“Rune, are you all right? You’re awfully flushed. Is it . . . ?” She takes one look at my face and moans. My flushed cheeks and dilated pupils are her only cue. She’s never seen what I see in the mirror . . . what Dad used to see when music burned inside me: my irises brightening to a lighter, almost ethereal hue, like sunlight streaming through green glass. Dad called it an energy surge, but because Mom couldn’t see it, she laughed him off.
“Just get it over with,” she insists.
Another cough—hard enough to strain my vocal cords. “I can’t sing in here.” The nagging notes tangle in my throat. “What if I hit a high C and break the windows? Your clothes won’t survive that much rain.”
She frowns, oblivious to the way my skin prickles under my raincoat, to the sweat beads gathered at my hairline beneath my cap. I dig through the bag at my feet—an oversize tote, with burgundy, mauve, and green beads sewn onto the pearly front to depict roses and leaves—and drag out my newest knitting project.
Mouth closed, I go to work on the cream-colored sweater I started a few weeks ago. With each metal clack of the needles, the fluffy chenille skims lightly through my fingertips. The cold instruments are firm and empowering in my hands. I start the looping and rolling rhythm so the tactile stimulus can distract me—a strategy that sometimes works.
Mom’s frowning lips soften to a frustrated straight line. “The one good thing your Grandmother Lil ever taught you, and you use it for a crutch.”
Ignoring her, I snap my wrists so the needles loop and roll, twist and twirl. Chenille winds around the shimmery silver metal like strands of cotton candy on a cone.
“The music wouldn’t affect you like this if you’d just stop fighting it,” Mom presses, trying to stall my hands.
“Why should I have to fight it to begin with, Mom? Is that normal?” I pull free and return to my rhythmic escape.
Mom shakes her head, steadfast in her denial. Secure in her faith in me. If only I could borrow some of it.
I wish I were like those mimes we saw on a street corner when we shopped. If I could pantomime a song’s exit from my body—a silent and effective murder of melody—maybe I could once more be grateful for my gift, instead of fearing its gradual and violent consumption of me: body, mind, and soul.
2
THE THREADS THAT BIND US
“Sometimes, the Angel [of Music] leans over the cradle . . .”
Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera
My dad first discovered my “gift” when I was four. I was in the living room with him, building a block tower as he practiced on his treasured Stradivarius violin. Up to that point, he played only concertos, overtures, and sonatas. But he’d decided to try his hand at an operatic accompaniment that day.
I stopped what I was doing, staring up at the stringed instrument. Dad said it was like I was seeing the violin for the first time, although I’d heard him perform since my birth. Knocking down the blocks in my path, I toddled over, placed my hand on his knee, and hummed the opera’s tune—the one he’d never played before—in perfect pitch.
When he asked me about it afterward, I answered that his violin sang words to me. They told me how to see a rainbow and follow the colors with my voice . . . he called them auras. He was convinced I was seeing musical scales come to life—that I had a connection to the energized pulses of music. Mom returned from the grocery store in time to catch our discussion. She got annoyed, insisting Dad was being melodramatic. She blamed his superstitious upbringing and overactive imagination, two things that I—according to her—inherited from him. Her father had been a fanatical small-town preacher and had forced religion down her throat for so long, she’d turned her back on anything remotely spiritual or supernatural the minute she was old enough to leave home.
To this day she still shuns all things otherworldly, but her skepticism about my voice died a swift death as she herself sat a few days later, stunned and muted, while Dad played a recording of a Spanish aria sung by a vocalist in accompaniment. I sang along, executing every foreign lyric and note as if I were the world-renowned diva. This from a toddler who’d only recently learned to sing her English ABCs.
After that, Dad began accompanying operatic recordings regularly, and many times, I would join in unprompted. One day, as we put on a concert for some close friends, Dad stopped and dropped his bow, listening in reverent silence with everyone else as I finished out the song in perfect German. But without his violin guiding me, something changed. I still carried the song perfectly, until the final pristine note.
At that point, the vivid prismatic colors of the melody dancing around my head bled to a thick red glaze that tinged my vision. I dropped to my knees, trembling and nauseated. I was sick the whole night.