The girl with the piano

The girl is smiling in her mother’s lap. In this very moment, she has no teeth to be seen, and she chews the white cloth that warms her with tender pink gums. But - there is a but, there always is - this moment is more than a moment, it is many, repeated like a much-loved song through the years. And yes, in some she does have teeth. In others there is open space where they once were. Quickly, the white cloth turns into flowing white dresses, her blonde hair grows from wisps to curls, but the dimples in the corner of her smile remain untouched. Now, please do try to form a picture of her: the round angelic face, the chubby fingers, the freckles on her white skin.

Whoever you imagined isn’t her.

When the girl is six years old, in the summer before the mystery that is school, her mother sits her by the piano, and, with a careful touch, holds each of her four hands in position. The stroke of the mother’s fingers dissipates the tension in her muscles, but fails to loosen the puzzled expression, the pouting lips of someone who has not a shadow of an idea of what she is doing, or why. The first thing she plays is what many people first play: a scale - C major, to avoid the black keys. The girl giggles as the notes climb higher and higher.

Then, she dreams: the stage, the lights, the wall of darkness between her and the audience, blinding her to the many faces transfixed by awe and wonder, grief and , or - just perhaps - nothing at all. She would rather not have to see them, in that case. Not that it would have prevented her from trying, because try she will.

For the next twelve years, she grows into someone who is not quite what she had been. Life does that to a person, though for her sake let’s fool ourselves into pretending it isn’t inevitable. The girl trades her white dresses for jeans and oversized jackets her mother tailors for her and her some would say too many arms. She hasn’t lost the taste for them, exactly, but there is a time and place for everything, and, for her, school is a place for lying low. It isn’t that others laugh at the sight of her. In fact, by now they must have grown used to it. But there is a coldness, a distance that arises from the profound truth of her situation: these people are not what I am. Whether they are what she should have been isn’t something she has decided yet.

There is one constant through all of it, and it is music. Of course it is. What else would it be but the swelling of melodies like waves on the shore ? Every day, after hours upon hours of sermons she sometimes bothers to remember, of numbers and letters and plants and History, she sits by the piano straighter than she ever could on the hard wooden chairs of her classroom, and she plays. More: she is impossibly good. She is. She is impossible herself. She knows it. Her mother knows it too: that’s why she often smiles as she hovers in the doorway after long days of work, swaying slightly to the rhythm of the songs. That smile invites wrinkles into the corner of her eyes. There is a sadness in them that vanishes every time the girl stares into them.

Now, she is eighteen years old, and her mother is walking her to the concert hall. There is something she knows and doesn’t know: she isn’t welcome here. She can see it in the way the other competitors glance at her custom-made white dress, furtively like one steals candy from a child. There might be anger there too. There is going to be a competition, and, unbeknownst to her, it was her mother who got her in. Not because of her talent, but despite it.

It would be unfair, someone said.

When she climbs onto the stage, she bows, waves a single hand at the ocean of faces that the spotlights will soon swallow. When she sits by the piano, she plays two-handed, her other two arms hanging simply at her side. The unused fingers twitch as she loses herself to her art. Oh, if only she could use them, how great would her music be then!

Perhaps.

Perhaps not.

She will never know until she tries. That’s why she tries now, even as her mother’s warnings echo inside her. She does it for music - no, she does it for Music, capital letter and all. It is stronger than her, It is what pumps the blood in her veins. In the end, the audience cheers, the candidates barely remember to scowl, mouths slightly partly, the jury doesn’t say a word. But she knows what will happen. Back in the changing rooms, her mother is there to hug her as she cries.

Needless to say, she doesn’t win. Maybe she deserved it, maybe she didn’t, but, either way, the decision was made even before her first note.