How High the Moon

by Sandra Kring

  I tuned them out and sang some more “How High the Moon,” instead of just humming it. I guess they heard, because the next thing I knew, Teddy was telling them about me singing at the Starlight for the big gala. I went back to humming then, so I could hear Mrs. Fry ooooo and ahhhh since it was the first time she’d heard the news.

  They didn’t do that long, though, before Mrs. Fry was talking about how good her daughter said Charlie could play the piano. Then Miss Tuckle was gushing about Charlie instead. “I play, but not well”—no kidding!—“so I admire anyone with a natural musical talent,” she said. “I see you have a piano, Teddy. Do you play?” My ears perked up like Poochie’s when that nosy mentioned my ma’s piano.

  I wanted that piano saved pristine for Ma. And Teddy knew it.

  I was still in my undershirt and underwear, my legs damp from their milk bath, when I went to the door and leaned up against it. Deciding right then and there that if Miss Tuckle thought she was touching Ma’s piano, she had another thing coming!

  But Miss Tuckle wasn’t thinking about playing Ma’s piano. She was thinking about having Charlie play it.

  Charlie was talking so mumble-mouthed that I couldn’t hear what he said, but I heard Mrs. Fry say, “Go on. Play us something, Charlie.”

  Having your old neighbor lady and your Sunday school teacher and your fat, scabby-headed neighbor who wasn’t even your friend turn on you was one thing, but having the guy raising you say, “Go ahead, Charlie,” well, that was the last straw! I grabbed the first dress I could reach in my closet and yanked it down so hard that the hanger banged me on the forehead. Charlie was hitting the middle-C key. I recognized the sound as soon as he struck it. And suddenly I could see her. Ma. Sitting right next to me, her limp nightgown outlining her lap as she showed me that very key, and then the chord that went with it.

  I punched my arms through the armholes of my dress, and didn’t even bother pulling the skirt part down over my damp legs before I shot out of my room and screamed, “What do you think you’re doing, Charlie Fry? Get your hands off that piano!”

  Teddy leapt to his feet. “Teaspoon!”

  Charlie backed up, his brows cringing away from eyes that looked ready to jump out of his head.

  I didn’t care that Charlie started crying, any more than I cared if my shout startled Mrs. Fry. I didn’t even care that my Sunday school teacher was staring at me like I picked up a case of rabies while in my room. I stomped across the floor, my fists bunched, and was about to haul off and slug Charlie when Teddy grabbed my arm. “Enough,” he said.

  I was so hot under the collar that I wanted to cuss really bad. “That’s Ma’s piano! We’re saving it pristine for her. You know that, Teddy. Why’d you let him touch it?”

  Charlie ran out the door, leaving it hanging open, and Mrs. Fry struggled to her feet so she could go after him. “Teaspoon,” Teddy said. “Calm down.”

  “You calm down!” I screamed, even though Teddy was always calm as dead.

  “I said enough, Teaspoon, and I meant it.” He glanced over at Miss Tuckle, his face red with anger, or embarrassment, or who cared what.

  “Teaspoon. Since when did you become so insensitive to other people’s feelings?” Teddy let go of my arm and hurried to the window to gawk over at the Frys. “He didn’t mean any harm.”

  “Well, he caused some,” I said.

  Teddy was so upset that he was moving in place, his hands on his hips. “Teaspoon… Miss Tuckle, Charlie, Mrs. Fry… they don’t know how you feel about your ma’s piano, but what Mrs. Fry does know—”

  “But you know, Teddy!”

  “As I was saying… what Mrs. Fry does know is how Charlie feels about music. That boy’s known how to play the piano since he was four years old. His dad taught him. And he has a gift for playing. But he’s not had a piano to play since he left his father’s home eighteen months ago. Did you know those things about Charlie? Do you really want to keep his music from him, when we have a perfectly good piano sitting idle here?”

  And then Teddy did what I guessed he’d do—what he always did when things got serious and he thought I was looking at things wrong. He tapped his hand over his heart and said, “Give it some thought,” like a person’s brains were there.

  My face was stinging like Teddy’d smacked it when I ran out of the house, grabbed my scooter, and headed down the street. I didn’t know where I was going. Just anywhere but home!

