Free Don't Call Me Mother by Linda Joy Myers Page A

those lovely hands. See how he lifts his fingers up and down like pistons,” Gram croons. While Liberace plays, Gram sips her coffee, a look of such wonder and pleasure on her face that I stare at her more than at the TV. The notes of the music make waterfalls of color In my mind, sweeping me into an unfamiliar, beautiful world.

    The next week, on a day so windy that the house creaks, I find Gram tink-ering at the piano, trying to play runs like Liberace, lifting her hands high into the air.
    Her dark eyes fasten on me. “Sugar Pie, how would you like to learn piano?”
    The piano entices me with its amber keys, the magic waiting beneath them. Playing the piano will make Gram happy. I wonder if I could play like my mother does. I tell her yes, I want to learn. Gram takes out sheet music with a silver cover. A curvy lady with dark hair leans back against a slick-suited man with a tiny mustache. He meets her sultry look.
    “This is the music for the ‘Third Man Theme,’” Gram says wistfully. “Oh, how I’d love it if you’d play this for me someday.”
    My grandmother at fifty-seven is as glamorous to me as any movie star. She poses, a hand on her hip, her dark hair flowing around her face. She has a faraway look, as if she’s listening to a distant melody. “Ah, this is the music I loved.” She gets up to dance, one hand on her stomach, the other hand on the shoulder of an imaginary dance partner. She takes a few turns around the living room, humming the “Third Man Theme,” cast back into memory.
    “You have no idea, when I lived in Chicago, the kind of life I had, men falling all over each other to dance with me. In those days we danced all night. I wore the most magnificent dresses and shoes with little straps. Ostrich boa over my shoulder… oh. I was escorted home properly, of course, with no funny business. Quite a life. I took ships every year to England. You have no idea…”
    She drifts off, seeing herself before she was a grandmother. I squint my eyes to see that Gram better, trying to imagine her wearing the clothes that hang in her closet—long satin gowns, fancy shoes with ribbons, the ostrich boa I love to stroke. She turns to me, luminous. “If you learn to play the piano, you’ll be very popular. People will invite you to parties; they’ll ask you to play so they can sing and dance. You’ll see.”
    The future spins before my eyes. I want to be the lady on the sheet music, or Gram with a boa flung over her shoulder. I try to imagine the time before I was born and the person I will become, but it’s hazy, like fog on winter wheat fields.
     
    On Saturday, I meet my new piano teacher, Crystal. She flows through the door of her studio, a white caftan covering her full body, necklaces sparkling on her generous chest. Crystal seats me at a white piano with sticky keys and shows me how to position my hands, while Gram takes notes. Crystal says that musical notes look like black flowers with stems. She shows me the mysterious signs of music—treble and bass clef, half notes and whole notes, the repeat sign, middle C. A world opens up, with its own secret runes.
    After that Gram and I have a new routine: She drives me to lessons each Saturday afternoon; I practice twenty to thirty minutes after school. Each week Gram reminds me what the teacher says from her notes.
    “Lift your wrists like Liberace,” she says, laughing. “What a guy. Wouldn’t it be romantic to have him play just for us?” Her eyes glow with delight.
    In the beginning, it’s fun. The piano, left over from her Chicago days, stands like a proud dowager in our small dining room. The wood is worn; the ivories are discolored. I press keys, listening to the notes and how they create songs. Gram smiles a lot. After a few months, she tells me that we are getting a new piano. A shiny new Baldwin Acrosonic piano, with its shiny polished wood and bright new white keys, is delivered. It smells good, like lemons.
    Then, as the