Part 5 (1/2)

FOR ME, IT ALL STARTED in the second grade, when the cla.s.s was auditioned for the school band. That was back in the day when there was such a thing as a music program in public schools. I had had no exposure to music before that. My parents didn't like it. Didn't even seem to trust it. My father was an ex-army guy and a genuinely humorless individual. He believed that life was all about sacrifice and hard work. He was the premier carpenter in the small town where we lived. A child of poverty, he had never really recovered from it. His own family had lived from handout to handout until his father, a part-time drunk, finally procured a position as a full-time grave digger. It was excellent work for my grandfather. No one cared how much a grave digger drank, as long as he didn't actually fall into one of the holes, which grave diggers often did. Far as I know, my grandfather always managed to pa.s.s out aboveground, which kept him in good stead with his employer.

My father, to his credit, grew up with an intense dislike of alcohol. Never touched the stuff. Unfortunately, he a.s.sociated alcohol with all other forms of pleasure, from music to literature, and so none of it was available to me. I went to school, and I went to the local Methodist church, which was where I first heard music. My father frowned on my efforts to sing along with the hymns. He said I should just be quiet and listen. So I did listen, with those wolflike ears of mine, digesting and internalizing every note.

My mother didn't argue with him on this particular point, though she argued with him on every other point, it seemed. Their fights were loud and cruel, falling just short of violence. (My father was too proud to hit a woman, though the expression on his face told my mother and me that he was not entirely above it.) They called each other names. My mother broke dishes. My father slammed doors and sometimes drove off into the night. I didn't attempt to intervene, but after the storm had pa.s.sed, I would sometimes ask my mother what it was all about.

My mother, a former department store model who was still quite beautiful, would sit in front of a vanity mirror perched on the kitchen table, wearing nothing but a slip and drinking iced tea and smoking as she pounded powder on her face.

It was always swelteringly hot in this memory. Our summers were hot, to be sure, and the kitchen was the center of the house. The windows were thrown open, and sometimes my mother would put a fan in front of a bucket of ice. Cheap man's air-conditioning because we couldn't afford the real thing. It was the heat that made my mother particularly angry, but she always seemed to be mad about something much deeper. The heat was just an excuse.

”Your father believes women are slaves,” she told me. ”He believes they should be seen and not heard. Well, I am not going to live the life my mother did. My mother was a weak individual. She let my father get away with murder. My father hated me. He only cared about my brother. And did Mama ever defend me? No, she did not. She just served me up. She sold me down the river.”

The fan whirred. The bucket of ice made no difference.

I had no idea what any of her talk meant. I only knew that my name was Pearl, and my grandmother's name was Pearl, and if my mother hated the original Pearl as much as she claimed to, what the h.e.l.l was I doing lugging her name around?

”My family had money,” my mother would tell me. ”My father worked for the oil company. We never wanted for anything. Your father is just plain old white trash, but I am above that. I am not accustomed to living this way.”

(She never identified which oil company, and I suspected it was just one of her stories. The grandfather I knew was a kind of jack-of-all-trades, one of those trades being a tobacco farm. If he was rich, I could never see evidence of how he got there. Or how any of us had benefited from it.) ”What way, Mama?” I asked. ”What way are we living?”

”Poor,” she spat out. ”We are dirt poor. We live from one paycheck to the other. I can't even afford wall-to-wall carpeting like my friends have. I am not used to living like this.”

”But Daddy works hard,” I said.

I had no real evidence of this except that he left the house every morning in work clothes and came back, usually, after dark, talking about work.

”Ha! Works hard like a b.u.m. He could own this town if he had a spine. Which he doesn't. He's a jellyfish. He's weak. Listen to me, Pearl, don't you ever marry a man like your father unless you want to suffer for the rest of your life.”

”Okay, Mama.”

”Your father says we can't afford air. He doesn't have to worry. He works in rich people's houses all day. Please don't hang on me, Pearl. You know how I hate the heat.”

I was always trying to think of a way to make my mother proud of me. Outside of money, the only thing she seemed to value was accomplishment. She loved it when I got good grades. I hid the bad ones so she wouldn't have to cry. But there weren't many to hide. I was a good student. My first-grade teacher told Mama I was the smartest child she had ever taught.

