Don't Call Me Mother

by Linda Joy Myers

  After dinner, Grandpa and Mother go outdoors and pace back and forth across the lawn. Grandpa’s voice drones, Mother’s pierces the air. I help Bernie with the dishes and then play with my dolls, wondering why my mother’s presence always provokes disharmony.

  Later, Grandpa paces up and down the driveway. Bernie shadows him, trying to talk to him, but he keeps pacing. She begs, “Please, Blaine. You’ve come so far.” His face is crumpled up—he’s either angry or sad. When Bernie tries to touch him, he jerks away and slams his fist against the car, swearing. What has happened to the holy man? He has turned into a different person, too, just like my mother is wont to do. I start to shake, anticipating disaster. Grandpa gets in the car and sits behind the wheel, his head in his hands.

  Bernie comes over to kneel in front of me, looking at me kindly. “Don’t worry, Linda Joy. Your grandfather is all right, but he gets these spells. He’s much better than he used to be. He has a sickness called alcoholism; it makes people drink too much and hurt those they love. He was saved by taking the Lord as his savior, but he still feels bad at times. Don’t be afraid; he’ll feel better soon.”

  She soothes my nerves and we go into the house to have peach cobbler. She sits me down, cuts into the steaming cobbler, scoops on vanilla ice cream. The light of the day is seeping away, taking with it the clutch of tension in my stomach as Bernie kindly tends to me. Crickets and birds sing.

  That night is soft and silent as I lie close to my mother, inhaling her smell, brushing against her in the night. I make a memory package to take away from here with me: the cobbler, Bernie’s soft eyes, and Grandpa’s prayers. The love I feel all through me.

  I will leave behind the parts I don’t want to remember.

  The Music Man

  Mrs. Rockwell’s fourth grade classroom smells of polished wood, chalk dust, and pads of Red Eagle tablets. Twenty-five of us are sitting at our school desks, books and papers tucked neatly—or messily, as mine are—in the well beneath the desktop. The boys are noisy. Some have dirty fingernails, and their hair is cut in a flat top or slicked to the sides with Brylcreem.

  I soon notice that there are the “in” kids and the “outs,” and that the girls’ hierarchies are more complex than the boys’. The most popular girls sit in clumps (if the teacher doesn’t keep rearranging them throughout the room), their perfect hair swinging and shiny on their shoulders, wearing saddle shoes and white socks. These girls’ fathers own car dealerships, or they are accountants, teachers, or school principals. Their mothers belong to the PTA, drive them to school and pick them up in polished cars, and visit the school dressed nicely, often towing another couple of children.

  The most “in” girls are on the honor roll. At recess, they lead the games on the concrete slab behind the brick school, the wind blowing their skirts tight against their legs. All of us kids know that these girls will marry well and live in the best houses on the west side of town. Their muscular husbands will come home at night to barbecue in the backyard with neighbors, wearing a chef’s hat. In 1954, that is the best life we can imagine.

  The lowest-class boy or girl is easy to spot, with dirty or frayed clothes, yellow teeth, furtive eyes. These kids will probably never get anywhere, and they are ignored at best or sniggered at openly. Their mothers have to work as waitresses or housecleaners. Their tattered houses ruin the perfect look of decent, tree-lined streets. Old cars and disemboweled washing machines lie listlessly in dead grasses around their houses. You don’t befriend those kids because their bad luck will rub off on you.

  The kids in the ill-defined middle group—despite good enough grades, good enough clothes—demonstrate qualities of lucklessness. Perhaps the family has some taint, as mine does. It’s strange when a child lives with an aunt or a grandmother instead of with her parents. The houses aren’t shacks, but they aren’t up to snuff. Perhaps the front yard is not a tidy green patch, or the mother is not perky enough. Perhaps she is tight lipped or square shouldered, carrying the family secret of alcoholism or penury or incest in her posture. Perhaps it shows in her hair that isn’t just so or her lipstick that’s the wrong color seeping past the well-defined edges of her lips. The town might not know exactly what is wrong, but it will sense a discordant note, and the child will be judged accordingly.

