The Sweetest Sound

by Sherri Winston

  “God knows all your secrets,” he’d said. I practically ducked down in my seat.

  Honestly! Fear and guilt followed me like a cloud. I’d promised to use my voice to sing loud and stop being shy if He granted my wish. But I wasn’t sure I was ready to do that.

  Maybe I needed some kind of sign. Like when Moses struck the rock and it flowed with water in Numbers 20:10–11. Or in Matthew 14:17–21 when He fed the multitudes with loaves and fishes. I mean, in Bible School, we learned that when God gives us a sign, we need to pay attention. We understood that if you have faith, God will deliver miracles.

  While I waited for a sign, I kept practicing at my piano teacher’s house. Mrs. Reddit was also the music teacher at my school; she gave lessons on the side. One day while we were practicing, she had gone to make a call, and I got caught up in one of the pieces—“His Eye Is on the Sparrow”—and began to sing. The words did not get caught in my throat or stumble over my lips. They passed through my heart, one by one, until they rose up to the chandelier above the dining room table. Singing with all my soul made me feel free and beautiful and loved.

  Until I finished and realized Mrs. Reddit was standing right there.

  Then I felt trapped and terrified and exposed.

  My heart started pounding. My face felt hot and itchy. But part of me truly also wondered if she thought I was as good as I’d begun to think I was—even though I didn’t want to think about being good at all.

  And sure enough, she said, “Cadence, was that really you? That was the most amazing thing, child. How long have you been singing like that?”

  She saw the terror in my eyes. Saw me start to shake. She rushed over. Wrapped her long, thin arms around me. Hugged my body into her powdery perfume softness.

  “Please don’t tell. Please don’t tell. Please don’t tell,” I whispered over and over again. I wasn’t even sure who I thought she’d tell. I just knew I didn’t want anyone else finding out.

  Mrs. Reddit, being so awesome and all, promised it would be our secret. “When you’re ready to sing in public, you will. I hope one day you will trust me with your gift and let me show you how to make it shine,” she said.

  After that, even when I was hiding in the back row of choir in her class, Mrs. Reddit never mentioned my singing again.

  But now, my two best friends, Zara and Faith, were counting on me. In a little less than a month, I’d be turning eleven. An important age in choir years. At church, eleven was how old you had to be to go from the baby choir, which we were in, to the Youth Choir with the big kids. And nobody got into the Youth Choir without auditioning. In front of everyone.

  Zara and Faith had already had their birthdays. Now it was up to me. We’d vowed to be ready for the next round of auditions, which were the first Thursday of the month. That meant they were a little over four weeks away, the week after my birthday. All of church’s choirs would be performing in the upcoming Gospel Music Jamboree the day after Thanksgiving. And we didn’t want to be stuck in the baby choir for the show.

  The problem? I was still so terrified of singing in public. I was not ready.

  And time was running out.

  2

  Emotions

  A funny thing happens when people are constantly trying to fix you: Eventually, you believe you need fixing. Being everyone’s favorite makeover project was simply exhausting. To me, it seemed perfectly normal to sit alone in my room and spend a whole day reading and writing, listening to music, or playing on the keyboard. Whenever I was at school or out someplace surrounded by people, after a while it made me feel tired. On weekends I could spend a whole day without wanting or needing to talk to anyone. That felt right.

  However, according to town legend, my quietness had worried my mother from the time I was a little baby. According to that same legend, she worried that I needed to come out of my shell. I was three years old. Perfect shell size, thank you very much!

  Those were the thoughts twisting inside my head on Saturday morning while working on chores with Daddy.

  Not quite eight o’clock yet. Must clean, must polish, must shine.

  Our routine. Junior was a late riser. He did yard work, garbage collection, wood polishing, and more, but not this early in the day.

  Daddy was a former air force man. He liked order.

  Saturday mornings we had our own rhythm. Coffee brewed in the octave of middle G. Same pot that formerly propped up my mother’s good-bye note. I once asked Daddy why he’d kept it. The coffeepot. He told me, “No use throwing out a good appliance.” Aunt Fannie said Daddy was a very practical man. Humph! Of course, I’d caught him staring at that coffeepot for hours right after my mother left. Like if he looked long enough, the note might reappear with an entirely different message.

