megan wildhood

If Blue, Then Sing

We fly over the Eastern seaboard on the 4th of July, a red-eye from JFK airport to Frankfurt. The miles of fireworks flash like giant tourists’ cameras capturing all the unflappable hell of American civilization. I have spent the last four days surrounded by about 300 other American and Canadian high-school and college band nerds, too shy and blue to laugh and joke and swear and break rules with them. This is all my band director’s fault. Coach should have known that I only recorded that audition tape to see if I could get in, not that I actually thought I’d be going; there was just no chance my loving but strict parents would ever let me gallivant around Western Europe under the guise of “playing saxophone” as part of a 150-piece concert band for half a summer. He had to have known the odds were low I’d get in. Still, he spent hours helping me get that damn tape ready; now, almost two decades later, whenever I hear “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” I still also hear “deeeee da de DAT DOT, not deeeee da de DAT DAT” in his voice—fitting, since he’s the one who took away the sheet music to “Stars and Stripes” and the song of my choice—a jazz-ballard arrangement of “How Can I Keep From Singing?—” to showcase my voice, or my fingers, as it were, on my particular instrument because, and I quote, “Memorization abolishes performance anxiety.”

But I did make it into “The Sound of America’s” annual concert tour of Western Europe. Coach called my parents to let them know and they effusively celebrated—well, my dad did. His mother was the musical one and, as he says, “Musical talent skips a generation in our family.” My mom doesn’t really show emotion as far as I can tell. So here I am: Carlisle, PA, rehearsing my butt off at Dickinson College, named after a brilliantly bizarre poet who did with her life what I secretly smolder with longing to do with mine but fear I am eternally untalented enough to justify squandering my time that way. I can’t even do a little bit of the routines I’ve constructed over the years to bring order to what I experience as a very chaotic, unpredictable world and self soothe (it would be another eleven years before I am diagnosed with Asperger’s) and I’m so socially anxious, I don’t even want go to Europe. The rehearsal schedule is rigorous, which is how it quickly becomes obvious I’m the very worst musician here. Some kids, this is their third time on this tour. But this is the first one with a saxophone feature, and mercy, do I suck. For each performance, all nine of us—six altos, three tenors and one baritone—will file out of our second-row seats to the front of the band and space ourselves evenly apart in front of the rest of the band like a string of gold-lacquered pearls and dance. We will flash our voluptuous horns, and twirl, or fall or can-can kick at the wrong time, while we play, and even sing a part of “Mambo Jambo,” a prestissimo (faster than possible) rumba-cum-salsa. It’s the hardest song I’ve ever figured out entirely by ear (which is how I learn any song; I’m too slow at reading sheet music for it to be that useful to me). I’ll be able to play this damn song for as long as I own a saxophone. The other neat thing: after my toe heals from God knows what but it started hurting and pussing just as we were leaving for JKF airport, I’ll be able to do the dance forever, too.

So my toe: I don’t know what happened or when it happened, but by the end of the first full day in Europe—a free day exploring Rothenburg, Germany on foot—I couldn’t walk. I’d actually managed to get myself into a clique of sorts. A tall alto in the choir with a fat, auburn braid and the “same birthday as Britney Spears, daymonthandyear,” —she would tell us this while dropping her left ear then right to each shoulder—directed us around the city. We walked the wall, the original from the thirteenth century, hemming the village in. We browsed the Kristmas Shoppe that smelled of soured candy canes and bitter hot chocolate. Against our better judgment, we took a stroll through a history of torture at the Kriminalmuseum. I made it back to the mock 1850s hotel by leaning on my six-foot-two friend and felt like my entire foot was on the stretch rack.  I could move it, all except my big toe, but this chortling fire came with wherever it went. My friend hobbled me to the hospital.                    

No one told me much there, which I wouldn’t, given my family background, have noticed, except for how uncomfortable my friend’s information seeking made me. All she was able to get out of the professionals working my case was that my left big toe had gotten viciously infected with a bug they’d mesmerized in its tracks with their wands of modern medicine before it dug to any important stuff like nerves or bones.I still might lose that nail and nail bed. I could not wear closed-toed shoes for six weeks. Part of the uniform was black socks and black dress-shoes-no-sandals. I’d packed old Tivas with black straps and black platforms, but they had white and blue waves on the straps. The executive assistant, who was also the band director’s daughter, said that if we could find some black socks for me to borrow, it’d be close enough.

“You might not even stick out.” She smiled like she’d split the atom. I grinned so she wouldn’t feel uncomfortable, let mine burble into downward nausea.

