Running Barefoot (3 page)
“Ahhh, yes,” she sighed. “That is one of Rachmaninoff’s creations. Was it this?” She started to play the romantic strains of the music I remembered. I sank to a nearby chair and listened to the soul-stirring piece. I felt my heart swell to bursting and the tears rise in my eyes just like before.
She turned towards me as she finished and must have seen something in my face, must have seen how the music touched me.
“How old are you, child?” she asked quietly.
“My birthday is September 1st. I’ll be ten on Tuesday,” I answered shyly. I knew I looked older, and I always felt funny when I confessed my age.
“How does the music make you feel?”
“Alive,” I responded immediately and without thought, and I blushed a little at my answer.
She seemed oddly satisfied.
“Would you like to learn to play?”
“I would love to!” I exclaimed, exuberant. “I’ll have to ask my dad…but I’m sure he’ll let me!” A thought clouded my happy musings. “How much does it cost?” I worried.
“The only cost is the pleasure of your company, and the solemn promise that you will practice very hard.” She shook her finger at me sternly. “The child who does not practice does not proceed with further lessons.”
“I will practice harder than anyone has practiced before!” I promised sincerely.
“Has school started?”
“Yes, ma’am. It started last week.”
“Then I will see you Monday after school, Josie.” She held out her bony hands and clasped mine gently, sealing our deal. It was the best birthday gift I ever received.
Sonja Grimaldi had been a professor of music for thirty years. She had met and married her husband Leo, aka Doc, later on in life, and though Doc had a son from an earlier marriage, they had never had any children together. It had been a series of strange events and coincidences that had brought them to Levan – it was not a place that typically attracted retiring academics. Doc had been a friend to the senior Mr. Brockbank since they’d gone to school together as young men. He’d been the family physician since he’d graduated from med school. Both Sonja and Doc were in their seventies but still spry and ambitious. Doc had always wanted to write, but while he practiced medicine he’d never found the time. Sonja had the notion that she might like to compose a little as well, and Tuckaway Hill had seemed the perfect writer’s retreat.
I combed the Penny Pincher classified ads for a few weeks until I found a piano for sale. It proved to be old and ugly, but it had a rich, lovely sound. I contributed all the money I had been saving from selling my chicken’s eggs at the weekly farmer’s market and paid for it outright. My dad grumbled a little when it cost $75 to have someone come all the way to Levan to have it tuned, but he paid for it, warning me that I had better practice.
Practicing wasn’t my problem. I couldn’t tear myself away from the keys. Sonja was an unconventional teacher, and I was a gifted student. Instead of lessons once a week, like most students, I had a lesson every afternoon. I flew through the rudimentary lessons, quickly grasping musical concepts and theory, graduating to intermediate books and songs after only a month. For a while I even stopped reading - pushing everything aside for my music. I practiced for hours on end. Luckily for my dad and my brothers, they were outside more than they were in the house, and I rarely disturbed anyone with my obsession. Sonja said I was not exactly a child prodigy, but close. I had deep passion and appreciation for the music, and I quickly absorbed everything she taught me.
I learned that the music that had so frightened me the day I had followed her white Cadillac home was a piece by Wagner. She pronounced it Vah gner. I didn’t care much for Wagner, but Sonja said it got her blood boiling, and she used it to give voice to her “savage beast.” She smiled when she said this, and I smiled with her. I didn’t think Sonja was ever ’beastly.” Sonja said we all had a little of the beast in us.
If Wagner spoke to the beast, then Beethoven gave voice to the beauty. Beethoven’s ninth symphony became my lifeblood. I made Sonja play it each day at the end of our lessons, and each day I would leave full of hope, the beast vanquished.
Ten-year-old girls without mothers should not have to bear the burden of early puberty, but be that as it may, I started my period not long after I met Sonja Grimaldi. I believed myself stricken with some sort of terrible malady when I discovered the blood in my underpants, and overwhelmed, I had cried out my fear of certain death to Sonja. She had been playing Beethoven’s
Moonlight Sonata
, and the beauty and melancholy of the music had me drowning in self-pity.
“I think I’m dying, Mrs. Grimaldi,” I had wept. She had gathered me to her wispy self and coaxed further confession from me. When she realized what was actually happening to me, she sighed and put me away from her, tears glittering in her eyes.
“Josie! This is not death! It is a rebirth!” She exclaimed dramatically.
I stared at her with a dumbfounded frown.
“It is not surprising, you know. You are beyond your years in every other way. You have earned this right of passage much sooner than most girls. Josie, womanhood is an incredible gift! It is God-given. It is bestowed upon us. Womanhood is incredibly powerful, and you have been entrusted with it years before your peers. This means you are very special in His sight. We must celebrate!” She clapped her hands and rose with a swoosh of her long red kimono.
So we did. We lit candles and had sparkling cider in crystal goblets. She read the story of Queen Esther with great passion, telling how her beauty, grace, and courage had saved her people. How her power had influenced nations. She read to me the story of the Virgin Mary from the New Testament - only a few years older than I was, and mother to the Savior of the World.
