Unbound

My hand grips the cold, black handle of the door, and the icy shock of it propels me inside the museum. As I step inside the old, gracious building, I feel the warmth wash over me and my face relaxes, no longer scrunched up against the biting wind. Where shall I start this time? I read the map of the museum, in large print a few paces away, as if I’m poring over a menu at a five-star restaurant. Nothing piques my interest, a strange occurrence for me. In the end, I look away and simply begin moving forward. I don’t want to think. I’ll let the artwork take me where it wants to.      

A horribly comforting numbness has settled around me like a caressing fog in recent weeks. I move through the building like a spirit, silent and invisible. And yet, as is so often the case with spirits, I am the one who is haunted; trapped. There are many people here today, some standing silently as they contemplate a work of art, some chatting happily with other patrons. I come here often enough that the paintings and sculptures feel like dear friends to me, but today their warmth can’t seem to penetrate the grey cloud that has settled around my body and my mind.

As I wander silently down the hallway, a black shadow, prodding and oppressing, begins to pervade my mind. My eyes, hungry for color and texture and contrast only a few minutes ago, make every painting and sculpture seem so far away. I can’t make out their details, they aren’t touching me, making me feel or question or wonder, and now I can only wonder what’s happening to me. Oh, God, what is happening? Where have I gone? I start to feel the panic rise in my throat, my hair and my skin and my clothes are choking me, I’m struggling to cry out for help, but no one can hear me, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God! I stuff down the urge to scream, clamping my trembling lips shut tight, but can’t stop the hot tears from leaking out of my eyes.     

I hear the quick thudding of my footsteps as my feet take me to an alcove tucked under and behind the great central staircase of the museum. I need to breathe, have to control myself. As I round the corner, my feet suddenly stop, my lips unclamp and part to pull in a sharp breath as my eyes fall upon it. Hanging on the wall of the little corner space, hidden from view of the main hall, is a painting. It’s quite large, clearly an oil painting. Its contrast, movement, and raw emotion vaguely remind me of Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Beheading Holofernes, but something about it strikes me as contemporary. 

My eyes are drawn immediately to the face of the woman in the image. Her mouth is open, screaming, calling for someone. Her eyes, pouring tears down her cheeks, are full of suffering and confusion, wide and panicked. Her brows are contorted and her expression is one of total abandonment and sorrow. She looks into the darkness behind her, toward a shadowy figure that is walking out of the picture. Everything around her swirls and writhes in shades of ebony and deepest grey, and there are no intelligible shapes. In her torn and stained ivory dress, she lays on the ground, bound tightly with coarse, black rope. One hand is free, and she uses it to stretch her fingers uselessly toward the departing figure in the shadows. Liquid garnet flows and drips from a gash across her palm, matching the blood-encased blade of a silver dagger on the ground directly below.

An onslaught of dark memories, like oily shadows of pure Night, assault me before I can stop them. Beautiful, wonderful lies. Blissful ignorance. Accusations. The Great Dividing, separating me from family and friends. Screaming, horrible screaming and names I wouldn’t call my worst enemy. “If I slap the shit out of you right here, no one will help you. You know why? Because it’s like disciplining a dog.” I cover my ears and screw my eyes shut tight. Nowhere to go. No one to help me. No one to hear me scream. Trapped. I have to get out. 

I lower my hands and slowly unscrew my eyelids. I search beneath the painting, expecting to find a placard with the artist’s name, the title of the painting, the date. There is a placard there, with a single word printed upon it: Bound.

I turn on the spot and quickly march back to the front desk of the museum, breathing as I go, praying that the salty tracks my silent tears left on my heated cheeks are invisible. I approach the gentleman at the desk, trying to somehow emit calm. 

“Hi.” At the sound of my voice, he looks up from the note he’s writing and smiles kindly. I’ve seen him here before. I glance at the name card pinned to his pressed gray suit jacket. Jonathan Sachs. His dark brown curls and olive skin remind me of my younger brother. But my little brother’s smile is always accompanied by dimples, unlike Mr. Sachs.

“Hello, how are you today?” With his reply comes a hint of concern in his warm brown eyes.

“I’m fine, how are you?” This feels so plastic and surreal.

“I’m doing very well, thank you. How can I help you?”

I think that he can’t really help me, and I’m not sure who can. But he should at least be able to answer this question. 

“Um,” I falter. “There’s a painting kind of tucked under the staircase. It’s just really interesting, and I wanted to know who the artist is, but there's no name under it.”

His brows furrow in confusion. “Under the staircase? We don’t display any of our pieces under the staircase. Are you sure?”

