Mother took off work, picked me up at school, and dropped me at the Corsicana Public Library, where I was to play for the national piano guild.
The library, a massive stone building built in 1906 by the generosity of the Carnegie Foundation, was imposing and matched the local courthouse in architectural style.
To participate in guild, a student had to memorize ten pieces, and the ability to play and interpret pieces would be rated by a nationally certified judge. I dreaded it even more than recitals, except there was only one person to be embarrassed in front of, not a whole audience.
Inside, I crept slowly up the gray marble stairway. Putting off the inevitable, I ran back down quickly, made a half circle and started up the steps on the other side. Both sets ended at the landing.
Dragging the toes of my penny loafers over each of the eight steps, I arrived there slowly. A hopscotch step Mother had taught me took me midway across the landing, where I turned left, and started up the wide staircase that led to the 500 seat auditorium on the second floor.
At the top of the stairs, the massive double doors to the auditorium were opened wide as though they had been flung open for a large crowd to exit the last wonderful cultural event held there years ago, then left that way, frozen in time.
Everything about the library seemed massive and fine, though after some fifty years, it was beginning to exhibit signs of decay. A poster-sized piece of tan paint was peeling from far up on the wall in the stairwell. I noted the wooden auditorium floors, almost bare of stain or varnish. A mist of fine dust seemed to hover a few feet above the floor, little dust particles in frenetic activity in the one slant of sunlight illuminating the cavernous space.
Brass rails topped the ornate ironwork that flanked the stairs, but they were tarnished and neglected. Everything looked oversized, the tall ceilings, the broad stairs, the huge auditorium with its wooden seats.
When it was built in 1906, about the same time as many others across the country, it had been grand. Over 50 years had passed now though, and Mother said there was talk about tearing it down.
I loved to go downstairs in the main library and look at the Stereo Viewer. It looked like swim goggles on a stick, but when I put a picture postcard in the holder, held it up and stared through it, the scene looked alive.
Pictures of Corsicana in earlier years, downtown, people walking about, and all sorts of other pictures made me want to jump in there, like it was a time machine. The people looked like they could walk and talk. It felt like I could become part of it.
Susan spent many summer days at the library. Mother would come to pick her up, and she'd come out the tall front doors, barely able to carry all her books. Sometimes she, Jan, and I would spend the afternoon there, reading and looking through the Stereo Viewer. The ladies always smiled broadly as we entered, and they greeted Susan by name.
I had reached the auditorium; there was no turning back. Gazing across the tops of all the seats, I could see the stage, and sitting up there at a small desk about ten feet from the Grand Piano was a tiny woman with white hair, hunched over, writing furiously. She had not seen me yet.
Would Mother get mad if I just didn't go in, instead went downstairs and jumped into 1906 Corsicana in the Stereo Viewer? That would be a relief. I'll bet they didn't have National Guild then.
Creak. My weight caused one of the ancient boards to complain. Her head snapped up.
"Felisa," she called pleasantly enough. "Are you ready?"
I swallowed hard, nodded affirmatively, lying, and made my way down the interminable center aisle like a girl headed to the gallows. When I got to the end of the aisle, the stage was taller than I, so I couldn't really see her any more. I turned right, mounted the four steps into the anteroom, and creaked across those old, worn boards and through the door onto the stage.
"Sit down at the piano, please," she said, motioning to her right.
I hated guild partly because I couldn't talk and explain myself, or my mistakes. She didn't really want to know anything about me, only if I could play the piano. And that wasn't my best attribute. In fact, it was one of the worst-and weakest.
I wanted to tell her how I could ride a bicycle and swing by my knees on the bar, hang from my hands on the rings at Mr. Watts' house, and how, once, Boy and I had made lovely rainbows on his walls even if his mother didn't appreciate their beauty. And how I was strong enough to get both my sisters off my back. But she wasn't interested in any of those things.
"Proceed," she said formally, looking at me over the rims of her black glasses, the neckchain dangling from both sides of her face, looping down beside her cheeks.
