At the school, faculty members got a five-year review of their teaching, scholarship, and community service, regardless of whether they had tenure. I’d decided to retire before my next review but told no one. That knowledge let me spring a surprise on folks in those corseted corridors.
For less than three dollars, I bought a box of children’s face paints. The six colors— red, yellow, blue, green, black, and white—proved enough for my purposes. I pulled the box out of a desk drawer every morning and painted my face before teaching. The school had rules to discourage novelty, but in it had failed to regulate face-painting.
I went to town. A bolt of lightning slashed down my cheek one day. A heart beamed from one cheek the next day. I painted a night sky, complete with stars and a quarter moon, on my forehead another time. A red question mark in the middle of my forehead garnered the most stares.
Students’ reactions held some surprises for me. I learned that a painted face trumped a brown skin when it came to their perceptions. The flowers and goldfish took them by surprise, threw off their expectations. The bees and spiders on my face swept away, or at least suspended, preconceptions. My students could take me in with less racial garbage. We had a straighter shot at connection.
The images also let me add sauce to the vocabulary I served up in Spanish 101. Few of my students forgot the meaning of bombilla after seeing the yellow lightbulb outlined in black on my forehead.
My two-dollar box of paints also helped me address the broader issues of college life. It provided a platform on which to stand against the frequent life-sapping grayness of academia. College teaching and learning rank as serious business, but they need not bury one alive.
I admit that I relished hard looks from some administrators because I knew my retirement plans put me beyond their reach. Faculty meetings seemed less poisonous when I joined them with a giant sunflower painted on my left cheek.
Yes, I savored the disapproval of those two years, but also the fun. One day, I painted my nose black and drew whiskers and a ruff on my face. A student asked, “Que pasa con la cara?”
“It’s International Cat Day,” I replied, “and I’m celebrating.” Only later did I learn that there is indeed such a holiday.
The face painting drew me closer to my students, who anticipated fun and, one told me later, bet on what I’d paint next. After years shrouded in grayness, my paint box also gave me a foretaste of rainbows that could come my way with retirement.
The story of two women in 1973 NYC: one, age twenty-three, is despairing and without direction having barely survived the turbulent household of her parents, along with her own adolescent foray into sixties’ hippiedom.
The other, a forty-something Queens, NY wife, mother and survivor of Auschwitz. Thirty years later she battles her own serious and potentially damaging midlife crisis.
Like many folks during the so-called “Me Decade,” the two women indulge in hedonistic and self-destructive activities and then must deal with the consequences. They turn for support to their evolving friendship, and to a cast of characters that includes an idealistic young immigrant who works for a telephone prayer service run by another Holocaust survivor and self-fashioned spiritual guru.
The Rogen Treatment Program - a unique process wherein survivors “experience” the Holocaust again, and through a kind of aversion therapy conquer their individual demons - becomes a major character in the story.
Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple and your independent bookstore.
For more information: www.denisebeck-clark.com
Constance Garcia-Barrio, a native Philadelphian, writes a monthly column called “City Healing” for Grid, a Philly publication devoted to sustainability and social justice. She won a magazine journalism award from the National Association of Black Journalists for a feature on African Americans in circus history. Her current novel, Blood Grip, based on Philly’s Black history, is jam-packed with adventure, has a dash of romance, and a half-drunk Greek chorus.
Indu Varma is a New Brunswick based multi-media artist. Born and brought up in India, she immigrated to Canada in 1969. After a teaching career of 37 years, she pursued her interest in art by enrolling in the visual arts program and graduated with a degree from Université de Moncton in 2016. Based in Sackville, New Brunswick, she paints, creates ceramic sculptures, and does printmaking at Salt Marsh Studio. Her Indian heritage and Indian culture are very much a part of her Indo-Canadian identity. Her Indian roots are reflected in practically every aspect of her life, and her art.