I nod emphatically, the loose wisps of my hair swaying with the movement. “Positive. It’s called Bound. It looks like an oil painting, and it has a woman in a white dress laying on the ground tied up with rope.” 

The lines between his brows deepen, along with the flash of concern in his eyes. “I’ve never seen that painting... I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Can you show me where it is?”

“Absolutely,” I say, already turning on my heel. 

“Mr. Sachs!” a lilting voice exclaims. The museum attendant snaps his gaze back toward the entrance and his eyes light up in recognition. 

“Ms. Soltero, how are you? I wasn’t expecting you until Friday!” He clearly knows the woman well, and his voice glows with admiration. He turns back to me, looking apologetic. “I’m so sorry, I just need a few minutes to speak with Ms. Soltero. I’ll be with you as soon as I’m done ”

“Oh, okay,” I reply. “I’ll just wait for you by the painting. It’s under the stairs, like I said before.” He nods quickly and turns to beam at Ms. Soltero. As I start to walk away, I hear their voices mingling but don’t try to understand the words. I won’t be surprised if he forgets about me. 

Mind still racing, I round the corner beneath the staircase. What if the artist was - My train of thought screeches to halt as I complete the turn. Someone else is here. An intruder. I feel possessive over this space and this piece of art. I know that doesn’t make sense logically. I’m an adult, this painting doesn’t belong to me, and neither does this corner under the staircase. But I had found it first! More than that, I need this painting, somehow. I need to look at it and listen and think, alone. I take a deep breath and step up alongside the woman standing there. 

She hears me. She turns her face toward me, and suddenly the anger and the confusion and the panic whoosh out of me, like a cleansing breath. She doesn’t look at all surprised to see me. She smiles gently, and the warmth of it rises into her deep blue eyes and radiates out toward me. 

“Amazing, isn’t it?” she asks. Her voice is feminine yet deep and strong and flowing, like an indigo river, broad and powerful, advancing over ancient stony riverbeds. She turns back to the painting, and I feel strangely sad that she’s no longer looking at me. 

I clear my throat and nod once in agreement. “It is. It’s -” Before I can get the words out, I feel my throat begin to choke as fresh tears threaten to break free. I swallow painfully and try to push the emotions down, like trying to shove jagged rocks down a plastic straw. “I can’t really explain it. But I know how she feels. Being trapped, it’s a horrible feeling. And what I don’t understand is why she’s reaching out to him still, whoever did this to her. Why is she calling after him like that?” Why am I? And why am I saying all this to a stranger? I silence my thoughts again. “It’s just kind of strange.”

“You know,” her voice is very low now, pulling me in as she continues to contemplate the image. “I don’t think it’s strange at all. We all have things we refuse to let go of, even things that hurt us. Especially things that hurt us.”

Slowly, she turns her head toward me once more, and it feels like the sun has just come out from behind the clouds. She’s no longer smiling, though. Instead, her expression is one of unfathomable love, and sorrow. How does she know? This time, I can’t stop it. The hot tears start to stream down my face once more, faster and harder. I feel my brows scrunch together and my shoulders start to shake. I try to take deep, gasping breaths, but it’s not helping. 

Humiliated, my hands rush up to cover my face. She doesn’t need to see this; no one does. And then I feel a warm, gentle tug on my wrists. Ever so softly, she pulls my hands down and lets them fall by my sides. She raises her own hands and carefully, delicately, wipes the tears from my flushed cheeks. My wet lashes, clumped together by the salty torrent, are downcast as I look uselessly at my shoes, still breathing unevenly. She puts a finger under my chin and gently lifts it up, waiting for me to raise my eyes to gaze back into hers.

“You have to know that you were never alone. You have never been alone.”

I can’t do anything, can’t say anything. I can only let her words wash over me, sink into me, until they reach my innermost being, cooling and healing wherever they touch, like a heavenly salve.

She removes her graceful finger from under my chin and gestures to the painting once more. “There is something I find curious about it, though,” she says. I gaze at the image, waiting expectantly. “That hand that she’s using to reach toward him, don’t you think she should use it to grab the knife and cut the rope?”

She turns toward me again, her gaze searching my own like water sifting debris. My mind flashes back through all those hideous memories of Night and pain. I feel a little stab of fear in my chest and I find myself wanting to defend the woman in the painting. You don’t understand, I want to say. It’s not that simple. She’s hoping he’ll come back and dress her wounds, hoping he’ll unbind her and gently bring her home. If she freed herself, where would she even go? What if he comes back and she’s not there? Then she’ll never know if he returned for her, after all…

“But her hand is wounded; it would probably hurt to try and use it.”

