Shrug

by Lisa Braver Moss

  My mother had wound up with a black eye and two big black and blue marks on her back. My father had elbowed Hildy pretty hard in the neck when she’d tried to intervene, and he’d pushed me away with so much force that I’d been thrown into the corner of the kitchen counter and banged the middle of my back really hard.

  I know this’ll make you wince, but my mother acted like she was proud of her injuries. I say this because she forced me and Hildy to look at her bruises the next day. As sorry as I felt for my mother, even I had to gag at her complete lack of dignity. Didn’t she know by now that she was never going to convince Hildy what a bastard my father was? As for me, I already knew what a bastard my father was. And my mother knew that I knew it. There’s only one reason she’d flaunt her bruises in front of her children: because she is a disgusting human being.

  But as a twelve-year-old, I felt terrible that she was stuck with a monster who thought he could just hit anybody any time he felt like it. I understood completely why she’d kick him out of the house. I still do—even with everything about my mother that made me gag. Makes me gag.

  See, my father also makes me gag. It’s not only that he hits and never says he’s sorry; he just kind of turns my stomach. When I was younger, he’d come home at night and kiss my eyelids wetly. I had to try not to wipe my eyes off until he left, so he wouldn’t call me uptight or mean. Another thing I absolutely hated: sometimes he’d kiss the top of my head and take a deep whiff, as if my hair were a bouquet belonging only to him. But my father was the same with Hildy and Drew, and they didn’t seem to mind, so it always felt like there was something mean about me that I did mind. Besides, if I tried to get away from my father, it made him mad. I always wound up thinking, I don’t need to get away that badly.

  Plus, my father hated it when I had assignments that made me “uptight,” which, by his standards, were basically all of them. I guess he was trying to help when he brought home books for me, but they were college texts! And I had to act grateful. Get this: in fourth grade, when I had a report to do about bridges, he came home with an engineering text from Prufrock.

  I still remember sitting next to him on the edge of our scratchy dark brown couch and leafing through the book. The print was small, and there were very few pictures. “The towers serve as stabilizers, enabling the main cables to be draped across significant distances. The cables carry most of the structure’s weight to the anchorages, which are imbedded. . . .” I swallowed. “This book is kind of hard, Dad.”

  My father was sitting too close to me. He smelled of cherry tobacco and saliva and grown-up-man smell. Slowly, I scooted back on the couch so that it wouldn’t seem like I was scooting away, exactly: my father couldn’t stand my trying to put space between him and me.

  “Hard?” he exclaimed. “Nah! What part of it is too hard?”

  “Well, like. . . .” I hesitated. Even the World Book entry had made my eyes glaze over, and that was supposed to be easy for kids to understand. “It’s just kind of—boring.”

  “Boring—are you kidding?” Surprise, disappointment. “Look, I’ll give you a simple explanation of suspension bridges, okay? Take the Golden Gate. Basically, you have a deck, and the deck is suspended.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said uncertainly.

  “From cables, of course,” he added, standing up in front of me and pantomiming a line with his index finger and thumb. “And then the cables are anchored at their extremities.”

  “Wh—what are extremities?”

  “You know. The ends. The extreme parts. That’s where we get the word extremities. Come on, now. You know that.”

  “But I thought extreme meant—”

  “Look, basically, it’s all a matter of engineering!”

  “Oh.” What did engineering have to do with my report, anyway? Geez, I hope I don’t have to figure that out in order to do the assignment, thought my nine-year-old brain.

  I had to find a way to make the conversation okay. “Um, Dad? You know that Prokofiev thing?” I loved the opening theme of the news program my parents watched at night, a frenzied clarinet and violin conversation that my father promised to bring home, but never did.

  “I’ll bring it tomorrow,” he said, patting my head. “And don’t worry about that report. You’ll get your precious A.” This was my father’s version of a pep talk.

