Berry caught his dad in a good mood. “How did you deal with losing your voice?” Berry asked.
Marco looked startled. “I never lost my voice. See? I’m talking.” Marco had shaved his scalp but had a head’s worth of hair on his upper lip. Marco had a free-form career as gardener, house painter, spiritual advisor, and sometimes stockbroker.
“No, I mean your singing voice. Your treble one. When did you lose it?”
“Dunno. Thirteen. Maybe fourteen. Your age, more or less.” “I don’t want to change. I wish there was some way I could keep my voice the way it is.”
“Oh no, Berry. You should be excited. It’s a rite of passage to have your voice change. It’s like when a sumo wrestler reaches four hundred pounds or an opera singer grows horns of her own and no longer needs her helmet.”
Berry’s dad had a way of trying to sound whimsical that came across unbearably heavy. Something dragged Marco’s flights of fancy into the muck. Whatever it was, it made Berry cringe even as he knew he was meant to admire his dad’s quips. Berry listened to his dad talk endlessly about menstruation and some obscure West Indian tribe that proved manhood by removing one testicle. If the boy didn’t scream, that proved he was a man. If not, then wave goodbye to the other ball as well. Actually, Marco said, that was one surefire way to keep your boyish voice, “although I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s a lot to give up just to sound pretty. But back in Renaissance Europe, they used to have singers called castrati . . . But anyway, do you have any questions about sex? I’ve been meaning to have a talk with you about it.”
Berry told his dad he had no sex questions. Marco wanted to have the sex talk anyway, using words like “yoni” and “tigerlily,” so Berry stalked off and rode the elevator down to street level. It was Saturday, that non-school nonchurch day where kids with televisions watch cartoons. Berry talked to homeless people for a while, then went back to his apartment.
“Umm ... I want to use the computer,” Berry told Marco. “I need to do school stuff online.”
“You’re too proud to learn Sex 101 from your old man, but you’ll suck forbidden knowledge off the Web,” Marco whined.
Berry opened a chat window with Wilson and hit a search engine. On a whim, he decided to search for “Roland Montreux,” the name Lisa had mentioned.
The Wilson chat window sprang to life, slowed by the Jurassic laptop’s modem. Wilson squirmed in the same Saturday boredom trap as Berry. Marco looked over Berry’s shoulder.
WILSON3874: god shoot me now BERRIBOI: bad day?
WILSON3874: dad had hard work week, he’s hittin whiskey and Keats
BERRIBOI: sounds sucky
Roland Montreux’s first hit on the search engine came from a Canadian site about “reptilian aversion therapy.” Berry skimmed psychojargon. “Do you understand any of this?” he asked Marco, who pretended he did but didn’t. BERRIBOI: my dad’s looking over my shoulder now WILSON3874: hi mr. s
“Hi,” Marco said. “So anyway it’s all about the Id.” BERRIBOI: dad says hi. i can feel my pipes turn to shit WILSON3874: we’re all halfway to voice death Marco asked if Berry was listening to him. Berry said yes and opened another page about Roland Montreux. The second site showed designs for a water tank, with lots of arrows and odd notations showing w'here “the subject” could float in a state of psycho-evolutionary neutrality. WILSON3874: lisa won’t talk 2 me @ school BERRIBOI: ask her about reptilian aversion Marco huffed. “I thought you were going to be looking for forbidden sex. This is boring.” He smacked his palm.
• • •
The next morning Berry giggled in rehearsal. It started from something Teddy whispered, but it wouldn’t stop even after
Mr. Allen’s eyes stabbed him. The giggling jolted his insides, guttural like a baritone on nitrous oxide, until the laughter left but the shaking stayed. He couldn’t stop. Teddy led Berry outside and pushed him against a chunky wall not too roughly until the motor ran down on Berry’s jitters. Teddy told Berry to pull it together like a man. Berry nodded. They went back inside.
The choir stumbled over the same dumb psalm tune over and over, a jerky chant and antiphon called “The Lord of hosts is with us: the God of Jacob is our stronghold.” The boys ought to have learned it in their sleep, but they straggled and rushed, went up too much or not enough, and made mistakes out of impatience. Mr. Allen first growled and then raged, but by the time the choir got that jingle straight, there were only seconds to brush up the day’s offertory, Howells’s “Like As The Hart.” “I could train monkeys to replace you all—the choir would improve a million fold,” Mr. Allen yelled. Berry hung his head.
