“Why would you go to America to play with crayons?” Michael yelled as he ran past me. I passed the ball to him. He took a shot on goal. Achille, our goalie, lunged for it.
Just before he kicked it to centerfield, Achille said, “Drawing around here is one thing but to go halfway across the world for a little hobby?”
All the guys thought my passion for drawing was stupid or, at best, a hobby. I drew in secret now, avoiding their comments at all costs; but I couldn’t escape them now. I was going to America to participate in a study of talent found in economically challenged countries. With a 95% unemployment rate, Burkina Faso definitely qualified. Regardless of what the guys thought, I had to go.
Now, almost a year later, I’d learned so much; and I wanted desperately to win first prize at the final exhibit – a full four-year art scholarship.
“Wait up! Aristide! Hey!” I turned around to see my friend from Ghana running towards me. With only two days left until the exhibit, it was crunch-time. When he caught up to me, he was out of breath. “Man . . . I hate this . . . cold. . . how can they stand it?” We began walking quickly, anxious to get inside the building and out of the cold, ice, and snow.
“I know. My friends back home are never going to believe this” I said.
“Believe what?”
“This – what winter is really like! How snow feels. What it’s like to ice skate and make snowballs.” We continued conversing as we clamored up the stairs to the fine arts building – that was a mistake. My foot landed on the only patch of ice on the steps. A split second later, I was at the bottom of the stairs, pain shooting up my arm. I must have passed out then because the next thing I knew I was in the hospital with my right arm in a cast, broken in three places.
“Aristide? Hey, Aristide! You’re dripping!” Dimitri’s voice yanked me back from my musings.
I looked down at the brush in my left hand as a drop of red paint slid off its tip and plopped onto my shoe. I threw the brush down as if it was on fire. “What am I supposed to do, Dimitri? How am I ever going to finish this – and by tomorrow?” I was so frustrated. I wanted first prize so badly I’d walk on hot coals all the way across America to get it. This was my one chance in life. I couldn’t go home. I just couldn’t. Not yet. Not as a failure.
Dimitri tried to be helpful. “Okay, let’s think this through. You can’t paint with your left hand, and you seem to have trouble holding the brush with your toes. That rules out using your feet. Holding the brush in your mouth bombed. Hmm. . . hey, how deep is your belly-button or maybe one of your ears?!”
I gave him a dirty look. “Be serious. If I don’t win, I go back home a loser. I can’t face my friends like that. I just can’t.” I knew that tears were welling up in my eyes, but I didn’t care. “This is hopeless.” I stared at the floor, lost in thought, trying desperately to come up with a solution. “There has to be a way. There just has to.”
Suddenly Dimitri ran to the supply closet and came back with an armload of stuff. He held his arms over the table beside my easel and let go, knocking tubes of paint onto the floor and causing everyone to look in our direction. We ignored them and dug into the pile.
“There’s got to be something in here.” He said. We began tossing things on the floor in our haste to find “it.” Whatever “it” was.
“Here!” He held up a roll of duct tape. Tape your paintbrush to your cast.”
“What good would that be?”
“I dunno. It fixes everything else, why not this?”
“This isn’t going to work. There’s nothing here.” Defeated, I tossed some modeling clay back onto the pile. I’d never win now. I wouldn’t even be able to finish my painting. As we put the supplies away, I caught sight of one of the paintings on the drying rack. It was an abstract. I stopped dead. “That’s it!” I exclaimed.
“What’s it?” Dimitri asked.
“This.” I pointed. “This painting.”
Dimitri looked at the painting. “I don’t understand. You can’t enter someone else’s painting.”
“I don’t want to enter this painting. I want to change my painting. Instead of a detailed still life, I’ll make it an abstract. I can do that. I can use my right hand. I won’t have to worry about being exact. I won’t have to worry about realistic details.” I made my way back to my easel as fast as I could.
“The master painter is back in business.” Dimitri was right beside me, grinning, as I picked up my paintbrush with my casted right hand.
I frantically set to work. I had a lot of time to make up. When I finally emerged from the art room, it was 3 a.m. – enough time for a little sleep before our entries were due at Stewart Hall.
Fours hours later, I awoke to the sound of someone banging on my door. “Aristide!” My eyes bolted open. I looked at the clock, 7:10! I scrambled out of bed, getting caught in the blankets, tripping, and smacking full-body flat against the door.
I didn’t waste time opening it. I just yelled back, “Go on without me!” I turned around and dug my clothes out of the piles on the floor and threw them on, then ran to the fine arts building. The door was locked. I banged on it. Panic rose in my chest. I looked all around me hoping to find a solution in the air. I heard a click and wheeled around to see my professor coming out the door I was trying to get in.
“Aren’t you a little late, Aristide?” She asked as I flew past her. I didn’t answer but ran to the drying room, grabbed my painting and slid it into a protective case. I flew out the door, running awkwardly with my painting. Stewart Hall wasn’t far . . . unless you got lost, which is exactly what I did.
Up and down the street, all I could see were tall buildings and morning traffic. Horns honked, brakes squealed, and the smell of coffee mixed with exhaust assailed my senses. Pedestrians hurried along the sidewalks, hunched against the freezing wind. I’d never make it to Stewart Hall by 7:45 now. Disappointment swelled within me, and discouragement ridiculed me for even considering the prize. I turned back the way I’d come, hunched against the cold like everyone else.
“Aristide?” I heard my name and turned to see my professor getting out of her car. “Why aren’t you at the exhibit?” I shrugged my shoulders. “You’ve got two minutes!”
“I’ve decided not to enter.” I told her.
“That’s ridiculous. Get in here right now.”
I looked at her. “Here?”
“Here -The Hall.” She pointed to the building in front of which we stood. My jaw dropped open.
“Here?”
“Yes, here – The Stewart Hall Coffee Shop.”
I darted past her. Inside the coffee shop, artwork covered the walls, tables, and partitions. I found my name, and hung my painting in the empty space above it.
At an assembly the following evening, I sat in the audience amongst my new friends from all over the world, each of us waiting, hopefully, to hear our own name announced as the winner of the grand prize.
I didn’t hear my name that night, not even an “honorable mention.” My heart sank when the final name was called. I was going home. My time studying art in America was over. I fought back the tears that stung my eyes and forced myself to smile and congratulate Dimitri, the grand prize winner.
Three days later, as I lay on my matt inside my family’s mud hut, I realized that I’d been wrong. I didn’t come home a loser. I hadn’t won the scholarship, but I’d won something even better. Somewhere in the past sixteen weeks, I’d lost my fear of what others think. I’m proud of my artwork; and that’s a prize no one could’ve given me; neither can they take it away ever again.
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