  Still, Aunt Fannie said practical meant “logical, orderly, and doing what needed doing when it needed to be done.” And right now, one thing that needed doing was the dishes.

  Dry the dish. Pass it along. Give it to Daddy. Grab another dish from the dishwasher.

  Plates squeaked. Silverware pinged off china cups. F-sharp. Ping! Ping! Ping!

  Dry. Pass. Whoosh. Plink.

  Heat from the stackable washer-dryer filled the space around us. The air smelled of brewing coffee and lemon dishwashing soap. The dishwasher put some bass in the space. Bass clef keys, D and E. I called them belly grumblers because they were so deep.

  Daddy cocked an eyebrow my way. “You playing music in your head again, Mouse?”

  “Nope!” I snatched my fingers down. I had a habit of moving them in the air around me, tapping invisible keys.

  He snapped his dish towel at me. “Quit telling tales,” he rumbled. Definitely in the treble key of E. I giggled.

  “Um, soooo…” I said. “Were you able to fix Miss Clayton’s guitar string?” I pretended I was focused on drying a cup. Daddy hiked up the same eyebrow.

  “Why do I feel like I’m being set up?” he asked.

  Dry. Pass. Whoosh. Plink. The rhythm played out in the treble clef notes, high with a ring to them. G-A, G-A, G-A, G-A.

  “Um, because there is too little trust in the world?”

  He grunted.

  Miss Clayton was my teacher at Mountain View Academy of the Arts, a magnet school for K–8. I loved her class more than any class ever. She was the very best writing teacher in the whole entire world.

  And she was single!

  See, I had an idea.

  Daddy had been hovering over me since my mother left. That meant practically four years of nonstop hovering. Much like everyone else in town, he worked extra hard to make sure that I didn’t feel forgotten without a mother. He did a great job. He really did. Most of the time, anyway.

  Lately, however, all his good-doing had begun to feel a lot like overdoing.

  Like when I complained about feeling tired. Sometimes being around people all day at school made me feel like a cell phone that’d been off its charger too long. I told him so. That couldn’t be it, he said. The problem was probably psychological.

  That wasn’t it?

  Psychological?

  Wasn’t it bad enough my mother told me I “looooooooved” sky gazing long before it was true; then Daddy told me I had “forgiven” my mother, even though I wasn’t sure if that was true?

  A girl your age needs to get out more and be with EVEN MORE PEOPLE to get EVEN MORE TIRED! That’s what he told me. In the words of Faith, “Ay, dios mio!” Oh, my God!

  I love my father. He meant well. But really, all his fussing? For goodness’ sake! It wore me out!

  But I didn’t say anything. I was afraid to tell him that sometimes he made me feel about as damaged as the rest of the town did. Like when Miss Gladys, from down the block, took my face in her hands and cried, “You poor girl.” Or the way the mailman was always asking, “Are you going to be all right?” I was afraid telling Daddy would make him sad like he’d gotten when my mother left.

  My first idea was to run away, into the woods,
and live among the wild deer. Then I thought about how hard it might be to keep my books from getting wet and gross AND trying to find decent paper to write my future novels.

  Enter my new plan!

  What if I helped Daddy find a lady friend?

  He had not dated, not once, since my mother left. He was a good-looking guy, you know, as far as daddies go, and he was just kinda old—like thirty-six. He even had all his hair and teeth. Maybe if he had someone to spend time with, take to the movies, he wouldn’t need to keep an eye on every single thing I did.

  While we’d been cleaning, he told me to make sure to wear something warm when we left for breakfast. I mean, really! I knew how to dress myself. I was turning eleven in a month!

  “I know how you operate, Miss Slick!” he was saying. Dry. Pass. Whoosh. Plink. G-A, G-A…

  I said nothing.

  He went on. “You broke the strings on your teacher’s guitar on purpose,” he said, putting away the last of the dishes.

  My tiny laugh said, Busted, sister!

  Still, I gave him my best “who, me?” look. He grunted again. Then he laughed, shaking his head. Of course I’d broken the strings on purpose.

