First grade was a rough time for me.
I had never attended school before, mostly because my parents were quietly aware of the fact that I was…different. This is not to say that my development was delayed, or that I threw screaming fits in restaurants, or that I was starting to exhibit the three early onset signs of the Macdonald triad. Rather, I was….an artist. Always telling stories. Always playing at make believe. Always staging strange gay orgies with my Ken dolls and telling them that they could feel free to be themselves in the Malibu beach house because Barbie was on a work trip.
You know. Different.
School had always been my great white whale. I was so desperate to meet and play with other kids my age that I had begun to beg my mother to take me to the mall after piano lessons, hoping that I would meet other kids in the small playground by Macy’s and that we would somehow strike up an unlikely friendship. Mom quickly realized that I was floundering in homeschool and she convinced my Dad to begin the arduous process of choosing a school in the North Dallas area. Other parents had said things like “private school would be more up Casey’s alley, you know, because she’s so…gifted!” I’ll never know if comments like this were intended as compliments, though part of me knows that these other parents were probably realizing what my parents had always known. Gifted didn’t mean “smart” in the nineties. Gifted didn’t even mean “artsy.” Gifted meant “weird.” And I was. I was super weird.
Remember my Ken dolls? They’ve probably got a timeshare on Fire Island by now.
At this point in our story, I was about halfway through my first-grade year and my parents were trying rather unsuccessfully to hide the myriad things about me that might prevent me from fitting in.
The obsessive piano playing was odd, but explainable; hobbies were encouraged by the Dallas elite and we couldn’t afford horseback riding, so piano and ballet were my alternatives.
The heavy Christian influence in our household was also somewhat normal; Texas has always been a hotbed of religious activity and the school itself was religious, so me not being allowed to dress up for Halloween wasn’t necessarily unusual, just socially unfortunate.
But my aesthetic was doing far more damage that my ability to recite the first page of 1st Philippians ever could.
I was a living Raggedy Ann doll. Red curly hair that exploded from my head like a limp firework, freckles on every surface, big coke-bottle glasses to correct my lazy eye, and two huge front teeth complete with a gap in the middle. If this weren’t enough, I had started to grow like a weed in the August of 1995 and was currently loping around school like a little, ginger gumby, bowing my head to appear shorter but towering above my classmates all the same.
Needless to say, I had a little trouble making friends. I was tight with my best friend Deanna right off the bat; we both wore glasses, and this seemed like as good a reason as any to begin what would become a 25-year (and still going strong) friendship. But when Deanna wasn’t around to provide a buffer, I fell victim to a bit of standard school yard bullying.
This brings us to the Black Angel.
Art class should’ve been my sanctuary. Art has long been a safe space for the weird little fantasy kids with their cat-ear headbands and middle-class suburban trauma. But art class at my little private school would actually turn out to be the perfect environment for my bullies: lots of chatter, lots of crowd cover, and little-to-no supervision. Every time I turned my back, my art supplies had a mysterious habit of going missing.
At first it was just my orange and black markers. Sure, this made for a somewhat lacking Halloween, but that’s what colored pencils are for.
Then it was my package of drawing paper. I balked at this one but was able to shrug it off and draw some flowers on the back of a manila envelope; lack of resources can’t keep a good freak down. Viva la resistance.
But when my pencil sharpener went missing, I was at a total loss. My lines and shapes began to take on the dull, blurred quality of a rudimentary water color and suddenly my suns looked like lemons, my clouds looked like dandelions and honestly, I was seconds away from throwing in the towel completely. I couldn’t work under these conditions.
This led me to use the community bucket, which was a large container full of secondhand markers and pencils in the middle of the art room. My bullies seemed stumped by this, if only for a few weeks, and watched me sullenly as I took my fill of the dry hand-me-down markers. November was somewhat uneventful, and I started to believe that my antagonists had finally taken a backseat for the holidays. Little did I know that my greatest artistic challenge was yet to come.
Our art teacher announced the December project on the first of the month and man, was it the motherload. Any first grader who was able to complete a drawing in the following class period would have their artwork featured at the school-wide art show in February, a huge event attended by every parent, teacher, and student in our little school community. I was floored. This was it. This was my chance to be seen for what I was: an artiste.
I grabbed my motley little collection of coloring supplies and stood poised as our teacher handed out special rolls of professional looking paper. My little alien ectomorph body was vibrating with excitement as I fingered the corners; so smooth, like a glassy ocean upon which I could sail towards greatness.
The teacher clasped her hands and announced, “I want everyone in this room to draw an angel.”
