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The Major Scales
We wanted the
child to walk. We braced her shoulders and rubbed her
feet. We explained, baby steps. We
walked ourselves briskly, to the doorknob or the braided
pull that dangled from the crinkly blind. But when we let her go she crumpled. Each dusk we pranced, strode, strutted. But when we looked down, she was gone
slithering behind the elm in the dusty
yard, following the cat’s tail under the waxy
oleander. We longed for her to speak. We mouthed her name. She stared at that red O we claimed was a child.
But when she spoke, it was she who was
me. We taught her to read. She wriggled her
head trying to shake out those fiery
squiggles-- then the musty books fetched themselves down from the case, open to the last
page. A flashlight glinted under a blanket. Meanwhile the clouds were massing. Immense storms darkened the screen like a mood that can’t be shaken. We taught her, this world is finite. You can put your hand through it. We wanted to teach her freedom but there was still a gap between the words crested grebe and what they stood for and our accent was tranced, ironic. Our voices felt they had suffered. What more could be asked of them?
The cat had grown lame and stared at the fantail pigeons with a coy indifference– we had to teach ourselves that in the narrow crawlspace between each minute and the last while the child practiced her chords, augmented, diminished, broken, until the rain was music. How did she know when to stop? She trembled when she coaxed the violin back into its red plush case. We
longed to go home, but we were home. We were dozing in our marriage bed arm in arm when silence woke us.
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