“Trust me, you do!” I wink at her.
Emma leads us to the back of her studio classroom. Behind a partition we see a wall of sledgehammers, axes, mallets, and the like. It’s the angry ex-girlfriend’s armory on full display. In the corner are piles of broken art pieces: wood, clay, cement, even a giant plush teddy bear with an emo aesthetic, donning aPanic! At the Discot-shirt. Sarah looks over the wall and back to me, suspicious uncertainty all over her face.
“You can choose any tool you want. Only hit the scraps, don’t go rogue and trash one of my tables. Keep safety goggles on at all times, and please sign a waiver before you start.”
“What is the purpose of this?” Sarah asks, still uncertain.
“To let out your anger!” I say as I grab a mallet.
“The purpose,actually, is to make art,” Emma says, correcting me.
“With trash?” Sarah makes a face looking at the pile of scraps. Maybe this wasn’t my best idea.
“These were art”—she gestures to the pile—“and they can actually be art again. They were broken off during someone’s art process. Whether it’s rebuilding, restructuring, or just tweaking small details, it never looks the way you pictured it would in the beginning. The process changes and adapts with the artist. It’s a way to express, or calm, their emotions in a tangible way. It’s amazing what we can say with shapes and colors that we can’t say with words. It can be a healing process, and the pieces you see here may be leftover from someone else, but they can also be reused in another person’s process. What we leave behind may even help the next person.”
Emma is beaming as she imparts beautiful wisdom and emphasizes the power of art to Sarah. I feel so fortunate to witness Emma’s heart in many different ways, but getting to witness her passion for art, and how it has impacted her, is truly wonderful.
“I see.” Sarah is still staring at the wall, probably unsure about what she is getting into.
“Or you can just break some stuff,” Emma says with a shrug.
“Okay, cool!” Sarah perks up and grabs the goggles.
Teenagers.
I smile at Emma and hand her a mallet. She hesitates at first, unsure if she should partake in the releasing-of-anger-activity with astudent. Then after a moment, she smiles and takes the mallet. “Oh, what the heck!”
Turning on the bluetooth speaker and blaring Taylor Swift, we all take turns smashing different pieces of art—with safety goggles on, of course. Big swings with a hammer, followed with hands on our knees laughing, then gasping for air only to rear back and swing again. Once the tall, clay sculpture is pummeled into a pile of broken shards, a sudden sense of calm moves through my body—as if the pile of clay statues now lying on the floor was a tangible representation of my anger being dissipated by my own hands. It felt good and therapeutic to break something, and this time I didn’t feel shame about it.
We all slide down to the floor to catch our breath and whip our safety goggles off.
“I can officially say you guys are the coolest grown-ups I know!”
I smile at Emma, feeling very grateful for her and this job, and the memories we are making together, even if it is just for a short time.
Chapter eleven
Benny
“Whatdoyouwantfrom me? I’m doing everything I’m supposed to and she’s still hounding me. Why can’t I have some time to myself and hang with my team? We aren’t even doing anything wrong!”
Devon is in my office for the third time this week, and he’s fuming. And there really isn’t a reason for him to be in here. He’s right, he isn’t doing anything wrong, but Naomi has been rather persistent regarding his whereabouts lately and the best way to keep her off campus,everyhour of the day, is to start meeting with Devon regularly. He’s not happy about it, but this is my attempt at a compromise. And my attempt to prevent his mother from circling my school like a crazy mother goose.
“I know, but you’re her son, she’s just being a mom.”
“Yeah, an annoying one. She’s the worst.”
“Moms just worry, it’s a weird neurotic way of showing they love you,” Ellie says from the corner where she is currently sitting.
Ellie was supposed to be meeting with Devon one-on-one but he refused to meet with her, and of course, Naomi insisted. So we came to an agreement, we would have a group meeting. It was going as I expected, Ellie sitting and observing and . . . drawing, Devon resisting, and me, trying to keep the peace.
He was standing across from me, refusing to sit, for the entirety of our thirty-minute meeting—arms crossed, feet planted in place. I couldn’t help but wonder if this five-foot-eleven tank of a young man was attempting to fool me with his tough guy stance, but all I could do was smile inside, picturing the little six-year-old that used to sit on my shoulders to see the Fourth of July fireworks. I kept having to correct myself when I would accidentally refer to him as DJ in front of Ellie.
Devon is a fantastic kid, and the youngest of four. I feel very fortunate to be someone who has watched him grow into the young man he is. Naomi was best friends with Kate growing up, and after I lost my parents, her family took me in as their own—spending every family holiday and summer breaks together. We were all inseparable. Falling in love and getting pregnant at sixteen was not in the plan for Naomi, but she and Devon’s dad made it work. They have shown such resilience and perseverance raising their kids.
Even though he’s the youngest, Devon took on extra responsibilities to lighten his mother’s load—he excels in school and sports, and has multiple, full-ride, football scholarships awaiting his decision. But when his sister moved away last year, leaving him to be the last child at home, he started slacking off and it was enough to lose a few scholarship offers. As a result, this, in addition to his recent late night adventures with a few other football players, has put Naomi on high alert. Which putsmeon high alert. Naomi can teeter between worried and downright psychotic when it comes to her kids. And her hourly texts and phone calls to the school lately are an indicator the line between the two is close to being crossed.
“You don’t mean that. She just wants what’s best for you. We all do,” I say, crossing my arms to match his tough guy energy.
