The Trumpet Lesson

by Dianne Romain

  He was right about that. She had enough trouble finding time to practice as it was. But she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that. “I’ll manage.” But how? Her mother would find it odd she had a trumpet, much less planned to play it. One more reason her mother should stay put.

  “IT’S all taken care of, Dear,” her mother said when Callie finally reached her early Saturday morning. John would be taking her to the airport, and they wouldn’t have a long, early morning drive to catch the plane, as he had arranged for them to stay at an airport hotel the night before her flight. “In separate rooms, of course, Dear,” her mother added, as if she would be concerned.

  Callie smiled at the jaguar, but didn’t say anything.

  “John arranged for someone from the airline to meet me in Dallas and take me to my connecting flight, so don’t worry about that. And I know to drink plenty of water. I won’t get dehydrated.”

  It looked like everything had been taken care of, but still, dissuading her mother from traveling alone seemed worth a try. “But, Mother, are you sure you want to leave John behind?”

  “Now, Dear,” her mother said. “Don’t you start giving me trouble. It took me long enough to convince John, and then your aunt Ida started up. I want to have time with you. It wouldn’t be the same if John came along.”

  She was on the verge of telling her mother it wasn’t a good time for her to have a guest, but then thought better of it. If her mother wanted to go on a lark before getting married, why not honor that impulse?

  When she hung up the phone, she realized she hadn’t told her mother how happy she was that she and John were to marry, and so she dialed her mother again.

  Her mother answered on the first ring and laughed when she heard Callie’s voice. “I knew it would be you. We hadn’t finished our conversation, had we?”

  “No,” Callie said, “I was so worried about your trip I forgot to say how happy I am that you and John are getting married. So very, very happy.”

  “I’m glad you’re happy, Dear. I know you’ve always liked John, but still I felt a little nervous. There will be so many changes.”

  “All for the better, I’m sure.” Callie said. Her mother finally moving on with her life. There was nothing better than that.

  Once she accepted her mother’s visit, she began looking forward to it. She modified her weekend plans. No Sunday walk with Armando and no breathing session with Pamela. She would use the time to move forward with her next translation, to free up time during her mother’s visit. She would ditch her usual Saturday and Sunday chores, too, and, instead, prepare the guest room. And she would stop by the tourist kiosk for information to make a list of things they could do together.

  Armando had been disappointed when she called him, but once she assured him for the third time that she would not be seeing Pamela over the weekend either, he calmed down. Pamela seemed fine about the weekend, but then called back, sounding anxious. She wanted to make sure that Callie would be there for her OB-GYN appointment on Monday.

  “What kind of local granny would miss an OB-GYN appointment?” Callie said. “Not this one.”

  When she hung up the phone, she looked over at the jaguar. He looked pleased for a change. Maybe she could do something right.

  Thirty-Six

  CALLIE STOOD STILL AND SILENT BY THE EXAMINATION table where Pamela lay.

  When the doctor placed the ultrasound wand over Pamela’s tummy, Pamela’s eyes went to the monitor. Callie turned to look, too, then leaned closer to try to make out an image.

  “Ask her where the baby is.” Pamela’s voice sounded anxious. “I don’t see her.”

  Callie translated Pamela’s question. When the doctor answered, Callie put her hand on Pamela’s arm. “She says there’s not much to see at seven weeks.”

  “What about her heart.” Her voice was still tense. “It sounds fast.”

  The doctor explained that an embryo’s heart beats at the rate of ninety to one-hundred-and-ten beats per minute and increases to one-fifty to one-sixty per minute by the time of birth.

  Pamela smiled. “The rate my heart beat the first time I climbed the callejón to my house. Boy was I out of breath. A little like now.”

  Callie smiled.

  When the doctor asked Callie to have Pamela breathe naturally, Callie realized that she, herself, was holding her breath. She turned to the screen again. What did the doctor see? She asked her, and then translated the doctor’s response: “The baby is in the uterus, not in a fallopian tube.”