“I called Lisa last night,” Wilson said as he donned his cassock. “She freaked when I asked her about the reptile invasion or whatever.”
“Maybe it’s from a horror movie,” Berry said.
In the service, the readings, collects, and prayers all blended with Berry’s obsessive thoughts of the next winter, from which spring couldn’t follow. Bible talk wove with Berry’s inner chatter. One reading, from Paul’s letter to the Hebrews, said, “In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.”
At one point, Berry could have sworn he heard Canon Moosehead and Dean Jackson whispering from their big chairs. “Do you really think sexuality is a gift from God?”
Canon Moosehead asked. Dean Jackson nodded. “Then why did He booby-trap it?” the Canon said.
This week, Dean Jackson gave the sermon. The Dean was the main defender of Hungry Souls and had encouraged Mr. Allen to search the inner city for singers. The Dean used his sermon to defend his pet programs. “When people all praise you, that usually means you’re doing something wrong,” the Dean said. “Being the person you were meant to be is often the hardest work of all.”
The service ended. Organ music purred to silence. Berry hung out with Wilson and the others for a while. Then he found Mr. Allen, who was peeling off his black robe in the empty choir room. Mr. Allen shut the door on himself and Berry, then lit a joint. “Scarlatti always makes me crave weed.” “Sorry we sucked so bad today,” Berry said.
“No monumental deal,” Mr. Allen said between drags. Mr. Allen always said most European choral music was written to be sung by boys in the upper registers, not women. Mr. Allen spent hours training each boy to polish his voice like silver, until he could sing more like a bird and less like a reject from a local production of Annie: The Musical.
“Doesn’t it piss you off,” Berry asked Mr. Allen after a while, “that us boys lose our range just when we’ve learned enough to be rock steady?”
Mr. Allen shrugged. He looked the most relaxed Berry had seen him, leaning back in his chair with his feet up on the desk in his cubbyhole. His shoes rested on a pile of Elgar anthems.
“I get a few good years out of most of you,” Mr. Allen said. “And some of the better kids stay on and use their training as altos, tenors or basses. But I have to admit, it’s nice to focus on my organ sometimes—knowing the pipes won’t suddenly relocate on me.” Mr. Allen didn’t have much to say on the subject of castrati, except that just between him and Berry, he’d gladly have gelded a few of the cockier boys if he hadn’t thought he’d get in trouble with the diocese. “You could always train as a counter tenor. They’re coming back in a big way,” said Mr. Allen.
Berry went to the library instead of home that afternoon and found several books on castrati. He couldn’t find much on counter tenors, who sounded like tenors faking it as trebles. But the castrati fascinated Berry, they’d lived like pimps, covered with gold jewelry and surrounded by posses. Crowds had massed to hear the strange purity of the cas-trati’s voices. The choir boys had giggled once at stories of eunuchs who’d guarded the harems of the sultans, but these eunuchs had partied like sultans.
Marco had a carrot peeler and was seeing how much skin he could skim off each finger before he drew blood. Judy came home from a study group and had expected Marco to cook dinner. Marco threw the carro
t peeler at her. It left a plaster gash in the wall. Berry poured cereal and went to his room.
After his parents had argued themselves to sleep, Berry got up and wandered into the kitchenette of their apartment. City sounds answered each other like psalm verses. He wanted a glass of juice, but a bread knife on the counter caught his eye. He looked at it a long time. The light made its serrations glitter.
Berry pulled down his pajama bottoms and hefted the knife. He found the testicles that he’d first noticed a few months earlier and pulled at their nest. They seemed far from his body. Hatching venom. It would take only a quick slash to cut them loose.
He stood straight and parted his legs a little. His free hand pulled his balls from his thighs. He held the knife to the stringy top of his scrotum and slid it until it jabbed. He imagined a lover’s caress instead of metal. Teddy had brought a porn film to the Twelve Step room and the choirboys had watched it with muted sound on the church TWVCR. The male porn star’s advent candle-sized dick had slid in and out of his co-star’s vagina.
