I was four when... - Short Story

I was four when I started playing the piano. Under the gaze of my frustrated mother and the kind presence of my Grandmother, I would cautiously jar my chords and follow the scales very slowly with no regard for the listener or the rhythmic click click click of my Grandmother’s knitting needles. My fingers would warily press themselves against the cool white and were frightened of the block black sharps and flats. I would be startled by the sound that would emit. I felt like an ignorant magician, able to create misunderstood magic from the large wooden box but with no idea what to do with it. Half-heartedly I would approach the seat, after my mother had been calling for me for lifetimes, knowing that the next hour would be wasted and I would never get it back.

Wasting my time wasn’t enough to appease my mother’s heart. All her life she wanted to be a musician but blamed all sorts of common ills for the reason why she couldn’t be one. Now she tried to impress her desire onto her third child. She willed me to become the next virtuoso whereas I preferred to sit on my Grandmother’s lap with my thumb in my mouth. I would be fascinated with the birth of another jumper, sometimes they would be blue or grey or a dark maroon, sometimes a mix of all three colours. She would have the TV showing the snooker on mute, and occasionally she would stop to see a white ball randomly hitting other coloured balls until there were no more balls on the table. She would sit with her legs bound in all sorts of tights and material because she found it difficult to stand. Her tights weren’t lacy or thin like my mothers. They were the colour of skin but very thick and when I hid under her legs I would feel the rough bandages underneath. I would trace her varicose veins with my fingers, imagining they were like roads on a map.

When my mother would call me for practice I would inevitably be drawn to my protective Grandmother, silently I would just help to unwind the yarn that lay next to her. Sometimes I would burrow under the mountains of balls in an attempt to create a place where pianos did not exist. Or I would live in a world where people looked like knitting needles. The needle people were fun for a while but they weren’t a peaceful race. Even a greeting was a hit on the head or body and the only words they could actually say were clicking sounds made from hitting each other. Of course I could hit them on other objects like a drumstick, but usually that led to a revolution within the needle race, as it was a crime against needle rights and a distraction from a proper click click conversation.

My sisters would be doing very important activities like playing netball or kissing boys and I would be forced to sit on the piano stool, like them before me. My Grandmother would listen to my clumsy attempts and would repeat “Again” whenever she thought I had finished a piece, as if these words alone would suddenly give me the impetus to become musical. Soon enough my mother would tire of my clumsy hands that filled the void of a weekday afternoon, she would escape motherhood in the safe knowledge that my Grandmother would care for me. The whine of the gate would signal that I could slip off the stool and stand on the arm of the sofa and smell my Grandmother’s hair. An elderly scent with natural hair oils mingled with a chemical shampoo for dandruff would teach my olfactory nerves that this smell meant comfort, meant home, it meant being safe, without a piano in sight.

In my youth, different hair meant different things. My mother’s hair smelt of perfume. When we would go out in the car, I would attach myself to her scalp, grab her hair and breathe in deeply. Whenever she changed her perfume or shampoo I would know instantly but it didn’t bother me because my mother always had clean and shiny hair. It always smelt good. The smell of my Mother’s hair meant beauty because she was a very beautiful woman. Her voice is soft and, despite her talents in this area, very musical. The Scottish lilt, undeterred by many years living in the South, still cast a softness to her personality. Of course she could make it harsh or shocking to the ears but naturally it wants to flow along softer, more feminine lines.

My Papa’s hair fell out when my second sister was born. I never smelled a full head of his hair and patches of hair just do not give off the same kind of scent. The smell of a bald head is waxy and oily. The oil would come from either being under a cap too long or from being out in the sun. Anyway, in the days when drinking and driving wasn’t considered the ultimate sin, my Papa would always come home smelling of kitchens, cigarettes and alcohol. Even if he had hair, I can’t imagine it would have smelt that great. My Papa had the voice of a typically loud Italian male and when I was young I was afraid it would be directed at me. I would hide behind my Mother’s long skirts until his tones became more playful or when we were allowed to sit on my Papa’s back and play. As we grew older and there was no need for his children to challenge his undisputed authority as the alpha male, his voice became softer, except when he pretended to be an opera singer, singing bawdy Italian lyrics in place of the more spiritual and tragic originals. 