  “That’s good. But what about her? Is she alone in there?”

  “Alone?”

  “Ami Mai has sisters that are twins and some twin cousins, too.”

  Callie explained to the doctor that there were twins in Pamela’s partner’s family.

  The doctor asked whether there were twins in Pamela’s family and then Callie translated the question to Pamela.

  Pamela glanced at Callie and then turned to the doctor. “Sí.”

  How did she know?

  The doctor studied the scan. Callie translated: “There’s just one embryo. It’s seven millimeters. Normal for its age.”

  “How long would that be?” Pamela asked.

  “About a quarter of an inch,” Callie said.

  Pamela held her thumb and forefinger apart a tiny amount and studied the distance. “And she weighs?”

  Callie asked the doctor, then relayed her answer: “Less than a gram.”

  Pamela raised her eyebrows.

  The doctor smiled. “Ligero como una pluma.”

  Callie translated: “Light as a feather.”

  Pamela turned to Callie. “If she’s the length of a flea and light as a feather, why do I feel five pounds heavier?”

  Callie laughed. “Could it be your appetite?”

  Later Callie overheard Pamela phoning Ami Mai from the dressing room. “Our little flea’s healthy and beautiful. Just like you. And when she moves, she dances.”

  Callie smiled. The embryo was barely visible, much less with distinct features or precise motions. Still it was beautiful. That she saw, too. She leaned back in her chair, recalling the tiny Noah she had imagined in her belly. Same lanky figure, same ebony skin, same almond eyes. How surprised she had been when the baby the nurse lay on her stomach was a chubby cinnamon girl.

  When Pamela emerged from the changing room, she asked Callie what she was smiling about.

  She coughed. “Oh, nothing.”

  “LET’S sit here,” Pamela motioned to a table under an umbrella in the restaurant by Teatro Juárez.

  Callie looked down the pedestrian street. What if Armando came by and saw them? She gestured toward the clouds forming above. “It looks like rain.”

  “I think we’re fine. I like it here.” She pointed to her stomach. “She does, too.”

  Callie checked her watch. Still over an hour until the end of rehearsal. Chances are she and Pamela would be gone before it ended.

  When the waitress came by to ask what they wanted to drink, Pamela asked Callie to order food, too. “Something filling that can be fixed up right away.” Then she started rifling through her purse. “There’s something I want to show you.” She pulled out a creamy white baby shoe and handed it to Callie.

  “It’s soft and lovely.” She smiled. “But won’t you need … two?”

  “There is another one, but I don’t have it. Not yet.” She took the shoe back, set it on the table, and then turned again to Callie. “Look, I didn’t tell you everything the other day.”

  “Oh?” So she wasn’t the only one.

  “Mother doesn’t know.”

  “Where the other shoe is?”

  “Oh, she knows that. She has it.”

  “Well, then …”

  “She doesn’t know I have this one.”

  “No?”

  “No. It fell off when the social worker walked away with me. My bio-mom picked it up and kept it.”

  Her bio-mom. So that’s how sh
e knew there were twins in her family, too. Her hands began to shake, and she put them out of view on her lap.

  The waitress returned with a plate of tortilla chips layered with beans, cheese, salsa, and thick cream for Pamela and a plate of sliced fruit for Callie.

  Pamela stopped talking and focused on picking up savory tortilla pieces with her fingers. “We’ll need more napkins,” was all she managed to get out for a while.

  Callie studied the overlapping slices of papaya, pineapple, and melon ringing the circle of banana rounds on her plate. She had been hungry when she ordered, but now she couldn’t eat. Was Pamela’s biological mother white? Was Pamela disappointed? The way she said “bio-mom” sounded sweet. But still …

  “Was it, well … difficult … meeting your biological mother?” She felt her hands shaking against her legs. But she had to ask. She clasped her hands together.

  “No. Some friends warned me against meeting her. ‘Why open that can of worms,’ they said, but Ami Mai encouraged me. We both wanted to know my genetic history. And, I don’t know, I suppose I wanted my baby to have an opportunity I did not have.”

