She pulled out her eyebrow pencil. It was a Maybelline. She preferred Maybelline to any other brand.
If I had my choice, I'd prefer a Maybelline pencil too.
She got out her oil pastels, her palette, and began drawing. She had to do this in secret as her mother had forbidden any art.
She used her charcoal pencil to draw a thick bushy eyebrow. The eyebrow was complete. She looked at the result, laughed, and set to work.
She drew the scowling line of her cheeks, the shape of her nose, and chin, and then she drew her hair, the length of it, and the way it curled and fell over her shoulders. She did the same for her head and body. She drew her hands too. She was creating a model of herself.
When she had finished, she looked again at those eyebrows. She liked them.
When she finished she saw that herself in her sketch was like her real self. She had a good likeness. But in the drawing she looked like a different person, one who wouldn't make stupid mistakes.
She put the drawing away. Her mother would see her drawing. She would be furious.
She walked around the room. And looked at the full-length mirror in front of her.
It seemed the mirror was smiling at her.
She smiled back.
She walked toward the window. She lifted a curtain aside and looked out.
She saw a sagging tree. The limbs hung like dead legs and it looked as if the tree had been defeated.
She put her nose against the glass. It was wrapped with wisps of spiderweb. She wiped it with her hand.
She'd rather take a leaf from that tree and paint a leaf and it would be the same then draw a model of herself and look in the mirror and be different than she was.
She did not know what to expect when she told herself that she wanted to be an artist. She had never told anyone of her dreams. Her mother had always said she had to focus on studies.
This was her first time doing anything on her own. She wanted to be an artist. She could look back and see that her mother could hvae been an artist.
She could look ahead and see herself becoming an artist.
She took that Maybelline pencil and put it to her face.
Her face was finished. She looked at herself in the mirror, and that moment she was no longer herself.
She was drawing.
Her hand became the pencil.
Her eyes were three lines.
The sun was a circle.