It seems strange to me that I can still remember her smell but can’t remember my Grandmother’s voice. If she were to speak on the telephone now I would ask her who she was and question whether she had a wrong number. I never knew it in the throes of her youth when she used to whisper sweet nothings to my Granddad, or when she screamed in pain when all six of her babies would shockingly appear into the world. I have no clue as to her bedside manner when one of her children would fall ill or how she would pray in the local Presbyterian Church. All I have are the stories of a powerful matriarch that were passed on to me, which seem so incongruent to the peaceful knitter who populated my afternoons.

I like to think of my pregnant mother lying on the sofa, moaning about the perils of a third pregnancy and having a slight fever whilst I lay inside her listening to my Grandmother in her chair, knitting the history of our lives in her needles. Maybe her maternal intuition knew the life of the next grandchild in the household would have a special need, not the next computer game or a mini-skirt that would flimsily cover her thighs or the tortures of piano practice for one hour a day. I can imagine her busily tying the threads of her support, her love, her advice, into possibly the most important piece of material she would ever create. As if she knew she wouldn’t be around long enough to impart everything to me in the flesh.

But I digress and we are only at the beginning of this story… Maybe I should take you back.

My birth was a slow one. I didn’t want to come out. I was happy in my Mum’s belly, preferring to settle in the amniotic fluids sucking my thumb and being comfortable. My due date rapidly passed by and the Doctors started to get worried. My Mother became anxious, my Dad paced the floor and smoked cigarettes. My oldest sister stayed at home playing with Barbie dolls whilst my second older sister cried incessantly wondering why her mother had suddenly started to neglect her. I had already heard enough from the blurry outside world inside my Mother and I was quite content not to face it. What was out in the real world that I couldn’t get inside? I could sleep and had all the food and drink I wanted.

But after a while… Well, all I can say is, I was forced out. My mother started to rot. The electricity was faltering and the in-house heating and cleaning system weren’t working as well as they could be. My home soured so reluctantly I moved. It was my first trip into the unknown and I wasn’t looking forward to it.

“Push! Push!” were the first clear words I could hear from the outside. A man with probing fingers was touching my head a little roughly, trying to pull me out. “She’s coming.”

My mother’s voice boomed into her body, such loud screeching and moaning. I remember there was so much commotion and thinking, ‘Why were these people shouting so much? I was coming out wasn’t I?’ I mean, I was trying my best to get out of such a little hole, it’s not my fault it wasn’t easy.  But what I remember most about that time was the smell, my first smell was of the cold clinical medicinal white room I entered into, mingled with blood, shit and urine. I wanted to gag. My first breath and this was it? I was held by a strange man, people excitedly looked and prodded me and then suddenly I was laid upon warm sweaty skin and could feel my mother’s arms and a blanket cover me. I heard crying. I think it was my Mother, it could have been me. I heard laughing, I think that was my Papa. Suddenly I was lifted up, cleaned and put into a cot as I saw a glint of silver in the strange man’s hand and heard my Mother screaming. I also started screaming and together we were a strange chorus of agony. My mother had my house sucked away from her, manually removed, and all I wanted to do was go back home.

I don’t think my Mother ever forgave me for being so slow in coming out, I was supposed to be a slow and stable Taurean like my oldest sister but it seemed I preferred the flighty aspect of a fidgety Gemini. Inside my Mother’s stomach I waited until the world entered the symbolic airy twins’ domain. In a house full of water and earth signs it seems only natural to me now that I was always going to be a little different. Yet, in the beginning of my life I made good use of pretending to be a Taurean. Slow and steady? I was much more than that, I was silent and still. As a baby, I was Zen. My Mother would sit me down on the carpet and I wouldn’t move. I would put my thumb in my mouth and just wait until she picked me up and put me somewhere else. I didn’t even mind the smell because my Grandmother’s ingenuity sorted that out for me.

At night I would be tucked into a knitted cover my Grandmother had created. It was made from all the spare yarn she had in various colours. I used to rub my hand up and down the rows of stitching and play with any bits that stuck out. If I found any bobbly endings I would invariably stick them up my nose to stop any foreign smells close by. They felt nice settled at the bridge of my nose, comforting somehow. Much more comfortable than the toy car wheel my other sister had stuck up her nose previously. Everyone was upset about that, especially my sister because she had to go to hospital to have it taken out.

But bobbly bits weren’t like that, they could come out of the nose with a slightly forceful breath through the nostrils and everything would be clear again. The small balls would pop out covered in snot and mucus and when they dried they would become hard. I would stick the hard bits down my nails so I could keep them for later. My fingernails looked dirty but the balls were comforting, I could feel them dig into my skin and the sensation reminded me I was alive.

