Sing The White Note Black (Novel Excerpt) (3) "Go outside? No, we need to stay in and practice. Miss Cecil picked out the perfect song for you to sing." Miss Cecil pulled the curtain closed and turned my body to face her. I could see the stars in her eyes and somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that we eventually were going to disappoint each other but then she asked me to sing and I had to put my growing uneasiness into the back of my mind. Miss Cecil wanted me to sing. She wanted to hear what I sounded like without music. I began by opening my mouth. At the first sound that escaped from me, I sounded breathless and shaky. I tried to steady my voice but my hands felt clammy and cold. I could feel the power inside of me growing weaker. Miss Cecil's face went from satisfaction to contempt in a matter of seconds. She turned her face away from mine and looked down at her fingernails. I guess she thought if she looked away, I might sing better. I could feel my voice getting a little stronger but not enough to please her. I stopped. I shouted that I could not do it. My face was turning red and tears were streaming down my eyes. I hoped that by throwing this fit that Miss Cecil would see that my heart was not into it and would excuse me but she did no such thing. She came over to me and I thought she was going to hug me but instead, she slapped me. She called me all kinds of names. She said that I was going to turn out like the other boys and then she removed something from her pocket. She asked me if I had drawn the paper-constructed picture. I replied with a simple yes. It was a picture of my mother and me. We were standing on the beach in swimsuits. I had drawn our names at the top in my very best handwriting. She told me that she didn't think my mother would want to meet me, knowing that I could not sing and that I was not earning my keep around the house. Miss Cecil then threatened to send me back to where I came from, though I did not know where that place was. After all, since I could remember, she had reminded me that my mother had left me on her doorstep and she had rescued me. I told her then that I was wrong, that I needed to practice, even though I knew I was lying to her. She nodded her head in agreement and smiled at her little victory. She closed the curtains and turned my body so that I was no longer facing the outdoors. I could not see what the boys were doing outside. I longed to escape from my body. I just wanted to be a child and run outside and play. Miss Cecil placed sheet music in my hand. There were words to a song that I was not familiar with. She placed them in my hand and told me that I was to memorize them. For every sentence she gave me, I was to write it down on a piece of paper. She said that writing things down would help me to remember them. I was to carry that piece of paper everywhere I went in my pocket. That piece of paper was my meal ticket. If I came downstairs for breakfast, lunch or dinner and did not know those words or worse, I had lost that piece of paper, I was to march back upstairs, grab another piece of paper and rewrite the words ten times over until they were firmly in my head again. I looked around the room. I hadn't noticed that Miss Cecil had placed a big, giant brown vase on top of a wooden table with a green stain peeking out from under the white, shag carpet. Then, it dawned on me: We were house poor. I looked down at my black pants. There was a hole in the pants knee from a neighborhood baseball game. Miss Cecil had sewn the hole from the pants together with an off-black pouch of fabric. The difference in the two colors was only immediately noticeable to the two of us. She said then that I was the kind of child that would make my parents proud. That if I worked hard enough, I might very well get on television. They would see me and come for me but that would not happen for many years. I didn't realize then how much more other people expected of me than I expected from myself. I personally did not care one way or the other how I performed but Miss Cecil reminded me that one could never be sure of who might be in a singer's audience. She left me then with that image stuck in my mind. She told me to go upstairs and rest my voice while she prepared dinner. The other boys were just coming in now. Usually, whichever one of us had to stay inside due to a punishment, the rest of us laughed and teased whoever was in trouble, including me and I loved joining with them, especially when the troublemaker was not me. But other than that, the boys chose not to bother me. I guess they could tell by the look on my face that I could kill one of them and continue to sing all at the same time. I made my way up the stairs. I could hear their whispers to each other, and finally to Miss Cecil to ask what was wrong with them? I wondered if she told them that I was leaving to go to a new home, would they even care? She told them that I was preparing for a talent show. Their snickers of laughter drowned out the train whistle I could hear in my head. I heard their footfalls on the steps and then they entered the room we shared. I had been given a cot to sleep on in the corner while they slept in twin bunk beds on the other side of the room. They came in the room and ignored me. I could have annoyed them by shouting at the top of my voice and ruining it but then where would I be? I had no other place to go, no