I have water skis for feet, plus a huge swell of medical packaging around my toe now, which needed to be changed by a licensed physician every 48 hours at the longest. Not even my own socks fit anymore. I ended up having to try six girls’ pairs, after mustering the courage to approach each one and explain the situation as best as I understood it,  before asking not one, but two guys, for a pair of socks to borrow for the entire trip. I shot a thank-you up to the sky that there was at least one other person on this trip neurotic enough to bring double necessary stuff despite the luggage weight limit, and that I only had to tell a little clipping of my story, and to only eight out of 300 people.

***

I did it. The adults will be proud, and my future self possibly has a shot at not hating herself anymore: I am in Europe. Walking around the Louvre. Taking tiny (and supervised) sips of local Italian wine. As a teenager. And all I want to do is go home. I’m pissed—or maybe more sad?—because when I thought things through and decided to go, I realized that all I wanted to do a week ago was get as far away from “home” as I could. It’s not because my toe feels like it’s being sawed off by a dull pocket knife. It’s not like I suddenly realize my family is great and accepting and safe. It’s that nowhere else is, either. Safe.

I wonder if the self-loathing is obvious, if that’s why my singer friend doesn’t always want to walk around these beautiful cities and historical things with me like the other tour besties. I do have more time with my thoughts, which the eternal-now crowd says is good for you. My harmware runs something like “being alone makes it harder not to keep being alone,” no matter how many times I debug and restart.

I take advantage of the room our group rents out in every hotel we stay in specifically for music practice. I sign up for at least three hour-long spots on “exploring your surroundings” days. I’ll see the sights because it will probably be more embarrassing if I come home and have to tell people that, well, no, I went all that long, long way and did not actually see the Eiffel Tower or ride the Venetian gondolas or behold Rembrandt’s home. So I’ll do it quickly and for the photographic evidence. Then, it’s off to the practice room for me. I commit “Mambo Jambo” and the seven other songs we’re performing to muscle memory. I figure out how to put a rad swing on my audition song, “How Can I Keep From Singing,” then work out how it would sound if it were in a hoedown. People would understand, surely, if I can’t walk that much, given the toe situation.

On the day we’re touring Venice, something miraculous happens. Choir Girl’s deal isn’t that she’s mirroring my self hatred; it’s that she’s got a gnarly case of drug-resistant ADHD, which makes me feel better, then worse, for feeling relieved at what’s got to be a shitshow mentally, academically and relationally for her. Plus, it doesn’t soothe the aloneness, which is a selfish thing to say and is exactly the reason one deserves to be alone. But the guy whose socks I have to borrow for the whole trip, a voice tenor from Albany, New York, happens to be standing in line right behind me for breakfast. We’ve only got a half hour between the end of feeding and when we need to be at St. Mark’s Cathedral across the water so we have to eat in uniform. They’re already shuttling musicians over there as they’re ready.

Dude nudges my ribs. “Socks keeping those pipsqueak feet warm?” He’s got a mild dusting of upstate NY accent.

“Oh, yeah, yes.” I nod, bending to rub my knees for some reason. “Thanks. They’re toasty and good.” Ever start to say something and decide to change what you’re saying after some words are out there? This one’s because of anxiety that’s hurting my guts and the palms of my hands, not because I’m stupid enough, like some of the girls on this trip, to get crushes on boys who live across the country and believe I’m worth figuring out the long-distance thing.

“Mmm, toast.” I’ve missed the line of four-slice toasters, which he fills with sourdough and asks how I take my bread.

“I don’t really have bread that much so I usually burn it in the toaster and then I have to scrape off the charred parts before applying butter. The toast has usually cooled off enough to not fully melt the butter, so I smear jelly over the butter chunks and I don’t notice the fat hunk when I come across it as I’m eating the bread.” I look down, thread the hem of my skirt between my fingers.

Dude—I remember his name is Jesse—laughs. “Well, you got the hunk part right.”

I chuckle politely: I’ve been very well-trained by now to put up with shit like this from males.

“All right now,” he says. “And jelly of which persuasion is the butter smotherer of choice?”

“What are the options?” Let them feel helpful. Advice for all situations, really, whether you’re worried you’re going to get raped or not.

“There’s strawberry-flavored chemicals, blackberry-flavored chemicals, marionberry-flavored chemicals and honey-flavored—well, that might be real honey, what do you know.” He peeled back a corner of the aluminum cover from the little plastic tub.

“You know by the flow,” he says and distributes the slices of sourdough between his plate and mine. He waves the few people behind him around us and kneels to get eye level with the table while he slowly tips the little honey tub over his toast.

“Slow and gloppy,” he says, winking. “That’s what we like to see.” He presents the bowl of jelly like we’re not about to see some actually awesome stuff before our concert at St. Mark’s. “So?”

I fish strawberry from the display. It’s the only one I know I like because I’ve had it before. He congratulates me on my decision like I’m five. I hobble forward as the line moves up.

