Watercolor Girls
by Jemimah Wei
For months, I’ve been trying to tell my husband that I’m depressed. I’ve tried all the ways: I’ve listened only to Miyazaki orchestral pieces on our bedside radio, soaking my side of the pillow with pearly tears; I’ve pulled all the heart-shaped leaves off our living room philodendron and left them in a pile near our marble sink; I’ve shown him a series of my favorite watercolors, all crying, moody girls in shades of mint and turquoise, all enclosed in bubbles. Each watercolor I do arrests a different crying girl in a shimmering bubble that distorts and creates bulges in places where there should be none. It’s meant to be disconcerting, but he loves them, every one of them, declares them finished and precious.
I’ve even tried saying it as a question at first, do you think I’m depressed, and graduating to soft declarations, I think I’m depressed. He just nods, and with every nod I lose the conviction to say more.
We met online, before online romances became tired and trite. I had been putting scans of my watercolors up on this popular online community for budding artists, back when I was only doing it on the side. Most of my pieces then were symptomatic of the culture I was steeped in, knobbly elbows and wide, desperate eyes on too-big heads, a mix of manga and Tim Burton styles. They didn’t stand out much except by what they lacked, which was money, I suppose. Most of the other artists on the site had digital ink tablets— or the ones who still scanned work had expensive copic pens and the special kind of thick art paper that canvassed the copic colors well, creating a dangerously gentle palette. I had pencil sketches that I painted over with cheap watercolors from the neighborhood stores, and that still bore smudges from when I tried to erase the pencil marks later, after the paint dried. I would have given each one away for free, if only for the knowledge that someone desired them, when the man who would become my husband sent me an apologetic private message. At the time, he was still a poor graduate student, and could afford only thirty dollars, but would I make an exception? I knew, then. I felt myself cleaving to him already, even as I tapped out a reply, offering myself in shades that materialized and congealed with his quiet noises of amazement and pleasure.
In all my years of watercoloring, only two people have made serious attempts at acquiring pieces. I mean serious as in, they’ve been willing to pay. Of the two, I married one. Why then, did I take seriously his adoration, plunge full time into my watercolors, cresting the wave of his encouragement. Maybe I don’t want to ask, don’t want to know. Over the years I’ve accumulated copics and canvasses; he’s even gifted me a bamboo e-ink tablet one anniversary, the kind professional illustrators use.
But I still prefer working with paper. I like to get my hands dirty; I like my watercolor girls to leave their stains on me. My watercolor girls now all live in bubbles, seeped in thick art paper, sometimes cupped in frames on the walls, or pressed into photo albums. We’ve gifted them, autographed, as housewarming presents to friends, though only I notice the grimaces when they’re received; only I want to stop. But he is so convinced that they hold darling to others as they do to him, that even I can’t bear to burst the bubble. And truth be told we are running out of space at home, even with how liberally we gift them - my albums are stacked everywhere, in our study, storeroom, my studio, by the foot of our bed, you can’t walk somewhere in the house without stumbling over one of them, looking out at you, eyes wide, head too big, lashes brimming.
Sometimes when I’m crying in bed, my husband comes over and sits with me, helplessly, one hand on my shoulder as I heave into the sheets; but when I wake in the morning, after he’s gone to work, I see that he’s left offerings of mother-of-pearl and horsetail paintbrushes on my dresser.
I’ve tried to experiment, tried to branch out, but when I flip through the albums of those times—the landscapes on fire phase; the reinvention of classic postcards phase; the portraits phase—the colors run into each other, they muddle, unhappily. No risk, no soul. I’ve even tried to work with different material, I’ve dipped long goose feathers in dye and hung them out to dry, applied my brush to thinly blown glass bubbles, but the false and fragile beauty of the finished pieces mock me. I nudge the glass orbs off the table and watch them splinter, waiting for the moment sunlight snags on the shards at impact, sometimes flashing iridescent winks back at me. Whenever this happens the maid comes within seconds, sweeps it up so it doesn’t lodge under the soles of my feet, although sometimes I think, I think I want that, that quality of getting under my own skin.
Maybe what I have is not depression, but abundance. I try to locate the appropriate vocabulary in word and watercolor, sitting day after day in that sun-drenched studio at the back of our house, surrounded by small mountains of my own making. I find myself thinking this, as he comes home, as he stands in the doorway and watches me sully myself with the best material money can buy. I can see it on his face, the desperate powerlessness, his eyes searching mine, ready, always ready to offer. I hold his gaze for a moment longer. If I still had the ability, I’d want to paint it, capture that kind of love, net it in a glassy bubble, where I can watch it drift and float. I’d want to isolate it in one of my watercolor worlds, see how it bulges and shifts. Press my lips to it and see if it holds.