other family to turn to. I began to sing. I wanted them to look at me. I wanted every person in the world, in my audience to look at me. I imagined I was up on stage and everyone whom I loved and hated was in the audience. They were all looking at me except for one woman in the back whom I was imagining as refusing to give me eye contact. She started to leave until she heard me singing, and then she knew. My voice started off softly at first. I was shy about this newfound weapon of mine. I began to pick up my voice. I wanted Miss Cecil to turn the radio off downstairs. I wanted the other boys to stop flipping through those movie magazines and pay attention to me. I tried to steady my voice but it wasn't easy. I could feel myself shaking; my sweaty hands I wiped on my pants. I could see one of the boys tapping his foot against the bed. The other two pretended to ignore me at first and I got louder. I felt joy inside me. There was a growing anxiousness in between my legs and the harder I sang, the bigger I could feel myself growing. My face began to sweat and my mouth was dry. They were still turned away from me but they were listening to the words. I began to concentrate on them paying attention to me and then I began to forget the words. I stumbled where I should have soared. I watched them get up and leave then. It was like being at a movie where the movie just couldn't seem to come together. The older two boys decided then that they would rather go outside and play than to stay there and listen to me sing. One of them whispered to the other two, loud enough for me to hear, "He's a joke." He said this just as I was about to hit a high note. I still tried to reach for it but I could feel the sound of the word 'joke' in my brain and then in my throat. My voice cracked. I tried to continue on as I had once seen a singer do on television but the moment was gone. I was standing on the stage and someone had thrown an egg at people and me were leaving, not impressed with my performance. I trailed off the last note and stopped. The last of the other boys turned and looked at me briefly. I thought he forgave me for my bad performance but he quickly looked away. I had failed myself. I wondered then if my parents had ever been in this situation. I wanted to ask the other boys how might I escape this punishment but then, I wasn't sure that I could trust them. I wanted to cry out to them to listen to me but then I thought they might think that I was weak and then use that against me. They already resented me because of my skin but what they failed to realize was that I resented them also. I resented their friendships with the other children and their lack of supposed talent. I chose then to spend the rest of the afternoon looking out the window. I wondered where my parents were, why my mother had left me here for so long, and why she had not come back for me? I supposed that the life she wanted to live was glamorous and did not include me. I began to cry then, feeling sorry for myself. As the tears came down, my voice came out, the right way. It was funny to me how a sense of sadness was what I needed to sound right. I found myself not focused on what people thought of me but what I felt. I tried to hold onto that feeling but I found I couldn't control it and then even my sobbing was uneven. My voice wailed so loudly, I thought the walls were going to shake. I shook uncontrollably but then my shaking caused my body temperature to rise. I could feel the heat on my eyes, nose, lips, tongue, ears, hair, chest, stomach, legs and even my ankles. I could not feel it on my back though. I felt the steam rising from my face that refused to turn the other cheek. I looked around the room. This was not my bedroom. I shared this room with three other boys. I slept on a cot near the window they liked to leave open at nighttime. No wonder, I thought, that my voice could not hit those high notes. I went to clear my throat but it was raspy. I could feel my body about to give out so I went to lie down on my cot but the cot was cold and hard. I didn't want to lie there. The other boys shared the bunk beds. When I had first come to live with Miss Cecil, they had been a few years older than me and I was small for my age. I wet the bed, then, and had asked Miss Cecil for a cot because I didn't want them to know that I wet my sheets but now, I regretted that decision because it made me lonely. I looked out the window. The boys were down the street playing marbles for pennies. This was a regular occurrence for them. Since Miss Cecil would not give us money for any reason, the boys often turned to playing games to earn money to buy candy. I knew that it would be a couple of hours before they came inside. I walked out of the bedroom and to the top of the stairs. I could hear Miss Cecil's voice carrying on. I went back into the bedroom. At first, I thought to lie down on my cot but then I changed my mind and decided instead to lie down on one of their beds. It felt soft and warm. I had only stopped wetting the bed last year but had decided to continue sleeping in my cot. Besides, the only available bunk bed was the top one and whichever boy slept on the bottom feared that my wetness might leak through the bunk bed to the bottom. I had suggested once that they let me sleep on the bottom but then the boys said that whoever slept across from me was going to have to look at my ugly face. I