"Yes ma'am," I said, scooting forward on the piano bench and curving my fingers in anticipation, though as soon as I started playing, I forgot to keep them bent.
The tune resonated in the auditorium, stark sounds in the vast quietness. "Too loud," I thought, letting up on the keys.
When I finished playing, I glanced in the direction of the judge. She was not looking at me, but rather writing frantically, as though she could never get everything she wanted to say about that performance written.
All of a sudden, she stopped writing, tapped her pen, glanced at me, and said "Begin."
We repeated this strange ritual for the entire ten songs. It took about an hour. Five songs into the performance, I started sweating, not because it was hot, but because of the tension.
Between songs five and six, I surreptitiously wiped my hand across my forehead, near the hairline. When I began song six, my hand almost slipped off the keys due to the moisture.
Miss Judge didn't seem to notice. I assumed she was a Miss since I couldn't imagine anyone being married to such a woman. It would be so dull that I assumed her husband might turn into stone if he didn't just shrivel up.
She wouldn't care about him except one single thing. And whatever that one thing was, I could just see her with a large three page form like she had today, critiquing his every move.
"You held that rake too long," she'd say, for instance, when he was doing yardwork, scribbling maniacally on the form. "Watch the strokes; make them more staccato. And for heavens sake, rake quietly when you need to be quiet, and more loudly when the raking calls for it!"
Then she'd try to give him just a little positive regard so he'd keep raking. "Ok, nice phrasing on that set," she'd say. "You seem to understand the raking, what it is supposed to sound like."
"Ok," she'd say to him, "you're almost through."
"You're almost through," she said, clearing her throat.
"Oh, okay. Sorry. Is this number 10?" I asked, returning suddenly from my reverie.
"Yes, yes it is. Proceed," she said, turning to her rapid scribbling.
Mercifully, the song was over quickly, and I hopped up from the bench, walking toward her small desk. She looked up at me with an emotionless expression. "That will be all," she said flatly. "Goodbye."
"Bye," I said, exiting toward the anteroom, exhaling with relief. I practically skipped up the long aisle, bursting out into the foyer like I supposed that crowd had so many years ago when they'd left the doors open. Then I ran, really ran, down the stairs and jumped off the last step, landing lightly in the foyer of the library.
Glancing left, I drew a big smile from one of the librarians, who was sitting at the large counter looking out the glass in the tall walnut double doors leading inside. I sensed other kids before me might have done the same thing. We all hated guild, or at least any self respecting kid wouldn't admit it if he or she liked it.
"How did you do?" Mother asked when she came to fetch me.
"Ok, I guess," I shrugged. "She didn't talk to me. She just wrote and wrote on a long form."
"Her evaluation of your playing," she explained.
"I know that. I really know that," I said, turning toward the car window.
"But she doesn't know anything about me," I complained. "She never asked amything about me at all," I said disgustedly. "Is she married?"
"I have no idea. Why?"
"Just wondering," I said.
I was thinking about how we had the Bach Festival in February and the Hymn Festival and how very much I disliked all of them. I thought festivals were fun. Maybe the music teachers conspired to call them festivals so all the kids would come, thinking they were going to have a good time.
Next year I did not plan to be at the Corsicana Public Library in an abandoned auditorium with a woman who would cause her husband to dry up. I just had to think how to get out of it. I had a whole year, surely I could think of something.
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The library, a massive stone building built in 1906 by the generosity of the Carnegie Foundation, was imposing and matched the local courthouse in architectural style.
To participate in guild, a student had to memorize ten pieces, and the ability to play and interpret pieces would be rated by a nationally certified judge. I dreaded it even more than recitals, except there was only one person to be embarrassed in front of, not a whole audience.
Inside, I crept slowly up the gray marble stairway. Putting off the inevitable, I ran back down quickly, made a half circle and started up the steps on the other side. Both sets ended at the landing.
Dragging the toes of my penny loafers over each of the eight steps, I arrived there slowly. A hopscotch step Mother had taught me took me midway across the landing, where I turned left, and started up the wide staircase that led to the 500 seat auditorium on the second floor.
