Singing Lessons

It was in the fifth grade that I became a singer. Everything started when I was chosen to perform at the annual Brighton Elementary Christmas Pageant, a decision that filled me with excitement but which, I later realized, should have been terror. I’d never sang publicly before but the notion of all that attention was too good to resist. I liked feeling special, and at eight years old I didn’t have many other options beside, say, learning the provinces of China for an appearance on the Tonight Show. Our school music teacher, Mrs. Alexander, picked me seemingly at random from the twenty or so children in her class, and I was to work with her after school to prepare. I have no idea how she settled on me, as I’m sure there must have been better singers there; perhaps it was because she felt sorry for the round child sitting at the back of the class, belting out songs from Mary Poppins as if his life depended on it.

Mrs. Alexander was a short, thin woman wrinkled and dry from sun exposure and cigarettes, with skin that bordered more or less on the likeness of beef jerky. As I would stand there before her, inside a building that felt abandoned in its silence, I could smell the tobacco clinging to her as if she had been sneaking drags in between classes. During our sessions together, she would sit at an aging upright piano the color of lacquered almonds and I would stand a few feet from her, at a music stand displaying the lyrics to “Silent Night.” My shyness and the pressure to do well made my voice come out raspy and faint, as if I were singing through a tube. Finally in November, just as the last of the leaves were falling away from the trees outside her window, she sighed and stood up from the piano to put her hand on my chest.

If being touched by a teacher is awkward, more disconcerting still is when one caresses you with a hand that smells of Marlboros and looks vaguely like a preserved monkey’s paw.

I stiffened up, suddenly unable to breathe.

Mrs. Alexander, with her scratchy voice, said, “You’re singing from up here.” Her hand traveled from my chest downward, and in the few seconds it took for her hand to reach its destination, my mind stopped working. I had flashes of talks my parents had given me about strangers and how you should scream if someone touched you somewhere uncomfortable. Mrs. Alexander wasn’t a stranger, but this was odd enough. Before I could yell for help though, she stopped at my stomach, pressing her fingers into my belly. “You need to be singing from down here,” she said, pushing a little harder as if to punctuate her advice. That, or threaten me of her growing impatience and that I needed to sing, and sing well.

A month later, after our practices had ended and the big day arrived, my parents brought my three-year-old brother and me to the high school where my classmates and I would perform. My memories of the place make it seem impossibly busy, the gym booming with adult voices as the cafeteria filled with children clamoring over each other as teachers tried to settle them down. We were packed like animals before a traveling circus show, and as my dad took my brother to find seats, my mother helped me get ready, straightening my clip-on tie and running a lint roller over the white button-down shirt she’d insisted I wear.

I felt nervous, probably more so because of the other kids, and had I known then about drugs and the wonderful skills they possess, I might’ve asked my mother for something to settle my nerves. One by one, each class left the room, and as the cafeteria grew quieter my fear began to mount. Finally, my class was called, and everyone but me filed out to perform a three- or four-minute song and dance number about the joys of Christmas — namely family and friends, though most of us kids felt all the worthwhile parts were wrapped in decorative paper and accented with shiny bows. My solo would be the second part of the fifth grade performance, and much to my dismay, my mother left me there to go join my father and brother. She wished me luck, told me she loved me, and then, smiling, abandoned me.

In the minutes between watching my friends exit the room and my own call to action, I wondered if I might be able to throw up on command. I thought that maybe if I were sick, my portion of the evening would be canceled and things would simply move along without me. But no matter how much I thought about it, or how much I wished for something to interrupt the show, nothing came up. I reconsidered the singular desire for attention I’d had back at the beginning, when the idea of singing before an audience was a mere glimmer, a pesky detail to be addressed later. How, I wondered, could I have been so foolish? But before I could answer, it was time to go.

The gym, I remember, was an overwhelming sight for an eight-year-old. Rows upon rows upon rows of parents ran down both sides of the room, and to me it seemed like thousands of adults were there, though it must’ve only been somewhere in the ballpark of eight hundred. Still, that’s pretty intimidating, especially when you’ve just mastered basic multiplication and your knowledge of history goes back about four summers. I drifted out to my spot at the center of the room, taking my place before the music stand. The lyrics I had known so well abandoned me there, and as I stood looking down at the sheets of lyrics so did my ability to read. As she took her seat at the piano next to me, Mrs. Alexander flashed me a smile that in my anxiety read, simply, Don’t fuck this up.

The opening notes of “Silent Night” lifted into the air as the voices of the parents and their elf- and reindeer-dressed children fell quiet. I started to sing, then, but to my surprise things went smoothly. By the end of the song, I had forgotten about where I was, the music having taken over me. The rise of applause drew me back, and I remembered being afraid as if it were something from long ago. I searched the bleachers for my parents, but the faces were distant and blurred together like a watercolor painting dropped in a puddle.

I took my seat next to my class so that I could enjoy the rest of the show, but I didn’t pay much attention to what was going on. Maybe singing wasn’t for me, I considered. I couldn’t stop thinking about all I’d gone through to perform that single song: the jangled nerves, the stench of cigarettes in a grade school classroom, the presence of a teacher’s leathery hand upon my chest. All things that, if told in the right way to the right people, might bring me all the attention I could ever hope for.