Tethered

Four cardboard boxes containing old sketchbooks and a dozen canvas paintings.

That is all my father leaves for me in his will.

My three older sisters got lucky. Rose got his mustang, Penelope got his laptop and Lily got his records. They weren't thrilled but I reminded them they could flip them for a couple of bucks at least. They both looked at me with unified disgust. "We're not like you Violet."

And then Rose chimed in. "Yeah, besides it makes sense that you got his old art stuff. You were always his favorite."

I reminded her that if I was his favorite, then I would've gotten dad's car like she had.

"If there is one thing your father loved in this world, it was his fucking art," mom said then, taking a long drag of her cigarette. "Just be grateful he passed it to you."

Now she can actually say something, all Dad left her with was various paperwork and old family albums of his side of the tree-of which she mentions giving me some copies of any photos of Abuela. If there was one of us that got screwed, it was definitely her. Then again what can she expect of a man who was always disappearing.

My family's favorite misconception of me was that dad loved me the most. Perhaps because I was the baby or perhaps because of the specific timing of my birth. You see, Lily and I, the two youngest, are ten years apart. Mom and dad had been split up for nearly all her life before they got back together for the briefest respite. Blink and you would've missed it. The only proof of their reunited love was my birth.

But really, dad perhaps loved me the most because I gave him the least shit. And even into my early thirties, I would still take his calls and listen to him ramble for hours. The rest of the family stopped speaking to him when I was around eleven, which was a year after he disappeared for the up-teenth time.

What we talked about was mostly his art. His dreams for making it 'big', even into his fifties and sixties. He always believed even then, that he was just overlooked. That the world was obsessed with meaningless art nowadays, just abstract shapes and messy brushstrokes. Not his paintings, which captured the natural beauty of the world.

"Mija, so many people try to manufacture beauty on the page. But a true artist captures the beauty around them!'

Just one many one-sided conversations I had with him. But I suppose those phone calls paid off. Because in the end, I was the one who inherited his love:

His art.

But I'd rather have that damn mustang.

—

The storage unit is more rectangular than square. And with the boxes in the middle, it feels rather appropriately like a coffin inside a grave.

I move to shuffle through the paintings first, leaning neatly against the back wall. My fingers run through the top of the frames, seeing the dates (if they have them, my father wasn't exactly the most organized human being). I'm hoping to see something new but these are all the same ones painted before my birth. They are all nature scenes, birds being some of his favorite subjects he would paint in these landscapes. I won't share the details of them, just know they aren't remarkable. My father had technical talent but there is nothing interesting about the subject matter or the way they are painted. You'd be better off just going outside and looking at nature that way.

I hate to diss my father. Especially now that he's not here anymore. Though I'm not sure why he never painted any more after my birth. Or if he did, why he never kept them?

Turning to the pile of cardboard boxes, I go to open one and am immediately greeted by a stank smell of cigarette smoke. Though I don't mind it, I am amazed these pages held onto this drag for so long. I pull a journal out and flip through the pages, seeing various sketches either unfinished or abandon.

There are none of me or my sisters in here. I don't know why I thought there would be.

One by one I pull the sketchbooks out, sent them atop each other neatly in a pile and then fold up the box. Soon one side of the storage unit has a nice layered brick wall of journals and sketchbooks all neatly stacked by size. The canvas paintings are all lined up behind them, and there are various art supplies along the front of them. I fold up all the cardboard boxes and stack them again the opposite wall. Dusting my hands, I take a look at my father's haul.

What is this? Sixty plus years of art? is this a lot or not nearly as much? I tuck my chin into my hand as I scan the lot.

I think I can sell the carrier bag for a few bucks. And that easel too. The journals and sketchbooks are worthless unfortunately. The paintings? Maybe ten or twenty bucks here or there. And the art supplies I could sell at bulk for a few bucks as well.

This is what my sisters meant before that 'they're not like me'. Money. I'm good at making money. Not piles of it, or at least, not piles of it at once. I've spent most of my free time making extra cash selling other people's junk. You can make a good few extra dollars here and there. Save that up over a few years and you'd be surprised by how much you have. Combine that with a strict spending routine and you're set.

