Being near Rosenthall Elementary is like having my epidermis flayed from my subcutaneous layer of fat, slowly, something I white knuckle over and over. To not frighten the children I’m carpooling to school, I suffer this silently, peeled apart in the shadow of the cafeteria bricks I can almost smell. But then, my chest will bloom with memories of Delila, how her black eyes would shine when she gossiped or discussed terrible, corny literature, how she’d smell of nutmeg and rosewater, lavender lemonade lotion, and eucalyptus, how she’d transform into a poet whenever she spoke about math, detailing its continuity as something divine, resplendent. This keeps me bound.
In an act of penance, I have taken on Delila’s morning school run.
I pick up Jaun, Parker, Khlani, and Angelica every morning, their mothers rushing them to my car as they bend into theirs, harassed, hopeless expressions sinking their faces down as they juggle car keys and travel coffee mugs. We’ll get to Rosenthall Elementary with an hour to spare, and wait in the parent drop-off line, the windows rolled down. Going through the parking lot consumes my guts with nausea, liquifying me in bile, but if I park just so, I don’t have to see the front lawn at all. Khlani always crawls over the children to sit in my lap. She remembers me from last year, when she was in kindergarten, a bright student who would tug on her braids whenever she’d fret, but never cried, not even when a boy kicked her in the stomach. The kids like to update me on their lives while we wait for the school to open. Did you know my momma waxes her upper lip, and has a boyfriend? My auntie’s friend kicked our dog! Grandpa has a gambling problem, and he hates string beans.
I listen to them, feeling ill and angry, but resound, knowing Delila would appreciate someone carrying on her school run. The act is not enough to honor her though, while simultaneously being the only thing I can offer. It’s these two realities that tangle together in my chest and heave in their web. My mother says I suffer voluntarily, so I do more than enough. “Zeda the martyr,” she’ll say. She does not understand what a martyr is, not at all.
Some days they ask me questions, Jaun and Parker love to interrogate me about paintings and the act of creation, as if I am the gatekeeper of artistic knowledge. Why does art even exist? Can people paint anything in the world? What’s the point of making art? If they’re in a listening mood, I’ll tell them stories about painting in college, or studying abroad. They like to hear about the summer I went to Rome, a gap year before graduate school, where I rented a rundown flat and painted every day on the inch wide terrace. I look back on that sunlit, self-romantic time so fondly I could weep. That young woman and I don’t seem related in my mind anymore, but a tendril of her still lives, coiled in my breast, like a tenacious heart tumor.
One morning in late September, Jaun asks why I don’t go back to Rome, if I loved it so much.
“Yeah,” Parker adds, yelling like we’re at opposite ends of a bus. Parker has never used an inside voice in his life. “Why don’t you teach anymore?” Khaini tugs on one of her braids, the only one without a butterfly clip. Coach Zhang walks out of the cafeteria, securing the doors open. Mr. Miller and Ms. Joebeck mirror him down the car line.
“It’s time, guys,” I say. “Grab your backpacks. Jaun, don’t forget your water bottle.” Khlani hugs me, and then crawls over the center console to exit the passenger door. Khlani is shy, and small for a first grader. As she walks into the school, I imagine what she would look like dead on the ground, her face still with unseeing eyes, her braids replaced with blood. Coach Zhang catches my eye, but I look away, pretending not to see him. After Parker slams the door, I turn my car on, feeling like a raw open wound, skinless. The engine stutters, the light from my clock flickering. I turn the key in the ignition again. And again. Beads of sweat bud like tears on my forehead. Two teachers I’ve never met help me push my car to the parking lot. Coach Zhang steps away from his position on the car line and comes over.
“Uh oh,” he says.
“I know,” I sigh. Coach Zhang has on crew socks decorated with elephants playing basketball. He wears khaki shorts with his collared Rosenthall Elementary shirt tucked into his belt every day, and, always, crazy socks.
“Thompson keeps jumper cables in his trunk,” Coach Zhang says. “I’ll let him know so he can jump your car.” My head is floating above my body, like a telescope image of a lonely moon above a planet.
“Thanks.” I can smell his aftershave, cloves and citrus. I step away from him.