This came as a bit of a shock. First graders have a habit of drawing two things: flowers and themselves. It seems only natural that young children would be interested in the way that they look, especially as they begin to notice what sets them apart or makes them similar. But an angel? None of us had ever seen one! We’d never even touched one! Sure, there were angels in the stained-glass panels in our school chapel, but they all looked like 2D renderings of Meryl Streep in Doubt. How were we supposed to draw angels?
There was a little bit of backtalk and general hubbub, but the teacher repeated calmly, “I want you all to draw angels.” As almost an afterthought, she added, “And nothing you draw is wrong. Just whatever you imagine them looking like. And remember: if you finish your drawing in this class period, your artwork will be featured at the art show.”
After a moment of motionlessness, the flurry began. Kids started diving for their supplies and rushing to get an outline on their canvases, desperate to be included in the art show, but I moved at a metered pace. I was in no hurry. In fact, I had developed a method of artistic organization that had aided me in the creation of some of my greater masterpieces (Casey with flower, ’93. Casey with soccer ball, ’94. Casey with big red dog, ’95.)
First, I stretched. We always stretched before piano and I’d decided that any pursuit involving my hands should begin with some rolling of the wrists and good ol’ fashioned finger-splaying. I then began to line up my markers, lightest to darkest from left to right; the display was less impressive than it used to be, what with the tragic kidnapping of my favorite colors (red, green, and purple all lost to the wind) but I was undeterred. I then turned to my canvas, meticulously placing it exactly two inches away from the edge of the table. I was sure to step back and adjust my reach, ensuring that my long spaghetti arms had an appropriate area in which to cast their angelic spells.
When I was satisfied with my set-up, I got to work. I decided to go with a fairly basic angel shape, my knowledge of which was largely inspired by one of my grandmother’s sugar cookie cut-outs. I was careful to include a halo, which was paramount, and appropriately clasped hands; religious figures seemed to be less interested in my athletic finger-splaying and more concerned with piety. The outline had come together rather well; it was visually recognizable as an angel, at least to me, and coloring in my masterpiece was the only thing standing between me and the glory of the school art show.
This was when my inspiration began to lapse; I reverted back to my go-to, a portrait of myself. I decided that the angel would have pale skin, a few freckles, green eyes, and red hair; this seemed reasonable, as my grandmother had once said that humans were a reflection of God. If humans were reflections of God, then he probably looked like us. And if he looked like us, Angels probably did too. Heretofore, Angels probably looked like me.
I turned to reach for the pale skin-colored marker, which was grossly called “Flesh,” but found my hand grasping for air. A tell-tale giggle in the row behind me gave away the culprit and I whipped around to find a few of my markers “reappropriated” into the hands of other girls. I almost opened my mouth to argue, but the art teacher had looked up from her magazine and I got nervous about her potential involvement.
I turned back to my canvas, breaking out in a cold sweat; there were twenty minutes left in the class period and I was staring at a colorless angel. My eyes darted to and fro as I started damage control: calm down, take stock, and see what’s left. I had a few different kinds of yellow, which no one ever seemed interested in stealing, a few drying reds, an ancient magenta that bled Barney-colored blood on my fingers every time I took off the cap, and a rich, dark brown.
I picked up the brown and removed the cap, staring at the marker tip as though it held the secrets of the universe. I hadn’t used the brown marker since Diarrhea-Gate (Patrick M. called my drawing of a chocolate fountain a “poop explosion,” trauma ensued) and I was struggling to find a way to include it now. But after a second glance, I decided that this marker was also “flesh colored.”
And so I got to work.
I finished my coloring in record time. It was a little sloppier than my usual brush strokes and, sure, the red portions were tragically unpigmented, but it would have to do. I glumly handed in my art work, barely consoled by the fact that I would be featured in the art show and stumbled off towards home room. People probably wouldn’t like my angel drawing; I mean, it looked nothing like me!
Christmas break came and went, and I began to forget about the angel. Life for a first grader is momentary after all, grounded in the here and now, and my concerns shifted from art class to home room. One of my bullies concocted a lie about my behavior on the playground and my teacher took us out into the hall to calm the drama, which led to several weeks of humiliation via my classmates constantly asking, “What did she say?? Are you in trouble?? Are you getting kicked out??”
When the day of the art show arrived, I lagged behind the other students as they ran pell-mell towards the gym; I doubted that my angel would be well-received and enduring further social torment at the hands of my jeering classmates was more than my small psyche could bear. I entertained the thought of running for the carpool line, but my dread was interrupted by a curious sight.