  The wheels bumped in rhythm and my cheeks jiggled as I rode my scooter down the sidewalk, making it go faster than I knew it could.

  Sure, I saw Walking Doll on the corner. Heard her call my name, too. But I wasn’t planning on stopping because I didn’t want to talk to anybody.

  Walking Doll wanted to talk to me, though. So when I got up close to where she was standing, she called out, “Whoa, stop!” and jumped out like a wise guy, sticking herself right in my path.

  “Ow! Damn it to hell, that hurt, Teaspoon!” she hollered when I slammed into her.

  “It’s your fault!” I said, while Walking Doll lifted The Kenosha Kid’s black dress with the too-big neckline and rubbed her thigh and knee. “Why’d you jump out in front of me like that? Couldn’t you see how fast I was going?”

  Even though she was still ouching, she started laughing at the same time. “Wow, somebody’s sure spitting nails tonight. Some boy go whaling on you again?”

  “No. But my mad is about a boy.”

  “Aren’t you a little young to be having man troubles?”

  “Stop teasing me!” I shrieked.

  I suppose Walking Doll saw that my eyes wanted to cry, because she stopped grinning. “Sorry, kiddo. What happened?” she asked, still rubbing her leg.

  “That fat little kid, Charlie? He tried banging on my ma’s piano. And Teddy got huffy with me when I got ticked about it. I got out of there before he could finish lecturing me about poor Charlie this, and poor Charlie that, because his ma’s in heaven and his dad’s in the clink—like that’s the issue! That piano is my ma’s and I don’t want anybody touching it but her.”

  Walking Doll sat down on the curb, patting a spot beside her like it was her couch. “Come on,” she said.

  I didn’t have enough energy to keep scootering, so I propped my scooter up against the mailbox and sat down. I almost wished Mrs. Fry would come walking by just then, pushing that little cart of hers that she took to the grocery store, so she could see me and Walking Doll sitting with our knees apart. It would serve her right!

  “That piano is my ma’s. My ma’s! Charlie didn’t have no business banging on it, and Teddy knows it.”

  “Can Charlie play the piano, or was he really banging on it?” she asked.

  I looked at her like she’d lost her marbles. “I don’t know. What’s that got to do with it? The point is, it’s my ma’s and I want it saved pristine for her.” I wrapped my arms around my knees and ground my eyes against them so no tears could leak out.

  “Do you remember your ma playing it?” Walking Doll asked.

  “Course I remember. When she was practicing her pianoing skills to get a job at The Dusty Rose. Most times she’d just keep playing the same song, starting over every time she hit a sour note. But sometimes she played just for fun, mistakes and all, and we’d sing together.

  “Teddy lets me keep the radio in my bedroom and play it when I want, except for when it’s bedtime. I play it loud when he’s not home, but even with the dial on number ten, that radio can’t fill up the house with music the way Ma and me could.”

  Walking Doll smiled. “Your whole face lit up when you remembered that,” she said.

  “She was going to teach me to play. She started to, but she left before I got past ‘Every Good’… that’s E and G in case you don’t have any pianoing skills.”

  Walking Doll picked up a rock and rolled it in her hand. “My ma used to bake bread,” she said. “To this day, whenever I smell homemade bread or taste it, I think of her. It’s like a slice of memory.”


  “I didn’t even know you had a ma,” I said.

  Walking Doll started scraping the rock against the sidewalk, cutting short, white lines into the cement. “Course I had a ma,” she said. “What do you think, a stork dropped me here on this street corner?”

  “Well, how would I know? You never told me you had a ma. But I suppose it’s my fault that I didn’t know that, even if you never said it.”

  “Now, why would that be your fault?”

  “I don’t know. Ask Teddy. He’s the know-it-all,” I said.

  Walking Doll stopped scraping the sidewalk and looked at me. “Don’t slug me for saying this, okay? But I’m thinking of you now… not Charlie… not your ma. Maybe if that kid really can play, you two could fill the house with music again. Just like you and your ma used to. It might work on you just like a slice of homemade bread works on me, and remind you of those times when your ma was with you, so you don’t forget them.”

  “But I want the piano saved pristine. Ma ain’t gonna wanna come back for some old beat-up piano.”

