The Olive E-Zine: So what is it that you, yourself, wish to convey in your paintings?

Ada: I don't know, they are what they are. I just paint. I have no audience in mind when that brush is hitting the canvas. When I look at my paintings afterwards, I sometime wonder how that came from me.

The Olive E-Zine: Well, your works definitely seem to have a strong effect on people, regardless. Whole rooms of laughing, crying and embarrassed feeling people. Tabloids have even gone so far as to cite voodoo as your secret.

Ada: That's pretty funny. I think the secret to my paintings is more that they make the normal strange and new, not voodoo. I wonder, if I were white would the tabloids have come to the conclusion that my talent lies in an ancient African Religion? No disrespect to voodoo, but I strongly doubt it.

The Olive E-Zine: Good point.

Ada: I know.

The Olive E-Zine: On the same note, don't you find people's reactions to your work odd? I mean, come on, entire rooms full of people having the same emotional reaction to a work of art. That is not normal.

Ada: Depends on what your definition of normal is.

***********************

She began to see beautiful streams of color lace across his face and through his chest. Green, yellow, red. She shut her eyes and let it intensify, metallic and strong. Just as her entire body started to shudder, she heard it. "Waa Waa Waa! Waa Waa Waa!"

"What the fuck?!" They both froze and listened. It came again. "Waa Waa Waa!"

He made a slight move as he turned toward the sound. Ada's body reacted by resuming its orgasmic aftershocks. In mid-shudder, it dawned on her what the sound was. The realization mixed with the physical sensation made her start laughing hysterically. At first he frowned and then just the look on her face made him join in. "It's my frog," she snickered, after a while. Only two days ago, Ada had grown lonely in her off campus single apartment and gone out and bought a tree frog. She had meant to buy a guinea pig or chinchilla but the tree frog had caught her eye and her heart. It had sat, suctioned to the far side of aquarium, staring back at her with its golden eyes. Up until tonight, she'd had no idea that the thing liked to sing.

After they untangled themselves from each other, they crept over to the medium sized heat regulated aquarium that sat on her bedroom dresser. As soon as they got within a few feet of the frog, it stopped singing, suspiciously eyeing them.

"I think we must have turned it on," S?id said with a laugh.

"Man, don't even make my frog into some voyeuristic pervert. Plus she's female, I asked the sales guy."

"Oh so you're saying perverts are only male?"

"The majority of the time."

"But not 100% of the time, dear."

"Yeah, yeah, you and your obsession with detail, spare me your madness." She had met S?id five months ago in one of her annoying English classes she was required to take. She should have taken the class her freshman year but she had put it off until her last semester. She was not happy to find out that she would be a senior in a class full of freshmen. One of those freshmen was S?id who had just joined the university from Madagascar. Ada had sat and stared at his three long thick dreadlocks for the entire hour. She couldn't imagine how long it would take for hers to get like that. After class he had turned to her and said in his thickly accented voice "I've heard of you." He had taught her more about painting than she'd learned from the art galleries or her classes. He too was an art student, his specialization was "detail" as he liked to say. Well known in his country, the university had managed to snag him. The first time Ada saw one of his works, she'd stood in the same place for an hour staring at it; Her eyes couldn't seem to get a grip on the slippery image. Frog, sunset, ocean, trees, all of those things. None of them. And it made a world of difference.

***********************
Staring blankly across the room, she wondered. What was life really about, anyway? In her heart she felt that the world was full of wonderful things but there seemed so little to see. Most of the time, she'd hide under the cool soft green moss in the corner. Whenever she felt particularly adventurous, she slide up the side of the aquarium, her suctioned feet and hands allowing her to defy gravity. Today she was feeling strong and had climbed all the way to the top. From there she had a good view of the room her world sat in. She saw moving shapes near the center of the room and felt a tiny pang of fear. When she was scared, she always calmed herself with songs. She also sang when she felt lonely, though she couldn't possibly have known what loneliness was. She had no idea where she'd learned the songs but singing them always made her feel better. When she sang, whatever was bothering her would float away riding the short breaths she exhaled. Five months later, she thought to herself: In this life one must take chances. She had to move or she'd crumble. So one day when the giant was nowhere in sight, she decided to leave the aquarium. She squeezed out of the plastic lid and hopped out. She felt exhilarated, there was more! She jumped toward the closest dark spot she saw and decided to take a rest. When she woke, she noticed how dry and cold the air had become. She pulled her long legs in close and shut her eyes hoping things would change soon. Her skin felt papery and ached terribly.

***********************

Ada skipped into her room. She was having a good day and it was going to get better when S?id picked her up and they went off to the Reggae club tonight. She glanced into Binna's aquarium on her way to the bathroom. After washing her hands, she realized, she didn't see the tree frog anywhere in her aquarium. She went back to it and took a closer look and found nothing. She caught her breath on the brink of panic and opened the lid. She checked underneath the damp moss and behind the large chunk of wood. She was gone. She'd practically torn her bedroom apart searching for Binna when S?id knocked on the door. She opened the door.

