Sing for Me

by Karen Halvorsen Schreck

  The entrance is just behind me, and of course the telephone is still there. I have a friend. Maybe you’d like to meet him? When? Soon. Now I go to the phone, take a coin from my pocketbook, plug the phone, dial Theo’s number. It’s likely no one will pick up on a Monday morning. Mrs. Chastain must be at work, and Mary must be at school, and Theo might be giving piano lessons, or helping out at Hull House—that’s where he was yesterday after church, I bet—or working elsewhere or practicing something or doing whatever it is that Theo does on any given Monday morning, which I wish I knew. There is still so much to know about him. I must remember to ask him as much as I can. Music is everything, but also there’s more. Knowing more might tide me over when Theo and I are apart.

  There’s a click, and Theo says hello. “Oh!” I cry, delighted and surprised. He laughs when he hears that I’m calling from the Conservatory again; his laughter is as happy as mine. My laughter echoes back to me from the Tropical Garden. I hope the parrots don’t wake Sophy. There’s no one else here to bother her; still, she might feel unsettled not knowing where I’ve gone.

  Quickly, I tell Theo that a lot has happened in the past twenty-four hours. “Too much to say,” I say, but then all in a rush I say more. I babble on about Mother’s employment, Sophy’s fit, Dad’s blame, Andreas’s judgment. Theo remains quiet. Finally I run out of breath. The time is almost up on this call. I shake my pocketbook, but no coins jingle. When the phone goes dead, we’re done talking, unless he calls me back. I look for a number to give him, but there isn’t one posted.

  Theo is talking about piano lessons. He’s only giving four lessons today. Two of them he’s already given, one student just canceled, the last lesson is about to start. “If you’ll just sit tight,” Theo says, “I’ll be by for you within the hour.”

  I smile. Then remember.

  “And my sister, too? She’s with me.”

  “Will she be all right? With me, I mean.”

  The fact that he has to ask this question makes my heart ache. “As long as you’re all right with her,” I say.

  “It will be my pleasure.”

  I can hear the smile behind his words, and I remember that first night at Calliope’s, the gentleman stranger in the crowd, the man whose low, courteous tone captured my attention then, and means the world to me now.

  Sophy is still sleeping deeply when Theo arrives. Without thinking, I take his hand to lead him to her, then, quick as a wink, release it. Where his hand was, even this warm air feels cold against my skin.

  There’s no one else nearby, thankfully, so Theo and I can stand side by side, looking down at my sister. Her head droops to one side; her curls tangle in her long eyelashes and fall across her flushed cheeks and throat. Her expression is relaxed, her lips slightly parted. Her eyes move beneath her closed lids. She is dreaming, and now something in her dream tips up the corners of her mouth, and her faint, fleeting smile reveals her dimples.

  “She is as lovely as you described,” Theo says.

  I nod. What sweet dream is she dreaming to make her so content? I hope she’ll remember and tell me. We’ve both dreamed that we were each other. When I dream I’m Sophy, I awake sweaty and shaking, bound by sheets, barely able to move. When Sophy dreams she’s me, she says she spreads her arms and flies.

  Theo is watching me closely. “Clearly she’s as loved as you described, too.”

  “Words can’t say how much I love her.”

  Lovely, loved, love. I look at Theo. He leans close to me, and I lean close to him, and a pack of people bursts through the entrance—six dark-haired white boys, who’d probably be in high school if they weren’t playing hooky. Theo and I draw back from each other as the young men charge into the Tropical Garden. Three of them barrel on down the path; the other three stop short at the sight of us. I wonder if these are the same boys who startled Rob and me, stumbling out of Garfield Park so late at night. They don’t appear to be drunk; they’re too alert for that. They stare at Theo and me. They stare at Sophy, too. They’ve awakened her. With some effort, she looks dazedly back at them. Then she sees Theo, and her eyes widen. She isn’t frightened by all these strangers, but she is startled.

