Theresa Lewis

Writing is one of my greatest passions in life; another one is art. I love painting and drawing. I find art to be as fulfilling as writing, but in a different way and for different reasons. Now and then, I get an image in my mind that plagues me until I draw it, or paint it.

That’s the way it was when I was seventeen. I did a lot of painting when I was in my teens and early twenties and have sold them all. There was a period when I kept getting images in my mind of a dark skinned man and woman. The man I kept seeing looked about mid-thirties and the woman looked about my age. I would see them in my dreams at night and their images would pop into my head at odd times during the day. It didn’t really bother me until it went on for almost three months. One day, I decided to sketch the images with pastel chalks on a red velvet background.

I worked on the sketches for days. I framed the completed sketches behind glass. When I was finished, I showed the sketches to my parents first, then to my older sister. All of them were impressed. My sister asked me who the people were. I answered that I didn’t know because I hadn’t met them… yet. I realize that it was kind of a strange answer, but I had a strong feeling that one day, I would eventually meet them. My sister then asked me what nationality they were, but I didn’t know. Maybe Spanish, I thought, but I wasn’t sure. I had no doubt that time would eventually tell.

Even though I had sold, or given away all of my other artwork, I held onto those two sketches. I kept them in my closet. Many years passed and life unfolded as it should. I had met a young man around the time that I had done the sketches and we married when we were both twenty-two.

After seventeen years together in a most unpleasant relationship, we divorced and moved on. Everywhere I moved to, I toted my sketches, never knowing if I would ever meet these two mysterious images that had haunted me for months until finally I had sketched them.

One day, a girlfriend had invited me to a party. I was just newly separated from my husband and I wasn’t in the mood to go partying. She begged and pleaded until I finally gave in. When we arrived at the party, there must have been close to fifty people there. The only person I knew was my girlfriend. Having been out of the dating scene for over seventeen years, I felt awkward and very shy.

All of a sudden, I spotted a group of dark skinned men engrossed in loud, animated conversation. A couple of them looked like they might be Italian and a few looked like they were from the Middle East. One of them stood out from all the others because he appeared to be quiet and looked as uncomfortable as I felt.

I asked my girlfriend to introduce me to him, but she said she didn’t know him and had never seen him at any of the other parties. She told me to go up and introduce myself to him. Well, that was never going to happen. He was a total stranger and I didn’t have the nerve to be so forward. I made my way towards the bar and got myself a drink. I hoped that the drink would relax me a little. I stood near the bar and watched the throng of people in the dance hall. Some were dancing while others were gathered in small groups.

In the dim lighting of the room, my eyes kept searching for that one man in particular. I knew that I would meet him at some point, but I didn’t know how, or when. I put my drink down on top of one of the giant speakers so I could light a cigarette. The man I had wanted to meet, was about to dance with a pretty blond. He put his drink down on the same speaker next to my glass while he danced. I watched him as he danced his heart out. He took no notice of me at all.

When the music ended, the blond girl walked away from him and he came over to the speaker to retrieve his drink. He mistakenly grabbed my glass and took a swig before I could stop him. I took advantage of his flub and introduced myself. When he spoke to me, it was as though there was no one else in the room. Time seemed to stand still. He said his name was Dee and that he was from Singapore. When I said that he didn’t look Chinese, he then said he was from Malaysia. His gentle black eyes drew me in. His accent and the sound of his voice soothed my troubled soul. The longer we talked, the more I didn’t want him to stop talking.

After that party, we dated frequently and exclusively. The more I got to know him, the more I wanted to know about him. Within a few months, we ended up living together. One day, he told me he had a daughter and he showed me her picture. She was only six at the time the picture was taken. The day I saw the tiny photo, she would have been thirteen. I felt like I already knew her and had seen her before. As I studied the photo, my heart nearly stopped when I suddenly remembered the sketches I had done so many years ago.

I went into my closet and pulled out the bag that contained the two pastel sketches. I showed them to Dee. He was truly shocked. I knew then that Dee and his daughter were the two images that had plagued me when I was a teenager. Both sketches were so like them that it was as though they had sat and posed for them. The irony of it was that at the time that I had done those sketches, his daughter wasn’t even born.

The End