I prefer to live my life by these simple rules:

Don't eat out.

Don't buy what you can get for free.

Buy in bulk

And sell what you don't need.

The key is to not having a lot of things to tie you down.

My sisters have always been in awe-and somewhat jealousy annoyed- of my relationship with money and I'm sure my mother was relieved throughout her life when I never had to call her for help with an emergency or unpaid bill situation. My sisters say I need to get a life, but I look at they have and compare it to mine: Rose has two marriages, Penelope has five children to save up for college tuition, and Lily got herself one of those tuitions that she'll be lucky to pay off by the time she's a grand aunt. Whereas I'm living debt free. And while I don't have a fancy car-especially not a mustang-or a really nice house, I do have cheap versions of both, and I'm living quite comfortably. I'm looking forward to retirement when I'm forty and spending the rest of my life idly browsing museums and libraries.

But yes, selling his art, I figure this is what I'll do. I didn't put any money other than my time into this, so no matter how little the profit its still in the green for me.

I go to close the unit behind me and take one last look at the items. I'm tempted to go through the sketchbooks again, but what would I be looking for exactly? Some message sprouting the truth of life? Some sort of apology maybe? Or perhaps numbers to a hidden safe written in the lines of his shading?

I figure then that what amazes me is the existence of this storage unit. My father didn't like commitments, especially not ones you kept with money. He always had to be free. I suppose that's why he drew and painted so many birds. For him to make payments on a storage shed like this took an unusual amount of commit from someone so uncommitted.

My face scrunches at the only possible answer. That he kept this unit and passed it on to me so that his dream of becoming a famous artist would live on. That one day, an avid art collector would stumble upon this unit, and declare him for the genius he always wanted to be seen as. Then despite his death, his dream would live on. Or at the very least, have the chance to live on. Even at the end of his life and the choice he made, that this was the most important string to keep tethered.

The thought makes me slam the storage door harder than I meant.

—

"Don't get rid of his stuff!" Lily blasts into my ear over the phone.

"Why not? Are you going to take them?"

"Of course not! What on earth would I do with them?"

"Okay then."

"But still, that's like, all he has to show for his life? Isn't it said if you just get rid of them?"

"Don't worry, I'm going to sell what I can. It just the sketchbooks that I'm not sure what to do with. No one wants used drawings, especially if the artist isn't famous."

"Well, what about Yun?"

"Yun?"

Yun was my girlfriend of several years past. We met during a city carnival or festival of some sorts, I don't remember the details. A few co-workers had invited me and I begrudgingly decided to go. We were in some sort of artist street and I heard her before I saw her. She was standing over a table spraying cans of paint frantically. Surprisingly she wore no protective mask or goggles, but I was also too distracted with her fierce rainbow colored mohawk. Its end were flared like feathers and stood up in a way that made me think of a peacock.

I must've been buzzed because I decided to talk to her. I walked up while she was in the middle of her painting and said I liked her mohawk. She smiled at me and said 'thanks'. I said I had never seen one before in real life and that made her laugh.

"Let me paint something for you!"

"Oh no that's alright-"

"No no, on the house! What's your name?"

"Erhm, its Violet-"

She tossed aside what she was working on and began working on another. She switched between her tools so fast, and not once used an actual paintbrush (it was mostly paint cans, bowls, stencils and suprisingly, a razor). At the end she pass me a wet canvas of a galaxy bathed in violet starlight.

Business must've been slow for her then because shortly after she packed up and tagged along with my group. She was pleasant company and was good at the carnival games. She won a plush bunny rabbit. She gave it to me, and it was the first time a lady had ever given me something she'd won. Later that night, it was the first time a lady ever bought me a beer, which then lead into her being the first lady I ever let take me home.

The plush rabbit still sits on my bedside to this day.

Exploring Yun's studio apartment while she slept, I knew father wouldn't have approved. Not because of who she was, but what she was.

A fake artist he would call her. The work around her apartment was lined with canvas paintings of abstract art. There were various sculptures made of screws, old pipes, and other pieces of junk. There was a tarp hanging against one wall that looked like it had been shot over and over again with a paintball gun. My father hated this type of art. "So manufactured." he would say. 'So mechanical. So unlifelike."

