by Amy Harmon
As I worked, I listened nervously to the powerful music pouring out of the house. All at once, the music changed and morphed into something equally powerful, but infused with joy in every note. The music swelled in my heart and had tears filling my eyes and overflowing onto my cheeks. I wiped at them in amazement, leaving a streak of grease down the side of my face.
Music had never made me cry before. And these weren’t sad tears. The music I was hearing made me feel the way I sometimes felt in church when I sang songs about God or Jesus. But it made me feel that way without any words. I loved words. I was surprised that the music could talk to me without speaking. I listened as long as I dared, and when the song seemed to near its soaring conclusion, I picked up my bike and sped away, pedaling in time with the music that now filled my head.
* * *
“It’s a retired doctor and his wife,” my dad told me at dinner that night when I relayed the story of the white Cadillac. “Name’s Grimwald, or something or other.”
“Grimaldi,” Jacob corrected with his mouth full of mashed potatoes. “Rachel and her mom helped clean the house before they moved in.”
Rachel was Jacob’s girlfriend. Rachel’s mom was the president of the women’s organization at our little church, and duty made her a busy woman. It also provided an opportunity for firsthand knowledge of all the town’s goings-on, although she wasn’t the type to abuse her position.
“Rachel said the doc’s wife insisted on paying them,” Jacob continued. “She got kinda feisty when they refused. Rachel said her mom kept saying they were glad to help and wanted to serve. The doc’s wife finally gave in, but said that if Rachel wanted to come back she would pay her to clean once a week.” Jacob settled back with a satisfied burp.
“Why did they move to Levan?” I questioned. “Are they related to somebody?” Levan was a far cry from St. George three hours south, where retirees commonly moved to soak up sun and enjoy easy winters.
“Rachel says the old man is writing a book and he wants peace and quiet,” Jacob said matter-of-factly. “The doc’s wife said they are old friends of the Brockbanks, and Levan seemed like a good place to find it.”
I thought of the loud and passionate music of earlier that day. It definitely hadn’t been quiet then. I resolved to wheedle Rachel into taking me along when she went to clean again. And that was how I met Sonja Grimaldi.
* * *
Rachel was a tiny, pretty redhead who was good-natured and very hardworking. She was always moving and doing. She referred to everything as a thingy or a dilly, and she would probably never gain a pound, as she worked as fast as she talked and never seemed to tire. I loved her, but too much time in her presence made me long to sit down and drown in a deep book. She was a perfect complement to my laid-back, slow talking oldest brother, and I was grateful that someday she would probably be a Jensen, and I would have a sister.
That Saturday she was happy to let me tag along to the Grimaldis, and I found myself looking forward to hearing more music, hoping that whoever had played before might do so again. The Grimaldis were nowhere to be found when we arrived, though Rachel didn’t seem concerned and immediately got to work. I tried to help her clean, but she shooed me away good-naturedly, saying she didn’t want to share her profits. I tip-toed through the kitchen and into the room where I thought the piano must be. The piano was an enormous, black, shiny showpiece, the lid raised high, the seat a long smooth slash of ebony. I desperately wanted to sit down and run my hands across the keys. So I did. I slid onto the bench and rested my hands gently on the glistening whites. I played each one very, very softly, enjoying the individual sounds, the clear tones.
“Do you play?” a voice said behind me.
My heart jumped out of my chest and tumbled to the floor as I sat frozen, my hands still on the keys.
“You touch the keys so reverently, I thought you must play,” the voice continued.
My heart returned to my chest, pounding loudly to let me know I was still alive. I stood and turned guiltily. A bird-like woman, not much taller than me, stood just behind me. Her silver hair was fashioned in an up-do, all swooped the way Jane Seymour had worn hers in Somewhere in Time. She wore black horn-rimmed glasses on her very long nose and a deep purple pantsuit with matching purple gems that I later learned were called garnets at her ears, hands, and throat.
“I’m Josie,” I stammered. “Josie Jensen. I came with Rachel. I don’t play…but I wish I could.”
She glided past me and sat herself regally on the black bench I had vacated.
“Who is your favorite composer?” Her glasses slid down her nose as she tipped her face forward, peering at me above the rims.
“I don’t know any of the composers,” I confessed sheepishly. “Most of the music I know I hear at church or on the radio. I do love to hear the organ play the hymns.” Thoughts of Jane Seymour moments before brought a memory to mind. “There was this music in a movie I saw once. It was my mom’s favorite, and she cried whenever she watched it. The movie was called Somewhere in Time... do you know it?” I rushed on when she didn’t respond. “There was this beautiful song that kept playing.”
“Ahhh, yes,” she sighed. “That is one of Rachmaninoff’s creations. Was it this?” She started to play the romantic strains of the music I remembered. I sank to a nearby chair and listened to the soul-stirring piece. I felt my heart swell to bursting and the tears rise in my eyes just like before.
She turned toward me as she finished and must have seen something in my face, must have seen how the music touched me.
“How old are you, child?” she asked quietly.
“My birthday is September 1st. I’ll be ten on Tuesday,” I answered shyly. I knew I looked older, and I always felt funny when I confessed my age.