  Guitars, violins, violas, and mandolins covered several walls in our house. If anyone in the world could fix Miss Clayton’s guitar string, it was Daddy. So as soon as she turned her back in class on Friday, I’d pried the strings loose and frayed one. Trust me, it had been a mercy killing. That thing was sorely in need of tuning. She didn’t play the guitar; she just used it as a prop during our language arts class when we acted out plays.

  “She’s a nice lady, your teacher,” he said, not looking at me. I turned away from him, nodding my head. Smiling like the Cheshire Cat in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

  Next I had to dust all the furniture and instruments. As usual, I saved Cherie Amour for last. That was Daddy’s fancy electric guitar that sat in the corner of the family room. Daddy used to be a most excellent guitar player, only he hadn’t played Cherie Amour in a long time—not since my mother left us that note on the coffeepot. It was as if all the music went out of old Cherie Amour. Out of Daddy, too.

  “Daddy, are you ever going to play Cherie Amour again?”

  He blinked at first, like he didn’t understand. Then he went into wicked air-band mode. He squeezed his eyes shut and made a face like he was jamming out on a super stage, guitar in hand. I jumped around and offered silent cheers and air-applause. He bowed.

  “Thank you, thank you!” he said.

  He was feeling silly this morning. Pretending to play his guitar. Feet wide apart. Tongue pushed out one corner of his mouth. Wiping fake sweat off his forehead.

  I shook my head. Oh, Daddy. Sometimes I felt like the grown-up.

  “Promise me one thing,” I said with a sigh.

  “What?”

  “If you do play her again, promise you won’t look like that while you’re doing it!”

  He wrinkled his brow. Made his deepest frown. Then leapt toward me. Made his eyes sort of bug out.

  He growled. “You’ve awakened the monster,” he said. “You’ve awakened Sea Bear!”

  I gave him another head shake. Sea Bear. He started doing this thing when Junior and I were little kids. See, he used to work overnight shifts. At the sheriff’s office. When he got home, he told us if we made a bunch of noise and woke him up, he’d turn into a mythical monster. A Sea Bear.

  When we were little, it was funny. But I wasn’t a dopey little kid anymore. Still, when I looked at him, he looked like he needed to be Sea Bear.

  So I did my part. I pretend-squealed.

  “No, Sea Bear! No!” I said, not sounding at all scared. Then he lunged at me, and I squealed for real.

  He growled some more. Said, “Get up those stairs and get yourself into some clothes, brat. Or I’ll be feasting on Mouse stew!”

  “Aaahhhhh!” I half yelled, half giggled, racing up the stairs. I didn’t stop until I reached the second-floor landing.

  Below, I heard Sea Bear chuckle and walk away. I waited for a second. Let my heart rate chill out on its own. Then I took in the quiet of the second floor.

  Listening, listening, hearing silence, hearing the house sigh and wood floors creak and groan. Hearing the gas furnace kick on with the metallic hiss of a dragon wearing braces. I used to think the furnace was a beast living in our basement. Used to be afraid that one night it would come alive and breathe fire over our feet. That was before I awoke to the note on the coffeepot. I’ve learned there are scarier things in this world than furnaces or basements.

  I was listening for snores and snorts, like usual. Junior never went to breakfast with Daddy and me on Saturday mornings. Especially not during football season. Daddy was overprotective of him, too. He spent a lot of time bossing Junior around. Telling him, “Pull up your grades, boy. Stay out of trouble. Work on your technique.” Daddy had a lot of advice and one main goal—to get Junior a full-ride football scholarship to Penn State University.

  That was where Daddy had wanted to go. Almost made it, too. We heard that story a lot. If I wasn’t hearing it at home, I was hearing it in the diner or at church or in the market or the small library tucked neatly into the edge of the woods. Always bumping into someone who knew Daddy when he was “Harrison Jolly’s youngest boy.”

  How Daddy had played linebacker on the football team. Best in the state. His heart was set on going to Penn State.

  Instead, he wound up marrying Junior’s mama, Jackie Davis. After that, Daddy joined the air force. Later, he and Junior’s mama split up, and after a while, they decided Daddy was better with Junior than she was. Daddy and Junior moved back to Harmony. He started fixing old instruments and playing bass guitar in the church as a hobby. Tinkering and instruments had always been his passion, he said.