  And yet, and yet. Around the same time, I had finally grown into a creamy, light beige satin dress of Hildy’s that I had always loved and that was perfect for my upcoming violin recital. I had spun around the kitchen in the dress before realizing, and blurting out, that my white cotton socks wouldn’t look right with it. My mother said, No one’s looking at you! and that I shouldn’t be so rigid. My father seemed angry, but didn’t say anything.

  After I went to bed, my father brewed some hot tea and soaked my socks in the tea until they matched the dress. When I woke up, there were two perfect beige socks for me on a wire hanger on the hook in the bathroom, each attached with a wooden clothespin.

  6

  isolating the spots

  The first few days after my father moved out, it was quiet at home, almost echoey. I felt sorry for Drew, who was just getting used to being a first grader as I struggled to adjust to seventh.

  Hildy didn’t seem to be having any trouble getting used to ninth grade. She was popular, and she was always helping someone, especially boys. She’d immediately been asked to be a volunteer peer tutor, because even though she wasn’t a straight-A student, the after-school study hall teacher could tell how brainy she was and loved her enthusiasm. Hildy would do things like purposely choose an unpopular boy to work with on a two-person assignment, or help some poor slob who was running for student council by making posters for his candidacy, or give her lunch money to a kid who’d forgotten his. Anyway, the point is, Hildy was hardly ever home after school, partly because when she wasn’t tutoring or going over to someone’s house, she’d secretly visit my father at the shop so he’d remember that someone still cared about him. That was probably how she had money for school lunches.

  I didn’t usually allow Drew in my room, but without Hildy around, it fell to me to take care of both my mother and him. So I let him play on my floor, or lie on my bed reading Superman comic books or doing math puzzles, while my mother kept crying to make sure we didn’t forget how much she was suffering. The middle of my back still hurt, but of course there was no aspirin in the house. Baby aspirin had sugar in it, regular aspirin wasn’t natural, it was better to let the body heal itself, blah blah blah. At least Drew hadn’t gotten physically hurt in the latest fight.

  That was another thing that was different: normally, I wouldn’t have dared protect or defend Drew, because I’d be worried that my mother would see it as my taking Drew’s side against her. In fact, I’d been very mean to Drew a few times in an attempt to make my mother feel more secure. Once, when she got mad at Drew for throwing his food from his high chair, I’d taken him upstairs and shut him in his closet, whose inside handle was too high up for him to reach. He wasn’t even three yet. It seems ridiculous now, and horrible, of course, but I honestly thought my mother would appreciate my backing her up. Instead, when she heard his cries, she rushed upstairs, shoved me roughly aside, and rescued and comforted him. Then she told me angrily that there was such a thing as being an ugly person on the inside, and that just because I seemed nice didn’t make me nice. I guess she hated me, too. Sometimes, I forget that.

  Of course I’d rather have spent my after-school time with Stephanie. There were boys and classes to talk about, not to mention our home lives. A few times, I had to kick Drew out so I could drag the phone into my room to call Stephanie and pour out my heart about how horrible the latest fight had been, so the two of us could weigh the chances that my father’s moving out meant my parents were for sure getting a divorce. That possibility felt to me like the end of the goddamned world, even though nothing could have made more sense.

  Stephanie and I were both having a hard ti
me dealing with the demands of school, where the home economics teacher would give us assignments like making a lemon meringue pie—just the type of “white bread” thing that both my mother and Stephanie’s mom, Sylvia, disapproved of. White sugar was a poison, dessert-making was not a necessary kitchen skill, blah blah blah. But there was an important difference: whereas my mother refused to lift a finger to help me with the immoral assignment (sending me into a complete panic), Sylvia bought all the ingredients for Stephanie, despite her own personal opinions. Thank God Sylvia always had extra food around so I could make my pie over there.

  Of course it never dawned on me to skip the assignment. Here’s how my life would be described in a book: She was falling apart, but she had homework.

  I couldn’t really talk with Hildy about how I felt about my father, because she always defended him no matter what, even if it was against me. Actually, it was surprising how well Hildy and I got along, considering how differently we looked at things. We were both really upset about the fighting and the fact that my father wasn’t living at home anymore, and we had no choice but to comfort each other. At night, Hildy would sneak into my room and climb into my bed, and we’d stay up whispering. Invariably, since we couldn’t talk about what a bastard my father was, the topic would turn to what a bitch my mother was.

