Song of the Mockingbird: My Journey with Josefina

I picture our brownstone apartment building, every brick and crevice familiar. I fumble with the quill and bend close to the paper. How does anyone see anything in this firelight?

Clumsily, I draw our building with the skyline behind it, then lay down the quill after a few moments. Josefina says I’ve learned quickly, ignoring the many blots. It resembles a humpbacked mountain with a rectangle tilting across the paper. Josefina tips her head, saying it looks like their home. Those are the mountains beyond our rancho. I look closer. Whatever I drew doesn’t look like Chicago, but it does look like the hills in Santa Fe.

Josefina says my drawing is clever, and she’s right. The rectangle looks like our modern Santa Fe house, and the hill could be the same one outside both my house and Josefina’s. I started trying to draw one home, and ended up drawing another.