I knew even before I gave birth to him that he was different. Maybe it was because even up till the delivery day, my tummy still looked like a very nearly athletic woman, or maybe it’s because he actively responded to me when I talked to him. Not actual words. Just sounds. Sounds of assent and dissent when needed. He was already my best friend before he came into the world. Which was just about right because he was going to come into a fatherless world. When I presented a healthy baby boy to the doctors on arriving the hospital, as I’d already delivered him in the cab I came in, they only looked at me astonished, cleaned me up and sent me home.
My future. My hope. My dream child.
And yeah, if you haven’t guessed it already, I named him Dream.
Is it any wonder that I had to home school him? The teachers looked at him weird when I sent him into preschool at the age of two, and he went on to say, with unrestrained words, just how he felt about everyone there. I never brought him back. He was going to be something else. And not just cause he started walking at five months old. I never told anybody because I wanted to delay his ostracism from society for as long as I could.
By the age of five, Dream could play the piano, could comfortably take on a first degree holder in a debate, had a voice akin to a nightingale, was a black belt holder at karate and could crochet practically anything in sight. There was nothing he couldn’t do.
Except paint.
If there was one thing I’d always wanted to be. Way before I realized that dreams weren’t for me and I was better off not dreaming at all, it was painting. As Dream kept unravelling new skills, I kept expecting him to pick up a brush and ask me to get colours for him. But he never did. I even took matters into my hands by buying everything he needed to paint, but Dream never spared any of the items a single look. I was worried. Why wouldn’t he paint?
He was twelve when I finally confronted him. “There’s nothing you don’t do, and you don’t do excellently well, Dream. You’re my little prodigy. My star child. My dream. Why don’t you paint?”
“I just don’t want to, Mom,” he said without looking up from the LEGO castle he was building.
“Have you even tried?”
He shook his head still not looking up.
“Are you sure?”
He was quiet then. He way lying. Dream had tried painting. “Baby, you’ve tried painting, haven’t you? Where you bad at it? Is that why you don’t want to try it again?”
“No, Mom. I just don’t want to.”
Something wasn’t right. I ran to my bedroom and came back with the paint brushes, palette, canvas and every other thing needed for painting.
“I need you to paint, Dream. Just paint. Whatever it is, it couldn’t be that bad.”
“Mom, I really don’t want to do this.” Maybe if I weren’t so blinded by my need to project my own unfulfilled dreams on my son, I would have seen the plea in his eyes.
“Just paint, Dream.” I was resolute as I handed the brushes to him. “Paint.”
Dream gave me one last longing look, then took the canvas. He started slowly. Each dip of the brush into the paint deliberate and he was even slower as the brush went across the canvas. But I soon began to see picture materialize even as his strokes turned furious. Dark. Gory. Death personified. His paintings were grievously sinister, and it was just as he dropped the brush down and the house began to take on the form of his painting, that I realized. Dream was no painter of dreams as I’d hoped. He was a painter of nightmares.
Jhymi🖤
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Wonderfully written!