Page 50 - WTP Vol.X #8

43
The Sitting
Rue des Tournelles, Paris 1836 Rosa Bonheur (b. 1822)
Pere called her Nanette,
—he had endearments for
every portrait sitter:
the friend of Balzac’s,
the Polish Princess,
the journalist. Nanette
pale-haired, sallow skinned, bruises under her eyes; Mlle. Micas,
two years younger and
many centimeters taller than I.
She arrived accompanied by her mother or father who called me
ma petit fleur of the forest—
probably because I
was caked in sculpting clay.
Pere sold his portraits
for next to nothing,
every time he got a bit
of money he threw
the coins over his shoulder into the atelier’s corners
so as not to spend it all at once. Our chambers rarely swept,
we lived in a stormy landscape
of soot and grease and lampblack.
Come evening I banked
the fire against the stove’s grate
until it glowed, carried water
up flights of stairs; but
wasn’t so virtuous about other chores. Hems hanging, our kerchiefs—
when we had them—ragged.
I was incompetent at patching linen and darning stockings.
I had watched my beautiful
failing mother stitch
garter after garter to earn
money to feed us only days
before she died; the simple thought
of mending sickened me.
Natalie’s portrait finished,
her father commissioned
one of her mother.
“Nanette,” always tagging along, watched me toil
binding the edge of a fraying quilt, how slow I was. How
JAnA hArris