“How does the music make you feel?”
“Alive,” I responded immediately and without thought, and I blushed a little at my answer.
She seemed oddly satisfied.
“Would you like to learn to play?”
“I would love to!” I exclaimed, exuberant. “I’ll have to ask my dad…but I’m sure he’ll let me!” A thought clouded my happy musings. “How much does it cost?” I worried.
“The only cost is the pleasure of your company and the solemn promise that you will practice very hard.” She shook her finger at me sternly. “The child who does not practice does not proceed with further lessons.”
“I will practice harder than anyone has practiced before!” I promised sincerely.
“Has school started?”
“Yes, ma’am. It started last week.”
“Then I will see you Monday after school, Josie.” She held out her bony hands and clasped mine gently, sealing our deal. It was the best birthday gift I ever received.
Sonja Grimaldi had been a professor of music for thirty years. She had met and married her husband Leo, aka Doc, later on in life, and though Doc had a son from an earlier marriage, they had never had any children together. It had been a series of strange events and coincidences that had brought them to Levan. Doc had been a friend to the senior Mr. Brockbank since they’d gone to school together as young men. Doc had been the family physician since he had graduated from med school. Both Sonja and Doc were in their seventies but still spry and ambitious. Doc had always wanted to write, but while he practiced medicine he had never found the time. Sonja had the notion that she might like to compose a little as well, and Tuckaway Hill had seemed the perfect writer’s retreat.
I combed the Penny Pincher classified ads for a few weeks until I found a piano for sale. It proved to be old and ugly, but it had a rich, lovely sound. I contributed all the money I had been saving from selling my chicken’s eggs at the weekly farmer’s market and paid for it outright. My dad grumbled a little when it cost $75 to have someone come all the way to Levan to have it tuned, but he paid for it, warning me that I had better practice.
Practicing wasn’t my problem. I couldn’t tear myself away from the keys. So
nja was an unconventional teacher, and I was a gifted student. Instead of lessons once a week, like most students, I had a lesson every afternoon. I flew through the rudimentary lessons, quickly grasping musical concepts and theory, graduating to intermediate books and songs after only a month. For a while I even stopped reading, pushing everything aside for my music. I practiced every spare moment. Luckily for my dad and my brothers, they were outside more than they were in the house, and I rarely disturbed anyone with my obsession. Sonja said I was not exactly a child prodigy, but close. I had deep passion and appreciation for the music, and I quickly absorbed everything she taught me.
I learned that the music that had so frightened me the day I had followed her white Cadillac home was a piece by Wagner. She pronounced it Vah gner. I didn’t care much for Wagner, but Sonja said it got her blood boiling, and she used it to give voice to her “savage beast.” She smiled when she said this, and I smiled with her. I didn’t think Sonja was ever “beastly.” Sonja said we all had a little of the beast in us.
If Wagner spoke to the beast, then Beethoven gave voice to the beauty. Beethoven’s ninth symphony became my lifeblood. I made Sonja play it each day at the end of our lessons, and each day I would leave full of hope, the beast vanquished.
* * *
Ten-year-old girls without mothers should not have to bear the burden of early puberty, but be that as it may, I started my period not long after I met Sonja Grimaldi. I believed myself stricken with some sort of terrible malady when I discovered the blood in my underpants. Overwhelmed, I had cried out my fear of certain death to Sonja. She had been playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, and the beauty and melancholy of the music had me drowning in self-pity.
“I think I’m dying, Mrs. Grimaldi,” I had wept. She had gathered me to her wispy self and coaxed further confession from me. When she realized what was actually happening to me, she sighed and put me away from her, tears glittering in her eyes.
“Josie! This is not death! It is a rebirth!” she exclaimed dramatically.
I stared at her with a dumbfounded frown.
“It is not surprising, you know. You are beyond your years in every other way. You have earned this rite of passage much sooner than most girls. Josie, womanhood is an incredible gift! It is God-given. It is bestowed upon us. Womanhood is incredibly powerful, and you have been entrusted with it years before your peers. This means you are very special in His sight. We must celebrate!” She clapped her hands and rose with a swoosh of her long red kimono.
So we did. We lit candles and had sparkling cider in crystal goblets. She read the story of Queen Esther with great passion, telling how her beauty, grace, and courage had saved her people. How her power had influenced nations. She read to me the story of the Virgin Mary from the New Testament, a girl only a few years older than I was, and mother to the Savior of the World.
Days later, Sonja and I drove to the city, and she bought me new underwear and bras in pretty pastels with matching undershirts to wear until the bras were absolutely necessary. We got our nails done, and she purchased enough feminine supplies to stock my bathroom drawer for several years. I felt my mother’s presence that day and knew she had been instrumental in bringing Sonja Grimaldi into my life. After all, hadn’t I been at her grave the day I first saw the white Cadillac? After that, I was much more secure in God’s love for me, and I did not curse my rapid ascent into womanhood again.
* * *
One afternoon in early spring, I arrived for my lesson to find Sonja lying on the sofa with a book lying on her chest, her eyes closed.
