Page 46 - WTPVolI Vol.#4

Paloma (continued from preceding page)
fingers and energy running through my hands, arms, then my whole body. I rested. Then I woke and played some more. ~
I was leaving work, eager to get home and get to playing, I turned my head to say goodbye to Sergio and nearly walked into Mrs. Ling. I thought she was going to go off on me again, but instead she stopped walking and quietly swayed from side to side. She swayed and she smiled and though the ground didn’t move, she swayed. She teetered on the curb beside a scattering of broken glass. The flower was slipping from her hair. She reached up her hand and adjusted it. As she rocked, she hummed and her face was at peace as though she were lost in her own world and it was a good world. But her humming was not sim- ply a rumble in her throat to confirm she was in her body. There was a melody to it that spoke of lights and shadows. The cadence of people’s voices, though not their words. Birds in flight and the quick mov- ing shadows that their wings threw. She hummed as though she felt the sweet movement of air and she didn’t need words. I thought about what Sergio said, Talent flies away. He was wrong. People fly away but talent doesn’t. It might hibernate or become sub- merged, but it finds a way to come out again. Mrs. Ling was the woman in the photograph –I was sure of it now—changed on the outside, of course, but inside the currents still ran.
then forced out words I’d never said to her before. “How can I help?”
“Ah...well there’s not much to do. You know, I got my appointments set up. They’re gonna try surgery of course.” Brenda swallowed loudly, her throat sound- ing large and hollow.
“Well...I’ll drive you to your appointments.”
Brenda halfway smiled. It was her smile of conces- sion, like when she told me years and years ago, Yeah the accordion ain’t such a bad instrument.
“That would be cool, Paloma. I would appreciate that.” She motioned for the bill. “Are you still playing?”
I nodded.
“Good. Keep at it.” She stood up. “Well, since they got regulations on smoking, let me get a move on. I got the bill, love.”
I sat for a while after she’d left. I wasn’t sure of where else to go or what to do. Eventually I just went home and did what Brenda suggested.
The familiar weight of the accordion filled my hands. I played a round of the first corridos I ever learned, played them slowly, focusing my ears on the sounds and my chest on the rhythms.
To play again meant I might be the only one listening. The notes would rise and fall and dissipate until the air was still again. I might stray. It meant I wouldn’t know exactly what would happen next, and it meant I would sometimes find myself with people—strangers and loved ones alike—with whom I knew no words that could express what I felt. Hunger, tiredness, excitement, happiness would no longer cover what I felt, what I experienced in my day to day.
Suddenly Mrs. Ling’s eyes glazed over and she froze. Sergio brushed past me. He put his hand on Mrs. Ling’s arm and led her to safety.
To not play again meant I would continue to cut a generic figure: woman in elevator, woman buying gum, etc. A safe, reliable figure whom most people wouldn’t take a second glance at, someone who I often liked being. It kept life quiet.
The lights dimmed. People took their private conver- sations outside. Those who remained waited to be moved or at least entertained. How I loved to be part of the audience, but I felt the weight of the accordion at my feet. I slipped back into the shadows where I ran my fingers over the keys again. As I practiced, I remembered my grandmother’s advice to breathe in deeply with the accordion and breathe out with it, matching the release of pressure and matching the release of weight. I remembered what Brenda would always say when she was back in our lives again, “Just go with it.” I moved my fingers across the keys again and again, until the fifth performer was called up. I moved downstairs. My turn was near and there was nothing left to do but listen, be absorbed in the stage, then step up when the emcee called my name.
If I picked up the accordion and walked out the door with it, took it outside my home, took it out of the case and showed that it was mine, I would cut some other kind of figure, one that threw a sharper shad- ow against the wall, one that could turn into a force of sound.
The accordion was warmed up now. I played a little while longer until I felt the familiar tingle in my
The house band sat back in the blue shadows while a
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