  “But Hildy,” I said, “don’t all girls our age hate their mothers? Maybe it’s from our being, like, immature.”

  “Just because we’re young doesn’t automatically mean we’re wrong. Like, I think Mom is competing with me. I read about it in a book, how mothers sometimes hate their daughters.”

  I’m ashamed to admit this, but what I thought was, Well, my mother might hate Hildy, but she doesn’t hate me. “What do you mean, competing?” I said. “Like, give me an example.”

  “Duh! Don’t you remember how she washed us in the bath when we were little?”

  I had forgotten the way my mother used to drag a rough washcloth back and forth across our private parts. There was something impatient, or even frantic, about the way she did it, as if she were trying to erase us down there. We dreaded baths until we managed to convince her we’d do a good job washing ourselves.

  “But Dad’s temper!” I pointed out, because I always wanted to convince Hildy. “Remember April Fool’s Day?” We kids had replaced the contents of the sugar bowl with salt and my father had spooned it liberally into his coffee. Then he’d exploded, chasing after us and pounding each of us on the tops of our heads and on our shoulders with his hard fists.

  “We should never have provoked him!” was Hildy’s response.

  Eventually we’d fall asleep side by side, her back to my front, her blond, tangled hair splaying out onto my half of the pillow.

  I felt guilty leaving my mother in the mornings. But when it was time for my after-school violin lesson with Mrs. Cray, I was really glad for the excuse not to come straight home, even though aside from Orchestra, I hadn’t touched the violin all week. I also told my mother I needed to work with Stephanie on a history assignment after my lesson. Which was true.

  Mrs. Cray lived a couple of blocks from Garfield Junior High, very near Stephanie. She really was a relief from all the unpredictable behavior in my stupid life. Besides being the nicest person I’d ever known, Mrs. Cray was beautiful. Her skin was the color of creamy coffee, and her face reminded me of a bust of Nefertiti that Hildy had shown me in the World Book. Unlike other black women, who straightened their hair so it would look more “white,” Mrs. Cray wore hers cropped close to her head, as short as a man’s. She didn’t even bother with earrings to make herself look feminine. Why was it that instead of giving her a mannish appearance, the style only made her lovelier?

  Plus, her whole studio was wallpapered in this really inviting shade of pink with bright yellow and orange and red flowers on it, and there was plenty of light in there, so everything was cheerful. Mrs. Cray kept a dozen yellow pencils in a clear glass jar, all sharpened and ready to use. The pencils matched the accent colors in the wallpaper, and the eraser tips matched the pink.

  Mrs. Cray would start our hour-long lessons by playing records for me that she thought I might like, just for five or ten minutes. It was like getting to eat dessert first, before we got down to technique, the pieces I was studying, and sight-reading practice. Mrs. Cray felt jazz recordings were a great way to learn music theory, which, she said, I was probably going to need, because I might want to major in music when I got to college.

  One time she played “The ‘In’ Crowd” for me, starting with the original vocal version recorded by Dobie Gray. I didn’t think much of it, since I wasn’t in the “in” crowd and never would be, besides which, the song was just kind of lame. But then Mrs. Cray put on the live instrumental version by Ramsey Lewis. “They transposed it to D!” I exclaimed, unable to keep my head from nodding. The very same melody that was uninspiring when sung by Dobie Gray was provocative in Ramsey Lewis’s hands, something whose honest, smoky beat you couldn’t resist.

  “They did indeed! I think the story is that Ramsey Lewis’s bass player wanted to use his open strings, because the trio had just learned the piece the very same day they performed it. But you’re right—usually the original and the cover versions of a song are in the same key.”

  “The styles are so different,” I marveled.