  I live with a grandmother who wants me to compete with the girls whose parents own houses with perfect lawns and curtains. She doesn’t understand why I shouldn’t be accepted as one of them, why I’m not considered their equal simply because of who she is. I know it’s because of my hair, my buckteeth, and the clothes she makes me wear that are always a little off in design and acceptability. I live with a grandmother who speaks with a fake English accent, wears clothes that are too fancy, uses a cigarette holder, and never sets foot in church.

  We are all held to high standards in this small town by our forty churches, all Protestant but one, mostly Baptist, with a few Methodist, Church of Christ, or Nazarene thrown in. The quality of the souls of Mrs. Rockwell’s fourth grade class is measured by their Sunday school attendance as well as by their timbre of voice, or whether their eyes are closed or open when they recite the Lord’s Prayer each morning. The kids who mumble, recite mockingly, or stare off blankly are considered inferior beings. Also noted and rated is your degree of enthusiasm while singing the national anthem. In this place called Enid, Oklahoma, there are good children and bad children and questionable children, and you know who you are.

  It is into this milieu that he comes one morning, the Pied Piper who will change my life. He will save me from the town’s obsession with class but also will make me more vulnerable to it.

  The day begins as usual: the pledge of allegiance, the Lord’s Prayer, a round of spelling. Melodious music wafts into the room. Then a tall, willowy man enters, bright red hair tumbling over his forehead, a violin tucked under his chin. He dips and sways, his enchanting sounds making us stop what we are doing.

  His violin sings melodies from heaven. We leave our seats to gather around him and drink in the enchantment. He plays and dances and charms us like a leprechaun. He kneels, grinning, his blue eyes shining. He rips through a toe-tapping “Turkey in the Straw,” then an unfamiliar melody that makes me think of clouds and God. My chest hurts. I want more than anything to draw such sweet sounds into the world.

  “Hey, folks. This is called a violin. It is one of the stringed instruments in the orchestra. How many of you want to play an instrument?” I am hypnotized by his violin. It speaks in high notes and low sultry tones, silky and intimate. His violin laughs and tells jokes. Magically, his bow flies into the air and comes back down in just the right place.

  “My name is Mr. Brauninger. I’m the orchestra teacher. Do you want to join our orchestra? You could play the violin or any other of our stringed instruments. You just have to take a slip home to your parents to be signed.”

  I am drawn to him by his bright blue eyes and his golden-toned violin. He asks my name.

  “Linda Joy.”

  “What a pretty name you have, Linda Joy,” he says, looking directly into my eyes as if I’m a real person. He talks to me as if what I say matters to him. I’ve never met anyone like him before. He gives me a permission slip and tells me that I have to get my parents to sign it if I want to come to the orchestra next week.

  “I don’t have parents. I live with my grandmother.” He doesn’t seem to think there’s anything wrong with me because of this, though I know I’m the only kid in the class whose parents are divorced, and I’m sure none of their families fight the way my mother and grandmother do. Mr. Brauninger’s smile makes all that go away.

  Mrs. Rockwell tells us to sit down in our seats and fold our hands like polite children. Next Mr. Brauninger plays something soft and sweet, his face tender with the music, his lips quivering. His left hand vibrates back and forth. I want to cry. I could sit at his feet all day. I have to be included in his orchestra or I’ll die. I begin to plan what I need to say to convince my gr
andmother.

  When I go home that afternoon, my determination to play the violin sits in solid clarity in my chest. I will make any promise, I will do whatever it takes to be with the man with the red hair, the man whose love flows from him in waves.

  I tell Gram about the man who came to class with his wonderful violin. I promise her that I’ll practice; she won’t have to remind me. “Please, please, please let me play the violin.” She nods and takes a drag on her cigarette. The room is filled with smoke. I see from her coldly calculating eyes that I need to let her think about it.

  I know that Gram wants me to be a famous musician, so my foot is in the door. Later that evening, I try to convince her that the violin is what I am meant to play, but I promise not to neglect my hour of piano practice each day and to finish all my music theory assignments.

  I hear her talking to Mr. Brauninger on the phone after I go to bed. She tells him about Vera and about my divorced parents. The next morning I find out that they’ve decided I should play the cello instead of the violin. Gram tells me, “You’ll be more popular with the cello.”

