Free The Daughters: A Novel by Adrienne Celt

Remember, we’re here to have fun.” I shifted in my seat. “I know it’s almost springtime,” Noreen continued, “so first I thought we’d do one of my favorites. You might know it. It’s called ‘I’ll Be a Sunbeam.’”
    As she spoke, Noreen hopped off her box and walked around the room with a stack of pink and yellow mimeographed papers. She handed one to each child and gave a few to the adults who were shifting from foot to foot in the back of the rehearsal space. My paper was yellow and slightly smudged. It smelled like old silverware. In the top right corner was a picture of a grinning sun, and below that was a list of verses intercut with the chorus.
    Ada was only beginning to teach me to read, but I didn’t need to read to see that something was wrong. I raised my hand.
    “Yes, sweetheart?” Noreen smiled at me and bent down, putting her hands on her knees. I tried to lean away imperceptibly, but this only caused her to move closer.
    “Where’s the music?” I asked.
    “Honey, it’s right there in your hand.”
    “No, it’s not.”
    “Yes, honey, it is.” Noreen reached out and took the page from my fingers, wagging it in front of me. “See?”
    I pinched my lips together and nibbled on them slightly. Ada was always telling me to be polite, but she never let me talk nonsense to her either. And this woman was talking nonsense.
    “That’s just words.”
    Noreen stood straight and looked at me.
    “What’s your name, honey?”
    “Luscia.”
    “Well, Luscia, what a pretty name. You see, these are the words that go with the music. So I’m going to play the piano, and we’ll all sing these words along and make the song. Okay?”
    She smiled at me again, and I could tell she thought that I didn’t understand. But as I glared with all my childish might, her face took on an aspect of bland menace, something shifting below the surface and recategorizing me as trouble. Noreen gave a shortnod and turned back towards the group, opening her mouth to give further directions.
    Well, fine, I thought. Or something like it. Some inarticulate, foot-stamping approximation of indignation and despair. If she wanted trouble I could certainly provide it.
    My hand shot, shaking, back into the air, but before Noreen could so much as acknowledge it, it was grabbed by a larger, softer version of itself. Baba Ada stood beside me, looking severe, and tugged me to my feet. She turned to Noreen only when we reached the door.
    “My apologies. We seem to be in the wrong place.”
    “W here are we going?” I asked, once we were safely outside, safely on the train. My relief at escaping Noree and her sickly sweet voice had left me briefly giddy, and now I felt exhaustion creeping up. I was also a bit nervous, having openly and publicly defied my grandmother, rendering dead her plans for my choir career.
    I had expected to be dragged straight to my room and left there to think about what I’d done. But we didn’t seem to be heading home. The car creaked below us and I leaned my face against the cool window, watching brief snatches of apartments appear and disappear as we barreled past. People’s lives, here and gone.
    “What a revolting woman.” Ada sat beside me and squeezed my wrist. “Although,” she said, looking down at me, “you knew perfectly well what that sheet of lyrics was.”
    I took my hand away and fiddled with the collar of my coat, so it pushed my scarf up, warm over my chin.
    “I thought you might enjoy it.” Ada spoke as though inresponse to something I hadn’t said. Her brow was knit. “Your mother thought so too. We should have known.”
    “Mama did?” My mother’s moods and choices seemed to come like weather, blowing warm, then cool, then gray. She could, even then, be gone for days at a time, and I held any scrap of information about her close to my chest in the hope that it would lend some sense to her inscrutable patterns. Stretched-out hair ties left on the sofa arm, a broken