She pulled in to the community center lot on East Cherry, parked and unloaded her easels and supplies, making several trips to haul everything into the room assigned her.
She was a little early so she got started setting the easels up and putting out pencils, brushes, palettes and tubes of paint for her class. She thought of the very first time she’d done this and smiled. Miss Agnes had volunteered her when she’d heard the DAR was looking for someone to teach an art class for one of their charitable endeavors. Poppy had been less than thrilled at the time. She was twenty-seven, scrambling to make a living on her own terms, and she’d had to stretch her schedule to fit it in.
Then she’d met the kids.
Now, she sure didn’t come from a family rolling in dough, and God knew there’d been times she’d had to do some pretty creative bookkeeping to make her various incomes stretch. But there was always enough to buy her art supplies—a fact she’d simply taken for granted.
Then she’d met the teens in her first class and realized these kids didn’t have that luxury. And watching them blossom during the short time she’d had them, a new passion had taken root in her breast.
Little by little her current teens trickled in, the cardboard tubes she’d supplied to protect their drawings and paintings tucked beneath their arms or sticking out of the tops of backpacks.
It was a small group, just twelve kids in all, selected by teachers at the three high schools that her eight boys and four girls attended. The teens had been chosen both for their aptitude in art and their lack of financial—and in some cases, family—resources. This was her third group of its kind and her kids were now far enough into the course that she’d mostly gotten them over the giving-her-attitude hump and was edging them into the fun stage. At least it was a kick for her, since this was where she got to watch the myriad possibilities of art start to spark excitement in them.
She moved quietly from student to student, standing behind them to study their paintings or drawings, praising them here and offering tips or answering questions there.
“Yo, bitch. Hand over the vermillion.”
“Whatchu call me, cabrón?”
Poppy whipped around. “Mr. Jackson. Ms. Suarez.”
Darnell Jackson, whom she knew darn well was crushin’ on the girl he’d insulted, winced, but then straightened to his full six and a half feet to give Poppy a look loaded with that attitude she’d just patted herself on the back for having put in the past.
“Did you hear what he called me, Ms. Calloway?” Emilia Suarez stood with one hand on her hip, her head cocked and her chin thrust up in a belligerent I’m-gonna-take-you-down angle at a boy who—even standing three feet away—towered head and shoulders above her.
“Yes, I did. And I’m guessing whatever it was you called him in return wasn’t a love ode to your BFF.” Still, Emilia’s slur had been a direct response to what Darnell started, and Poppy turned to the young man standing one easel over from the irate girl. Leveling her gaze on him, she kept her tone mild when she inquired, “What is my number-one rule of behavior in this class, Mr. Jackson?”
She could see his pride demanding that he hang on to his badass ‘tude, especially considering how the room had quieted and all the kids had turned to see what he would do. But Darnell had been the first of the twelve to give in to the seduction that was art; he was one of her most talented students and Poppy had made it clear at the beginning of the course that she had a zero tolerance policy for troublemaking. Moreover, the teen lived with a grandmother who’d drilled manners into his head regarding respecting one’s elders.
And much as it bit her butt to think of herself as part of that demographic, it was probably how this group of teenagers viewed her.
“To give each other respect,” he said grudgingly.
She looked at him in silence.
He dipped his head. “Sorry, Miz Calloway.”
“It’s not me you owe the apology to,” she said calmly.
Big shoulders curving in, he looked over at the girl next to him. “Sorry, Emilia.”
“You a sorry excuse for a man,” Emilia muttered, but color flushed her cheeks. The other girls were too busy whooping their enthusiasm over seeing one of the boys who outnumbered them being disciplined to notice.
Which was a good thing, Poppy thought, for if they had, they would have teased Emilia unmercifully about it, which would have just escalated matters. “Ladies,” she said with quiet repressiveness.
They immediately settled down, but two of them bumped hips and exchanged low fives.
Poppy bit back a grin. But, damn, she loved teenagers!
She hadn’t gotten as far as Darnell and Emilia in her circuit around the room and she crossed to them now. Standing back, she studied Darnell’s painting. “Oh,” she breathed, staring at the portrait of three women with their heads together. “This is wonderful.”
“I got the idea from this picture my grandma Barb has of her grandmother and two great-aunts,” Darnell said, forgetting both his pride and his embarrassment in his enthusiasm for the project.
She scrutinized it further, admiring the way the women all but leaped off the canvas. “Do you have a name for it yet?”
“After Church.”
She laughed. “Yes, I can visualize that—sprung from those hard pews and ready to dish on who was wearing what and who showed up hungover from the excesses of the night before. You captured a sense of gossip and imbued it with a definite feel of an older, bygone era. Yet the subject matter is as fresh today as it was in your great-great-grandmother’s time. It’s fabulous, Darnell. I love the bold use of color.”
“Grandma’s photo’s black-and-white, but she says her people’s always been lovin’ color.” He grinned. “And I don’t doubt it, if me and her’s anything to go by.”
He’d painted two of the women in mostly primary-colored clothing—one in brilliant blue with a blue-and-yellow head wrap, the other in yellow sporting a large brimmed hat with green feathers and a matching sash that tied beneath her chin. He indicated the third figure, which as yet was still a pencil sketch. “That’s what I wanted the vermillion for.” Then he drew himself up to his considerable height and cut his eyes to the girl next to him. “But I’m sorry ‘bout what I called you, Emilia. I was being a smart-ass and Grandma would scrub my mouth out with soap if she knew.”
“I’ll do that myself, you ever call me that again.” But Emilia handed him the tube of paint. “I’m sorry I disrespected you, too.”
His teeth flashed. “Did you? I don’t speak Spanish, so you coulda said anything and I wouldn’t know the difference. What’d you call me?”
Her lips curved up. “It’s prob’ly best you don’t know.” She gazed at his painting. “You’re really good, Darnell. I can’t do figures for sh—” shooting a glance at Poppy, she cut herself off “—um, nuthin’.”
“Yeah, but you do buildings real good. I wanted to put the church steeple in the background, but I drew it and erased it so many times trying to get the proportions right I’m lucky I didn’t put a hole in the canvas.”
“Maybe after class sometime, I can show you how to do that. But you gotta show me how to draw them whatchamacall’ems—life studies.”
“Yeah,”