”You hear that?” Mama said when she gave me the news. ”You have the real ability to go places in the world. Don't throw it away.”

I didn't want to throw it away. So when they auditioned us for the elementary school band, I decided to do my best. They brought the second graders in to listen to the fourth and fifth graders play. Then they gave us a sheet of paper and a pencil. Someone in the band played a note, and for every note after that, we were to make a mark if the subsequent note was higher or lower. I got all my answers right. I was the only one.

The bandleader, Mr. Compton, took me aside after the experiment and said, ”Pearl, you have a real ear for music. You tell your mama that we want you in the school band. You pick whatever instrument you want to play.”

I ran home from the bus stop, all excited, clutching the piece of paper in my hand. I found my mother, sitting in the kitchen with a gla.s.s of iced tea and a cigarette. I told her all about the experiment, how I was going to be in the band and I could pick my instrument.

She just stared at me as I talked, and she didn't smile, and I felt my voice getting smaller and smaller as her eyes narrowed.

”We can't afford that,” she said.

”But I'm good,” I told her. ”Mr. Compton said I was the best.”

”We can't afford it,” she repeated.

”Afford what?”

”They'll make you pay for the instrument.”

I thought about that for a moment, then said, ”I have money. I've saved my allowance.”

”No. We just can't afford it. And I don't have a car when your daddy is at work, so I can't pick you up if you have to stay for practice.”

”Maybe I could pick a cheap instrument,” I said.

”Pearl. We cannot afford it. You just concentrate on your studies.”

She took a drag from her cigarette and blew the smoke into the stale air of the kitchen.

I am sure I am painting my mother in a harsher light than she deserves. The two of them, I later realized, were in a compet.i.tion, and I was constantly being asked to choose. I didn't know how. My father was tall and handsome and knew how to build things with his hands, but as my mother often explained, he couldn't boil water. I knew you had to boil water to cook. My mother was a good cook. So siding with her meant I could live. Until something broke down in the house or a bill needed paying, because, my father explained, she didn't have the first clue about how things worked. I realized they only worked well as a unit, so I devoted my childish efforts to keeping that unit together. It was my only hope of survival. I didn't know the first thing about dividing to conquer. I only knew about cobbling together the broken pieces and praying at night in my bed.

But what I also knew about G.o.d was that he was listening to everyone. And I was sure all the other prayers were competing with mine.

TWO YEARS LATER, when I was ten, I was playing at my friend Carolyn Millner's house. Her family had money, and the only reason I was let into that particular social circle was that I was a better student than Carolyn and I came over sometimes to help her study. Both my parents were thrilled with this connection because Carolyn's family was rich. One time when I was there, Carolyn was practicing the violin. I asked her to show me how to play.

She sighed and said, ”Pearl, it's complicated.”

”Just show me.”

”No. I have to practice.”

”How did you learn?” I asked her.

”My mother teaches me. She went to a music conservatory. She could have had a cla.s.sical career. But she fell in love with my father.”

”If you don't show me, I won't do your homework for you.”

I did her English homework for her all the time. We pretended that I was helping, but really I was diagramming sentences for her. Carolyn's parents were aware of this but never objected. They just wanted her to get good grades.

So Carolyn spent an afternoon showing me how to make the notes and how to bow.

I caught on quickly, and soon it became part of her payment for my help on the homework. One time, her mother walked in and saw me playing. She was surprised and at least pretended to be delighted.

”Why, Pearl,” she said, because she talked that way, ”you have a natural ear.”

”I was the best in my cla.s.s,” I informed her.

She chuckled and said, ”You're holding the instrument all wrong, though. Your left hand should be curved. See, like this.”

And she positioned my hand. Suddenly I could reach the notes much more easily. She must have seen the grateful look in my eye. She had blond hair and smelled of gardenias. My mother had black hair and smelled of something much sweeter. Her makeup was soft and quiet, not as thick and intrusive as my mother's. Up close, I could see that Carolyn's mother was what my mother was trying to be, and it made me sad.

Mrs. Millner said, ”If you keep helping Carolyn with her studies, I'll teach you how to play.”