  I am disappointed, but she says there is a cello waiting for me. I’ll play anything just to be near Mr. Brauninger.

  The first day of orchestra is on Thursday. My shoes squeak on the polished, walnut-colored cork floors. I run down the stairs to the basement music room. The room smells of oil, wood, and the musty dust that is caked in the thick window curtains. Mr. Brauninger greets me with a sunny smile and shakes my hand.

  A group of kids has gathered in the room. I am surprised by who is here—a few of the popular boys, the “guy” kind of boys—Roger, Michael, and Dennis. They talk and laugh among themselves, but then listen when Mr. Brauninger starts to explain about the stringed instruments. “This is a violin. Next to it is a viola, a little bigger.” He plays a few notes to demonstrate the deeper range of the viola. Then he picks up a cello.

  “Linda Joy, I talked to your grandmother, and we thought maybe the cello would be best for you. It’s a special instrument for a special girl like you. I picked out one just your size.” He holds up a burnished brown cello, half-sized to fit me.

  We gather around him as he shows us how the stringed instruments are constructed: the curves of the ribs, the maple coming together in the back to make a beautiful wavy pattern with a perfect seam, the intricately carved bridge, the nut at the top of the fingerboard, ebony tuning pegs, the graceful scroll, and the strings made of steel and catgut. Curlicue F-holes carved in the top allow the sound to emerge from the belly. The sound post connects the top with the back, creating vibrations along the whole instrument. The bow is made of Pernambuco wood from Brazil. Hair from real horses is strung from an ivory tip all the way to the ebony part, where we hold the bow, called the frog.

  “Ribbet, ribbet,” he says, grinning, his blue eyes shining. We look at him with wonder. He makes us feel important, not like the other teachers who treat us like silly children. I am surprised that the boys take Mr. Brauninger so seriously. I thought all they wanted to do was joke around.

  In this very first lesson, he shows us how to drape our hands over the frog. We take turns holding the bow, learning to place it on the strings and pull it smoothly. I notice how the string widens as it vibrates. When I press down on the ebony fingerboard, I can feel the hard tension of the string under each finger pad. It hurts my tender fingertips, but I don’t care. I am making music. I am playing the cello.

  Finding Beauty

  Mr. Brauninger becomes my inspiration and my guide into realms of beauty. In my little girl way, I fall in love with him. I can’t wait to practice because his face lights up when I play perfectly. He draws little pictures in my string book to make me laugh: little men with bulbous noses lying over the lines and spaces. He tells me I am special, but it is the look on his face that sustains me, a look that tells me I am a real person as well as a cellist. He sees the music in me and coaxes it out, helping me discover something beyond the dissonance at home. He is a guide to the true harmony inside me.

  In my school world I become “the girl with the cello,” one of the strange musician kids. Mr. B. invites me to join the Youth Orchestra, where children learn to play symphonic literature. Only the best musicians are selected for it.

  The night before I am to join the orchestra, I polish my cello. Gram rolls my hair to make it fluffy. Being asked to join the Youth Orchestra at such a young age means I have talent. They both talk to me about Carnegie Hall, but I don’t know what it is, only that it’s in a foreign, scary world called New York. Because of Mr. Brauninger, I can imagine accomplishing almost anything with my cello.

  The Youth Orchestra meets on Saturday mornings in the basement of the high school music room. When I arrive I notice a clump of kids gathered around Mr. Brauninger, their faces shining with admiration for him. French horns, trumpets, and woodwinds are tuning up in the upper tier of the room. The noise is huge and thrilling. Trying to conquer my shyness, I wander over to the group of kids laughing and grinning around Mr. B. A boy with jet-black hair is laughing in a deep voice. His eyes behind black horn-rimmed glasses are soft brown, and he is full of energy. He dances toward me, hands fiddling with change in his pockets. “There she is, the new girl.”

  Mr. Brauninger introduces me. “This is Keith. He’s first chair cello, a wonderful cellist. Keith, this is Linda Joy.”