  “Well, well,” one of the young men says, and I wonder if Sophy is frightened now, because suddenly I am. Something in the way he’s looking at Theo makes me edge my way between them. “Keep back,” Theo breathes, but I stay where I am. The young man’s hand is in his pocket; he’s fiddling with something there. There’s a flash of silver as he draws the thing out, tosses it into the air, catches it. He flicks his thumb, there’s a click, and a knife springs from its case. “Well, well,” he says again.

  “What do you think, Mike?” one of the friends says.

  “Traveling circus?” says the other. They position themselves on either side of Mike, arms crossed, feet spread wide.

  Mike doesn’t answer. He purses his lips and gives a piercing hoot. The parrots squawk and flap their wings, shedding feathers, rattling the bars of their cage.

  “Think they’ll hear you?”

  I don’t know which of Mike’s companions says this. I am too busy watching Mike, the slow smile altering his face, the chipped teeth his smile reveals.

  “They always hear me,” Mike says.

  Feet pound the path, coming closer, matched almost beat for beat by the pounding of my heart.

  Theo puts himself between Mike and me. “Driver,” I hear Theo say, and, “leaving.” And, “Place is yours.”

  Next thing I know, Theo is wheeling Sophy toward the Conservatory entrance. He looks over his shoulder, jerks his head to signal that I should follow.

  “Freaks!” The insult catches up with us, and then: “Wouldn’t come back if I were you.”

  “Oh, come on back.” This is Mike, laughing. “We’ll have a good time then.”

  Theo and I settle Sophy into the backseat of his old car, and I slide in beside her as he opens up the rumble seat and hefts her wheelchair inside. The car jounces as he wrestles with the chair and anchors it at a crazy angle. He pulls out two pieces of rope, secures the frame, and we drive off, leaving Mike and his companions behind. I hold Sophy tightly as Theo makes sharp turns down side streets. Quicker than I expect, we turn onto State Street. We drive south for a few blocks before Theo finally looks in the rearview mirror and asks if we’re okay.

  I nod. Sophy tries to do the same. I tell Theo she’s okay, too.

  In truth, it’s Theo who looks most shaken. His eyes, reflected in the mirror, dart anxiously. He leans into the steering wheel, grips it hard. He can’t seem to relax, not even when we pull up in front of his house. He turns off the engine, but he doesn’t take the keys from the ignition. We sit for seconds that stretch into minutes as he stares out the windshield. His expression fluctuates between anger and fear and other feelings I don’t fully understand.

  Sophy plucks at my sleeve. “Friend?” She asks this quietly, but Theo hears her. He turns around in his seat and apologizes. “Memories,” he says as if that’s explanation enough, and he passes his hand across his forehead as if he’d like to wipe these memories away.

  I tell him it’s okay. He’s okay. It’s those foolish boys who are the problem. I tell Sophy yes, this is my friend, the one I mentioned earlier. “Theo’s a musician, too,” I say. “A pianist.”

  Sophy’s face brightens at this news. When Theo sees the change in her, he smiles, shining his light, too, and his grim memories seem to fade.

  “My mother’s at home. It’s her day off,” he says. “She’ll be glad to see you again, Rose, and meet you, too, Sophy.”

  Leaving the wheelchair strapped to the rumble seat, Theo carries Sophy inside. We find Mrs. Chastain sitting in a rocking chair in the kitchen, her dress hiked up around her knees, her feet soaking in a washtub. The sleeves of her dress are rolled up as well, and the collar unbuttoned. She looks at the three of us and lets out a low moan.

  “I wasn’t expecting company!” Mrs. Chastain pats at her hair and tugs dow
n the apron that covers the front of her dress. She’s embarrassed by her state, but she doesn’t even blink at the sight of Sophy, cradled in Theo’s arms. She hoists herself up and steps out of the tub, dripping. “Least I’ve got some nice chicken soup simmering on the stove. You two young ladies will have to stay for lunch. I’ll cook up some biscuits, too.”

  And now I see the thick scars circling Mrs. Chastain’s ankles. They are angry scars, ugly scars, and they circle her wrists, too.

  Theo sees me seeing. Calmly, quickly, he tells his mother to sit back down. He’ll take care of the biscuits. He’ll take care of everything. She needs to rest up.