  “So that’s what you think? That the only reason your ma would have to come back is to get a shiny, like-new piano? You’re enough for her to come back to, kid. You’re like the sun, even when you’re grumpy, and if that’s not enough for her, well then…”

  She didn’t finish that sentence, but added, “It at least might help you keep your memories of her pristine, you know?”

  Walking Doll didn’t give me time to hit her—not that I would have—she got up and brushed off the butt of her dress. “Damn, but it’s quiet tonight,” she said. She put her hand on the rubber handle of my scooter, leaning against it like she was suddenly too tired to hold herself up. “Where’d you get this thing, anyway?” she asked.

  “At a yard sale.”

  “Nice,” she said. Then she stared down the quiet street and sighed. I thought of telling her about the Sunshine Sisters and the gala, but I wanted to save that good news for a happier time. So instead, I asked her if she wanted to take a ride on my scooter.

  She laughed like I was kidding, as she rocked it back and forth a bit. “Why not?” I said. “It’s a whole lot funner than riding in Ralph’s taxicab.”

  “What the hell,” Walking Doll said. She kicked off her high heels and put her left foot on the scooter. “Now what do I do?”

  “Nothing. Just push with your other foot and steer.” She asked me to keep an eye on her purse, which was stuffed under the mailbox like it always was when she didn’t feel like holding it, and off she went, past the shops, laughing and shouting “Wheeeeeeeee” like she was on a carnival ride.

  “Oh my God,” she yelled from down the street, her long hair waving in the breeze like clean laundry. “This is so fun!”

  When she got back to the corner, she didn’t stop. She circled around me, the front wheels coming close to falling off the curb, then she headed back down the street, whooping it up all over again. She was having so much fun that I ended up laughing, too, even if I didn’t want to.

  Walking Doll still had half of a block to go to get back to the corner when Ralph’s taxi pulled up and The Kenosha Kid slipped out of the backseat, tugging down Walking Doll’s red dress so her undies wouldn’t show. There was a guy I didn’t know sitting in the front seat beside Ralph, but The Kenosha Kid didn’t say good-bye to either of them.

  “Your lipstick’s smeared,” I told her as she slammed the door, but she didn’t answer because she was staring down the street after Walking Doll. “What in the hell is she doing?” she said, a grin spreading across her face. “Jesus, like a little kid.”

  And Walking Doll did look more like a kid than a lady as she wheeled her way back to us, her head lolled sideways because she was laughing so hard, her cheeks bright pink as she jumped off. Just then, Mr. Miller’s Lincoln Continental reached the stop sign. Walking Doll stopped giggling, but she put a smile on her face as she poked her hip out to the side and ran her hand down it. Mr. Miller watched her without turning his head all the way.

  After his car passed, we could see that he was gawking in his rearview mirror. “I don’t like Mr. Miller,” I said. “He sounds mean when he talks to Teddy, even when he’s smiling. His girl, Susie, is mean like him, too. Though she doesn’t even try to sound nice.” I said this like I’d forgotten that Teddy was a Benedict Arnold.

  “Oh, he’s a bastard all right,” Walking Doll said, her voice quiet and low like a growl.

  I looked up at her. “Then why’d you smile at him?” I asked. She didn’t answer. She just kept staring down the street with narrowed eyes, watching Mr. Miller’s Lincoln disappear. Walking Doll didn’t look like a kid no more.

  The last of the day’s sun dipped down behind the tin roof of Pop’s store, so that the glare that was usually there on sunny days was gone. “You better go home now, kid. It’s getting dark, and we’ve got things to do.”

  I was half of a block from home when I saw Teddy on the sidewalk, coming from the Frys’ house and going to ours, holding a bundle wrapped in tinfoil like it was a baby. (That was Teddy for you. So good that he wouldn’t walk on the grass, even if it was yellowing from a lack of rain.)

  Across the street, Jolene and Jennifer were sitting on their steps when I pulled into my yard, the white toes of their new shoes glow-in-the-dark bright. “Hey, Teaspoon,” Jolene called, “want to come over and see our new saddle shoes?” I pretended I couldn’t hear them over the shouting match Jack and James were having in their yard, and scootered around my house to sit on the back steps.