  Until he reconnected with his first love.

  Chantel Marie McDonald. My mother.

  Junior’s room was dark. It reminded me of a sanctuary in Penn’s Cave & Wildlife Park where animals laze around in caves scratching their butts. A smell like old socks, old cheese, and maybe a hint of something dead hid in the darkness.

  “Junior?” I whispered, holding my nose. “Junior? Want to come have breakfast with us? I’m afraid I woke the Sea Bear. He might try to make Mouse stew.” I half giggled.

  So dark. Very cavelike. Except for the splash of bright gold sticking out of a pile of clothes on a chair. I reached out and tugged the thick fabric. It was the sleeve of a hoodie.

  To my surprise, Junior rose onto his elbow. Instantly I could see his face, lit by a small rectangle of light from his phone. “Hands off my stuff, Cady Cat!”

  His voice was part growl, part yawn. Had he just woken up? He was one of the few people who never called me that most hideous of hideous nicknames—Mouse—which followed me around everywhere. Church was the worst because a lot of the old people called me Little Miss Mouse. Ugh! Isn’t that awful?

  “Why’re you awake?” I asked. I moved closer to the bed. Soon as I got near, he reached up, hooked an arm around my neck, and yanked me down. Not hard enough to hurt, just enough to annoy me.

  “If you didn’t think I’d be awake, why’d you bring your little butt in here?” he said, scrubbing his knuckles across the back of my head.

  “Junior! Don’t be such a donkey! Stop messing up my hair!” I yelled. I was laughing. Junior was ridiculous. And unlike Daddy and most people in town, he never treated me like I was broken. In fact, Daddy constantly yelled at him for playing so rough. I loved that he treated me like he would anybody else. He never acted like I was some poor little girl with no mother.

  After shaking me around a little, he pushed his cell phone toward me. The rectangle of light shifted from his face to mine.

  “Look,” he said. I did. Pixels of light danced. He explained that at his school’s pep assembly yesterday, he and a few of his big, strong guy friends dressed up like girls and sang a song from the seventies.

  “Check this
out!” he said.

  Looking at the phone’s screen, I saw three figures, psychedelic blurs of color, twisting and twirling while belting out an old-school tune, “Best of My Love,” by this group called the Emotions. Junior could barely get the story out because he was cracking up laughing.

  I said, “Oh, yeah. Sea Bear will really love that!”

  He grunted. “That’s why I used this app to make a filter,” he said, practically doubling over with laughter from his own cleverness. “The filter changes how we look! Sea Bear might see the video, but he can’t prove it’s me!”

  Wouldn’t the whole point of doing something like this be to show how funny you are? Sometimes I just didn’t get Junior and his high school friends.

  “It is hard to tell it’s really you,” I said. “I mean, I hear your voices, but your faces? Everything’s just weird looking.”

  He was still cracking up. “I know, right? I love it. Man, that’s what makes it so funny. I’m putting it on my YouTube channel. Gonna get a thousand hits, I bet.”

  I shook my head. Being a high school boy must be perfectly tragic. Your feet smelled bad almost all the time. Your friends burped or made other bodily sounds at inappropriate times. Worst of all, you laughed at things—like singing with your friends while wearing dresses—that other people didn’t think were at all funny. Poor Junior. He and his high school friends lived for funny videos on the Internet.

  So tragic!

  “Junior? You coming with us? To breakfast?”

  He kept smiling at his creation. “Naw, Cady Cat. You and Sea Bear just go on. I’m gonna post this, then go back to sleep.”

  I left him grinning at his comic genius in the darkened, animal-smelling room. Most likely making gross body noises and scratching his butt.

  Twenty minutes later, Daddy and I were on Main Street, parking in front of the Big Orange Diner. I’d tried to get him to walk over from home. It was two whole blocks away. But, alas, Daddy was too worried I might catch cold or fall off a curb or contract Ebola. There wasn’t even any snow on the ground, but there I was, wrapped up in so many layers of “protection” I felt like a burrito.