The Trumpet Lesson

by Dianne Romain

  “She went to college the year before me.”

  As had Gwendolyn.

  “She took her finals early, so she could be there for my graduation.”

  She held her breath and looked at the road just in time to see Pamela swerve out of the way of the truck. The dust kicked up by the passing truck made her cough until tears began to form.

  Pamela pulled over. “Sorry about that.” She waved at the cloud of dust. “There are some drawbacks to convertibles.” She offered Callie a bottle of water and noticed her crossed fingers. “You can uncross them now,” she said. “We’re safe.”

  Safe? She tried to laugh, but she could not stop coughing, and the tears were getting worse. Her face felt hot and her arms sweaty. What a sight she must be.

  “Try taking a breath,” Pamela said. “Slow and steady. Notice the feeling of the air going in your nostrils. Follow it down into your lungs.”

  Once the dust settled, the air felt fresh and clean. Her throat started to relax.

  “Breathe out. Notice how the air feels warm now.”

  “Thank you.” She had never stopped coughing so quickly. But it could start up again. She might as well ask, while she had a chance. “Who, ah, who is she?” She started coughing again.

  “Be patient. Follow another breath.”

  If she waited, she might not ask. She managed to get the question out between coughs. “Your high school friend?” She put her hand over her mouth to muffle the coughing.

  “Oh, sorry. Her name is Jenny. Jenny Thompson. She’s a dancer. I have her to thank for Ami Mai. She introduced us.”

  She sighed. “Oh.” She was safe. But her sigh felt more like one of disappointment than of relief. She untied her scarf and wiped the tears from her eyes.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t know you before. I could have introduced you when she was here.”

  “Jenny?”

  “Oh, sorry. No. Ami Mai. She managed a weekend here before going off to the artists’ retreat. She would have stayed longer, but my move took her by surprise. Well, took both of us by surprise. But it threw her more than me. I jump into things, but she likes everything planned in advance. She was a good sport about it, though. And she has a sabbatical coming up soon. She’ll figure out some way to stay here.”

  Once Pamela got started talking about Ami Mai, her words of love flowed like the mountain stream, sparkling with energy, thundering in places, quiet and deep in others, and always fresh and clear. Awash in Pamela’s words, Callie felt at the same time calm and exhilarated. She couldn’t wait to speak to Armando, to tell him what she felt had to be true. That if he would let his words of love for Claude flow freely, then nothing could stand in their way.

  Seventeen

  PAMELA GESTURED TO THE HILL THAT ROSE BEYOND a small community of one-story houses, all made of the blue-green stone they had seen in the truck. “I can’t wait to see the mine shafts.”

  Mine shafts. Callie shuddered recalling the time she had been invited to descend. “Do it,” Armando had said. “You’ll get a view of mining those documents you translate can’t provide.” The cables that lowered the cage had looked strong, and after the initial jolt, the ride was smooth enough, but, even so, she had broken out in a sweat approaching the darkness below and had blacked out before they reached bottom. Still, she knew plenty about mines, not just from documents, but also from reading up on Guanajuato’s mining history. She could tell Pamela about the precious metals hidden deep in bedrock so hard in places that it took hours of labor to break through inches of it, the work so dangerous in colonial times that the miners, adolescents most of them, survived only a few years.

  Pamela pulled up by a small building with a rusty Coca-Cola sign over a waist-high window. She nodded toward the window. “They’ll know where the ruins are.” She got out of the car and waved to a boy who had come to the door of the house. Then she walked over to him and started gesticulating with her hands.

  The boy seemed to understand and pointed to a road through the village.

  Callie, meanwhile, had gotten out of the car and approached the two.

  “You see,” Pamela said when she noticed Callie. “I told you they would know.”

  “So you understand what he said?”

  “Not really, beyond starting at the village,” Pamela said. “But you will. How about asking him to make a map.”

  Callie laughed, remembering Juanito once making a map for her.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “If his map is anything like the one my neighbor boy made for me, it will look like spilled spaghetti.”

  Pamela laughed. “Better than nothing.”

  The boy told Callie he could take them to the mine shaft, if they liked. But if they preferred to use a map, he would make one. Then he could stay and watch the car.

  Pamela chose having him watch the car. “It will be fun following a map. And, besides, did you see how big his eyes got when he saw this baby?” She made circles using her thumbs and forefingers to show the size.

  The boy pored over his map for some time and then walked them through the village, all the way peppering Callie with questions for Pamela about the car. At the other side of the village, he stopped by a nopal cactus, its pads edged with fruit, like lines of tiny barrels, and pointed toward the path they were to take. A path that, as far as Callie could see, crisscrossed with numerous other paths through the landscape of rocky soil, occasional vines with tiny flowers, and scattered cactus. She considered asking the boy to guide them after all, but he had been so enthusiastic about the car that she didn’t want to disappoint him, and, besides, she told herself, they could survive on nopal fruit, if need be. Pamela concurred, and so off they went.

  Callie cleared her throat several times, preparing to begin her discourse on mining when Pamela said, “Now it’s my turn for questions.”

  She took in a breath.