Days later, Sonja and I drove to the city, and she bought me new underwear and bras in pretty pastels with matching undershirts to wear until the bras were absolutely necessary. We got our nails done, and she purchased enough feminine supplies to stock my bathroom drawer for several years. I felt my mother’s presence that day and knew she had been instrumental in bringing Sonja Grimaldi into my life. After all, hadn’t I been at her grave the day I first saw the white Cadillac? After that, I was much more secure in God’s love for me, and I did not curse my rapid ascent into womanhood again.
One afternoon in early spring, I arrived for my lesson to find Sonja lying on the sofa with a book lying on her chest, her eyes closed.
“Sonja?” I whispered, not wanting to wake her, but not wanting to leave if she was in need of something. I was a little scared. She looked small and tired and it made me think of my mom before she died, shrunken and pale.
“Sonja?” My voice quavered, and I put my hand on her arm.
She opened her eyes sleepily, her brown eyes huge beneath the thick Coke bottle lenses of her horn rims.
“Oh, Josie! Is it that time already? I was trying to read and my eyes just get so tired when I read lately...I’m afraid I’m going to have to give up my books.” She said the last part a little mournfully. Sonja was not a mournful individual in the slightest, and I looked closer at the book that she had been reading.
“
Wuthering Heights
,” I read aloud. “What if I read to you while you rest your eyes? I’m an excellent reader.”
Sonja smiled at this serious declaration of my ability and handed me the book. “All right then, you read for a while, and then we’ll practice.”
I hated
Wuthering Heights
. Each day I would come for my piano lessons, and I would read to Sonja for a half hour before we began. After one week of
Wuthering Heights,
I threw the hated book down in disgust. Though I was young, I was sensitive and thoughtful, and with Sonja’s explanation of different words and phrases, I had grasped most of what I had been reading and had comfortably followed the story line.
“These people are horrible! I hate them! I can’t read this anymore!” I surprised myself by bursting into violent tears, and gulped desperately to rein in the embarrassing display.
“They are, aren’t they?” Sonja agreed quietly. “Too much ugliness for a tender spirit. Maybe someday you will read it with different eyes…but maybe not. No more Heathcliffe for now. Off to the piano with you, child!” She said briskly, and I followed her meekly, scrubbing my eyes and feeling relieved that I would not have to spend any more time wandering the moors with ghosts.
The next day a new book was waiting for me. I noticed the author was also named Bronte, and cringed inwardly. But
Jane Eyre
was nothing like Catherine Earnshaw Linton. I adored
Jane Eyre
and begged Sonja to let me take it home to read between our visits. She acquiesced graciously, but made me promise to write down every word I didn’t understand and look it up, so that I would truly grasp what I was reading. When Sonja found out I didn’t have a dictionary of my own at home, she gave me a copy of Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary. She said it was the second most important book in the English language, next to the Bible.
I kept my promise and, reading late into the night, would pencil words I couldn’t define onto the wall above my bed. The next day I would delve into my heavy dictionary and look up all the words I had written the night before. With every book my “Wall of Words” grew, as did my hunger for more words. One day many months later, my dad climbed into the loft that served as my bedroom - which he rarely had reason to do - looking for something. I was downstairs whipping up a new recipe in the kitchen, and I dropped the mixing bowl when he bellowed my name.
I came running, fearing some disaster had occurred, and found him staring at my wall in outrage.
“Josie Jo Jensen! What in the world is this?” He threw his hand towards the wall behind my bed which was now partially covered in words.
“It’s my Wall of Words, Dad,” I supplied meekly. When he glowered at me and folded his arms across his chest, I decided I’d better explain myself further.
“See, at night when I’m reading I don’t like to stop in the middle of the story and look up words I don’t know…so I write them on my wall and look them up in the morning. It’s very educational!” I said brightly, smiling at him hopefully.
My dad shook his head, but I saw a flicker of a smile across his lips. He walked over to the wall and read some of my words.
“Ameliorate?” he read doubtfully. “Now that’s one I’ve never heard before.”
“Ameliorate means to make better. My ‘Wall of Words’
ameliorates
my vocabulary,” I said smartly.
My dad laughed out loud. “It does, does it?” He shook his head and looked at me fondly, all traces of anger gone. “All right Josie Jo. You can keep your wall. But keep it up here, okay? I don’t want words written all over the kitchen when you run out of room.”
“Maybe I should start writing smaller,” I said, suddenly concerned at my limited wall space.
I heard my dad laughing as he descended the narrow stairs.
Sonja had made the difficult shift into maturity easier than it would otherwise have been, but I still had to endure the scrutiny that my changing body encouraged. By the time I entered the seventh grade, I was fully grown. Though I was slender, I was 5’6 and had breasts and curves when boys my age were still wetting the bed. Tara thought I was the luckiest girl alive and pestered me with personal questions and even asked me once if she could wear my bra “just to see how it feels to be a woman.”
Being the only girl in a family of boys made my wardrobe choices pretty limited. I wore my brother’s old tshirts and hand-me-down Wranglers because that’s what we had. My dad had never thought to do anything different, and I’d never thought it important enough to ask. I’d outgrown Sonja’s underwear purchases the first year, and if it wasn’t for my Aunt Louise making sure I had a sturdy bra I don’t know what I would’ve done. The boyish clothing mostly disguised my figure, although I hunched my shoulders to hide my height and my breasts and was constantly self-conscious and awkward.
