"Nina Kiriki Hoffman - The World Within" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Nina Kiriki)

Lately, Pell had slammed doors while Aria sang for her mother. Mostly the
bathroom door. Slam slam slam. "O, holy night," slam, "the stars are brightly
shiiiiining," slam. Mother thought Aria could sing at school in the Christmas
show; surely if she had a prepared piece, they could find a place for her in the
program. Slam. Aria had never sung where anyone but Mother or Pell could hear
her.

Slam.

Then there was paint. Mrs. Bridge taught English and art. She gave Aria poster
paints and construction paper and Aria had spent whole hours stroking colors
side by side onto paper. She swirled things. She got mud brown colors by mixing,
and then she learned to mix for creamy orange and light purple and pale green.
While other people did whatever projects Mrs. Bridge assigned each day, Aria sat
with her colors in front of her and made pictures that didn't look like anything
you could see when you looked around an apartment or a street. Just swirls and
pools of color.

Sometimes she painted with her fingers. Sometimes she mixed up colors and
pressed her hands into them and then slapped her hands onto the paper.

Aria rarely brought her pictures home. Mother didn't like them. "Can't you do a
nice still life?" she had asked.

Mrs. Bridge liked them, though. She had asked to keep some.

Then there was science class, where Ms. Claire taught them the world in pieces
and puzzles. Shake up these body parts and then assemble them into a body. There
was a certain romance in piecing together a bird from pinions and down and
muscles and organs and hollow bones and the lace of nerves and branching trees
of blood vessels. Aria loved the language of science: thorax, abdomen, mandible,
proboscis; style, stigma, ovary ...

She was not sure she would want to spend the rest of her life buried under such
language, so many details. She liked them; she could build walls with them; but
were walls enough, when she could have color or music instead?

Aria looked at Mrs. Bridge. "Any news?" Mrs. Bridge asked.

"What?" said Aria.

"Do you know yet what you want?"

"No," said Aria.
"Well, you're young yet. You have time to try different things."

"You know what you want," said Mother. "Your marvelous instrument! Your
beautiful voice!"