  Grumbling, Mrs. Chastain complies. Her ravaged feet are back in the tub again by the time Theo and I settle Sophy on the little daybed in the corner of the kitchen. While Theo makes the biscuits, I clear and lay the table, pour glasses of water, put the coffee on. I try not to look at Mrs. Chastain’s wrists, or the other scars that I see now, on her calves, knees, and forearms, and the single scar at her throat, like a broken necklace.

  I hold Sophy on my lap during lunch, and the four of us eat together. Conversation is sparse, but when it comes to us we keep it light and easy. Mrs. Chastain talks to Sophy as if she were any other girl. We’re finishing our coffee when Mrs. Chastain asks if I’d be willing to sing a few songs. I agree, and Sophy smiles, delighted.

  With Sophy settled on one couch in the front room, and Mrs. Chastain on the other, Theo sits down at the piano. I stand beside him. We work our way from one hymn to the next, and then turn to Chess Men standards. We’re halfway through “It Had to Be You” when I realize I’ve sat down beside him on the piano bench. I’m leaning into him. I can feel the rise and fall of his ribs as he breathes. I wonder if his ribs still hurt from the beating he, Dex, Jim, and Ira took. I need to ask him that, too. I am breathing with him, in perfect time, as I sometimes breathe with Sophy. Only this breathing is different from the sisterly kind. Theo’s breathing completes mine, as his playing completes my singing. Two halves of one whole, I think, and the thought makes me light-headed. I can barely finish the last verse of the song. When I do, I look down at my hands. They’re clasped tightly on my lap, only inches from his thigh, and now he lifts his left hand from the keys, and his hand hovers over mine. Touch me. But then Sophy coughs, and Theo draws back his hand. I see Sophy watching us, wide-eyed, and Mrs. Chastain, neither wide-eyed nor narrow-eyed but very, very still, her expression unreadable, is watching us, too.

  “Thank you for the music.” Mrs. Chastain speaks slowly, as if she’s weighing the real meaning behind each word.

  Sophy kisses the air, adding her thanks, and then flushes bright red at the sound. She looks suddenly miserable, lying there on the couch, unable to say what she wants to say, or do anything to distract us from this awkwardness. I can’t bear to see her miserable.

  I go to my sister and take her hand.

  “It’s your nap time. We should go home.”

  Sophy scowls. “Not tired.”

  She wouldn’t be, I realize. She had that nap in the Conservatory. “Well,” I say. I can’t think of what comes next.

  “If you’ve got nowhere to be, then feel free to stay as long as you like,” Mrs. Chastain says.

  Sophy and I thank her, and Theo does, too. Then he stands up from the piano and heads to the front door, saying, “Here’s Mary, home from beauty school.”

  And indeed, here is Mary, hugging Theo as he opens the door. Mary is delighted to see me, delighted to meet Sophy, delighted to offer us both manicures. “I need the practice,” she eagerly explains. I decline, but Sophy seems overjoyed at the thought of her first-ever painted nails. What Mother will say about this I don’t know and I don’t care, for Mary is chattering on now about various shades of pink and red, and Sophy is choosing Sunrise, and Mrs. Chastain is dozing on the couch, and Theo and I are heading toward the kitchen, readying ourselves to clean up the lunch things, and I am asking him the first of many questions.

  “What happened to your mother?”

  EIGHTEEN

  “She was convicted of a crime she didn’t commit. That’s where the scars came from.”

  Theo runs water into the sink and adds soap, carefully submerges dishes, glasses, and cups. I pick up a tea towel and watch his hands stir the water.