  “So what brought you to Mexico?”

  A safe enough topic. She let her breath out. “Mummies.”

  “Mummies?”

  “Well, they brought my aunt Ida, and I came along to keep her company.”

  “And you liked the museum so much that you stayed?”

  She laughed. “I haven’t been to it.”

  “No? It’s grisly, but fascinating. You’re a translator, Armando said. Is that why you moved?”

  “Oh, not really, I could translate almost anywhere.”

  Pamela turned to her and asked, “But you’re not thinking of moving are you?”

  She sounded worried, which surprised Callie. “Oh, no. No.”

  “That’s nice,” Pamela said. “But then, if it wasn’t for the mummies, why did you move here?”

  “I was walking along the callejón where I now live and saw the limb of a tree reaching out over a stone wall. Actually, that’s why I moved here, I think. That limb. It looked as if it were beckoning me.”

  Odd, she thought, her openness. She had not even described the limb that way to her aunt. Was it Pamela? Armando, it seemed, had been open with her. He had, after all, mentioned the husbands. Had he let anything else slip?

  “I know what you mean,” Pamela said. “Something beckoned me, too.”

  “Not an avocado tree.”

  “No,” Pamela laughed. “Though I love guacamole. I tried out for the job because I was tired of gigging, but what drew me, once I got here, was the people. They’re kind.” She raised her eyebrows. “Well, with a certain exception.”

  By Pamela’s look, she knew she meant Armando, but she chose not to comment. Instead she translated something Juanito once said when enthusing over Guanajuato: “Even the drunks are nice.”

  “And everyone’s some shade of brown. Well, most people, anyway. I have to admit, I like that. But how do you feel. Being so white?”

  Callie coughed. What a question.

  “Oh, I hope that didn’t offend you. Ami Mai says my directness can be off-putting. But I like to get right down to things.”

  “I see
. Well, I did feel like I stuck out like a sore thumb, at first. I suppose I still do.” She thought about being called güera and coughed again.

  Pamela stopped and offered Callie her water bottle again.

  “Oh, that’s okay, I have some.” She reached in her backpack.

  They stood for a moment, sipping water.

  Then Pamela said, “There’s something about you. You listen. Has anyone ever told you that? How you listen?”

  Jacob had said he had never seen anyone listen the way she did. “It’s as if nothing in the world draws your attention more than my words.” He had laughed then. “When you listen. Other times you seem miles away.”

  “I noticed at your lesson. You don’t interrupt. You don’t wait for a pause and then go on about your own experiences. You just, well, listen. I feel like I could tell you my whole life story.”

  Pamela’s whole life story. That could include Gwendolyn. Couldn’t it? If only there were a way to ask.

  “But I won’t, don’t worry. Ami Mai taught me that. I should show interest in others, not just talk about myself—and the trumpet.”

  The trumpet. Another safe topic. Maybe she needn’t have worried so.

  “And I am interested. I just got into the habit of being the center of attention. Raised as an only child, you know. And you, do you have a host of siblings?”

  “No.” But then she hadn’t needed siblings to avoid being the center of attention. Not with her father.

  “Well, welcome to the club. Did you ever want siblings?”

  “Not really. I liked playing alone.” Even as a little child she had felt cozy alone in her room reading a picture book. “Did you miss siblings?”

  “No way. I preferred the attention of a parent. Ideally, both of them. Mother says that before I went to school—when she had me on her hands all day long—she would arrange play dates with neighbor kids, hoping to have some breathing time. She would set us up with toys and then sneak off to bake a pie in peace. But it wouldn’t be long before I would pull on her apron, wanting her to come play.” She laughed. “Then when Dad came home, I’d go to his study and insist he join in.” She laughed again. “Now let’s get back to you, where did you come from?”

  Another safe question. She smiled. “Well, I was born in a small town in Missouri, but I lived in Chicago many years.”

  “Chicago? You know I’m from Chicago?”

  “I recognized your high school. Actually, I tutored there for a while.” What had come over her? She hadn’t needed to say that much.

  “You weren’t that woman who sat in the back at band concerts?” Pamela asked. “The one with the black scarf.”

  She felt her face burning. She had hoped to disguise her difference, covering her light hair with the dark scarf.

  “We were all curious about her.”

  They had talked about her? She fanned her face with her hand. Would Gwendolyn have joined in? Her hands felt sweaty.

  “But then a friend told me she had invited a white woman, her tutor, she said.”

  “That must have been me.” She wiped her hands on her shirt.

  “Mystery solved.” She laughed.

  She felt her shoulders relax and smiled.

  “But I didn’t recognize you here. Or you me, I imagine.” She took off her hat and shook her curls loose. “Not with this hair.” She laughed again.

  She smiled.

  “So you were that woman. Small world.” She spread her arms out and spun around.

  She looked around. “Small world. Yes. But big enough to get lost in. Which is where I think we might be now. Lost.”

  Pamela handed her the map. “How about trying to decipher this?”

