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{brittle piano} jessica thummel An old piano sits in the corner of my grandmother's living room. Each key has a face and they look at me when I play, brittle and out of tune. When I finish, before I close the lid, I rub the face of the woman. She lives on middle C. No one plays the piano except for me and my grandmother's neighbor, Russell. . He is eight, a year older than me, but my feet dangler lower, and he smells like wet dog and cut grass. He sits next to me, watching my fingers trail across the rusty keys and then props open the front of the piano to peek inside at the long wooden legs that kick out the notes. I finish and rub the woman's face. It is only an outline really, but her hair is long like I wish mine were if only my grandmother wouldn't cut it every month. Russell laughs "Why do you do that?" He stares at my finger. I tell him that I think that she is beautiful. He says that she is just a blob where the paint has worn off. "No she's not." I shout and slam the lid on his hand. He yelps, pulls his hand out, pinches the soft skin on the back of my arm, and then runs out the door. The loud clap from the screen door brings my grandmother into the room. "Go out and play." She says with a thick Mexican accent, and scoots me off of the piano bench. That night, when it is still too early to go home, Russell and I play in the dirt in the alley behind my grandmother's house. "I have something to show you." Russell says. He pulls down his pants. The light from a street lamp shines on him and I can see the line around his thigh where his swim trunks block out the sun. "Ughh." I cover my eyes, but peek through the cracks between my fingers as he pulls up his pants. I turn around, and run toward the front door, my fingers still covering my eyes. I've never seen a penis before, and I think that it looks like the small barbeque wieners that my grandmother makes at parties. The next party I watch as Russell's parents eat wieners with a toothpick, and I gag. "Qué pasó?" my grandmother asks. She wags a wiener in my face. "Te gustaban esas." I gag again, and press my lips together. The adults drink their wine and laugh at me. "Lily, why don't you play the piano for us?" Russell's mom asks. She points to the piano, and I look over at Russell who sits in the corner drawing. He hasn't come over since the night in the alley, and I worry that we will never sit on the bench together again. "Yeah, Lily, why don't you show them the woman?" Russell says. "Mujer?" My grandmother questions. I glare at Russell because no one knows about her but him and I, and I want to keep it that way. "Yeah, Lily is in love." Russell makes fun of me. "Que quieres decir?" My grandmother asks Russell, but he doesn't understand Spanish. "He's just being mean." I say and run to the piano. I wave Russell over to play "Heart and Soul" with me, and the adults sit and watch. They barely pay attention, except for my grandmother whose eyebrows wrinkle and she swallows her glass of wine in one gulp. When we finish playing, Russell points at the woman on middle C. "That's her." I push my elbow against his rib and slam the lid. He screeches, and rubs the spot with his hand. The adults still laugh, someone passes around the wine bottle, refilling the glasses and my grandmother pours the biggest one of all. I find her a few weeks later staring at the piano keys. It is early and I need a drink of water. As I walk into the living room, I see her leaning over the keys, inspecting. My thin ankles are not quiet, and crack with each step, and she hears me. She startles and slams the lid to the piano suddenly. She smiles and I stare at her hand which rests on top of the wooden lid just above middle C. "Good back to bed, mija." She says to me. Russell's sister, Greta, has marvelous hair. She sits with her boyfriend on the couch while Russell and I sit cross-legged at the coffee table. I stare at the black strands. They sway against her arms like a thick blanket and I wish that I had some of my own to wrap up in. Greta's boyfriend has lots of pimples and he always plays with her hair. I pretend that I can crawl around the couch and run my fingers through it myself, but instead I use my colored pencil to draw a better picture of the woman who lives on middle C. "I think Lily like girls." Russell tells his sister and then giggles. My face becomes hot and I crumple the picture before Greta can look at it. "That's not true." I tell Russell. "It is so." He yells, and steals the crumpled drawing from my hand. "Give it back." I am so angry that I start to cry. Russell holds the paper above his head, while still sitting on the floor, and I jump forward to grab it. It crunches between my fingers and I run to the bathroom and slam the door. A few seconds later Greta knocks softly. "Lily, can I come in?" I look in the mirror. My brown eyes are ringed, red and puffy. I sniffle. I use both hands to turn the knob. "Don't listen to my brother." Greta says. I stare at her hair. "He's just a boy." I nod and look down at the drawing still crumpled in my hand. Greta takes it, unrolls it, and smoothes it along the wall. She stops and smiles. "She is really beautiful." Greta says, and then hands me the drawing. I now know