literature

mi, a name I call myself

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austheke's avatar
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Literature Text

The first day you had piano lessons, your older sister cried, because neither of you had been to school yet and the waiting room full of strange children scared her, and so your mother had to take her outside and feed her an orange slice by slice before she would stop. She came back in sticky with juice and tears to find you with a toy keyboard in your lap, tapping gently at it as if every accidental harmony was intended, and as if every clang of wrong notes was secretly a masterpiece.

When your names were called it was you who had to be dragged away into the room where the real piano waited, and where the teacher was polishing her glasses impatiently. Your mother apologized, twice.

The teacher was a young woman, but her hair was tied in a severe bun--her skirt was long, her glasses wire-rimmed, her skin tight over her cheekbones.

Do, a deer, a female deer
Re, a drop of golden sun
Mi, a name I call myself
Fa, a long, long way to run
Sol, a needle pulling thread
La, a note that follows sol
Ti, I drink with jam and bread
And that brings us back to…


Surprisingly, her voice was sweet. It didn't crack even once.

On the second time you were both supposed to sing with her, but by the third line your sister forgot the words. You continued bravely on, making up the words you didn't know.

"They have potential," the teacher said, adjusting her glasses. You didn't know what she meant, so you sat quietly and stared at the piano, memorizing the shape of it, the way its weight made depressions in the carpet. Your sister fidgeted beside you, swinging her feet, but the formation of the keys fascinated you.

The bench was black and very tall, and you stared up at it with a kind of mute fascination. While the teacher talked you thought, in a wordless childlike fashion, of inventive ways to climb up. You didn't notice when the teacher stopped speaking because you were not listening, but then your mother lifted you up onto the bench and the teacher became a wire-rimmed goddess.

"This is middle C," the teacher said, pressing the key with one finger, and you had never heard anything more beautiful. (You didn't know the word "beautiful", you could not spell it, but the sound still was, even if you couldn't describe it.) You reached out eagerly to touch the keys yourself and nearly fell off the bench.

By now your teacher has grown into her glasses and taut skin, but she still remembers your sister's bewilderment at that first note and your delight. She was never good with names but she can still recall your face.
Wow. This piece is part of a "novel" that I started months and months and months ago. I'm no longer really sure what my premise for it was, and I never got past the third paragraph of chapter two, but this is the first chapter.

:bulletblack::bulletred::bulletorange::bulletyellow:

things in progress right now
-editing NaNo '09
-making a clever book of vignettes
-passing all my classes
-getting back into writing

More, better-written work will be up soon. <3
© 2009 - 2024 austheke
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katully97's avatar
I keep reading your work and all I can say is wow!