Art Class by June Wolfman

Art Class by June Wolfman

Zoey slept fitfully in her six-by-seven room on the second floor, right off the landing, the hallway light glowing through her eyelids. Though she lived in the New Jersey suburbs, where life was meant to be calm, she felt her stomach hurt, even in her sleep.

Zoey’s mother woke her with a scream, “Get up!”

Zoey opened her eyes and looked at her mother, who was unsteady on her feet, and thought Oh no.

Zoey felt her mother’s hand smack across her left cheek; Zoey’s neck pulled to the right. “You left your sneakers in the yard!”

“I’m sorry.” Zoey’s left ear was ringing and her cheek was hot and stinging.

Zoey’s mother reached back, grabbed the damp sneakers off the desk, and threw them at Zoey, hitting her on the head and neck.

Then her mother stumbled away. Zoey felt she might throw up. The smell of whisky made Zoey want to vomit.

Zoey slipped back into bed. She was shivering, though it was not cold. She looked at her desk, where her journal sat. The quaint roll-up top looked beautiful to Zoey, even now. Her wood floor was also beautiful to her; it was old wood, as the house was old. On her side table, her handmade, antique doll sat helplessly. Zoey was not allowed to sleep with it as Zoey was thirteen and in high school.

Zoey burrowed under the cotton covers, held her knees close to her chest, and fell asleep.

The next morning, Zoey’s sister, Morgan, shook her to wake her for school.

“Come on, Zoey. You have French! You can’t miss it again! Remember!”

French, the word bounced in Zoey’s head like a hot coal. Oh God, French, was all she thought over and over, and her stomach began to hurt badly. She got up, threw on her clothes, and ate a quick breakfast of cereal with Morgan. They walked to school together, down tree-lined streets, a few miles walk.

Zoey sat in French class without having done her homework. She looked around at the fifteen other students in the class. Nearly everyone had homework out on their desk. The atmosphere in French class felt like a military inspection. Some students’ armpits were damp. Zoey hated the teacher for all the fear in the room. The slate blackboard taunted Zoey with French phrases she didn’t know. Why study French, she always thought. She couldn’t remember any French; what was the point?

Mrs. Willis, the teacher, called on Zoey to conjugate “to leave” in the past tense.

“I don’t know it,” mumbled Zoey.

“You are lazy, lazy, lazy!” yelled Mrs. Willis.

Zoey felt her eyes tear up. Mrs. Willis made some kid cry every class, Zoey knew, so maybe now Mrs. Willis would lay off the other weak students.

“Miss Norton, would you please conjugate for us?” Mrs. Willis asked the student Zoey thought of as the star student.

Zoey zoned out for the rest of French. Mrs. Willis had already drawn blood. One good thing is that she rarely came back for more.

Algebra was a different color of failure.

What does X mean? she thought. She looked at the teacher, whose face was permanently tan and whose hair was combed over his balding head. He scowled as he lectured. He frequently screamed, “Are you listening, guys?” to the football team in the two front rows of class, but his attention never lit on Zoey. As the football coach, he had priorities.

She felt like an intruder in a football practice.

The teacher passed out the quizzes. “F” glowed up from Zoey’s quiz paper… the fourth “F” in a row.

Zoey had twenty minutes free after Algebra. The period bell rang, and she half skipped and half walked to art class.

Zoey entered the art room and scanned the triple-wide classroom for the teacher, Mrs. Lavenbrook. She spied the teacher struggling to put some paint on a top shelf. Zoey guessed the teacher was well under five feet high, despite the high clogs she always wore. Zoey smiled at Mrs. Lavenbrook’s usual get-up: her large blue neck-to-ankles apron, covered in paint and dried clay. The teacher’s full effect made Zoey smile, and Zoey lifted the paint to the shelf for her.

Zoey looked for her friend, Keith, her next-door neighbor. She was sorry she had heard his father yell at him and knew he had heard Zoey’s mother scream at her. Zoey enjoyed their exchanges of knowing glances at one another across the fence at home when their parents were there. She spotted Keith. It wasn’t hard, as he stood six feet six inches. She sat next to him at the tall craft table with tall stools.

“How goes it, Zoey?” asked Keith.

“Good. How’s by you?”