that Greta was probably just being nice, but I can't help but think of her while Russell's hand is between my legs. We are both thirteen, but in a week his birthday will make him a year older again. He kisses my mouth, breathing heavily and pushing his lips so hard against mine that they begin to go numb. His finger slips in and I gasp a little. He breathes faster and begins to wiggle it in and out. I'm not thinking about him, but the long, shiny hair that flung across Greta's shoulders, and they way her body curved before she got fat. I think about the woman on middle C and what she would feel like if she were real. At some point Russell stops and pulls his hand out from beneath my jeans. He smiles shyly, and later when he thinks that I'm not looking, he smells his finger. It seems disgusting, but somehow I wish it were me and I were smelling someone on my finger. Russell has a girlfriend with short hair and olive skin. Her name is Aida, and when she laughs her whole body shakes and it's deep like the sound of her soul. Russell met her in college, and brought her back for the summer. She lives in his house, and my grandmother complains about people having sex before they're married. "It's disgusting" She says, and then begins to complain in Spanish, something she always reverts to because she thinks I will understand her less, but I understand her more. "It is foul" She says in Spanish, "Almost worse than the gays." She throws her rag she used to wipe the counter and looks closely at me. I stare at the rag instead of her eyes, and then shuffle over to the piano. The lid squeaks when opened, and it seems that in the months between my winter and summer vacation, no one has played the piano, not even to peak in at the beautiful woman. I close my eyes and begin to play. Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata fills the room and I sway my head softly, pretending the woman from middle c was real, and I open my eyes to stare at her. My fingers stop sharply, and the foul sound of missed keys fills the room. Each key is polished to a shiny white and not one figure shines through the fresh coat of lacquer. The woman, my woman, has been suffocated, eliminated, and I bend closer to inspect middle C. "It's gorgeous. Don't you think?" My grandmother says from the doorway of the kitchen. I stare at the shadow from my nose, obscuring the key, and the white keys all around it are empty and barren as the white's of a corpse eye. I suddenly hate my grandmother. Tears sting my face, but I can't help but nod my head and agree. After all, it was only an image, I tell myself. The woman on middle C is still there, still smiling, hidden under layers. Russell brings Aida over later that evening. He is excited to show her our old routine. I sit on the left, he on the right, and he props open the front of the piano, exposing the wooden legs below dancing as we play. "She's gone" Russell comments when we are done, and I instinctively rub the shadow of the woman on middle C. "No." I say. "She'll come around." I wasn't really sure what I meant by that until a day, during that same summer, Russell is gone, playing basketball with his friends. Aida asks me to watch a movie. It is cold and dark in the basement of Russell parent's house. We are alone, and she sits close to me on the small loveseat, so close that I can smell her peach lotion, the peppermint gum in her mouth, and feel the heat rising from the side of her thigh. She laughs at a joke, which I don't understand because all I can think of is the feel of her breasts on my knee when she leans over for more popcorn. I want to touch her, and before I know it, I am in between her legs just like Russell had me six years before. Same couch, same motions, but this time I don't think about Greta's hair, or the woman on middle C. I think about Aida, and the warmth that wraps around my middle finger. Later, when Russell arrives back, sweaty and red from his basketball game, I hug them both goodbye. Aida blushes and lingers longer than Russell. As I walk across the grass in the dark, I smell my finger and smile. My grandmother has nothing to give me when she dies except for her old piano. Russell and his wife, Sarah, help me load in the back of a rented pick-up. I plant it in the corner of my New York City apartment. It barely fits, and must act as a table and a chair for guests. I play it so much that the paint wears off from the keys, my neighbors and either call the cops or come over to listen. I get requests and sheets of new music from struggling musicians, but the most interesting spectator arrives from the streets. "I heard your music from the window." She says from the doorway. She brushes her hair back with one hand and smiles shyly. "It was beautiful." I invite her in, and because I have no other chairs, ask her to sit with me on the bench. I start to play, and she puts her hand over mine. "I know this will sound silly, but do you know how to play 'heart and soul'?" She asks. I smile, thinking of Russell, and nod. "You play the upper part." I say. We play, and when I finish, she leans over me to look at middle C. "Well, isn't that lovely. That looks just like a woman." She says. "She's beautiful, isn't she?" I say. She looks up at me, and nods slowly. "She is." |
