Hearing Helen

by Carolyn Morton

  The corners of Felicity’s mouth seemed to lift a little, as though she was smiling, and I put down my pen for a moment, my thoughts wandering back to the concert.

  There was a lot of stuff I wanted to do with the money, but the more I thought about the money and what it could mean to me, the more I found myself trying to remember how I’d played, and the more difficult it became.

  I closed my eyes, trying to recapture that moment before I’d played the opening note, but my hand remained suspended in mid-air and would not fall onto the notes.

  So I continued writing.

  And when you discover that life is no longer just about you,you have to make choices. Sometimes, you still need to put your­self first, before you lose yourself and your dreams. At other times, you need to put yourself on hold, because you know someone else’s needs are more important right now. The tricky part …

  Felicity seemed to be leaning forward, eager for the punch line.

  “The tricky part,” I said, putting her on my lap, “is finding the balance.”

  “Helen, are you almost done with your section of our project?” asked Kean, swaggering up to me in class. Everyone was starting to file in at the start of the day, after assembly.

  I nodded and pulled out my notes from my bag. “It’s all here,” I said. “Now you just have to add it to your section and June’s, and we’re done. We can hand in tomorrow.”

  “Hey, June,” said Kean, then repeated himself more loudly when she didn’t look up. She glanced at him, embarrassed because he’d been shouting at her and the others in the class stopped what they were doing to listen to the interchange.

  As usual, Kean loved an audience. “What’s your case?” he said, leaning towards her. “Are you deaf?”

  I put my hand on Kean’s arm, pulling him back. “Leave it,” I hissed.

  “Why?” he said nonchalantly, shaking off my hand.

  “Because she is deaf,” I said as softly as I could, but I saw Joe’s eyes blinking in surprise, and then turning to mutter into the ear of the boy next to him. The news seemed to run through the class like a veld fire.

  Kean looked startled, then turned it to his advantage. “So, June,” he said, walking up to her and shoving his face in front of hers. “CAN. YOU. HEAR. ME?”

  June froze, then looked down, pretending to look for one of her books. Pockets of shocked silence around the class were interspersed with awkward laughter. Maybe a few weeks ago, I would have laughed too, but at his words, the last few scatterings of magic that had seemed to hover around Kean’s magnetic personality disintegrated into dust.

  “Shut up!” I yelled at Kean and yanked him back. “What is your problem? You’re never happy unless you’re making someone else feel humiliated, are you?”

  Kean’s mouth fell open, and I launched off before he could think of anything to say.

  “You’ve laughed at me, you’ve embarrassed Joe and Mrs Smith, you’ve made fun of June, the kindest friend I’ve ever had. Why can’t you just grow up?”

  He was about to retort when we heard footsteps behind us, and Mrs Smith and Madame Pandora were standing there in the doorway.

  There was a grim half smile on Mrs Smith’s face. “Take your­self to the principal, Kean,” she said curtly. “We need to have a chat with you.”

  “B–but Mrs Smith …” he stuttered.

  “Don’t keep me waiting,” she said coldly.

  His shoulders dropped and he walked to the door, dragging his feet, not daring to glance up at the class.

  Madame Pandora was less reticent than Mrs Smith. She looked him up and down thoroughly with pinched lips, like a painter inspecting a bad stain. “You really are a very nasty little boy,” she said in a conversational tone.

  “Get your books ready,” Mrs Smith told us, turning to follow after Kean. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Madame Pandora swept out after her and, as the teachers left, June sat down suddenly. I sat in the desk next to hers and nudged her. She only half turned her face, as though reluctant to let me see her expression, and I slipped her a little Tupperware box. Inside, I had wrapped up two salami sandwiches. She laughed a little, then pushed them to one side and flung her arms around me.

  “Thank you, Helen,” she whispered.

  “Eat them,” I said, looking at her so she could hear. “I’ll be back now.”

  I dashed out of the classroom and saw Madame Pandora in the distance.