  “I was a sickly kid, and Mary was a sickly newborn,” he says. “That’s what happens during hot summers in certain wards down in New Orleans. Some bug bites you, or you drink water from the wrong tap, and next thing you know, you’re barely alive. My mother lost her job, doing laundry for a big hotel there—they wanted to hire cheap Irish labor, white labor, instead—and there Mary was, barely six pounds, not taking milk or water, shaking with fever. And me, eight years old, not much more than skin and bones, shaking with the same. The doctor said we needed some kind of medicine. Expensive medicine. Without it we’d die. So Mother did what she had to.” Theo lifts a glass from the soapy water and wipes it clean with a rag. “One night, she left Mary and me with the pastor of her church. She went down to the French Quarter. She walked the streets. First hour out, she gets picked up by the vice squad before any vice has happened. Next thing she knows, she’s in jail. Next thing after that, she’s a licensed convict, working a plantation like her mother before her. Only my mother’s not a slave, because slavery’s been abolished. She just looks like one, feels like one, lives like one in chains for seven long years. The cheapest labor known to man.” He’s still wiping that same glass. Now he drops the rag into the water and begins to rinse it. “When she finally gets out, she comes looking for Mary and me. I don’t recognize her. Not right away. Not with those scars. She’s changed in every way. But our pastor recognizes her. Papa, we called our pastor. When our mother never came back, he found a way to get that medicine for us, and he didn’t get caught. Papa never told me what he did, but he saved my life and Mary’s, too, and I believe God has forgiven him, regardless of what some earthly judge might say.”

  I nod, though Theo hasn’t asked a question.

  “When I saw what they did to my mother, something snapped tight around my own neck, wrists, and ankles.” He’s still rinsing that glass. “I was a fifteen-year-old boy, but I started living like a crazy man—drinking myself sick and doing much, much worse. I stopped playing the piano. I started playing with knives. Papa said we had to get out of New Orleans. The memories weren’t doing my mother any good, either. So she packed Mary and me up, and we headed north. Along the way, I found God again. I told you about the tent meeting. I found God there, or I let God find me, then we settled here, started a new life.” Theo gives me a hard, long look. “But still, the anger stalks me, and the fear. I grow hopeless sometimes.” His gaze softens as he looks at me. “But then I remember good folks like Jim and Ira. I remember Dex, a black man like me, who somehow, by the grace of God and his music, lives an unchained life. And I remember you, Rose.”

  He sets the glass on the drying rack. I’ve wrapped that tea towel tightly around my hands. He takes my bound hands in his own. He frees my hands from the towel. It slips to the floor as he laces his wet fingers through mine. His palms are dusky pink, my palms are the palest pink possible, but they meet, they fit together, our hands hold fast. He bows his head and presses his forehead to mine, and we stand together like that as time stops, and water cools in the sink, and the glass dries on the rack. Then he gently kisses my forehead, and I stand on my tiptoes and kiss his forehead, too—so this is how his skin feels, smooth and soft as silk—and we look at each other, sober and serious, this is serious, and then he picks up the towel and gives it to me, and we turn back to the dishes, help his mother the best way we can, do the work we’ve been given to do.

  It’s late in the afternoon when I finally tell Theo that I think Sophy and I had better get home. In a couple of hours Dad will be back for dinner, and possibly Andreas, too. With Mother staying the night at the Nygaards’ house, it’s up to me to have dinner ready. And though Sophy is having the time of her
life, she’s a little worn out, I can tell. We’ve spent much of the afternoon listening to repeats of The Lone Ranger and The Shadow on the radio. In this past hour, we played charades. Theo, Mary, and Sophy were one team, Mrs. Chastain and I were the other. Sophy had never played charades before, but she and Theo made a great pair. With Mary’s help, she acted out a famous person. While Sophy reclined on the couch, Mary mimed lining Sophy’s eyelids with kohl and painting her glossy nails Sunrise all over again. Mary fanned Sophy with a pretend palm leaf, popped pretend grapes into Sophy’s mouth, and Theo snapped his fingers. “Cleopatra!” he said. “That’s right!” Mary shouted as Sophy kissed the air.

  Now Sophy’s eyelids are drooping, and Theo agrees that it’s probably time for us to go.

  On the way, Sophy sleeps, and Theo and I confirm what we’ve already discussed this afternoon. What with Mother working and my parents’ disapproval, I will have to miss rehearsals. I’ll make it to the gigs, but just barely, and only if Rob can give me a ride. Who else could I ask? Zane is too unpredictable; his parents complicate things. Nils is too wounded.

  Of course, the answer—the answer I want—is sitting right in front of me.