didn't think that my face was that bad to look at but I didn't want to argue with them, for surely this might lead to a three-to-one fight that I could not win. I put my head back on the pillow and looked down on the floor for a moment. Miss Cecil's house depended on the old, hardwood floors for character. I rationalized in my mind that if they came in, I could hear them on the steps. The sun faded away behind our neighbor's evergreen. I watched the sunset through the window facing the bed. Soon it would be suppertime and then after that, Miss Cecil would allow us to watch a little television as long as it was in the living room and with her present. However, that would not happen for another few hours so I turned over onto my stomach. I had left the window open and I could hear the sounds of laughter outside. I smelled fresh-cut grass, smoked hamburgers and a very light scent that reminded me of the gardenia perfume that Miss Cecil often wore. I wanted to be outdoors but I knew that it would be impossible for me to go out the front door. Miss Cecil probably assumed that I was up here practicing but I had tired of that a while ago. I longed to be free like the other boys, outside, exploring the world. I knew then that I could risk going down the tree, which had a huge, steady branch that reached from Miss Cecil's bedroom window to the backyard. Even if she was in the kitchen, the kitchen was so small that usually when she was cooking and talking on the telephone, she sat in the dining room, facing away from the window. I walked over to the edge of the stairs. Miss Cecil's voice floated up the stairs, a melody without pause on the telephone and by the tone of her voice, which was soft and patient; I knew that she would be talking to the other person for a very long while. I went down the hallway to open the bedroom door but it was locked. I had seen one of the other boys pick a lock before. I walked back up the hallway into the bathroom and opened the cabinet. I looked around until I found an old screwdriver behind some cotton balls. I went out of the bathroom and listened at the top of the stairs. The faint smell of English tea threatened to intoxicate me but I came to my senses. I tiptoed back to her bedroom. My fingers went over the lock and played with it until I heard a popping noise and the lock came off. I realized then that in all the time that I had lived there; I had never seen her room before. Every night when I was sleeping, I heard her downstairs drinking tea and sometimes early in the morning when I awoke. I never heard her moving around in her bedroom and when I went in there, I suspected that she probably never spent a lot of time in there. For one, the room was a hot pink color that could have easily blinded me if the sun had been brighter. Her queen-size mahogany bed was covered with a pink comforter and matching shams. The bed had so many pillows, it was impossible to climb up there without knocking it down. Facing the bed was a chest of drawers and over that, a hand-painted portrait of a young woman. The woman had porcelain skin that was smooth like chocolate butter and an expression of sorrow and loss but it was not the face that told me I was staring at Miss Cecil. No, I saw her layered personality through her eyes that were dark and old before they needed to be. She had a rare eye color: black but like a lot of black people, they had gotten lighter over time. Now, they were almost the exact same color of her hair: grey. Her half-smile in the portrait scared me. Who was this person in front of me? I looked down at the objects on top of the chest of drawers: blue rhinestone earrings, a pearl necklace, a tube of lipstick, a half-eaten plain donut, another bag of tea, a yard of white lace. I opened her top drawer and touched her panties. They felt new and silky. I could feel a rise in myself in between my legs. The longer I touched her panties, the harder I became. I needed then to steal a pair, to keep for myself. The other boys had a magazine that they looked at. Once, when they were outside and I was pretending to be sick to escape my chores, I had walked over to the top bunk and lifted it to look at the women in the magazine. The other boys had said there was something wrong with me because I wasn't even interested then at looking at the pictures. I called my own self in question over it but now, I understood the problem. The women in the magazine were small breasted and wore too much makeup. They looked more like dolls than women. I would feel differently about them, as I got older. One year I would accept any woman who would have me and be grateful and call her names that I didn't really mean but when I was eleven years old, I lived in a different world. Miss Cecil, in a world by herself, existed as a black Mona Lisa, regal yet stern. The painter had gone to great pains to articulate and define her, letting her natural beauty fill in for the paint colors he could have used. It would not be until much later that I finally was able to understand that I was attracted to older women. That year, the queen of small breasts had her crown stolen from her and as she would cry on television with her makeup streaming down her face, I realized then how unreal pictures really were. Here stood before me a woman that most people would never see. Miss Cecil hardly ever had visitors other than neighbors and no one came upstairs except us. The