"My frog is gone," she said, turning and walking back to her room. He followed her in and began to help her look. An hour later, Ada sat down in the middle of her messed up room, with her shoe in her hand.

"S?id," she quietly said. "Come here."

"Yeah," he asked sitting next to her, putting his arm around her. She held the shoes out to him.

"Oh my," he said after glancing inside. "I'm sorry, Ada."

As she pressed her face into his shirt, Ada wondered whether she would have died if Ada had found her sooner.

***********************

The Olive E-Zine: We've noticed the last two of your paintings have been of a sad nature, the Clown, Music With Plants. Would you describe yourself as happy?

Ada: These are strange times....there's a lot going on, I guess. Maybe not happy but content?

The Olive E-Zine: You say that as if you're not sure.

Ada: I can't seem to convey my thoughts in words right now.

The Olive E-Zine: Well, what would you say bothers you the most about the world at the moment.

Ada: Oh a lot of things! It's funny. My work is selling well, right now. Technically I should be happy but... I don't live in a vacuum. Even if you had all the room available on the net, I don't think you'd have enough room in your online magazine for all I see wrong with what's around me.

The Olive E-Zine: So how do you deal with it.

Ada: Good question.

***********************

Ada plopped down onto the couch next to S?id with the day's mail. S?id broke the comfortable silence.

"See that," he said pointing to the television screen where a black and white Lemur acrobatically hopped across the screen on two legs with its long hands in the air. "We have hundreds of kinds of those back home. We've got even more types of frogs. I had a friend who touched a bright golden one and..." He turned to Ada and frowned.

"Hmm?" she mumbled after he nudged her with his elbow. When she saw the annoyed look on his face, she immediately felt bad. She was always interested in stories about Madagascar but at the moment her attention was elsewhere. "I'm sorry S?id," she said leaning over and giving him a slight kiss. "But look, they sent me another one." She handed him the opened envelope with the pictures inside.

S?id's frown immediately melted into a soft grin. He chuckled. "Now it's made it to Paris!" he laughed. "This is crazy!" Ada didn't find it all so funny, though anyone else would have gotten a kick out of it every time. But she'd really loved that ceramic violin-playing frog. Before it was stolen, she had kept the eight-inch artwork standing on her windowsill. Her best friend from high school, Kyra, had given it to her as a gag present for her 15th birthday. Though it was meant to be funny, over the years, Ada had fallen in love with the gaudy green musical frog with the dreamy look on its face as it played.

"Man, who are these people?" she asked. "I mean, I just can't figure it out. Who would break into someone's apartment and only take a cheap ceramic frog? The thing was far from a work of art. It was spray painted green for goodness sake."

S?id shrugged. "One man's trash is another man's treasure, I guess." The pictures started arriving in her inbox about two weeks after the frog disappeared. Judging from the poor quality of the pictures, Ada figured they were taken with a digital camera. The first one was of the ceramic frog standing on the pavement in front of the Kremlin. A week and a half later, the frog was playing its fiddle on Easter Island. Two weeks later, it was strumming away in front of the Taj Mahal. Then the Pyramids. Its most recent visit was the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Ada printed out the photo, got up and put it with the others on her dresser.

"Don't worry about it, Ada," S?id said from the other room. "You can always paint another one."

"Ha ha, S?id. Very funny," Ada said.

***********************

Ada stared at the ceiling and grasped S?id's hand as the tattoo artist did his job. The tattoo parlor smelled of antiseptic, the walls covered with elaborate drawings of flowers, plants and fairies. Ada wasn't sure which she couldn't believe more, the fact that she was in New Orleans instead of class or that she was getting a tattoo of a frog on her shoulder blade. They'd both decided to take the spontaneous road trip two days ago. Ada hoped it would get rid of what S?id was calling his "muse block." Of late, S?id had been quieter than usual, which Ada didn't think possible. At first, his quietness had bothered her. It wasn't that he didn't let her in on who he was and what was on his mind, it was just that he didn't do it very often using words. He'd draw her pictures of his anger at failing a math test. He'd write her letters telling stories of his home in Madagascar. Once in a while, he'd tell her tales about his country. And if he didn't have anything to say, he didn't do what he claimed Americans always did, which was babble about nothing because the silence made them uncomfortable. He simply wouldn't say anything at all. The closer she got to S?id, the more she liked his scarce usage of spoken language. But in the last few weeks he barely spoke to her in any language. Ada thought that some irresponsible time off campus would do them both good. Plus she'd heard that New Orleans was a magnet for artists.

