infatuation with Amrita Sher-Gil, the Indian-Hungarian painter who died at twenty-eight yet influenced an entire generation, but that doesn't count.

She snatches the paper from my hands.

"These are my bones?" Eris asks. "Damn, it's in like 360 degrees. From the sides. From the back. From the front. Your memory... wow."

"Yes," I say, yanking my sketches back, as if they're my bones and not hers.

That's the extent of our conversation. The new alterations to the painting are minimal aside from adding another vertebrae, and my face warms as I realize that it's barely made a difference, only serving to morph the saint more closely into Eris' image. There was truly no need for me to do what I did, and as she watches me implement my precise measurements, I'm almost certain she's thinking the same thing.

I hold my breath with anticipation for her to call me out for my worthless experiment, but she only calmly mixes paints on her pallet, which I've noticed she has an insane talent for—she can match the colors we've already painted to perfection, using tiny drops of shades I never would think to use.

Although the saint is fragmented into two, half bone and half flesh, we decide the visual effect will be less jarring if we keep her veil the same.

"I can take it from here," Eris says. "We're almost done anyway."

I nod, relieved at being able to go home early, and stand up.

Eris looks up at me. "I didn't say you could leave."

"What if I want to leave?"

"Nah, you're staying here and watching me finish. Then you can go over it and fix any of those little mistakes you like to obsess over."

"And you call me demanding."

She pats the spot next to her on the floor. "Sit."

"What if I want to stand?"

She shoots me an annoyed look. "Ef."

"What's the point of you finishing the rest when it's supposed to be a collaborative effort?"

"Collaborative effort, huh? Just like when you erased all my work in round one and turned in a painting that was 100% yours?"

With a dramatic sigh, I sit beside her. This is one of those rare times when she's right, and I have no solid argument to make my case. It's only fair to let her dominate this round after what I did. The vibrancy in her parts of the painting will overshadow my careful details and muted colors. Already, it's a very Eris painting, though unlike any of her usual stale, derivative pieces I'm used to.

Last time, I studied her bones. Today, I'll study her methods. The dozens of colors on the palette at once, her quick jabs from brush to canvas, and how her initial layers are nothing but vague shadows and chaotic strokes but eventually come together in a dynamic realism that seems to move beyond the canvas.

Instead of a golden hour sunset, the cloudy skies make the studio gloomy and dark, the sprinkle of rain that started this morning turning into heavy showers. Completely focused, Eris doesn't reach up to pull her hair or pick her skin or hit her vape, not even once. I'm grateful the colder weather today resulted in her wearing a hoodie and jeans so I don't get distracted by her spine again.

After hours, she finishes. My eyes are heavy as if I've been the one painting, my mind spinning with new ideas to try out later, but finally, we're done.

It's leagues better than our first submission. Than anything I could've painted on my own.

"There's our saint," Eris whispers.

"Your saint," I clarify.

"And what's yours?"

"I don't have one."

"C'mon, I know those white Canadians are stale as hell, but there's gotta be something from your culture or something. Like some Haitian voodoo shit."

I roll my eyes. "Way to stereotype me."

"I mean... that's what some people practice, right?"

"Not my mother. Not William. My grandmother, I'm not sure. She died before I could ever meet her—a few years ago, actually. She was Catholic from what I know."

"So you never visited Haiti?"

"My mother had no interest in going back. My father would never have the guts to go, not even with her."

"Why not?"

"Because it's not exactly a premier tourist destination, Eris."

"So what? You still had family there. That's important."

"Not to them. And William isn't going back because when he started his journalism career there, he had a lot of issues with the government... he lived in the Dominican Republic for a while, but he wasn't really safe there, either."

Eris frowns.

"My grandmother apparently used to say that hundreds of prophets existed throughout history but died as slaves, so their stories were never made into scriptures," I continue. It's strange to be talking about this to someone other than my family—no one else has ever been even remotely interested. "She thought the Bible was only part of the equation. She used to say that my mother was one of the lost prophetesses, and she would be the queen to bring our country into better days."

"Did your mom believe that?"

"Of course not."

"And then she just left and went to go join the Canadian military and never looked back."

"Yes."

"That's kinda fucked up. You know that abuelita definitely has some beef to sort out with her in heaven."

All my usual thoughts about order and numbers and goals unfurl as the awareness of being extracted from a faraway homeland carves itself between my ribs. Microeconomics in action.

"Maybe," I finally say.

"Or maybe she's watching over you now and realizing that it's you who's the prophetess."

I laugh, and it does more to relieve the tension in the studio than any sage smoke could. "Well, she did believe in some African deities. I think our family had a patron back in the day, but I don't remember her name..."

"You don't ever wanna look into it? Reconnect with your roots or something?"

"I don't need to believe in anything."

"It's not about that. It's about understanding that for some people, it does exist. Like yeah, maybe the old myths aren't as relevant as they used to be with modern technology and capitalism and all that shit, but we can't just let ourselves forget."

In my obsession with perfect grades, I've dedicated so much time to mastering the secular, Eurocentric curriculum of the schools I've attended. My father always said his ancestors were former American slaves who escaped into Canada, though he's also half-Irish. He made his name painting scenes from such often-overlooked histories, and he would fill me in on the back story for each one.

"Do you know for a fact your mother's ancestors were Aztecs?" I ask Eris.

"I mean, define Aztec... Because if you mean the Mexica people who were like the top dogs with their base over there in Mexico City, then maybe not. But if you mean their empire, which I think took over Guerrero by the 15th century, then yeah. Though, like, my great grandparents spoke Nahuatl, which is the Mexica language, so I have no idea if they were related to the colonizers or the Mixtecs or Cuitlatecs who were there first."

The fact she knows all these specific details about her culture and I know very little about mine is truly shameful.

"It makes sense our parents just slapped some Greek names on us," I sigh.

"For the next painting, we're doing an African goddess. Time for you to do some research. You need some life in your blood. Canadian ice got you cold as hell."

She may not realize it, but the thought that she would want to make space in our painting for something like that... is one of the kindest things anyone has ever done for me.

I've barely stopped to consider what deities were important to my ancestors hundreds of years ago, yet she's curious about them. Deities that fueled the Haitian revolution from the heavens.

Growing up in Canada, which touts itself as an all-welcoming oasis of diversity, there was this urge to believe that any racism was a thing of the past, with a colorblind, "we now have equal rights for everyone" rhetoric. But I can't deny the way those art world snobs look at me. What happens when I stop painting with them in mind? What happens when I stop trying to impress, doing everything to prove my worth, like any success is something I have to take by force?

"That wouldn't be a bad idea," I say, looking up at the bleeding Guadalupe.

Eris leans back on her elbows, smiling. "Yeah, fuck this Greek mythology shit. We're putting the spotlight on our own gods." 

▴ ▴ ▴

a/n: what a long chapter! i hope you don't mind the slower pace; things will definitely be picking up soon :PP

i really enjoyed delving into persephone's character here. alsoooo, let's get a ship name! in the first draft of this story, back when eris was named erin, readers came up with "persepherin" (sounds like the name of a medication lmao), so how about 💜 persepheris 💜 ???