shag carpet smelled of citrus oranges and I looked down to make sure that I could still smell the scent after my foot touched a certain spot. But then, I heard footfalls coming toward me. I panicked. Due to the hardwood on the stairs, I couldn't decide if the foot was male or female, I had never really paid attention to the sound of Miss Cecil moving up the stairs. She always used the half-bath on the first floor and rarely came downstairs during the day. I didn't know where to turn, so I opened the closet door and hid inside. I left the door closed but not shut because there was no knob on the inside and I didn't want to be trapped. Miss Cecil had a huge walk-in closet with blue jeans, sweaters, a swing skirt with the top missing, housedresses of every color, a pair of white corseted gloves, an old pair of two-tone buck shoes and endless boxes with more of her belongings. The sweat dripping from my forehead fell down onto the hardwood floor and made a small stain. I hid behind one of her dresses as I heard her enter the room. There were dust particles in the air and I forced myself to hold my nose to prevent me from sneezing. I could hear her sniffing the air and felt her standing in one spot for a second too long. "Who's in here?" she asked the air inside the room. I said nothing. I placed my hand over my head. I was scared that she might come in and see me hiding behind the lock. I saw a huge pile of dirty white wedding gowns on the floor next to an open trunk. Many years later, I found out that she masqueraded as a seamstress and made them by hand. The big pile covered almost a fourth of the closet. I could hide underneath them and pray that she would not find me. I knew that in the spot I was in that I could not very well hide my body. I came out slowly from behind the dress. The sound of laughter, the smell of gin and the throbbing of a very loud radio permeated the room. I hoped that she was distracted long enough not hear me moving around. I took off my shoes and tiptoed over to the pile. I buried myself underneath the dresses, curled up into a ball and hid my shoes behind the trunk. As soon as I did this, I heard the closet door open. Miss Cecil came in. The magic words again: "I said, who is in here?" She looked around the closet briefly and then she did the unimaginable: she locked the door from the outside, trapping me in the closet with an increasingly strange odor of musk. My heart sank and I could feel the weight of the wedding gowns on top of me. Part of me wanted to scream out but in this room of old dresses with one dirt-covered window that probably never had been cleaned off and couldn't be opened unless I broke it with my bare hands. Another part of me wanted to break down the door and scream at her for locking me in there. I came out from under the wedding gowns. I walked over to the window and looked out. Through the dirt marks, I saw the other boys from the house playing touch football with a couple of other boys. Miss Cecil, who rarely went anywhere, was speaking to them. I couldn't hear what she asked them but I saw one of them shrug his shoulders. I assumed then that the question was about me. She turned back and looked again at the house. I saw her staring up at the attic window where I was at and for a moment, I thought she saw me but if she did, she climbed into her car, a 1958 Chevrolet Bel Air and drove off. My nose began to bleed. It ran down onto my lips and I wiped it away with my hand. I kicked over some boxes and slumped into a corner. The temperature of the room began to rise and the weight of panic threatened to overwhelm me. My body slid to the floor, paralyzed and stiff. I opened my mouth to shout out for help but nothing came out. The sun was beginning to go down. Was this it for me? Miss Cecil's bedroom was all the way down the hallway on the far right. I cursed her, convinced that she deliberately placed her room far away to escape from civilization when she needed to but then I rationalized, when did she ever have visitors other than neighbors? The telephone calls she received were always private and kept her talking into the wee hours of the night but never did I discover their identity nor did those callers ever come over. The kitchen, a home away from home, allowed her to live an entirely different world. A world where a woman could leave her home with boy children running through the streets, finding their salvation out there and me, in this closet, alone. Anger rose through me quicker than the lightning rod of God. I walked back over to the window. I could see our neighbor next door pulling into the driveway with his Ford. I banged on the window as he got out of the car. He turned toward me in a gray fedora hat with a wool jacket and his trademark hanky, an open neck dark blue shirt, black pleated pants and wingtip dress shoes. He nodded his hat towards me and proceeded towards his house. My fists banged on the window as I tried to get his attention. He shook his head, as if I was a child with too much time on my hands. I recalled then that he and his wife did not have children, at least not yet. They were in their own world where the movements of crickets provided their only source of annoyance. I knew then that Miss Cecil had seen me and in her anger, had left the house. I turned around and faced the pile of wedding gowns. I sank down in them and began to cry again.
Copyright © 2008 Piper Davenport |