  I should have known that Poochie would start snarling the second I got back there. Poochie was like that. Even when he caught a glimpse of people on the sidewalk, he went nuts. Snarling and biting at the air like he thought they were going to come into his yard and pull out his vocal cords, even though I’ll bet not one person in the whole neighborhood would have stepped into that yard to do that, even they wanted to. I wanted to yell at Poochie to stop getting his fur in a bundle, but I didn’t want Teddy to hear me. Not that yelling would have done any more good than Mrs. Fry’s twisted knuckles giving him a warning rap against the kitchen window, which is exactly what she was doing.

  Teddy must have gotten suspicious that I was in the backyard when he heard Poochie carrying on, though, because a few seconds later the doorknob jiggled and Teddy poked his head out.

  I pressed myself flat against the corner of the house, siding scraping like sandpaper against my back as I hid in the dark shadow coming from the bush. Teddy opened the door and stepped out. Standing on the steps and cocking his pointy head this way and that, being nosier than I ever was. “Teaspoon?” he called.

  Poochie’s barks gobbled up my name the second time he called it.

  Teddy stood there for a bit, looked over at Poochie, and went back inside.

  “You girls seen Teaspoon?” I heard him call from the front door a few seconds later. And then the sound of Jolene Jackson’s voice, screechy as a finger rubbing against wet glass. “She went around the back of your house a few minutes ago.” I made a mental note to punch her twice as hard the next time we fought.

  Teddy came out the back door again, his hands hanging limp, then finding their way into his pockets. “Why didn’t you answer me when I called?” he asked, even though I don’t think he knew exactly where I was. When I didn’t answer, he sat down.

  “I know you’re mad at me, Teaspoon,” he said, talking to me like I was sitting beside him. “And I can’t say that I blame you. I know how it looked, me sitting right there, letting Charlie touch your ma’s piano.”

  I wanted to stay hidden, but when my mad came out, so did I. I stepped into the glow made by the Frys’ porch light. “Why’d you do it, Teddy?” I didn’t want to cry, but I could feel that my eyes were going to make tears anyway.

  “Well, Teaspoon,” Teddy said with a sigh. “Because I looked at Charlie. That’s why. Haven’t you ever noticed the way that boy looks at your ma’s piano when he comes over? Like he’
s starving to death for the sounds only that piano can make.”

  “Charlie don’t look like he’s starving for anything to me,” I said.

  “Teaspoon,” Teddy warned. “You know what I’m talking about. Tonight when Mrs. Fry suggested he play, Charlie’s eyes lit up. I could see his fingers twitching.”

  “His fingers always twitch,” I reminded Teddy. I crossed my arms.

  “Teaspoon, you’re lucky. Your gift is in your voice, and you can open that gift anytime you want. But imagine if it wasn’t. If you needed an instrument to make music happen. And it was taken from you.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t go stealing his ma’s vocal cords if mine got taken away, that’s for sure.”

  “Come on now,” Teddy said. “Hurt and upset as you are, you know that’s silly.”

  I wanted to smart-mouth Teddy some more, but I couldn’t because I had a lump the size of a fist in my throat.

  “Teaspoon, Charlie won’t wreck that piano by playing it. He’ll help it stay in tune.”

  “He’ll get gunk all over it, Teddy. You’ve seen Charlie’s hands. They’re as grubby as my elbows—always smeared with dried jelly, dirt, or head scabs… who knows what else.”

  “Then ask him to wash before he plays.” Teddy sighed. “Teaspoon, you know what it feels like to miss a mother, now don’t you? But at least you can have hope that you’ll see yours again. Charlie won’t be reunited with his dad until he’s a grown man, and he’ll never see his mother again. That’s pretty sad, now, isn’t it?”

  “Boy, Teddy. You might not be a sinner, but maybe you do need to start going to church if you don’t know that Charlie will see his ma again. In heaven.”

  Teddy stood up. “Okay. If you don’t want Charlie touching your ma’s piano, I won’t make you change your mind. What I will ask you to do, though, is to give it some thought. Living with regrets over what we did, or didn’t do, is a heavy burden to carry, Teaspoon. Now come on inside. It’s late.”