“Still crippled?” He butters my sourdough also like I’m five.

“It’s more just to avoiding putting weight on it rather than that I actually can’t.” I paused, trying to decide if I was using the right tone. “Except when I actually can’t.”

“Is one of those times now, though, really?” Jesse’s piled scrambled eggs high on his plate, lifts up the serving spoon full of more towards my plate and raises his eyebrows like I’ve reached the age of consent.

“I can manage, I think.”

 He raises his eyebrows again, this time jiggling the spoon. I reach for the fruit.

“Do you want the second half of bacon and eggs?”

“Oh. Oh, of course. Yes, sure. Please.”

He laughs as he repeats “oh, oh” under his breath.

As it turns out, I fail at the managing. Jesse’s got my plate on the way to a table but I need both hands, one of them carrying orange juice, to  grab onto a chair after putting what apparently was too much weight on my foot on that particular step. The juice gets everywhere; the thick plastic cup hits the floor and bounces around until everyone in the room has turned their heads. My face gets so hot I wish I could use it to burn a hole in the floor to sink away through.

Jesse seems to leap over the chair I’d flipped, swipe some napkins off a nearby table, drop them on the orange puddles and catch the cup with his toe before it comes to rest, all in one motion before dribbling it to the dirty-dishes bin. The mini chorus of timpanis in my chest covers over any sound there might be in the room. I know enough about high school girls to realize that this damsel-in-distress move will look purposeful to hook an apparently hunky guy and that, whether or not they see my self-hatred, they’ll raise me ostracization.

“So, looks like you might need a leg up, kinda,” he says. He’s not making fun of me. His smile is compassionate, not derisive. He turns around and squats and pats his hip bones.

I blink and realize I’ve been holding my breath and trying to catch tears with my tongue.

He pats his hip bones again. I haven’t dared to look around to see if people are still staring, but my cheeks are burning fiercer than the toe that started all this.

“Hop on?” Don’t embarrass them. I reach a hand for his and squeeze his sides with my thighs.

Nothing else happens. (That’s the miracle.) He piggybacks me to the gondola taxi waiting near our hotel and we ride over to downtown Venice and go off to our respective rehearsal areas. We perform our respective songs in our respective groups to a standing-room-only crowd. We bow to our respective ovations. The choir obliges the crowd roiling for an encore. (Maybe this is the miracle.) The thirty-five male singers file into formation like they’re expecting this and start an acapella thing that sounds a lot like “How Can I Keep From Singing,” but with words. By the time the last group in the round finishes their part, I’m on my knees, and I stay there well past the echo’s dissipation, covered in layers of goose bumps like it’s pouring snow. Several members of the handbell choir at the church my grandfather attended for fifty years came to his hospice room and played it his last night until he could hear it from the angels. That’s why I picked it for my showcase song to get on this trip. I never knew it had words and, due to being on the sapphire-tile floor in some mix of flashback, reverie and awe, didn’t hear them clearly as they emerged from mens’ mouths.

My life flows on in endless song; I wince as I miss the notes, Above earth's lamentation. I’m back at the room in the hotel designated for individual practice sessions, having nicked a choir boy’s sheet music after they bowed their way out of the human-made thunder in the cathedral. I hear the sweet, though far-off hymn that hails a new creation. I overreacted to a boy’s attention, just as I was trained by my mother, who was trained by her mother before her and her mother before her. Through all the tumult and the strife, I hear the music ringing. I overreacted and now I will be alone forever. It finds an echo in my soul, how can I keep from singing? I’ll never get it right. What though the tempest round me grow, I hear the truth, it liveth. What though the darkness round me grow… Whenever I defer to my own judgment, I’m wrong. Songs in the night, songs in the night, songs in the night, the night, it giveth.

The stained glass windows from the practice room (hospitality is a mark of holiness; all the hotels in this city have church windows) start gushing sunlight, and everything gets kissed blue. The blue begins to hum itself bluer. Like depression, like my favorite thing: the ocean. Half my favorite color. That choice women have to make every day between taking a chance on companionship and assault. No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that rock I’m clinging. Since love is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?

 ***

I can’t. I repeat the full hymn until my time in the practice room runs out. I repeat it on the plane to visit my tall choir friend a year after the tour ends in her home state, which is not exactly neighboring mine. I repeat it, though less and less, years after we lose touch, which happened with Jesse almost immediately after landing back in the US. It repeats itself whenever blueness strikes my retinas, starts getting at my guts and clamoring for my heartspace. It repeats itself when I pick up my sax, when I walk by a crumbling building or a lichen-covered park bench. It repeats, sometimes, when I pass a man, doesn’t have to be blond or talk New Yorkish, on the street while to my mace I’m clinging. Until love is Lord of heaven and earth, I guess I’ll keep on singing.