“I’m sketching Michael Jordon,” he said, holding a picture of the basketball player.

Zoey shot Keith a smile. “I’m headed for the pottery area.”

“You gonna make your pot?”

“Yeah.”

The teacher allowed the students to choose their projects, no matter what they were.

Zoey saw some pre-kneaded clay near the wheel and scooped some into her hand. She positioned herself in front of the wheel and slammed the glob of clay at the wheel’s center. She turned on the motor.

She perched on the machine, placed her elbows on her knees for stability, then ran her cupped hands around the circling clay and centered the blob. The clay was soft, slightly buttery even, and its earthy smell and reddish color delighted Zoey. The clay yielded to Zoey’s hand pressure. The blob became round, then with effort, became a cone. After drilling down the center with her thumbs, she cupped her hands. That was all she knew how to do. It was a simple bowl.

Zoey turned off the motor. She cut the bowl from the wheel with wire and placed it on a drying slab. Seventeen matching bowls sat on the top shelf where the pottery projects were displayed.

No one ever said anything about Zoey trying to do something more complex. Mrs. Lavenbrook passed Zoey and said, “Very Zen, Zoey! You read Zen and the Art of Archery, yes?” and smiled at her with a warm heart. Zoey couldn’t remember to put her shoes away or discover X, but she could make this bowl, and she was, as far as everyone was concerned, ‘very Zen.’ And she had read Zen and the Art of Archery. She felt the flow of the activity…being in the moment alone. No troubles.

For fun, Keith lifted Mrs. Lavenbrook up and set her on her feet on the high craft table. Mrs. Lavenbrook tried to look angry, but her smile broke through too often for Zoey to take that seriously.

“Let me down!” She stamped her foot.

“I will. I will,” said Keith, and he swung her down to the floor on her feet.

She pretended to huff off, but the class was roaring with laughter, and pretty soon, so was she.

The school day was over, and Zoey and her sister, Morgan, walked home. Zoey braced herself for the return walk, uphill on the way home. Morgan had on makeup that she had not had on this morning. She also smelled like booze. Zoey thought her saddest thought: Morgan is not going to make it out of our house in one piece.

They trudged up the long hill. Zoey’s thighs burned.

“I’m moving out just as soon as I graduate,” said Morgan.

“Me, too,” said Zoey.

That night, Zoey was woken at least five times when her parents were brawling. She heard slaps, and she ran and yelled, “Stop it! Stop it!” But they didn’t.

On zero sleep, Zoey couldn’t face French or Algebra. She hid in the Student Center and began sketching. She took a picture of Ruth Bader Ginsburg that she had torn from Time Magazine at home and tried to sketch her in her spiral notebook. Her effort was rudimentary, but she got the glasses and the eyes right. She decided just to do the eyes and glasses and erased the rest.

It was time for art. Zoey brought her sketch to the craft table.

“Hey, Zoey! That’s really cool! Who is it?”

“Ruth Bader Ginsburg. . . you know, the new Supreme Court Judge?”

“You could do collage around that drawing…you know…pictures of her.

“Wow, that would solve the problem. Her eyes are all I can draw.”

Keith laughed. “Yeah, and it would seem on purpose.”

Mrs. Lavenbrook overheard the conversation and carted a stack of recent magazines to Zoey’s station. She brought a large piece of linen paper, some scissors, and glue. She also gave Zoey a board to work on.

Zoey cut out her drawing of Justice Ginsburg’s eyes and glasses and pasted it at the center of the linen paper, smoothing out the glue.

For the next three weeks, Zoey carefully collected text and photos from magazines, playing with the arrangement on the linen paper. Today was the day to paste it all down. Keith watched her. He had finished Michael Jordan and was really into Zoey’s project. Three or four other students gathered around to watch. Mrs. Lavenbrook stood nearby, smiling.

When Zoey finished, Mrs. Lavenbrook brought out her camera and took pictures of Zoey’s work.

A week later, the piece was featured in the school paper with Zoey’s reluctant permission.

Next to the article on Zoey’s piece, another bold article read, “Show up for the School Board Meeting Thursday! Cuts to Art and Music to be Discussed to Close Budget Deficits.”

With a surprise, Zoey knew she would show up.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright June Wolfman 2025