  She took her time. Time enough, she hoped, to get off the topic of her in the back of the auditorium. It was safe enough, thanks to her cover story. But still it made her think of Jacob, which she didn’t want to do. How even after they had parted, he would come sit next to her. How his shoulder brushing against hers had filled her with desire.

  She supposed the delay worked, since, after they figured out the route, Pamela switched to a different topic. “Have you ever thought about what type of grandmother you’d like to be?”

  Where did that question come from? And how could she answer it without giving herself away? She couldn’t say one who’s privileged to know her grandchildren. Best to deflect. “I didn’t realize grandmothers came in types.”

  “According to Ami Mai’s research they do. Sporty. Adventuresome. Conventional. Arty. Hippie. Distant.”

  Distant. She didn’t want to go there. Research. That was better. “Is Ami Mai doing research for a dance about grandmothers?” She could be helpful with that. “She could use the Purépecha dance of the viejitos. Instead of children portraying little old men, they could become little old ladies bent over their canes, clacking their wooden sandals.”

  Pamela laughed. “Not a bad idea. But she wasn’t researching a dance.” She paused, as if trying to decide how to go on and then continued, “They didn’t have a category ‘Aproned,’ but that would have been my grandmother. My mother’s mother. I didn’t know my father’s. I never saw Granny without an apron. Well, hardly ever. She took it off for Sunday morning service. But otherwise she always had one on, the pinafore type, like the aprons kindergarten children wear here. She loved to cook, Granny. Just picturing her turning pieces of chicken in a sizzling skillet makes my mouth water. I’d like to be a grandmother like her. Cooking up delicious foods. That and playing the trumpet, of course. But here I am going on about me again. What about your grandmothers? Would you like to be like them?”

  Callie told Pamela she had not known either of them, since her father’s mother had died when he was small and her mother’s shortly after her own birth. “Sometimes,” Callie said, “I pretended our next-door neighbor was my grandmother. I used to climb the tree in our backyard and watch her weed her garden. She wore a cloth sunbonnet.”

  “Oh, a bonneted granny.”

  She laughed. “When she saw me, she would ask my mother if I could come help her. When we finished, she would offer me snickerdoodles from a tin.”

  “Silent as a mouse,” she recalled Mrs. Wilson saying to her mother when she walked her back home from her first visit. “Silent as a mouse, your Callie.” Mrs. Wilson’s grandchildren had been there that day. But the next time, when she was the only guest, she had talked nonstop. She didn’t remember anything she had said, but did recall Mrs. Wilson saying, “Oh, Callie, you are droll,” and how she had rushed home afterward to look up the word.

  “So,” Pamela said, “Would you like to teach your grandchildren to garden and then offer them snickerdoodles?”

  Callie nodded. She would be happy to offer her grandchildren anything. Gardening, cookies, new words. Anything. If only she could.

  They stopped to check the map again. Callie looked around and then tapped on the “R” for “ruin” marked on the map. She pointed off to the right. “It’s that way to the ruin. Looks like the mine shaft is not far beyond it.” They started walking.

  Now that they were near the mine shaft, it seemed appropriate to fill Pamela in on some mining history, Callie thought. But she had barely started when Pamela interrupted with a question. At first, she thought she hadn’t heard right. “What was that?” she asked.

  “I said ‘What do you think about babies?’”

  An image of her baby curled by her chest came to her mind. She stopped to catch her breath. “Babies?”

  Pamela stopped, too. “Sorry, I just can’t focus on minerals at the moment. You see, Ami Mai and I are planning to have one. A baby.”

  “Oh, you and Ami Mai.” So that was why Ami Mai was reading about grandmothers? Why hadn’t Pamela just said so?

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “I think that’s wonderful.”

  Pamela started walking again, waving her hands as she told of their plans. Not just one baby, but two. They would be close enough in age to play together
and far enough apart to give the first one a good start before the second came along. Ami Mai had it all figured out. “Like I said, she plans everything—to the last detail.” Ami Mai wanted to go first because she was “‘not getting any younger’—can you believe she said that?” but she had some performances coming up that she didn’t want to do pregnant. “Not that she’s one of those choreographers whose dancers all look prepubescent. Actually, that’s why she and my friend Jenny became fast friends. Jenny’s a fantastic dancer but doesn’t get many parts because she’s plump. Pleasingly plump. Kind of like …” She glanced at Callie, then went on. “Anyway, Ami Mia created a dance starring Jenny. It was the hit of the camp.” Ami Mai worked with disabled dancers, too, people whose movement was blocked in one way or another. “Kind of like me. I help students whose air is blocked. People who would sing, if only they could breathe.”

  Like her? Had she stopped breathing again? Well, she did not want a lesson on breathing now. She wanted to know how they planned to get pregnant.

  Pamela returned to the subject without prompting. She explained, as they walked along the rocky path, that she and Ami Mai had thought of adopting, but they both wanted a baby genetically related to them. “An Ami Mai-Pamela baby.” When they told Nori, Ami Mai’s older brother, he offered to donate sperm. “We didn’t even have to ask. I felt bad for having thought him a nerd,” Pamela said. “But you would know what I mean, if you saw his studio.” She rolled her eyes. “Sterile.”