Slowly but surely, as I grew, my blanket shrank and less bobbly bits appeared. I started to burn the edges of my blanket so they would be hard and I would drag the burnt frayed edges up and down my skin. The sensation was sensual, ticklish and rivers of bubbly pleasure would arise in me. I especially loved to trace the lines of my palm, ignorant of a palmist’s prediction of my life ahead. I would sit for hours concentrating on this phenomenon, content to be alone, listening to nothing except the faint scraping of skin. My mind was empty of the large family life around me.

The blanket also had a protective power, as soon as I put it to my nose and breathed in I would instantly relax. The smell was completely unique and if I ever temporarily lost it and replaced it with one of my Papa’s smelly shirts, it just wouldn’t feel the same. Whenever I came across a smell that offended my system I breathed into the blanket and moved on. This blanket became a constant companion and despite any adversities that palmist didn’t warn me about, the blanket would anesthetise me and mellow out any blunt edges or hard surfaces.

As suddenly as my Grandmother would appear in my afternoons as quickly she would leave. This happened every summer until I was old enough to travel to Scotland without my parents. With my blanket and brother in tow I would duly visit her, eat square sausage and watch her get her toenails clipped by a Doctor. In her living room, my Grandmother had two chairs that would lean back and provide a footrest so for many days my brother and I would play with these. We weren’t really big enough to push them back whilst sitting so we would invent ways to move the chairs back and forwards. The day when I could push the chair back whilst sitting down was important for me. At night time I would sleep in one of these chairs and curl up with my blanket.

One day my Grandmother really did disappear and we never saw her again. She was sleeping in a bed in the living room but she had a curtain that divided her bed from the rest of the house. I woke up to hear her coughing and could hear her trying to speak to me. I asked my Grandmother if she was okay and she asked me if I would make her a cup of tea. I didn’t know how to make tea so I went into the bedroom where my brother and Uncle were sleeping. I woke my Uncle up and asked him how to make tea so I could make my Grandmother a cup but he got out of bed and then later told us to put our day clothes on because an ambulance was outside and we had to go to hospital. My Uncle, my brother, my blanket and me went in a car behind the ambulance and then my brother and I hung out in this big room waiting for someone to play with us.

My other Uncle came along, the one that tells jokes that aren’t funny. He told us that our Grandmother was in heaven now and that she was happy with God. My brother and I went to church every Sunday so we knew what heaven and God were. Nobody looked that happy about our Grandmother going to heaven and being happy and talking to God so we put our sad faces on. I breathed into my blanket and waited. At the time I didn’t realise my Grandmother wasn’t coming back from her trip to heaven, I think I only understood that when she didn’t come next summer and listen to me practice the piano.

I would take my blanket everywhere with me and even if I had to sit in front of the piano my blanket would sit beside me. I would say goodbye to it when I went to school and say hello when I came back. Sometimes I would take it to school with me and quickly sniff it in the library or when I was alone. I wouldn’t go to sleep without it and if I had misplaced it I would have my entire family search for it. I wouldn’t rest until it was found. Life would twist and turn in directions I had never imagined previously but at night I would lie there with a piece of my Grandmother, delicately clicking her stories and energies into me.  Tracing the lines of my life, tickling my mound of Venus, wondering where I would end up.

After a while I gave up playing the piano. It wasn’t a big deal for me. For a long time the piano lay there wasting away because all my Mother’s children decided to pursue a life without the accompaniment of those black and white keys. Occasionally, one of us would casually lift the lid and recite old childhood tunes or play chopsticks in pairs but otherwise our eyes would brush over it without another moment’s thought. My oldest sister was the best at playing the piano so sometimes we would make her play. She was very good at playing Fur Elise so we would listen to that a lot. Every week it was my job to make it shine with furniture polish which smelled sickly sweet, that smell now reminds me of wasted beauty. The wood would glisten underneath the cloth and I would marvel at its shape, the way the wood felt smooth against the palm of my hand but sometimes the smell would be too much so I would bring my blanket to my face, breathe and wait.

You can read my short stories here: Gracie's short stories

 Follow me here... 

Twitter: Gracie's Twitter Page

Facebook: Gracie's FB page

Google +: Gracie's Google + page