  “Madame!” I yelled, so loudly that a grade eight teacher stuck her head out the door and glared at me. I didn’t care. “Ma-dame!” The word came out in pants while I tried to catch up to her as she reached the door of her music room.

  She stopped, then swung around. Her black eyes searched mine curiously as I paused for breath, swallowing to get my wind back. “What is it, child?”

  “I want to talk to you,” I said.

  A tiny smile swept across her face, barely touching her lips but lingering in her eyes. “I thought you might,” she said. “I think it would be useful for me to talk to your parents too, if you are thinking what I suspect?”

  “I guess so,” I said. “But first, let me tell you my plan.”

  Madame Pandora nodded and pushed open her door, gesturing to me to go through. “So,” she asked. “What is it you want to tell me?”

  *

  Sixteen

  THE NEXT FEW WEEKS passed in a blur. The only time I talked to Kean was when we got our project back, and then all I said was “Well done”, although he hadn’t done much to contribute to the eighty per cent June, he and I got. June wasn’t in class much. Often she was with the guidance counsellor, and several days she didn’t come in.

  About two weeks after my fight with Kean, I was hurrying home after school because Mom and Dad wanted me to go with them to pick up Hank from work as his bike had a puncture and then Mom needed me to help her with shopping afterwards.

  When I arrived, I heard the phone trilling insistently and, as Mom rushed to answer, I suddenly felt sick.

  “Madame Pandora?” I could hear that Mom was surprised. I sat down in the lounge, listening, waiting for the bomb to go off. I didn’t have long to wait. Mom was ominously quiet as Madame Pandora talked, and then she cut her short.

  “I must talk to Helen,” she said briefly. Madame obviously tried to say something else, but Mom wasn’t listening.

  “Not now, please, Madame. I really cannot see you or talk about this right now,” she said, trying to control her voice, which sounded like it was breaking. “I need to speak to my daughter first. Thank you for calling. Goodbye.”

  Dad, hearing her voice, had come through and was standing with his hand on Mom’s shoulder. “What’s all that about?” he asked.

  Mom just kept shaking her head. “I don’t believe it,” she said, sitting down next to me. “Helen, how could you do that?”

  “Do what?” asked Dad.

  I swallowed. “Well, when you guys were working late last week, I went in the afternoon to support June when she went to St George’s Hospital again,” I started explaining.

  “What has this got to do with the phone call, Helen?”

  “My prize money,” I said, each word sticking in my throat like toffee. “Madame Pandora wants to come and speak to you about what I did. I’ve spent it.”

  “You’ve what?” I was sure Dad’s voice shook at least another three bits of flaking paint from the wall.

  “I spent it on the hearing aids for June,” I muttered. “She couldn’t cope at school.”

  I could see Mom was furious. “June seems like a lovely girl,” she said, still trying to control her voice and failing miserably, “but we are talking about your future here, Helen. There must be another way for her to pay for them.”

  “There isn’t!” I cried. “She can’t afford them.”

  “Well, if that’s the price you want to pay for giving up a promising music career …” Mom was shaking her head again. I wished she’d stop.

  Su
ddenly, I started feeling angry too. “It’s my choice!” I shouted, and I could hear my voice was all funny too. “And what do you care, anyway? You only want me to do what you want.”

  “That’s not true, Helen,” replied Mom, her face as ashen as the dust that clung to Dad’s overalls.

  “It is!” I yelled. I swallowed again because the top of my mouth was feeling dry. “I do want to go to a good school, but I was only able to play like that because of June, and her whole education will be thrown away if she can’t hear. It’s my decision, Mom, Dad, not yours.”

  Dad tapped his watch. “Hank’s waiting,” he said tersely. “We can carry on this conversation later.”

  I thought continuing the discussion at any time was a really bad idea but I was too shaken and too grateful to have a breather to say anything.

  We drove in horrible silence to Maths Magicians, where Hank, Caryn and Mrs Meintjies were sitting chatting on a bench, the Trellidor already locked. As usual, not a hair on Mrs Meintjies’s head was out of place. Everything about her was a model of mathematical precision. Even her briefcase stood neatly at ninety degrees to her feet.