“Sonja?” I whispered, not wanting to wake her, but not wanting to leave if she was in need of something. I was a little scared. She looked small and tired, and it made me think of my mom before she died, shrunken and pale.
“Sonja?” My voice quavered, and I put my hand on her arm.
She opened her eyes sleepily, her brown eyes huge beneath the thick Coke bottle lenses of her horn rims.
“Oh, Josie! Is it that time already? I was trying to read, and my eyes just get so tired when I read lately. I’m afraid I’m going to have to give up my books.” She said the last part a little mournfully. Sonja was not a mournful individual in the slightest, and I looked closer at the book that she had been reading.
“Wuthering Heights,” I read aloud. “What if I read to you while you rest your eyes? I’m an excellent reader.”
Sonja smiled at this serious declaration of my ability and handed me the book. “All right then, you read for a while, and then we’ll practice.”
I hated Wuthering Heights. Each day I would come for my piano lessons, and I would read to Sonja for a half an hour before we began. After one week of Wuthering Heights, I threw the hated book down in disgust. Though I was young, I was sensitive and thoughtful, and with Sonja’s explanation of different words and phrases, I had grasped most of what I had been reading and had comfortably followed the story line.
“These people are horrible! I hate them! I can’t read this anymore!” I surprised myself by bursting into violent tears, and gulped desperately to rein in the embarrassing display.
“They are, aren’t they?” Sonja agreed quietly. “Too much ugliness for a tender spirit. Maybe someday you will read it with different eyes…but maybe not. No more Heathcliffe for now. Off to the piano with you, child!” she said briskly, and I followed her meekly, scrubbing my eyes and feeling relieved that I would not have to spend any more time wandering the moors with ghosts.
The next day a new book was waiting for me. I noticed the author was also named Bronte, and cringed inwardly. But Jane Eyre was nothing like Catherine Earnshaw Linton. I adored Jane Eyre and begged Sonja to let me take it home to read between our visits. She acquiesced graciously, but made me promise to write down every word I didn’t understand and look it up, so that I would truly grasp what I was reading. When Sonja found out I didn’t have a dictionary of my own at home, she gave me a copy of Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary. She said it was the second most important book in the English language, next to the Bible.
I kept my promise and, reading late into the night, would pencil words I couldn’t define onto the wall above my bed. The next day I would delve into my heavy dictionary and look up all the words I had written the night before. With every book my “Wall of Words” grew, as did my hunger for more words. One day many months later, my dad climbed into the loft that served as my bedroom—which he rarely had reason to do—looking for something. I was downstairs whipping up a new recipe in the kitchen, and I dropped the mixing bowl when he bellowed my name.
I came running, fearing some disaster had occurred and found him staring at my wall in outrage.
“Josie Jo Jensen! What in the world is this?” He threw his hand toward the wall behind my bed, which was now partially covered in words.
“It’s my Wall of Words, Dad,” I supplied meekly. When he glowered at me and folded his arms across his chest, I decided I’d better explain myself further.
“See, at night when I’m reading I don’t like to stop in the middle of the story and look up words I don’t know…so I write them on my wall and look them up in the morning. It’s very educational!” I said brightly, smiling at him hopefully.
My dad shook his head, but I saw a flicker of a smile across his lips. He walked over to the wall and read some of my words.
“Ameliorate?” he read doubtfully. “Now that’s one I’ve never heard before.”
“Ameliorate means to make better. My ‘Wall of Words’ ameliorates my vocabulary,” I said cheekily.
My dad laughed out loud. “It does, does it?” He shook his head and looked at me fondly, all traces of anger gone. “All right, Josie Jo. You can keep your wall. But keep it up here, okay? I don’t want words written all over the kitchen when you run out of room.”
“Maybe I should start writing smaller,” I said, suddenly concerned at my limited wall space.
I heard my dad laughing as he descended the narrow stairs.
Sonja had made the difficult shift into maturity easier than it would otherwise have been, but I still had to endure the scrutiny that my changing body encouraged. By the time I entered the seventh grade, I was fully grown. Though I was slender, I was taller than average and had breasts and curves when boys my age were still wetting the bed. Tara thought I was the luckiest girl alive and pestered me with personal questions and even asked me once if she could wear my bra “just to see how it feels to be a woman.”
Being the only girl in a family of boys made my wardrobe choices pretty limited. I wore my brothers’ old T-shirts and hand-me-down Wranglers because that’s what we had. My dad had never thought to do anything different, and I’d never thought it important enough to ask. I had outgrown Sonja’s underwear purchases the first year, and if it wasn’t for my Aunt Louise making sure I had a sturdy bra I don’t know what I would’ve done. The boyish clothing mostly disguised my figure, although I hunched my shoulders to hide my height and my breasts and was constantly self-conscious and awkward.
Sonja had insisted I get my eyes checked when I persisted in putting my face too close to the sheet music, “ruining my playing posture.” I needed glasses to read or play the piano and since my nose was constantly in a book, I wore them most of the time. I used big words and blurted out deep thoughts, and I think my peers considered me extremely strange when they considered me at all.