Running Barefoot (3 page)

That Saturday she was happy to let me tag along to the Grimaldi’s, and I found myself looking forward to hearing more music, hoping that whoever had played before might do so again. The Grimaldi’s were nowhere to be found when we arrived, though Rachel didn’t seem concerned and immediately got to work. I tried to help her clean,
but she shooed me away good-naturedly, saying she didn’t want to share her profits. I tip-toed through the kitchen and into the room where I thought the piano must be. The piano was an enormous, black, shiny showpiece, the lid raised high, the seat a long smooth slash of ebony. I desperately wanted to sit down and run my hands across the keys. So I did. I slid onto the bench and rested my hands gently on the glistening whites. I played each one very, very softly, enjoying the individual sounds, the clear tones.

“Do you play?” A voice said behind me.

My heart jumped out of my chest and tumbled to the floor as I sat frozen, my hands still on the keys.

“You touch the keys so reverently, I thought you must play,” the voice continued.

My heart returned to my chest, pounding loudly to let me know I was still alive. I stood and turned guiltily. A bird-like woman, not much taller than me, stood just behind me. Her silver hair was fashioned in an updo, all swooped the way Jane Seymour had worn hers in ‘Somewhere in Time’. She wore black horn rim glasses on her very long nose and a deep purple pantsuit with matching purple gems I later learned were called garnets at her ears, hands, and throat.

“I’m Josie,” I stammered. “Josie Jensen. I came with Rachel. I don’t play . . . but I wish I could.”

She glided past me and set herself regally on
the black bench I had vacated.

“Who is your favorite composer?” Her glasses slid down her nose as she tipped her face forward, peering at me above the rims.

“I don’t know any of the composers,” I confessed sheepishly. “Most of the music I know I hear at church. I do love to hear the organ play the hymns.” Thoughts of Jane Seymour moments before brought a memory to mind. “There was this music in a movie I saw once. It was my mom’s favorite, and she cried whenever she watched it. The movie was called ‘Somewhere in Time’ ... do you know it?” I rushed on when she didn’t respond. “There was this beautiful song that kept playing.”

“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. Again, 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 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, “Doc,” later on in life, and Doc had a son from an earlier marriage, but they had never had any children together. It had been a series of strange events and seeming 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 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.