The painting was ugly.
An atrocious thing.
An insult, with “MAMA” written in funky, scraggly, scrawling handwriting in the bottom corner. A blob of greyish brown with two skeptical eyebrows arched too close to the hairline- or perhaps the hairline was too close to the eyebrows. Two circles for eyes, smaller, smudged circles for nostrils and drastically high, almost satirical cheekbones.
But what caught her eye wasn’t the array of disharmony before her, with spaghetti for hair and an isosceles chin. What caught her eye was the kiss shaped red stain where her mouth should have been, and that same rouge on the mouth of the small child whose spindly arms held the painting out before her, presenting it to her.
What caught her eye, was the way her daughter’s wide eyes bore into hers, imploring. The way her tiny feet shuffled. The way her mouth swung precariously, like a pendulum, between a frown and a grin, as if she would only allow herself to be proud of her work if her mother was.
Tell me I did well, mama. Tell me I made you proud. Tell me you love me mama.
She considered. Inspected the heart of the child that lay beating in the centre of the painting. Prodded, poked. Drew it closer.
“And this is… spaghetti? That you used, for the hair- For my hair?”
“Yes.”
Her daughter’s smile wavered and wilted, and the heart began to bleed- a small trickle. It needed substance, needed approval.
So, as she took the painting from her child, she didn’t ask which drawer she got the lipstick from, because the love she had poured into the painting was tangible and real. And red.
And, as she swept her daughter into her arms, she uttered the words that brought small white teeth shining from between their red- stained captors, and a giggle from her throat.
“Well done.”