Written by: Yureka Adhikari - 29049, Grade VI
Posted on: 20 October, 2022
The night would approach each day yet Pearl wouldn’t take her canvas nor her pencil, paint and brush away and into her art bag. No, she’d stay until it got so dark she could no longer paint. Each day, a new river or lake, a new hill and a sunset. Each day, a new painting. No matter how long a painting took she’d finish it. She’d go home to a cute little cottage. A beautiful little cottage at that. Inside all alone she’d put the painting up on her walls. She did this ever since she got the cottage at 20 years old. Now, 3 years later she’s filled a whole wall. A total of 1096 paintings. Gradually getting smaller. How did she make ends meet when she spent so much time on these paintings? Well, she did this as a hobby. Mostly after finishing her work.
One day after seeing my friend do this everyday I asked “Pearl, why do you do this each day?” Pearl looked up at the paintings she had made and took a sip of her tea that she had made for me as well. A lonely tear fell from her eye with a billion others wanting to rush through. As she went to the kitchen to wash her face I wiped the tears and asked another question “Is it because of her?” Pearl was always told her eyes shined like a pearl when the sun rays hit it and that she had very pretty long eyelashes, each time she heard those words it felt like someone stabbed her. You see, she knows why her name was given to her and more importantly, who gave her that name. She also knows why her lashes are so long and beautiful. She knows it was all her dear sister. Once, she controlled herself after I got her a couple of tissues and a glass of water she took out a book. Again a rush of tears tried to escape her eyes though she managed to hold them in and continued “She always wanted to paint the sunset, she wanted to make a painting of it’.
However, once we lost mom and dad it became nothing more than a dream. All her hopes and dreams came tumbling down. She was legally an adult and so she had to take care of me. We were both grieving. She used to say to me during those days that I was the only bright thing left in her life.” Pearl took a pause to flip through her sister’s art diary. Pearl had lost her parents when she was 15 due to a fire. She still has vivid memories of it all even after almost a decade. Pearl then took a breath remembering all her hate for those memories and continued from there, “I wish she knew it was the same for me. I wish she knew how much I loved her” again she looked away from the diary to stop the tears. “But I hated the world then, she never got to know her importance for me.” I told her it was ok if she wanted to stop here but she didn’t. “No, I need to tell someone! I NEED to cry. She deserves it,” she continued her story teary-eyed, “She did ONE MISTAKE and I shall never repeat it. She fell in love. I still hate him so much, I hate her boyfriend. Oh, he was a wreck. A wreck who had trapped my sister like a spider traps its prey. Oh, he made her miserable life worse. How dare he promise her a PERFECT LIFE? How dare he show her dreams he knew he could never complete? How dare he know he had already fallen out of love but continued? I hate him with every inch of my cold, ruthless and unforgiving heart.” She had tears but an angry expression. I felt so bad for both Phoebe and of course Pearl. She continued,“When Phoebe found out he had been cheating on her. The pain of losing everyone but me hit her hard. So she did it-” Pearl broke down. She was shivering and tears were pouring out of her eyes as if her life depended on them. She was frozen, speechless.