  “Notice the dynamics,” she pointed out. “It’s not just mezzo-forte all the time. They get really quiet, and then the energy picks up.” She went on to give me the music theory behind the chord progressions, and the way in which the sequence was unusual. The song as performed by Ramsey Lewis revealed gospel influences, she explained: that exuberant interplay between the musicians and the audience, which could be traced back to West African rain dances, was part of what gave the track its magic.

  Now that I think about it, it’s weird that my parents let me take lessons with Mrs. Cray. My mother was skeptical that a teacher could be kind and gentle and also effective. My father didn’t quite understand music lessons: he seemed to think great musicians were born proficient. I guess he liked Mrs. Cray because she was a customer of his and valued his opinions. If he ever warned her about how rigid a person I am, she must have ignored him.

  I had to assume my parents didn’t know Mrs. Cray was introducing me to jazz and telling me I was going to need to study music theory, and I could easily see them getting mad if they found out. But the truth was, Mrs. Cray and I always got down to the business of violin quickly after our fun.

  “This is such a difficult section,” she sympathized as we worked on the Corelli passage that I’d been mangling in Miss Transom’s orchestra. She picked up her own violin and ran through it absently, experimenting with a few different fingerings. “In bar forty-two—hmm . . . try shifting into second position.”

  I hesitated.

  “Now, Martha, don’t be upset with yourself for not sounding like me. You should have heard me when I was your age! Good Lord, what a racket. Made my poor mother cover up her ears.”

  “Really?” Even though I knew great musicians were born talented, not proficient, it was still hard to imagine Mrs. Cray ever having been crummy on the violin. She’d gone to Juilliard, taught in the Music Department at Cal, and was part of an important local string quartet. Plus, she sometimes played jazz violin in a friend’s band.

  “You have to remember, Martha dear, the violin is very unforgiving. It’s hard to sound good on it and easy to sound bad. And let’s face it—it’s a pretty awkward position in which to put your chin and left arm.”

  I wrote the new fingering into my music with a pencil from her jar. With Mrs. Cray, I could imagine a different life for myself, a future that made sense. I could have students, too, and be their favorite teacher. I could get rid of the shrug somehow and get married. Who knew? Maybe the shrug would go away as soon as I found the right person to fall in love with and who would fall in love with me. The shrug could be all psychological, from having psychologically sick parents,
couldn’t it? It could disappear with love. I could have children. I could teach violin while the children were in school.

  It wasn’t so much that I wanted to be a violinist. I just wanted to be good at something that would make people outside my family notice me for something other than my shrug. Also—I almost never shrugged while I was playing violin, even if I was sight-reading or didn’t know the piece well yet.

  “Excellent work today, Martha.” Mrs. Cray smiled as the lesson ended. “Now, what’s the key to good practice?”

  “Isolating the spots,” I answered. Mrs. Cray encouraged her students to play very slowly, start a beat or two before a problem area, play through the problem, play a couple of extra beats, and then go back and repeat the same thing a little faster, and then a little faster, until it was seamless. Often, her method meant starting and ending in very odd places (the odder the better, Mrs. Cray said), playing absolutely nothing except the “isolated” spot, and resisting the temptation to lead up to it or end it with parts I already knew well. The technique really did work—when I used it.

  “Exactly,” Mrs. Cray said. “Practice isolating with the new fingering, and I’ll see you next Wednesday, okay?”

  “Mom, where’s the Nestle’s Quik?” Mrs. Cray’s son poked his head into the studio. When he saw me, he blushed and looked away. Probably he was caught off guard because I’d changed lesson days now that summer was over.

  Clifton Cray was a cute kid. He was a year behind me in school, and on the younger side for his grade, plus he was unusually small for his age, so it always felt kind of ridiculous that he had a crush on me. Like me, Clifton had perfect pitch. When we were younger and I’d come for lessons, he’d follow me around, maybe because he didn’t know any other kid with perfect pitch. If I sat on the bench in the little waiting area just outside the studio, Clifton would sit down right next to me. If I moved over, he’d move over to be closer to me. I never paid much attention to him. He was kind of immature, and besides, it embarrassed me that he was already way better than I was on violin, since he studied and practiced with his mother.