“I’ve noticed you’ve been doing a school run this year. Classic Zeda. Surprised you’re not teaching them about art on the way,” he says and chuckles. When Rosenthall Elementary discontinued early morning care for the working parents, some teachers volunteered to carpool the students. The buses don’t make their rounds until seven thirty when some parents must leave as early as six. Mr. Thompson volunteered, and Delila.
Coach Zhang clears his throat. “I hear art class isn’t the same without you.”
I am a throbbing skull, a tender mouth of dark blue.
He nudges my arm. “You can call me, you know? You can always call. I haven’t because I figured you need space. We all heal differently and everything. I want to give you space if you need it.”
“Howdy,” Mr. Thompson’s booming voice cracks the space between us in two. I am so grateful I let out a peel of high laughter, so relieved to break free of Zhang. I pour my attention and energy into jumping the battery, and it relieves me of the school’s hulking presence, Zhang, Delila. I don’t even mind Thompson speaking to me like I’m a child as he relays instruction. I know how to jump my battery; I just didn’t have cables. Coach Zhang stays by my car, eyes burning into my neck. I keep my back to the school’s front lawn, the building.
“Get your battery tested,” Mr. Thompson claps me on the back with his huge, meaty hand. “We miss our art teacher around here.” I nod, wondering what I can do to get away as soon as possible without being rude. Mr. Thompson could be long-winded and oblivious, and I can tell he is one coffee breath away from asking me to visit his church again, and I am past the capacity to politely decline again, despite how fond I am of him.
“Thanks, so much.” I say and duck into the car. Coach Zhang walks back to his post on the car line, a frown creasing his forehead like a scar. I can’t help it, as I pass the front lawn I look, as if magnetically pulled, like it’s a slaughtered body and I’m compelled to get an eyeful. A new rose bush has been planted beside the school’s sign. My mouth fills with saliva and my stomach has a pulse, a sudden beat. I leave as fast as I can, knowing the nausea will settle when I’m home.
I lie in my bed and grind my teeth until I check in at work. My heart beats faintly in its cage, I picture a flower bone.
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
I never wanted to work with young children, high school was my optimal teaching goal, but the trajectory fizzled out when the only school in need of an art teacher was an elementary one. I grinded my teeth and accepted Rosenthall’s teaching position, sure it would be just as tedious as I predicted. However, it took less than an entire class period for me to devour my own words.
The kindergarteners were scattered and giddy, but took painting trees with their fingertips seriously, their faces like wet violets from the effort. Fourth and fifth graders became transformed when I explained Claude Monet was called an impressionist as an insult in the beginning of his career, but now impressionism is a revered movement in art history. We called him ‘Come Back Claude’. The second graders were easily subsumed by wild delight in creation, their enthusiasm to make mistakes and be bold was like a stimulant to me, a joyful noise in my skin. All the students were rejuvenated in the face of learning, as I was rejuvenated to teach them about arts presence in the world, how it penetrates everything. Awe ran through them, like thread, and it made me think of the golden light you get along the horizon at dawn. I leaned in.
While the students worked, I’d play Cab Calloway, Billy Holiday, Gregorian chants, film scores, oboe concertos, music I felt would open the children’s creative flow. The windows unlatched easily in the art room, and sunlight would flood in. The art tables were gilded in the light that illuminated the gallery wall of student drawings, the air swelling with music and the thin scents of acrylic paint, wood shavings, and magnolia. I’d breathe it in.
The experience only sweetened, it was all about learning the young students’ language. If I had a pack of particularly rambunctious fifth grade boys, I’d tell them about Da Vinci and Michelangelo brawling in the streets of Florence over who was superior, emphasizing their large age gap and their documented shit talking. This piece of trivia endeared me to the rowdiest of children. If I had a student who described their work as bad, I’d show them Mary Abbott’s work beside Frida Kahlo’s, insist there is only variation in art, not elevation. The students who resisted drawing, painting, or sculpting, I’d lay out paper on the ground, have them remove their shoes, and paint with their feet in time to Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” an activity no one could turn down.
Albert Zhang, Delila Dray, and I would sit together during staff meetings, placing bets on how long they’d take. We read the same books and would meet once a month at Delila’s house to discuss them. She had a pergola in her back yard covered with bougainvillea, and we would sit beneath its sweet shade and talk about whatever mass market fiction we were digesting, the air heavy with heat and honeysuckle. We joked about getting triangles tattooed on our arms, the perfect shape for three friends, but we never did.