  “Can Caryn come for supper?” Hank asked, and I rolled my eyes in wonder at his timing.

  “No,” said Mom immediately. “We can’t afford to feed an extra mouth right now.”

  Caryn stood up, holding out a plastic packet. “That’s okay,” she said awkwardly, and I realised that Hank’s supposedly stupid question was an olive branch. “We got you Chinese.”

  “We don’t want charity,” Mom said, and I was so humiliated I wished I could just vanish. She and Caryn glared at each other for a moment like two lionesses fighting over the same piece of meat.

  “Good grief!” said Caryn, raising her voice as everyone else seemed to be doing today. “You were happy to let Hank study a course he didn’t want to do, to provide for you, but you won’t accept one meal, which isn’t charity, just us trying to make peace?”

  “We never asked Hank to provide for us,” said Dad, his voice starting to go up too.

  “It was understood that I would,” said Hank tiredly, taking the packet with the Chinese food from Caryn and placing it on the bench.

  “That’s why I feel so terrible for using my prize money to help June,” I admitted. “I felt I should have given some of it to you.”

  Mom and Dad were silent, but their faces looked bleak.

  Mrs Meintjies coughed. She’d been standing back, an unwilling listener, but she came forward now. “I realise my timing is abysmal,” she said, “but I just wanted to let you know how proud I am to have your son working for me full time from next year.”

  “I beg your pardon?” said Dad blankly.

  “I didn’t want to upset you,” said Hank, “but I’ve been offered a full-time job as a teacher assistant. I’ll be working here in the afternoons and at schools during the mornings.”

  His boss nodded. “Your son is very skilled, and he’ll be paid much better than now,” she said. “Maths Magicians doesn’t normally offer such posts to those without qualifications but …”

  “They’ll make an exception because I’ll be studying,” continued Hank. “My salary will enable me to study teaching part time. I have to choose two majors – I’m going for maths and music.”

  As the news slowly sank in, we all looked at Hank, who was holding Caryn’s hand tightly. He wasn’t looking at any of us but at his girlfriend, and his eyes were shining through the orange spikes that stuck out over his forehead.

  “This makes you happy, doesn’t it, son?” said Dad slowly as though he and Mom were seeing him for the first time.

  Hank nodded. “I will never abandon you guys,” he said awkwardly. “You know that. And I’m going to do really well and help you out where I can. But I’ve got to lead my own life.”

  Dad was nodding as well now, and then Mom started nodding too, smiling a little. She took a step towards Caryn, still slightly wary but with her hackles lowered.

  “So,” she said, “what do you say we all go home and have Chinese?”

  *

  Seventeen

  THE FOLLOWING MONDAY, as I was about to leave Mrs Smith’s classroom at the end of the day, June waylaid me. Except for the teacher, sitting working at her desk, we were alone.

  “Wait up, Helen.”

  “How are the new hearing aids doing?” I asked.

  “Good,” said June, smiling. “A little strange still. Things sound different. I closed the car boot three times because I thought it wasn’t clicking properly.”

  Mrs Smith glanced at us. “The hearing aids can’t make June’s hearing perfect,” she explained to me, “but she will be able to hear in class if she sits near the front and she won’t have to struggle to hear you one-on-one any more.”

  “And I can watch TV again without pushing my nose against the screen,” said June, “and my mom closed the kitchen door behind me yesterday, and I heard it. And my sister phoned, and I could talk to her myself without having to ask my mother to repeat everything to me!”

  I hugged her, feeling the way I did when I wore my CK shirt: like I could conquer the world and the world would thank me for it.

  June handed me a chain with a locket on it. “I knew there was no way I could ever say thank you enough, but when I think of you, this is what I see.”

