She was the first woman created, even before Eve, made from the same dirt as Adam. Was she cast out of the garden for disobedience? Or did she leave in search of greener pastures?
Is she a deviant pleasure-hungry whore?
Or is she simply a woman who wants freedom?
They are the same story, depending on who tells the tale.
And in my story, she finds her own garden, in the glorious foliage and flowers surrounding her. Because Freida was telling the truth. Death is a natural part of life. And like the burning of a field, this library will give rise to new birth.
There’s more light now, with the building gone, and we’ll need those rays of sun for the garden we’re going to plan here. I can already see trees and bushes and flowers—but the painting against the wall will remain as the cornerstone. The beginning. It’s my most ambitious work to date. And it wasn’t completely a secret. It took me three weeks to paint the plants that curl up from the glass wall and hang down from giant illusory trees. It took that long with elaborate, very safe scaffolding and rope around my waist and a crew to prime the wall and seal it after.
It’s only Lilith who came at the end, working at night, with only Christopher beside me. My arms feel like jelly after working for twelve hours straight. There’s still paint smudged across my arms and shoved under my fingernails. Christopher doesn’t look much better—there’s specks of blue in his black hair from where I gripped it in a celebratory kiss, which turned into more, twenty feet above the ground on top of our large stable scaffold. There are faint lines under his eyes from being awake all night, but he looks live-wire and alert. Maybe watching for a threat since not everyone in the city is happy about the image of female empowerment painted on the building. Not everyone wants the west side to be restored. There are true demons that lurk these streets, but Lilith will help find them.
I saved her eyes for last, because they had to watch over the park. And they had to look out over the west side of Tanglewood. It’s her domain, all of it. There will be a modern library worthy of Smith College. There will be a soup kitchen and a shelter so that young women have choices. That will be the practical side, the necessary side—and finally, the perfect use for my trust fund. I’ve always been a fan of grand gestures. Of symbolism.
Of proving to the world that women don’t need to be meek to be beautiful—and that’s why Lilith will remain standing throughout all of it.
I was wrong to think that we needed a structure to house her. She isn’t afraid of the elements. Sometimes you need the darkness to shine. And sometimes you need death to come fully alive. Sunlight beams across the paint, drying her eyes. She looks on with a knowledge hard-won and peace that comes from finally finding home.