Delila taught second grade math, science, and social studies. She would tell her students, math is the key to understanding the universe, ourselves, and love. She was more an art teacher than I was. Her students called her Ms. Delila, instead of Ms. Dray, because it made her more approachable, easier to learn from, she’d say. She was the first teacher in our county to be voted teacher of the year three times. Her students doodled willow trees on her white board because it was her favorite, brought her apples and cupcakes on her birthday, whispered to one another in the halls, we love Ms. Delila.
On my last field day, Albert and I were approved to combine a sport and art activity. We filled water balloons with nontoxic, washable paint, and thought up a game like red rover, but with paint bombs. When Delila’s class came to our station, she smiled and said to her giddy students, “Don’t hold back.” By the end of it, Albert and I were in a heap on the color-stained grass, tackled down by a hoard of snow-cone-sugar infused children. Paint and grass were in my hair, a streak of electric lime crossed Albert’s lip and his two front teeth. Breathing the sweet air into my lungs, crying from laughter, I reached out and touched Coach Zhang’s forearm. He touched the top of my head. Through a bent elbow, I could see a puzzle piece of the cloudless sky, a triangle of azure, a promising omen.
They didn’t get a new art teacher after my abrupt resignation, the art room was simply left dark for three months, layered in dust and a sunless, heavy silence. Kimberlee Watts called me before the start of term, said she wanted me back but couldn’t wait any longer. They hired a new art teacher, a woman fresh from graduate school. She should remind me of me, but I can’t find a trace of myself in her. Now, I work online as a customer service rep for a marketing agency. I will never go back to any art room, no, not to places of beauty or tranquil culture, not to Rome, nowhere the light can touch my face.
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
That evening, I lie on my porch with my legs propped on the pot of dead lilies I planted last year, as the sun melds the sky from daylight blue to alizarin crimson. A car pulls into my driveway, and I let my legs fall to the wooden floor with a thunk. Coach Zhang gets out and looks down on me. My head is heavy against the welcome mat, my overgrown grass looks black from the red sky. There’s a part of me who hates him, so I invite him in. Take-out containers litter the counter space in the kitchen and the end tables, there’s laundry in small piles throughout the entire house, like an archipelago of musty fabric. Coach Zhang glances down as he steps over them, taking note of my table covered in mail, my floors I haven’t cleaned, the squalor. It’s possible my house smells vile, but I wouldn’t know, I’ve habituated to all forms of my human decay. The old me would have been mortified, she would have apologized profusely as she cleared a space, would have had the ability to make a joke to lighten the mood. We sit side by side on my couch.
“I’ve been a bit down.” I say as if I have the flu, when really, I am rotting.
“I have your address from all the Christmas cards. Sorry for just dropping in.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you know, today was the first day I’ve spoken to you since it happened?” His voice is high, like he’s telling a joke, but his eyes swim. “I constantly catch myself worried about you and how you’re doing, but then I remember, hey, Zeda isn’t the only one. I’m fucked up by it too.” My mouth feels dry and I swallow, wishing he would just leave. I invited him to, what? To show him not to return, maybe. His brown eyes look like the shadow of Saturn in the Hubble images of the solar system, they glass over.
I used to imagine Albert Zhang coming over at night, just like this, me on my porch, him suddenly in my driveway, the same fevered look to him. I imagined what his mouth would feel like against mine, his hands against my jaw, his eyelashes on my cheek. I was enamored by our friendship, it felt so pure and genuine that both of us were frozen by it. Would romance be the next step? Would it ruin everything? The pining for him was once so pleasurable, at times painful, but now I don’t feel any of that. I don’t feel anything.
He breaks into a sob, the cadence of a sea shanty, and lays his body over my lap, as if he wants me to hold him or nurse him.
“Albert,” I say, pulling my legs from beneath his torso. “I need you to go. I’m not feeling well.”
As soon as he leaves, I pace the house, my body full of a heavy buzzing, it fights to escape, making my blood hiss. I put all the takeout containers in garbage bags, shove all the laundry into one giant island in the hall. I call the four moms and say I can’t do the morning school run anymore, I call Khlani’s mom last. I lie in the bathtub, think about dissolving like a slug. I’m a creature that can’t find the will to call Albert and apologize for the unceremonious way I made him leave. The old me would have called. She dreamed of Albert Zhang, prayed to gods she didn’t believe in for him to appear. She had so much to say, her brain filled with concern and hope and love.