I imagined my father being appalled at who his 'favorite' daughter was dating at the time. And the thought had made me belly laugh, which woke Yun up from her futon.

"What's so funny?" she asked with a sleep hazed smile. And I remember thinking, rather dangerously really, that that smile was perhaps the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life.

We didn't last a year. And whatever my father would think of her 'mechanical lifeless' artwork I would never know. They never met, though he would hear of her later.

Yun like my father, ended up being a directionless artist with dreams of grandiuer. All during the year of our dating together she bounced between desires of several different future professions. At one point she wanted to be a tattoo artist, other times she wanted to design street fashion ware. And most bizarrely, she had the inane interest in becoming a fire dancer.

I'm sure you can see now why it didn't work out.

I tried to lure her in to making real plans to pursue some of the most realistic of those options. Tattoo artist, I figured would be her best bet. But she always seemed resistant to sticking to that path and would always drop out right before getting an apprenticeship.

Our shopping decisions also never aligned. She had this frivolous habit of buying any notebook, journal or sketchbook that caught her eye. She even fell for the buy one get the other 50% off (They're all 50% off all the time). And worse she seemed to think it made it better when she also bought a couple for me.

I asked her once, why keep buying them when she still had so many unused?

"Because I don't know if I would ever see that sketchbook again. If I hadn't bought it then, it would just haunt me at the lost possibility. And besides, maybe I don't need it now, but what about two years from now?

"Then you buy a new one two years from now." was my blunt response. "Particularly one without a floral cover design, you would save so much."

To be honest, with her habit of hoarding unused sketchbooks, I could probably actually sell my father's used ones as 'un-used', and given her habit of never going through the ones she bought, she would probably be none the wiser.

The thought brings a smile to my face, however devilish. And I think in a way she would find it funny too. Which makes me smile even wider. She always had the most brilliant smile. And her eyes were like sparks that lit up a fire.

She has a new girlfriend, or I should say, fiance now. And she seems very happy. I should be happy for her too.

—-

This is the fifth time this week I've been back to the unit, and I've only had it for five days. My once neat stack of my father's artbooks are strewn about the place now. I've been going through them rather ravenously, searching for something I still don't know what.

There is a pattern I've noticed, in the way he's drawn. Earlier older journals seem so full of life. So much vibrant texture especially on the wings and feathers of the birds he drew. But as the years went on, his drawings became less detailed, less consistent. The later sketchbooks were lucky to even have a full outline.

Then there is one sketching that catches my attention so sharply it takes my breath away. Its of my Abuela sitting atop her balcony, he seems to be looking at her from below her three story apartment.

I remember that patio because I spent my toddler to five year old stages there. Dad had disappeared again, mom was working full-time and my sisters were in school, so Abuela was the one to take care of me. I sweari thought she was my real mother back then too, our bond was so close.

She didn't like having me near her when she smoked though, but my crying fits won over and she would allow me to sit out on the patio with her while she did. I would have a coloring book out there with me or my dolls, but my favorite thing to do was to lie belly first on the metal grates of the patio, running my finger along the metal bars and listen to her talk frantically in Spanish on the phone.

And I loved the smell of her cigarrette smoke.

I trace my fingers along the sketchbook, feeling the weight my father must've put into his pencil along the grooves of the parchment. Some of it fades into my finger.

I suppose I'm ready to admit now that I will miss my father's phone calls. That perhaps they were less one-sided than I might've presented them before. I enjoyed listening to his voice, the way he said 'Mija' that was so similar to Abuela's intonation just deeper. I wonder if I had ever told him I enjoyed our talks, and if I had done so, would he have changed his mind? Would it be enough to keep him tethered here?

I press the book into my chest and lean back with my eyes closed. I can still feel the marks of the sketching along my finger, and can feel the metal patio and hear Abuela's voice. Looking up I can see her smile down at me, her mouth creasing in a way that reminds me of Yun's, and then I look skyward and can see the faint outlines of birds soaring through the white canvas clouds above.

I close the storage unit behind me. I've extended the contract for at least another six months. I tell myself that it'll give me more time to find the right buyer.