“Probably,” the woman intones softly, gaze still sifting mine. “But won’t it hurt more to stay where she is?”

I turn to the painting again. If she used that tender, bleeding hand to take the knife and saw through those coarse sinews of black rope, there would be no going back. She would have to figure out what to do next, where to go, who she was all alone… That little stab of fear returns, fluttering in my chest like a bird in a cage.

“Sometimes fear of the unknown can keep us trapped where we don’t belong.” Her voice is stronger now, slightly louder. The powerful waves of it wash over me as she continues. “But we have to be brave. You are not here on this earth to lay sad and broken for the rest of your life. You were made for more than this.” There is a ferocity in her countenance now; a challenge.

The fluttering fear in my chest has fled, replaced by a tiny flame of hope, orange and flickering. I glance at the palm of my own hand and wonder…

“Hello there, excuse me!” The spell is broken by the voice of Mr. Sachs, and I turn to see him hurrying over the glossy marble floor toward us, his polished leather shoes tapping as he goes. “Sorry about that; I’ve just finished with Ms. Soltero. So, this is it?” He stops in front of me, his kindly eyes shifting from mine to focus on the painting behind me. 

I turn back around to gesture at the woman. “Yes, we were just-” My voice cuts off abruptly. She’s gone. Where the hell did she go? Had she somehow walked away when I was distracted? But no, there was no way she could have done that without me seeing her. Am I actually losing it? The fear flutters its way back into my chest again as I start to wonder what the symptoms of a complete psychotic break are. With everything that’s happened, it could be a real possibility. 

“I’m sorry,” I say to Mr. Sachs in a shaking voice. “I swear there was a woman here; we were talking about the painting and…”

My trembling voice trails off as I register the expression on Mr. Sach’s face. He is staring over my shoulder at the image behind me, frozen. His face has become a mask of deep, inexplicable grief; deeper than the most cavernous, yawning hole, and blacker than any abyss. “Well,” he says, his voice thick. “I can certainly see why you found it so interesting. It really does capture the feelings… No parent should have to bury their child.”

My brows knit in bewilderment and I turn to face the image once more, wondering why it had elicited such a strange response from him. What parent is he talking about? And there’s no child in the image…

He continues on, his voice sounding far away. “The artist must have lost a child. You can tell by the black everywhere, by the despair in the mother’s face. That tiny coffin, it’s horrible… A coffin should never be so small. The artist knew what it was like.”

He snaps out of his reverie at that last remark, forcing himself back to the present moment. Though not as cheerful as before, he soldiers on with the task at hand. “And that was the whole reason you asked me about the painting, wasn’t it? To find out the name of the artist? Well, you seem to be correct.” He leans forward slightly, squinting at the placard beneath the frame. “There’s no name listed. Only the title. But didn’t you say it was called Bound? That’s not what it says here…”

I silently start to back away as an utterly strange, completely impossible idea begins to grow in my mind. Mr. Sachs turns and looks at me perplexedly. “Are you alright?” That flash of concern in his warm chocolate eyes again. 

“Yes, I’m fine… I just have to get going. But thank you for your help.” I back away another step and begin to turn toward the main hall, my mind buzzing with questions and a sensation of awe beginning to grow in my breast. 

“I’m afraid I wasn’t much help at all; I didn’t answer your questions… I’ll speak with the head curator. Come back next week if you like; I’m sure I’ll have more information then.” His voice fades as the distance between us grows.

“Oh,” I toss breathlessly over my shoulder. “Thank you, I will… See you later.” Alone now, he turns to contemplate the painting again, and I watch his shoulders sag.

As I hustle back toward the entrance of the museum, I notice a small child, apparently alone and standing in front of the doors. As I near her, she grins at me and it’s like the sun bursting forth after a day of heavy gray rain. My feet slow as I approach her. Her deep blue eyes bore into mine and they transmit a peace and joy like nothing I have ever experienced. She puts her small hand in mine and gives it an affectionate squeeze. 

“You can do it, you know.” Her tiny voice is like music, like sparkling, clear streams and soft summer rain. My breath catches in my throat, and all I can do is look back at her. Actually, I think I really can do it. I feel that tiny, warm tongue of flame in my chest grow a little bit bigger, and the corners of my mouth turn up into a small smile. A beginning smile. 

“Thank you,” I breathe, unable to think of any words that would be enough. She wraps her little arms around me. I close my eyes, hugging her back for a brief moment before she lets go and bobs her way joyfully to the corner under the stairs, where I left Mr. Sachs. I glance at my hand once more, then look up and push back out into the wind.