She'd chosen a creeping tree frog the size of her fist with red eyes and a forked tongue. The pain wasn't nearly as bad as she thought it would be but she still needed a way to keep her mind off of it. Since S?id was never much of a talker, she'd blabbed with the tattoo artist whose name was John. John looked exactly as she'd have imagined a tattoo artists would look; like a big burly biker Caucasian guy with numerous tattoos creeping up each arm. He was also a really nice guy. She figured she clicked with him partially because he was a fellow artist.

"So why a frog?" he'd asked after they had discussed everything from his life story to how Ada's mother had no idea where she currently was.

S?id chuckled at this. "Because the girl's confused," he said. "She doesn't know whether she's coming or going."

"Oh shut up, S?id," Ada said with a laugh. "It's nothing like that, John. Frogs, I don't know, they just mean a lot to me. On one level, I feel that they represent me and my duality, how I was born and raised here, in the US. Yet, I have Nigerian blood running through my veins and I've also grown up with my parents' culture. Nigeria and the United States are like water and land to frogs, I can't live without either one."

"Hmm, I dig that," said John smiling, his face inches away from her shoulder blade as he needled away. Ada squinted trying not to move. "Also," she continued with some effort. "Frogs have this weird presence in my life. Whoo, that stings."

"Just relax, you're doing fine," John recited.

***********************

With all her success, Ada simply couldn't be happy. Apparently S?id's feelings for her messed with his art. When he decided to stay away from her for a little while "to clear his head" was the last straw. There was so much she needed. She needed love, she needed control, she always needed more.

And then one day something happened. It was on the Friday night she'd gotten the last photo of her ceramic frog. A note had accompanied the picture. It had one word: "Sorry". The photo showed the ceramic piece's shattered remains. She'd sat in front of the television staring blankly at the screen. Terrible thoughts and ideas tumbled around in her head. Rest in peace. That guy with the Zodiac name in the newspaper who wore the expensive clothes who had been found in an alley with a hole in his head. That news story on Halloween night about the African American girl from her high school who'd been attacked by skinheads. Friendless. The 35 year old white man who jumped from his office building. Fat and ugly and weighing 100 pounds. Who was the real Slim Shady? Her friend David who had recently told her that he didn't like dating black women because they were too difficult. "I don't want to deal with a woman who comes bearing guns and knives," he'd said in his Ghanaian accent. That stupid man named Batak who was always mean to her because she was taller than him. Her friend Gabrielle who stripped to support her education and who hated every human being with a penis. He can't go home. The fetish-ized Asian woman. The boxed-in man. "Innocent" cartoons. Amadou Diallo and Steven Biko. Hair weaves like Europeans and fake nails done by Koreans. Gold rings and expensive cars and no diploma. Norms and mores. Misunderstandings and selfishness covered beautiful things with a thick coat of shit brown. Maybe it was time to pick up a paintbrush. Who would want to buy a painting that made them want to cry just from being near it, Ada didn't know. Nor did she care.

She ended up in her studio, paintbrush and palette in hand, staring at a blank canvas. Her heart was beating fast, her cheeks were salty, her skin felt dry and her head ached. She stroked, at times, jabbed at others. She used every shade of green she could mix. When she was finished, she threw down her paintbrushes and collapsed into a heap on the floor. It just wouldn't let up. It was as if a group of Boreal Chorus Tree Frogs were congregating on her chest. She could feel their cold feet. The cacophony was unbearable. The noise pushing out every rational thought. Was her life so miserable? She wondered. The studio reeked of wet paint and her own sour sweat. She pulled her body off the ground and maneuvered it to the bathroom. The pain was not even close to the pain she felt when she was getting her tattoo. The razor blade had cut through her skin with a delicious ease. Only the thought of the frog on her shoulder blade made her feel the slightest bit of regret. Other than that, she was happy with her decision. She consciously didn't' think about her mother, father, sister, sister. She knew she'd hurt S?id but hadn't he hurt her just as badly, if not worse? Except, he was still alive and haunting her at the same time. She heard a door slam from far off somewhere but a soothing sleep was wiping it all away.

***********************

He sat quietly, an amphibian on the wall. It was one of those days where he couldn't be anything but happy. He could practically drink the tropical air, it was so humid. The tree frog looked down at the two hairless beings basking in the sun. On a day like this, hairless beings didn't move much so he doubted he was in any real danger. He shifted his left foot for better suction. They sat in straw chairs watching the sea. One of them had long hair that grew in thick dark brown ropes. The other had shorter hair that grew in thinner more orange red brown ropes and she munched slowly on her mixed leaves coated with a sweet berry smelling substance. If the frog knew the language of humans, he'd have known to call it spinach salad with raspberry dressing. If the tree frog was closer and if he cared he would see that they were both smiling. The tree frog quickly lost interest in the humans. After snatching a lazy fly from the air with his pink sticky tongue, he slowly closed his eyes an d went to sleep.