Berry imitated that motion now with the bread knife over his balls. He fucked himself with the knife. It was the first time Berry’d touched himself down there other than to pee that he could remember. The blade rocked back and forth. Berry sawed until the knife bit skin, then gasped, trying to keep his sobs inaudible to Marco and Judy.
The next pass of the knife seared all the way into Berry’s stomach. He felt he’d hit a suspending worm. Blood sprayed his legs and then he couldn’t keep the shriek inside. It sounded louder and fiercer because he’d held it in so long.
As he heard his parents stir and dropped the knife, Berry had two thoughts close together. The first: he’d hit that note, way up the windy scaffolding above everything, that nobody could reach at the end of Stanford’s “Te Deum” in C major. The second: Berry had failed the tribal test and wasn’t a man.
4.
Giants with ADD had ripped up a square mile of the North end and started to build, only to lose interest before they found structures to cover foundations. Occasionally, a few stores sold baseball cards or beauty supplies out of half-empty shopping centers next to vacant lots. Late summer baked the cement residue and turned the tar rancid. Gravel skittered under the old Toyota as Judy pummeled the accelerator. She explained her mistake in letting Marco raise Berry while she advanced. Berry watched the never-finished buildings through the back seat windows. Unfinished construction isn’t the same as ruins.
Unless Berry thought about abstract things, his crotch killed him. The bandages chafed his thighs and his balls grew rawer every second. Pills didn’t help. Berry couldn’t get anyone to sign his bandages, he could only sit with his legs as far apart as they went. Berry felt a kick between his legs whenever he shifted.
"... going to be some changes around here,” Judy said. The rubble became lawns. Berry spotted a smoothie store. It made him thirsty and need to pee all at once. It also meant they were reaching their destination. A flock of office buildings came after the smoothie place.
Emergency rooms at three AM aren’t the glamorous places Berry had seen on television. You carry in a boy with a blood-soaked crotch and whistles from the gunshot-and-overdose crowd will be your quickest response. Loss of blood, and Marco and Judy’s tormented whispers, had worn Berry out before a doctor had said hey.
Listening to Judy’s voice without taking in her words, Berry thought of one of the sixteenth-century misericordias or Kyrie Eleisons he’d sung a lot of recently. It rose and fell, got going again just as it seemed to be dying down, swung between pitiful and vengeful. “It’s obvious the reason Berry hates his manhood is you’re not a real man, Marco. No wonder your son wants to castrate himself.”
Marco said nothing.
When one brick office building among dozens caught his eye, Marco spoke up. “This one.” John Tamarind, MD PhD, had his office in a two-story block with magnolias out front. The trees sprayed blossom scent everywhere and left white petals along the cement paths. Marco held the door open for Berry. He had indigestion face. Judy said she’d wait in the car, so Marco alone led Berry up to the second floor and a walnut waiting room.
They waited together for five minutes, then just as Berry was about to scream or laugh a neat-bearded man with a lean face opened the inner door and turned his lazy eyes on Marco and Berry. “You must be Berry. Pleasure. And you, Mr. Sanchez. You don’t have to bring Berry from now on, if he can get here by bus. It tends to make things more casual if there isn’t a parent hanging around the waiting room. Berry, please come in.” Marco looked around the waiting room, as if wondering whether the chairs would burn him if he tried to sit again. Then he nodded and walked out, back to the wife and car. Berry realized he’d have to take the bus home this first time as well.
Dr. Tamarind’s office had framed pictures of guys in wigs and frills, alongside diplomas and shelves of heavy books. Heavy drapes blocked daylight.
Berry told Dr. Tamarind he wanted to stay a choirboy and admired the castrati. Then he’d said all he wanted to. Dr. Tamarind spent the next forty minutes or so asking questions and hearing shrugs and grunts in response. Why did Berry value his voice so much? Was his the voice of God? Or a gift from God? Did voices tell Berry to cut himself? What did Berry think Jesus would say about self-mutilation? What did Berry think about when he imagined being a man? Did Berry have any sexual fantasies he was aware of?