The next morning, I quit the customer service job. I lie in bed. I don’t eat. I think about painting. I won’t, but I think about it. I’m jobless now. How long will it take before they seize my house? But, of course, they can’t really take anything from me, not anymore. I envision John Everett Millais’s painting, Ophelia, only it’s my head resting back in flower-soaked pond water, my body floating. I blink, seeing Delila now, her hair fanning out around her head, her body beautiful in the deep green.
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
I was teaching Georgia O’Keeffe to Mrs. Kent’s fourth-grade class while I shaped a soda bottle cap into a flower with plyers. It was for a recycled sculpture I’d be working on with the next class. Vivaldi’s Spring bounced around the room, the violins buoyant like breeze. It was an uncharacteristically cold February day. I heard it just as the students began drawing orchids on black paper with oil pastels. Ava Chanler was asking if she could draw a cactus, instead of an orchid. I paused, distracted by a series of pops in the distance. The students were talking and the music was weaving through their conversation. I opened my door and poked my head out. A man screamed. There it was again, the pops, sounding like fireworks. Silence fell throughout the students, but Vivaldi still played, the cheerful music suddenly grotesque. Some of the children stood up, their mouths open in shock, some instinctively crouched.
“Everyone, let’s get to the supply closet. Quickly, and no talking.” I said, forcing my voice to be clear and calm, but it shook violently. I pressed the red button beside the fire alarm, notifying the nearest police station there was an active shooter. I locked the classroom door and stood in the center of the empty art room, listening to Spring, trying to hear what else was happening. I turned the music off. A door slammed. More shots. Were they getting louder? Should I stay in the classroom alone, to make the shooter think there were no students with me? Maybe they’d shoot me and move along. Or maybe, he’d eliminate me and then find the students, unprotected and afraid, in the supply closet? Was there more than one? My mouth filled with saliva and my stomach seized up into my ribs, throbbing. My heart pulsed like a hammer against meat, thwack, the sound was heavy in my skull, thwack, thwack, thwack. I could wrestle a man if I surprised him, I could tackle the shooter to the ground, maybe. More shots popped, unmistakably closer now. It felt like cold saline was being pumped into my veins, a chilled, acrid taste in the back of my mouth. I got into the storage closet with the others.
Three girls held hands, their knuckles white. Twenty pairs of eyes bored into me, beseeching me. A few students in the back laughed nervously. I pressed my finger to my lips. The art supply closet became a bunker, so what did that make the children? Soldiers? Refugees? We all jumped as a violent noise screamed above our heads, ripping the tension in the air. Someone had pulled the fire alarm, and it whirred and whirred and whirred. The children flinched, half clapped their hands against their ears. Was there a fire, now? Or had someone pulled it to warn others to get out of the building? Nova Schnider, a boy sensitive to loud noises, clung to my legs. He looked like a toddler in that moment, not a ten-year-old. I sank down to my knees and hugged him. Alice Mackenzie wept, pressed against the gallon jugs of primary colors. Collen Tosling whispered, this isn’t for real, right, teacher? We waited in the closet until an army of police officers evacuated the school. They had the children and me run bent at the waist to a side exit in the hallway.
We formed lines where we had field day every year. Mrs. Kent found me and took attendance of her students, sobbing. The sunlight was blinding. My breath was loud in my ears, my chest pulsing like a sucking wound. I pulled away from Mrs. Kent, who was shaking and holding onto my arms, following the chaos to the front lawn. I moved in slow motion, unable to hear, like my head was filled with cotton. Bodies were being laid out in the shade, behind the school’s sign in the front lawn, Vice Principal Jones, Shelby Shandle, a second-grade language arts teacher, and Delila, her black ink hair spilling out around her head, like a halo of oil in water. Her chest was unrecognizable.
