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Description

" There was something reticent about her, like the petals of the flowers that twist up at nightfall just to burst open when they are sure no-one is looking. Because her smile, though sometimes hard-won, was a blossoming thing. It took her face and lit it up. Everything about her became warm, and her dark eyes and dusky skin were luminescent when she allowed them to be.

But she usually didn’t.

Every morning, Resi would wake up two hours early so she could lay her curly hair beneath the steaming bellows of her mother’s hot iron, and then saturate it in spray to make sure it stayed through the school day. She powdered her cheeks, her collar, her arms. On several occasions Isolde had caught the girl using bleach from her cleaning supplies. And Resi knew her presence at the only secondary school in Boppart was tenuous. It was pushing the law enough as it was to allowed a Negro into a respectable Aryan gymnasium, and it was only her half-white heritage and the money funnelling in from Papa, Mr. Armbrüster, Mama Rosie and Markus that kept her there. The child bore the full brunt of the word bastard like a scarlet letter or a Jewish star, and I only wished that could make her believe she was beautiful. "

-- Vergessenheit

* * *

One of my fav newcomers to my novel that I've yet to post art of until today! Therese, known as Resi, is the illegitimate child of the manager of the Bellevue hotel (Mr. Armbrüster) and an afro-german maid (Isolde), who is the sister of an old family friend of the Fleischers' (Markus). She and Sara have been playmates and close friends since birth, and Sara has spent her life trying to get used to the fact that they are each treated very differently by the society in which they live. Hoping to explore with both Resi and Benjamin what it is to be mixed-race in a predominately white community, and the damage white-washed culture can wreak on POC's, an issue that is obviously still prevalent today.

art, writing, character (c) me

Description

" There was something reticent about her, like the petals of the flowers that twist up at nightfall just to burst open when they are sure no-one is looking. Because her smile, though sometimes hard-won, was a blossoming thing. It took her face and lit it up. Everything about her became warm, and her dark eyes and dusky skin were luminescent when she allowed them to be.

But she usually didn’t.

Every morning, Resi would wake up two hours early so she could lay her curly hair beneath the steaming bellows of her mother’s hot iron, and then saturate it in spray to make sure it stayed through the school day. She powdered her cheeks, her collar, her arms. On several occasions Isolde had caught the girl using bleach from her cleaning supplies. And Resi knew her presence at the only secondary school in Boppart was tenuous. It was pushing the law enough as it was to allowed a Negro into a respectable Aryan gymnasium, and it was only her half-white heritage and the money funnelling in from Papa, Mr. Armbrüster, Mama Rosie and Markus that kept her there. The child bore the full brunt of the word bastard like a scarlet letter or a Jewish star, and I only wished that could make her believe she was beautiful. "

-- Vergessenheit

* * *

One of my fav newcomers to my novel that I've yet to post art of until today! Therese, known as Resi, is the illegitimate child of the manager of the Bellevue hotel (Mr. Armbrüster) and an afro-german maid (Isolde), who is the sister of an old family friend of the Fleischers' (Markus). She and Sara have been playmates and close friends since birth, and Sara has spent her life trying to get used to the fact that they are each treated very differently by the society in which they live. Hoping to explore with both Resi and Benjamin what it is to be mixed-race in a predominately white community, and the damage white-washed culture can wreak on POC's, an issue that is obviously still prevalent today.

art, writing, character (c) me