A group of adults and a few students were clustered around one of the first-grade display boards, a crowd so large that the artwork in question was obscured from view. I wandered towards the upset and was spotted by one of my nicer gym teachers, who smiled brightly and took me by my shoulders.
“Excuse us, Casey wants to see her drawing!”
The teacher ushered me gently through the crowd, many of whom glanced down at me incredulously; before I could make sense of it all, I reached the front of the line and looked up to find the source of all the commotion.
It was my angel.
Before I could even register the magnitude of this experience, some of the adults leaned down to speak with me. My music teacher asked me quietly, “Casey, did you draw this?”
I furrowed my brow; my art teacher had printed little name plates and labeled every drawing in the room. My angel was labelled clearly: “Casey Joiner.”
“Yes…”
Another adult, who shockingly appeared to have tears in her eyes, said tremulously, “That’s very beautiful, kid.”
I looked back up at my drawing and began to make a slow connection. This crying lady worked in the principal’s office and while I didn’t know her well, she bore a striking resemblance to my angel. The angel in question stared solemnly down at me as I began to connect the dots and I finally began to realize that this lady’s skin was the same color as my angel’s skin.
This lady was black. And so was my angel.
I had drawn a black angel.
Skin color was something that I was not totally aware of at this point in my life. I knew that people looked certain ways and that everyone had skin, but I had not yet begun to recognize different races or backgrounds. This woman’s comment was rather confusing to me. My angel was beautiful?
I started to say something along the lines of, “Oh, this isn’t even my best work, my resources were sadly limited by thievery, call my agent for a private showing,” but I couldn’t even find the words. She looked so touched by my drawing that it seemed like I probably shouldn’t argue.
So I stood planted by my angel for the next hour as teacher after teacher came by to tell me how wonderful it was. My parents arrive some thirty minutes later and stood there motionless, looking intrigued, surprised, and somewhat astounded by my artistic decision to draw an angel of another race. I could see them communicating with their eyes like parents do, clearly deciding whether or not we would “talk about this in the car,” but they eventually moved to flank me and helped me receive compliments for the better part of the evening.
Teachers would talk about this drawing for the rest of the year and for some years afterwards. It was mentioned in the 1996 welcome-back speech, referred to by my principal as a “reason why everyone should feel safe at our school.” My art teacher used it as a teaching tool, telling students that they should try to draw someone who “didn’t look like them.” And as for the lady who worked in the principal’s office, she always made sure to give me a hug whenever we crossed paths in the hallway.
I eventually confessed to my mother that I “hadn’t been able to find my Flesh marker,” a watered-down version of the truth, and she’d digested this information gracefully before remarking that it was a very good drawing and that we didn’t have to tell anyone. Life continued on and I never became an artist, though my love of drawing continues to this day.
While I did not possess a nuanced understanding of racial dynamics at the time of this event, I now look at my angel with the eyes of a woman, the eyes of a teacher, and the eyes of an adult living in a Hunger Games version of the America I once knew. As a teenager, the memory of the principal’s assistant filled me with guilt; I began to think that I’d essentially given her false hope, that I had lied by omission. I believed that she’d seen my drawing as an attempt to connect with people living a different life than me, and I had failed to correct her assumption. I had wanted to draw an angel that looked just like me and viewed my inability to do so as the ultimate failure. I was selfish.
But I now believe that this kind woman was touched by the purity of my offering. She probably knew that I didn’t understand race for what it was: a beautiful element of life that has been grossly weaponized and misunderstood for centuries. She knew that I didn’t know about inequality, or that our country was just some twenty-five years fresh from race riots that had gripped our nation’s collective consciousness for several years.
She knew that I was a little girl untouched by the ugliness of life. She didn’t know that my “Flesh” marker was missing. And while I was quite unaware, I had uncovered one of the darker sides of art class: the fact that only one marker was called “flesh” and that other flesh-colored markers were called by their color. I also didn’t know that there were other forms of self-expression outside of the self-portrait, which I would continue to explore in depth until I had used every single red and orange shade in Crayola’s arsenal to attempt to correctly express my hair color. I didn’t know anything then, and honestly, I still have days in my adult life where I wonder if I really know anything at all.
But here’s something that I do know: my angel drawing meant something to people. It was probably a little different for every adult who saw it, and more than a little mortifying and confusing for me, but somehow, that drawing was important. And if I was able to create something important, then I guess my artistic debut was ultimately successful.
The Black Angel, drawn in 1995.
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