Parents and pedestrians were bound back by police tape and officers. News reporters were already there, people pointed their phones at the school, there were no paramedics or firefighters yet. Sirens blared down the street, but you could barely hear them over a different sound. It was like a rising storm over an undulating sea, gathering a terrible momentum as small bodies were carried out of the school, their lifeless eyes wide in the shock of their final seconds. Voices rose until they became echoes of one sound, wounded animals, roaring like wind. Some parents fought to get to the children’s bodies, to see if they were theirs, but were held back. An officer tackled a parent to the ground. A police officer was shouting, where is the goddamn paramedics? Another officer screamed, the veins in his neck bulging, leave the bodies where they are!
The shooter shot himself when the fire alarm sounded. He came in through the cafeteria and killed three lunch aids, then he went to the first classroom he could find. Eighteen dead, not counting the shooter, and seven injured. From what the three survivors of Delila’s class said, she shielded the students with her body. She died first.
The school closed for a week. There was an emergency staff meeting, an emergency school board meeting, then an emergency town hall meeting. People screamed about gun reform, about immigrants, about drag queens, about God. They sang and danced and performed gymnastics about mental illness in this country—yes! They decided that was the culprit. There was a strong discussion about arming schoolteachers with AR-15s. In the end, the school board would evaluate options and get back to the community within a fortnight. The day before the school reopened, I went to get my bearings back in the art room. All the oil pastels and children’s drawings of orchids were still on the tables, one was a cactus. A woman was laying roses in the front lawn, I stared at her from the window, breathing heavy. People had been leaving teddy bears, stuffed unicorns, pictures of the dead children and teachers, candles, wreaths of roses. I walked to the woman with the roses.
“One for each,” she said in a cracked vocal fry. “All angels now.”
I did not go back when it reopened, I couldn’t even imagine it, I couldn’t move.
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
My mother and father, who have been divorced longer than I have been alive, show up at my house together, as a unit, and demand I take action.
“Zeda, what happened was horrific, just devastating, but you can’t live like this. It’s been almost a year now.”
My heart is growing six legs and trying to crawl out of me.
“We thought you could paint,” my dad says. “Or therapy. Have you considered therapy?” This is a big sentiment for my dad, who believes therapy is a circus.
“Yes, Zeda, paint.”
They stay the night, my mom in my bed, and my dad on the couch. I lie beside my mother and listen to her snore, feeling overwhelmed with love for them, something so unexpected it makes me cry from the shock of it. The next day they wash my sheets, scrub my toilet, and cook me large, starchy meals. I humor them and prep a canvas in the living room while my father mows my lawn, and my mother folds towels. The smell of linseed oil and gesso saturates my brain in calm memories of painting, making me forget the past year, my heart pleasantly still. For the first time, there is clarity. I sketch out the bones of the painting, then fill it in with sap green, cerulean, brass pearl. I paint the children’s bodies in the grass, Clair McDonald, who always drew zebra-unicorns on the art tables, Connor Zara, who liked to stand when he painted, Danielle Krosky, who intuitively understood color. My father says this is not what they meant. He speaks loudly to my mother outside, saying my brain is addled by trauma. The painting is shocking, he’s right, but correct in its blaring injustice. Art is meant to do this, and I sob into the viridian.
After my parents leave, I call Kimberlee Watts, and we talk on the phone for two hours. Principal Watts believes my thoughts on art, aftermath, and trauma are so inspirational she wants me to speak about it at school. She invites me to teach again after the winter break.
Over the next month I finish my painting of the school and the dead children, believing, more than I ever have, art can save us all. I begin another canvas, a close up of Delila, dead in the grass. I make her look beautiful and luminous, surrounded by striking color and dramatic light, imitating John William Waterhouse’s style in his painting The Lady of Shalott. I plan to paint each murdered person in a similar way.
After the winter break, I reprise my role as the art teacher. My first class of the day is Ms. González’s third grade, they clap in the hall when they see me standing by my door. Their teacher claps with them, beaming at me before going back to her room. Coach Zhang stops by on my planning period. He says he couldn’t imagine a better start to the new year. I tell him I need some quiet. The next day, I bring my painting, which I have titled, The American Elementary School, and mount it on the white board. In each class, I have the children get out of their seats and examine it one by one. I project Delila’s class photo on the wall. It’s life size this way, as if they are posing for the class photo in the art room. I instruct the children to pick a student to draw.
“These are the ones that died?” A fifth-grade boy named Tony asks in a hushed voice.
“They are.”
