Fallas

Today was the second Tuesday I went to the artist-lady's workshop. From school it's a 20-minute bike ride down Aragon into the Rio. It's four or so by this time, the city slowly coming back to life from its collective siesta, the Rio beginning to fill up with people running, walking their dogs, holding hands, roller skating, strolling, playing futbol.

Victor, Marisa's son, is sleeping when I get there. He's parked in his stroller in front of some dubbed Bones reruns playing on the TV. The arboles we paper-mached last time are gone; in their place are more of the little child-people in various animal costumes. Each one comes up to my knee or so, and though Marisa grabs the cat one by the ears and the pumpkin one by the stem, I cradle each one like it's made of glass. Yes, we're readying them for their festival funeral pyre, but to die a premature death in the hand of a clumsy American seems like it would be the worst kind of injustice. We seal them up with a paste that looks like watery glue and their new under-skin glistens. Paint me! they say. Paint me in absurdly bright colors, and we do.

Marisa wears a man's green jumpsuit over her regular clothes as she works. Today she also has a scarf that looks like the tails of a hundred miniature grey foxes spilling out over the collar; they wag slightly as she leans over the table, turning and adjusting the newspapered arms of the figurine she's building. Watching her work is...deceptive. She's at once so industrious and so distracted that it's easy to forget she's a really, really talented artist. One moment she's so absorbed in the papery creases along the figure's sides she can't be bothered to answer questions with more than a "sí," and the next she's off talking on the phone, chasing Victor around the studio for the next half hour trying to get him to stop playing with the dinosaur and eat his merienda. She comes off as so pragmatic it's hard to imagine these pink moons and fox-children coming from a place in her brain. But they do.

The studio, from the outside, might be the textbook definition of nondescript. The entrance is a dirty glass door, the street seemingly without a name (though I am a poor looker and may just have not seen the sign). The only way I know I'm in the right place is if I pass the graffiti of the woman in the red and white polka-dot dress. Yet a number of people pop in and out of the studio while I'm there, some family, some friends, some who appear to be total strangers but all, I am fairly sure, people from the barrio. An older man brings Victor some croissants in a bag, one lady makes herself at home on a stool and chats with Marisa, while still another woman comes to talk (I think) numbers with Paco, Marisa's husband. I submerge myself in the steady flow of Spanish and afternoon light and paint a cat-kid grey.

My fingers are still covered in paint, and I don't bother to wash it all off when I get home. I cannot wait for next week.