Berry couldn’t believe the sun still shone when he finally escaped Dr. Tamarind’s office. He half-ran out of the brick cell block and then he had to stand and feel the sun. He felt logy as if he’d hung upside down. He staggered to the bus stop, then saw a bus coming and had to run to catch it, surgical tape scratching.
Berry trudged up to his apartment, each step a killing effort. When he reached the right floor, Marco opened the door and stepped aside to let him in. Judy sliced eggplant and mushrooms in the kitchen.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
“Did you get a lollipop?” Marco asked.
Berry would never speak again. It wasn’t a decision, just something he knew for sure. It was a waste of breath. The less Berry explained himself, the more mysterious he felt, and the more a perfect sacrifice to God or music or something. Berry sat on the couch facing the dead TV and heard his parents’ screaming with the distant ear he used for school and sermons. Eventually Marco and Judy yelled at each other instead of Berry. Berry ate eggplant and went to bed.
A week later, Berry walked like a guy again. His crotch still roared with pain, but you couldn’t see it in his walk. His first day back at choir was a Wednesday rehearsal—first the boys by themselves, then men and boys. Berry arrived early because he was still missing school. Teddy and Randy were the next to show up.
Teddy and Randy whassupped Berry and said they’d heard he was sick. Berry nodded without letting their eyes out of his sight. He saw no sign they knew he’d gone blade-crazy. Luckily nobody tried to wrestle Berry in the prerehearsal scrum.
Mr. Allen gave Berry a hard time. “I hope you haven’t forgotten how to sing during your little vacation. ” All the boys stared at Berry, who said he remembered how to sing. Then Mr. Alien gave Berry his first ever solo, in Sunday’s piece: “This Is the Record of John” by Orlando Gibbons. People kept asking John the Baptist wThether he was Elias, or the Prophet, or the Messiah. He kept saying no, no, no in a tender stream of grace notes. The music lilted, but sadly, maybe because these people couldn’t figure out who John was.
Finally, Berry as soloist defined his own identity in the sweetest part, “I am the voice of him who crieth in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord,” When Berry sang it the first time, Wilson flashed him a thumbs up.
During the dinner break, Wilson talked about race cars and sports cars. “People talk about the Jaguar or the Ferrari but they’re fools. They don’t know what real power is. So on Sunday I’m gonna catch up with Lisa and just ask her out myself once and for all. No other girls, no grown-ups, just her and me. Wi
sh me luck.”
The next day Berry went back to school with a note excusing him from PE. Rat expected him to have done a week’s worth of readings and asked him a question about Jane Austen. Berry mumbled. Toad showed a film about microbes then asked questions about it. Berry hid in his seat. Between periods Berry heard one of the Goose girls whisper that he’d overdosed.
After school, Berry took a long bus ride past the bleak North side to Dr. Tamarind’s cinderblock. Marco had promised Berry an ice cream or something if he went to Dr. Tamarind under his own steam. Berry thought about skipping therapy and lying about it, but he figured Dr. Tamarind would call his folks if he didn’t show up. So much for confidentiality.
Berry walked into the shrouded cavern. Dr. Tamarind looked up at him from behind his desk, his face pale from the light of his single lamp. Dr. Tamarind talked. Berry stood facing the desk, deciding whether to sit. Then instead he opened his mouth and music came out. He hadn’t decided to sing in therapy, but once it happened it seemed a good thing. Once the trained voice flowed, Berry felt in control of the situation for the first time. Dr. Tamarind stopped halfway through a question about testicles and communion wafers. The shrink just stared as Berry filled his musty office with the Glory. He ran through several hymns and the anthems of Stanford, Howells, Byrd, Mozart, and Bruckner without leaving much pause between. Finally, R. Vaughn Williams’s, “Yea, the sparrow hath found her a house, and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young ...” After a while, Dr. Tamarind just leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Berry wondered if Dr. Tamarind had fallen asleep, but he didn’t care.
“That was very lovely,” Dr. Tamarind said quietly after half an hour or so of singing when Berry paused for breath. “You have an amazing gift. I can see why you want to keep it. ”
Choir Boy Page 4