Sonya Cummings, the shyest of all the fifth graders, draws the classroom with all the children and teachers dead, their bodies bloodied with maroon and scarlet crayons. I praise this drawing above all the others and hang it on the white board beside my canvas.
After the school day, I input participation grades in the computer while listening to Mozart’s Day of Wrath! Dies Irae, when Coach Zhang and Principal Watts come in. They stare at The American Elementary School, and Sonya’s drawing beside it.
“Wow. Okay,” Kimberly lets out a dry snort of laughter, humorless. “Zeda, we need to rethink some things.” Albert’s eyes move from my canvas to Sonya’s drawing and back again, his mouth set in a firm line. I break the silence and tell them about my new art series, painting each murdered person from our school, saying the kids could benefit from doing the same. Kimberlee says we need to take a beat.
She looks at Albert and they communicate silently with their eyes. “Zeda, you need a break.” She insists again.
“No. I have so much I want to do with the students. And, anyway, I should be here. If we’re sending our children off to be killed, I want to be with them. It’s what Delila would want.” I feel, for the first time, back to myself. At the mention of Delila, Albert’s face reddens. Kimberlee looks at Albert and speaks like I am not in the room.
“She is overworked,” she concludes.
“You think this is from stress?” he asks, thrusting his hand up at the painting.
“Overworked from two days?” I step between them, “Our children shouldn’t die alone.”
“You don’t have any children.”
“Well, our community’s children.”
“Zeda, you have upset the students, do you not see that? I’ve already gotten calls from parents and it’s not even four o’clock.” She fans herself with her hands. “Why would you bring this, this, horrible painting to the school? And show it to the students? To a kindergarten class?”
“We can’t just forget what happened! I thought you agreed with me?”
She lets out another awful peel of humorless laughter. “You’re on leave until the summer, then you’ll hand in your resignation, again. I can’t fire you because of a mental breakdown, and I don’t want to, but just know, you can’t come back to this school.” Before she leaves, she wheels around and rips Sonya Cummings’ drawing from the white board. I stand there, stunned, listening to her footsteps fade down the hall.
“What the hell? Fired after two days?”
“You’re not fired, didn’t you hear her?” Albert’s voice shakes. “You work for two days, and now you’re, what, on some type of sabbatical?” He spits the word like it’s a curse. “You’re rewarded for this?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know, Delila would not want you acting like an insane person. Don’t use her as an excuse to behave deranged.” I gape at him.
“You, and this whole fucking school, wanted me to come back and teach so bad, and now I’m back. And Delila died here with her students.” I scream the last part. “She would want us to protect the students. She’d want us to remember what happened and do something about it.” My voice calms. “I’ll die with them, next time.”
“Please, don’t talk like that,” Albert says.
That night, I lie in bed, tapping my fingers against my temples. The sky is raw umber beneath my lids. I search tickets to Europe, calculate flat rentals in Rome. The realization feels like the prick of dawn in my brain. I could finish my painting series there. I buy a one-way ticket that leaves tomorrow with a credit card. Before I pack a suitcase, I sit on the floor and unbind The American Elementary School canvas from the frame. I carefully roll it up and secure it in a case. In my garage, I get a can of liquid adhesive. Down the dark, silent streets, I walk with the case strapped to my back, the can of adhesive in one hand, a brush in the other, feeling eerily calm as I move down the ground licked with moonlight.
I let myself in through the art room from a window I left unlatched that afternoon. Through the dark halls, I walk under the red beams of exit signs to the main lobby. I unroll the canvas and lay it out on the linoleum to flatten. There’s an indistinct buzzing from one glowing exit sign. I paint the adhesive on the wall, and then secure the canvas, using my library card to smooth out any bubbles. My hands smell of linseed oil, and something vaguely sweet from the glue. I sit down and wait for it to dry. I close my eyes and see Delila standing by her pergola, paperback book in hand, laughing, the sky and her, both aching with light. The image swells in my sternum, a force bowing out the bone. I think about Sydney Miller, who did not have any front teeth, Dahsay Lightly, who made everyone laugh, Carter Jones, whose mother always wanted to have a conference with me over his drawing abilities, Felicity Crouch, Elli Sheilds, Joseph Pool…I see all of them, dead in the deep green.
By the time the glue dries the only way to remove the canvas will be by ripping it, slowly, like skin, like flaying the epidermis from the subcutaneous layer of fat.