  Her heart filled with hope. “And so you decided to look for her.”

  “Yes. She wasn’t white. But her mother, my biological grandmother, was. Is, I mean, white. That’s why I’m on the light side, I guess. Anyway, my biological grandfather was from Senegal. He had fought with the Free French forces in the liberation of Southern France, and she had served in the WACS. They met in Paris. ‘He was tall and black as night,’ my grandmother said.”

  “Your grandmother?”

  “I met her, too. Anyway, my grandfather told my grandmother he had never before seen a white lady walk with the grace of a Senegal woman. She was the first.”

  She smiled.

  “She blushed when she told me that. All these years later. Imagine. It must have been love at first sight.”

  She pictured Noah’s hands taking a book from the library shelf, and her own hands relaxed. “Lovely.”

  “She went with him back to Senegal when de Gaulle replaced him and the other African soldiers with white ones. But then he died suddenly the month before my mother was born, and so my grandmother returned to Detroit.”

  “Did she have help from her family?”

  “She had no family. Her parents had died, and she had no siblings. She did have the GI bill, though, and so she went to college and got her nursing degree, toting my mother along.”

  “That must have been a challenge.”

  “A challenge. That’s hardly the word. Imagine a white woman with a mixed-race baby in those days! People were nasty.”

  She thought of the nurse with the cross. People had been nasty in her day, too.

  Pamela took a sip of water. “When my bio-mom got pregnant with me, and her young man abandoned her, her mom— my bio-grandmother—consulted with a social worker she knew. The social worker recommended adoption—for the sake of the child and to help out a childless couple. Still, her mom offered to help, if my bio-mom wanted to raise me.”

  “Oh, my. But …” She stopped herself, fearing she would give herself away if she completed her thought. Still, she wondered, how had she let her go?

  Pamela must have known what she was thinking anyway. “My bio-mom wanted her baby to have the father she had never had. So, she decided to follow the social worker’s advice.” She turned to Callie as if she needed to reassure her. “Mom told me how grateful she and Dad were to my bio-mom, though they never knew her.”

  Yes, of course they were grateful. The gift of a child. She imagined Pamela’s mother receiving baby Pamela, her wish come true. But how had Pamela’s biological mother felt? She wanted to ask, but knew her voice would waiver.

  Luckily she didn’t have to ask. “My bio-mom told me that she went on with her life, and, yet, she always wondered if she had done the right thing,” Pamela said.

  Of course, she would wonder—especially when she could have kept her baby.

  “She regretted not insisting on an open adoption so she could have known for sure that my parents loved me.”

  Yes, to know that, at least. Callie’s hands began to shake again. “They were not common then. Open adoptions.” Her voice sounded weak. Not that an open adoption would have eased her mind. She would still have had to let her baby go. She shivered. She had to pull herself together. She took in a breath.

  “No, I suppose not.” Pamela picked up the shoe and looked at it. “When she gave me this, she said she didn’t need it any longer, now that she had met me. And then she asked for forgiveness.”

  Ask for forgiveness. She couldn’t see herself doing that. It seemed at once too much to ask for and yet insufficient to still her regret.

  “I didn’t know what to say!” She put the shoe down and looked at Callie. “It’s funny, I never blamed her. I know some adopted kids feel that way. But I never did.”

  Not blame her? When she could have kept baby Pamela? Blaming her seemed, somehow, more fitting. She checked herself. Who was she to judge that woman’s decision?

  Pamela’s voice turned sad. “I reserved my blame for Mother.”

  She wanted to comfort her. “Maybe. But you’re not blaming her any longer. At least so it seems.”

  “No, but that’s not the only problem.” She paused as if trying to decide whether to explain. And then her voice lightened. “I met my bio-mom’s kids, too. Oh, she got married again eventually and had nine of them. Imagine!”

  Having nine more children after relinquishing a baby. She couldn’t imagine that. She could not have had even one other child. But Pamela didn’t seem to mind all those other babies.

