Georgia O'Keeffe paints a face

Georgia O' O'Keeffe paints a face

fiction
edward w Pritchard

The rich white lady often stopped here at the reservation when she was looking for directions to find flowers to paint. Out there in the dessert, in the heat of New Mexico, she would set up her easel and spend hours and hours capturing the shades of pink and yellow of blooming dessert flowers. She kept the easel and paints in the back of her big car and drove around by herself. The men here on the Resz, that's what the men called the reservation, liked the crazy white lady and warned her not to travel around by herself but Georgia just smiled, she said she was too old to be afraid anymore.

The women here in the village, that's what the women called the reservation, would bring Miss O' Keeffe  cold sweet tea to drink and show her their pots and vases that they had made and painted from clay and sometimes Georgia bought things.

I was a little girl then, back on the reservation, that's what I called my home. While I was sitting in the sun one morning Miss O'Keeffe stopped everything and spent two hours painting a picture of my face and shoulders. Later a couple of weeks she brought the picture back and gave it to my Mother. People said that picture was worth more than our entire village. My Mother wouldn't sell that picture though. She said it was special and I should always keep and treasure that picture that was worth more than money. She said there were a thousand pink, red and yellow flower blooming in my face in that painting.
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