  I opened the locket and stared at the laughing girl in the picture. It must have been a very young Marilyn Monroe, maybe only a year or two older than me. One eyebrow had a slight kink in it, and her parted lips were full and laughing. In her teeth, she held a stem ending in pink flowers that clashed with her auburn hair. It was beautiful.

  I hugged June again, my heart as warm as a microwave beanbag.

  Walking home, I couldn’t stop fiddling with the locket around my neck. I opened it, then closed it, then tucked it beneath my school shirt, only to pull it out again. Just before I turned into my street, I was startled by an imperious hoot, and I swung around to see Madame Pandora leaning out of her car window.

  “I am taking you home,” she announced to me. Just when I’d thought Monday was going to be good.

  “That’s not necessary,” I replied.

  “Your mother put down the phone the other day while I was talking, and I need to complete my conversation with your parents,” she said, waving away my remark. “Come, child. Don’t dawdle.”

  I was half hoping my parents would still be at work, but when we arrived, they were there.

  “Ah, good afternoon, the Booysens,” announced Madame, seating herself in the best chair and inviting them to sit as well. Madame glanced out across the garden for a minute or two, smiling to herself as though she could see something that we couldn’t, then glanced back at my mom and dad, her eyes as sharp as ever.

  “Do you know what I was dreaming about now?” she asked rhetorically. “I will tell you. It was the performance of this child,” she pointed a manicured finger in my direction, “when she played in the competition.” She nodded. “Helen has great talent, you know. Perhaps not as much as her brother, but great, nonetheless. Her timing is most accurate, and her technique impressive for someone so young.”

  She paused for dramatic effect.

  “But,” she added, building up to the climax, “that is not what makes a truly good player. To play in a way that inspires takes more. It takes depth and soul. And Helen has always played exclusively for one person: herself. Every time I saw her, her work would improve, but it was all centred around one aim – pushing herself forward to compete with your son, so that she would be noticed. So that you would see and hear her.”

  “Is that true, Helen?” Mom asked, as if she couldn’t believe her ears.

  I nodded, staring down at my shoes.

  “You don’t need to do that!” said Mom, and she sounded like her heart was breaking. “We love you just as you are.”

  Maybe it was something in her voice, or maybe it was her words that set me off, but when she said that, I started shaking
and couldn’t stop. The next thing I knew, Mom and Dad were sitting on either side of me, their arms encircling me rather shakily too. The only person who was unmoved was Madame Pandora, who looked quite unabashed and rather pleased with herself.

  “I never knew,” I said. I realised my eyes and my nose and everything were running, but I didn’t care.

  “The real reason I wished to see you,” continued Madame Pandora, and my parents looked up, as though they’d forgotten about her, “is to say that when Helen played at the competition, something inside her changed. She played not only with her hands but with all of her soul. And then, when she had achieved everything that she thought she’d ever wanted, she gave it up to give another girl a chance at success. That was a very noble act, but it robbed her of the opportunity to attend the Music Academy. And so I asked myself what I could do.”

  I held my breath, wishing it weren’t Monday.

  “I cannot offer her a place at the school at present.” Madame was a mind-reader. “But I can offer her what she gave to June – an opportunity. As Helen knows, one scholarship per year is granted in December. The successful learner is chosen from a shortlist of five. There are four learners currently accepted to be in the running for the scholarship. I have spoken to the other teachers, and I would like Helen to be the fifth candidate, if she so wishes.”

  “Yes!” I shouted. Thank you, Monday, I thought silently.

  “Then it is settled. The opportunity has been presented, and what you do with it now is up to you, child.”

  “I’ll give it my all, Madame,” I stammered eagerly, prepared to cut my nails and wear pedalling shoes and practise for hours. “But before, you said no. What made you change?”

  “It was not I who changed, but you,” she replied. “When I watched you on that stage, I saw and heard that something was different.”

  Madame smiled enigmatically at me.

  “And then I knew. You truly have the heart.”

  “The difference between you and your brother is that he’s not only playing for himself but his parents too. That is his greatest problem,” said Madame Pandora. “But you … You are only playing for yourself. And that is your problem.”