  “And, you know, her mother—my grandmother—she still walks with grace.” She laughed. “She’s a ‘graceful granny.’”

  Callie smiled. “You are graceful, too.”

  “You know, she said that, too.” She laughed. “She’s nice. They’re all nice. Ami Mai and I will see them again. We want our baby to meet them. But I don’t feel—the way some do about their bio-families—that they are my people, my real family. The Fischers are my family.” She pointed to her tummy again. “They are this baby’s family, too.”

  She dipped her fingers in a water glass and then reached for a napkin. “And, yet …” She paused to dry her hands. “This baby will be mine, my relation, in a way that no other person is. I will have what my mother wanted, but could not have. A child of her very own.” She leaned back in her chair. “You know when babies are born how people say things like, ‘She has her grandma’s eyes.’ Well, my baby can’t have my mother’s eyes.” Tears started rolling down her cheeks. “What if she has her bio-grandmom’s eyes? And what if Mom sees those eyes in my baby? How will she feel then?”

  Callie recalled seeing herself, her mother, and her father in the photo of Gwendolyn and felt tears run down her face, too.

  Just then a hand rested on her shoulder. She turned to see Armando glowering at Pamela.

  “Now what have you done?” he asked.

  Before Pamela could answer, Juanito appeared, smiling, and carrying a lopsided music stand. He offered the stand to Callie.

  Armando turned and cast a dark look at him.

  “Oh,” Callie lay a calming hand on Armando’s arm a moment and then reached out for the music stand.

  “Now, Callie,” Armando said, reaching out to intercept the music stand. “You don’t need this.”

  Juanito pointed to the listing side of the stand. A piece was broken, but Juanito said he knew someone who could fix it.

  Callie smiled at him. Well, that would be nice—for Juanito himself to see about getting the broken stand fixed.

  “I think it can be made good as new,” Armando said, turning the music stand this way and that to check it out. “I know a student who can use it and that trumpet you’ll never play.”

  Pamela turned to Callie and asked, “Were you thinking of giving your trumpet away?”

  “Well,” she said. She looked at A
rmando and hesitated and then turned back to Pamela.

  “I would like …”

  “Another lesson. Sure. I meant to talk with you about scheduling one.” She looked down at her stomach. “But there’s been so much going on.”

  “Why would you want to do that? You told me you didn’t have time for anything because of your mother’s visit!” Armando said to Callie. “Tell her ‘no.’”

  Pamela stood up and went to stand by Armando. She pointed at him. “Tell him ‘no.’”

  Callie turned to Pamela. “Look, to be honest, I have been busy. I haven’t had time for practice or the breathing exercises.”

  “Which you could use,” Pamela said. “I noticed you were holding your breath a little while ago.”

  Callie turned to Armando and said, “But, no, I am not thinking of giving the trumpet away.”

  “Well,” Armando said, and set the music stand down beside Callie. “Then you might as well have this piece of junk, too.”

  Pamela leaned over to gather up her things. “I’ve got to go.” She turned to Callie and said, “But I wanted to check with you about your mother. Didn’t you say she was coming in on Thursday? Mine is too. I could drive us there.”

  “No, you can’t.” Armando said. “I am taking Callie to pick up her mom.” He turned to Callie and asked, “What time did you say she’s coming in?”

  “Five p.m.”

  “Oh, well, then,” Pamela said. “My mother arrives in the early afternoon.”

  “I suppose you’re planning to skip out early on the rehearsal?” Armando said. “Why weren’t you there today, anyway?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Well, at least you weren’t distracting Maestro Chávez for a change.”

  Pamela turned to Armando. “You do him no service by ignoring his lapses. He needs medical attention, not coverups.” She turned to Callie and asked, “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “Well …” She looked from one to the other.

  “Don’t say anything,” Armando said to her and then turned to Pamela. “And that is none of your business.”

  “It’s orchestra business. He needs to resign. And I am not the only one who thinks that.”