Kristin Hersh - Rat Girl

The paper is enormous and difficult to manage. I try spreading it out on the desk, but it spills over the side, so I put it down on the carpeted floor. Then the pen I’m using tears a hole in it. Goddamn it . I grab a small book off a nearby shelf, place it underneath the paper and, stretching my arms out past my enormous stomach, draw a tiny blowfish in the exact center of the paper.

While I’m coloring it blue, the instructor calls for everyone’s attention and asks that we begin discussing our imaginary animals with the other people in our group. Imaginary? Quickly, I draw a horn on my blowfish’s forehead, then sit down at a desk, leaving my drawing on the floor.

A painfully nerdy guy sitting across from me stands up, offering to go first. “I drew myself as the Golden Eagle of Fantasy,” he says nervously, holding up an incredible picture of a shining eagle on top of a mountain, surrounded by vivid blue sky. It looks like a frame from a government-issue comic book. How did he have time to do that? He must have brought it from home. Every inch of the magnificent eagle is colored in varying shades of gold, with silver cross-hatching. It glares at us from the paper, wings outstretched.

“That’s you ?” I ask, without thinking.

“Why ‘fantasy’?” asks a middle-aged woman pointedly. Do you have to ask?

The nerdy guy clears his throat. “I feel at home in the realm of fantasy and I’d like to bring a more dreamlike quality to my everyday life.” He has memorized this short speech.

The woman smiles knowingly. “I feel like you have a lot to offer this world, but you keep it locked away inside you.” She has stiff, puffy, jet-black hair and dark red lipstick and she wears many, many silver bracelets. Her black pantsuit makes a crinkling sound every time she moves. Like when she says “locked away inside you” and folds herself up as if she’s locking away inside her all that she has to offer this world.

Golden Eagle nods noncommittally and sits down. Then the woman reveals her picture. It looks like a pony with butterfly wings. Her paper is completely filled with color, like Golden Eagle’s, but she can’t draw as well as he can. The butterfly pony is crooked and distorted. It could be a butterfly… camel? Whatever it is, it stands in a meadow, eating a square-ish apple, its horizon and ears masked by an enormous rainbow.

She stands. “I am Metamorphosis,” she says. “Ever changing, I am in flux, yet constant like a river.”

Huh. We all look again at the pony. It doesn’t look constant like a river. It looks lumpy.

“Where’d it get the apple?” asks a heavyset man in a Budweiser T-shirt. “I don’t see an apple tree.”

Metamorphosis turns her drawing to face her and looks at it. “There’s an orchard nearby,” she answers quickly.

“Oh.” He seems unconvinced.

The blond woman I’d followed over here points at the pony’s butterfly wings. “When you fly,” she asks, “where do you go?” Oh for Christ sake.

Metamorphosis smiles. “I’m a healer. I break through the illusionary walls of space/time to bring clients into balance on a quantum level.” God, Betty, what you’re missing.

The ponytails lady smiles back. “I, too, am a quantum field dweller,” she says, standing and holding up her picture. It looks like puke—a big pile of puke. Her picture fills the paper, too, but with what? “I am Amoeba,” she says proudly.

A quantum-field-dwelling pony and a quantum-field-dwelling amoeba. Do they think the quantum field is an apartment complex? Metamorphosis presses her face up against Amoeba’s drawing, squinting. Slowly, she sits back down in her chair, the wind knocked out of her quantum sails.

“That’s nice ,” offers Golden Eagle. Amoeba pushes her glasses up her nose and looks at the group expectantly for questions and comments, but we’re all busy grimacing at her puke picture. Eventually, she sits back down.

Then the Budweiser guy stands up, placing his picture in the center of the desks. He has drawn Batman. No one says anything. “I’m Batman,” he says.

Golden Eagle looks terrified. Metamorphosis stares at the guy’s drawing, then at his face. “What did you say your name was?”

“Batman.”

“No, your real name.”

“Oh. Bob.”

“Bob, I believe the assignment was to identify our personalities with a mythical creature—”

“Batman’s not real,” he says defensively. “He’s mythical.”

“—of our own invention,” finishes Metamorphosis, inventor of the butterfly pony.

Amoeba cuts in, looking sorrowful, her glasses glinting, ponytails swishing. “So it can’t be human.”

Bob thinks for a second. “Oh yeah. Batman’s human. He just wears a bat suit , huh?”

“Yes,” says Amoeba sadly.

“I see what you’re saying,” says Bob, folding up his drawing.

Metamorphosis stops him with a bangled, manicured hand. “No, Bob,” she says. “Tell us why you’re Batman. If it’s important to you, then it’s important to us.” Amoeba nods vigorously, not to be outdone.

“Well,” says Bob. “I’m a rebel.” He looks at us all. “Of society ,” he articulates. He looks around again, with growing desperation, then points at his drawing impatiently. “And so’s Batman!” Golden Eagle and I nod with tight, gruesome smiles on our faces.

“Stay focused on the assignment, Bob. Tell us where you live,” says Metamorphosis gently. “What are your immediate goals?”

“In the Bat Cave, see?” Bob, exasperated, points at a penciled semicircle over Batman’s head. His picture looks like it was drawn by a six-year-old. “I guess my immediate goals,” he adds miserably, “would be to… fight crimes.”

Golden Eagle says, “That’s important.” This can’t possibly be educational — I can’t wait to get back to the studio. Boy, Betty, when you’re right, you’re right.

“I may have misunderstood the assignment,” Bob mutters, looking at the clock. Four more hours to go, Bob.

Metamorphosis won’t let him off the hook, though. “Tell me,” she presses. “How did you become interested in art therapy?”

Bob looks like he’s under attack. He starts talking fast. “I’m-a-maintenance-professional-employed-by-the-University,” he says. “Completing-my-degree-nights-and-weekends.”

“I see,” says Metamorphosis, looking smug. “And what is your degree in?”

Bob’s crumpling. Golden Eagle looks like he’s gonna die. “I’m… undecided,” says Bob quietly.

Golden Eagle comes to his aid. “Sometimes a double major is the only option for those of us with varied interests,” he says hopefully.

Bob looks over at him, grateful. “Yeah, pro’bly.” Art therapy creates strange bedfellows.

There is a tense silence; then they all look at me. Shit. I’d hoped we’d run out of time before we did me. Batman was making it look possible. I look up at the clock in spite of myself. Four more hours to go, Kris . Then I pick my drawing up off the floor and spread it out on the desks. It’s difficult to see the tiny blowfish in such a huge expanse of white. Golden Eagle, Metamorphosis, Amoeba and Bob all stare at my dumb little fish. Help, I need help.

“Who are you?” Amoeba asks me.

“I guess I’m a… blowfish,” I say, looking down at the pathetic blue dot. “With a horn.”

Metamorphosis cocks her head to the side, trying to understand. “Where do you live?” she asks. “What are your immediate goals?”

I think for a second. “I live underwater.” I can’t think of any pressing mission I might take on in the form of a blowfish with a horn on its head.