The Blackberry Bush by David Housholder Page A

breakfast tomorrow as smooth as a panther, without making a sound. Every motion can be steezy. I can sneak up on anyone, even on wild animals that live on the other side of the wall. Coyotes live back there, and someday I’m going be able to stalk them without their knowing it. I’m working on it.
    While I’ve been thinking and telling you this, I’ve drawn all kinds of connections between the points of the octagon. It looks like an umbrella. Or a compass. Or the steering wheel of a ship. The baptismal font at the Catholic church here in town has eight sides.
    I look up from my drafting board at the most remarkable thing in my room. A big print of my favorite painting hangs in my room—Vermeer’s Vrouw met Weegschaal. * Oma Adri gave it to me for Christmas last year.
    The woman in the pic is so totally steezy and balanced. When I’m about to go skate my brains out, I look at the picture and listen to funk legends Earth, Wind, and Fire (I “borrowed” the CD from Mom) as loud as my speakers will go, until I feel the balance the woman in the painting is holding in her hands. She’s standing alone, just like Oma Adri, who never married and refused to tell her parents how she got pregnant with my mom.
    When we first put the framed Vermeer painting up on my wall, Oma Adri and I turned all the lights off and shined my desk lamp onto the reproduction and talked about it for almost an hour. She tells me that Vermeer, also from Delft, Holland, may be related to her father Ruud’s family.
    The more you look at this painting, the more you see. Do you see the tension in her left hand? I understand that. Maintaining balance.
    The old picture behind her on the wall feels like the vibe I get when I’m sitting in the empty Catholic church here in town, drawing.
    The light coming in the window is the coolest part of the painting. The woman’s face is so beautiful and balanced—not like the pale girl in my dreams, who is always agitated. I believe the blue robe in the painting belongs to Jesus somehow, and I can’t stop thinking about the three gold coins.
    The woman has turned her back on the past stories (the picture behind her) and is focusing perfectly on the present. She and I totally get the “in the moment” thing.
    And she’s pregnant. I’ve never seen my mom pregnant.
    Oma Adri says that the light coming into the window is like God’s grace. When you enjoy it, it doesn’t mean that someone else gets less of it. God is lavish.
    It’s the best painting there ever was.
    Something inside me says I could walk across water if I could balance perfectly. I sometimes practice trying it in my dreams. The woman in the painting has nothing in the balancing scales. She is just “balancing balance.” I think that might be the key to everything. If you could balance balance, you could walk on water.
    The pale skinny girl has been showing up in my dreams again. Last night she was wobbling across a balance beam in our high school gym. I quietly walked up behind her on the hardwood floor and grabbed her right wrist to steady her. She wasn’t startled. She breathed in and found balance. She’s like my dad. She doesn’t have balance on the inside, so it’s hard for her body to balance on the outside. Some people are falling over inside, 24/7.
    I grab my ThornHeart ink stamp and push it down hard into the squishy red ink pad and “sign” my octagon. Too sleepy to draw anymore…
    I awake…I think…to a nightmare.
    Are Mom and Dad okay?
    The ground is shaking back and forth. Glass is breaking.
    Everyone is losing balance.
    Are Mom and Dad okay?
    I’m not just misplacing balance. I’m losing it. My childhood is slipping out of my grip. I am being pulled out of my room into the dark night sky, high above Zarzamora.
    There’s a sudden scene change in the dream.
    I get transposed in the nightmare. I find myself out surfing in the Santa Barbara lineup at night. A rogue wave the size of a sideways semitruck starts to jack up. I