  “Nice to meet you, Linda Joy.” Keith’s dark eyes are like lassoes, drawing me to him. He shakes my hand, then leans over and whispers in a conspiratorial voice, “Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of things. It’s nice you could join us. We’ve heard good things about you.”

  I’m surprised that they know about me already. Mr. Brauninger comes over, takes my cello, and puts his arm around me. “This is Linda Joy, a bright new star from Adams Grade School.” Another young girl holding a cello, long dark hair flowing down her back, flashes me a quick smile. She seems tall for her age, nearly as tall as Keith. Mr. Brauninger puts his hand on her shoulder. “This is Jodie from Emerson Grade School, another bright star. Do you know that you two started cello at the same time?” Next, I am introduced to redheaded twin boys who look alike except for their haircuts.

  “Floyd plays viola, and Lloyd plays violin. They’re fine musicians.”

  They nod at me, grinning. “You can remember us this way—Floyd, flat top; Lloyd, long hair.”

  Jodie and I are the last two chairs in the cello section. Mr. Brauninger taps his baton. “Good morning. We are here to play the greatest works of music ever written. This is the start of something new—an orchestra for all you talented young musicians in town. We’ll get started with Vivaldi, and after that Bach, and a little Mozart. Some of you will not keep up with all the notes, but just do the best you can. Let’s have fun.”

  The music builds up around me, filling the room. Most of the time, the strings are out of tune and the woodwinds squawk. The music rushes over us like a mountain stream. Jodie and I scratch away at our posts, watching Keith and the other cellists play their parts with ease. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to play that way. During a rest, Keith looks back and winks. I feel happy that he notices me.

  During Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” thousands of notes rush by that I can’t seem to play. Jodie and I look at each other helplessly, knowing we missed most of the notes, but I’ve never had so much fun in my life. Mr. Brauninger stops to demonstrate dynamics, how to crescendo and diminuendo, his fingers opening wide and then coming together like the hieroglyphs on the page. He tells jokes and stories about the composers, and makes wavy pictures with his hands to show how sound vibrates through the wood of our instruments. He singles out each section of the orchestra to play separate passages, teaching us to hear how each person is playing and how the section works together. We learn that we are one body of music makers, not individuals. We must play together, feel together, and listen as one being to the composer’s ideas coming alive through us.

  The music rises above us, lifting us
to a higher plane of knowledge, a realm of experience untouched by the rest of life. Through Mr. Brauninger’s conducting—the swoop of his lanky arms, the shining in his eyes, his waving red hair—I am birthed into feelings I never knew possible, into a beauty that has no words, a connectedness I could never imagine. It soothes the sore places within me.

  At each week’s rehearsal I am transported into this ethereal realm. The music is more than words or ideas or anything the mind can conceive of. It goes straight to my heart, the place under my breastbone where my cello rests.

  Mr. Brauninger becomes a family friend. Gram invites him over for dinner one evening. I am overjoyed to have company because we so seldom do. Gram says, “Poor thing. He’s a bachelor all alone. He needs friends and a home-cooked meal. Now, you be sure to mind me…”

  She goes on with a list of rules, but I don’t care. I am thinking only of Mr. Brauninger’s face when he urges us, “Come on, come on and play with everything you have,” gesturing with his whole body, his long arms swinging around wildly. I think of what he told us about Beethoven, that he wrote his music for God. The look of beatific surrender on Mr. B.’s face inspires us to take a leap of faith to this transcendent spirit in ourselves, even as we work so hard to play.

  Mr. B. arrives with a present for Gram and a new ball of rosin for me. He brings his records so we can hear wonderful symphonic music. Gram fixes New York steak with mashed potatoes, a salad, and corn on the cob. After dinner, while Gram is still in the kitchen, he sits on the floor spread-eagled and begins to play marbles.

  “Come and sit on the floor with me, Linda. We’ll have fun. Do you know how to play marbles?”

  I tell him I want to learn. I smooth my dress and sit on the rug, careful to still look like a lady. I roll the cool, hard marbles in my hands. Gram comes into the living room with that look on her face. I hope she won’t say something bad to Mr. Brauninger. She says to me in a hardened tone, “Get up off that floor. Ladies do not sit on the floor with their legs spread like that.”