At the top of the stairs, the massive double doors to the auditorium were opened wide as though they had been flung open for a large crowd to exit the last wonderful cultural event held there years ago, then left that way, frozen in time.
Everything about the library seemed massive and fine, though after some fifty years, it was beginning to exhibit signs of decay. A poster-sized piece of tan paint was peeling from far up on the wall in the stairwell. I noted the wooden auditorium floors, almost bare of stain or varnish. A mist of fine dust seemed to hover a few feet above the floor, little dust particles in frenetic activity in the one slant of sunlight illuminating the cavernous space.
Brass rails topped the ornate ironwork that flanked the stairs, but they were tarnished and neglected. Everything looked oversized, the tall ceilings, the broad stairs, the huge auditorium with its wooden seats.
When it was built in 1906, about the same time as many others across the country, it had been grand. Over 50 years had passed now though, and Mother said there was talk about tearing it down.
I loved to go downstairs in the main library and look at the Stereo Viewer. It looked like swim goggles on a stick, but when I put a picture postcard in the holder, held it up and stared through it, the scene looked alive.
Pictures of Corsicana in earlier years, downtown, people walking about, and all sorts of other pictures made me want to jump in there, like it was a time machine. The people looked like they could walk and talk. It felt like I could become part of it.
Susan spent many summer days at the library. Mother would come to pick her up, and she'd come out the tall front doors, barely able to carry all her books. Sometimes she, Jan, and I would spend the afternoon there, reading and looking through the Stereo Viewer. The ladies always smiled broadly as we entered, and they greeted Susan by name.
I had reached the auditorium; there was no turning back. Gazing across the tops of all the seats, I could see the stage, and sitting up there at a small desk about ten feet from the Grand Piano was a tiny woman with white hair, hunched over, writing furiously. She had not seen me yet.
Would Mother get mad if I just didn't go in, instead went downstairs and jumped into 1906 Corsicana in the Stereo Viewer? That would be a relief. I'll bet they didn't have National Guild then.
Creak. My weight caused one of the ancient boards to complain. Her head snapped up.
"Felisa," she called pleasantly enough. "Are you ready?"
I swallowed hard, nodded affirmatively, lying, and made my way down the interminable center aisle like a girl headed to the gallows. When I got to the end of the aisle, the stage was taller than I, so I couldn't really see her any more. I turned right, mounted the four steps into the anteroom, and creaked across those old, worn boards and through the door onto the stage.
"Sit down at the piano, please," she said, motioning to her right.
I hated guild partly because I couldn't talk and explain myself, or my mistakes. She didn't really want to know anything about me, only if I could play the piano. And that wasn't my best attribute. In fact, it was one of the worst-and weakest.
I wanted to tell her how I could ride a bicycle and swing by my knees on the bar, hang from my hands on the rings at Mr. Watts' house, and how, once, Boy and I had made lovely rainbows on his walls even if his mother didn't appreciate their beauty. And how I was strong enough to get both my sisters off my back. But she wasn't interested in any of those things.
"Proceed," she said formally, looking at me over the rims of her black glasses, the neckchain dangling from both sides of her face, looping down beside her cheeks.
"Yes ma'am," I said, scooting forward on the piano bench and curving my fingers in anticipation, though as soon as I started playing, I forgot to keep them bent.
The tune resonated in the auditorium, stark sounds in the vast quietness. "Too loud," I thought, letting up on the keys.
When I finished playing, I glanced in the direction of the judge. She was not looking at me, but rather writing frantically, as though she could never get everything she wanted to say about that performance written.
All of a sudden, she stopped writing, tapped her pen, glanced at me, and said "Begin."
We repeated this strange ritual for the entire ten songs. It took about an hour. Five songs into the performance, I started sweating, not because it was hot, but because of the tension.
Between songs five and six, I surreptitiously wiped my hand across my forehead, near the hairline. When I began song six, my hand almost slipped off the keys due to the moisture.
Miss Judge didn't seem to notice. I assumed she was a Miss since I couldn't imagine anyone being married to such a woman. It would be so dull that I assumed her husband might turn into stone if he didn't just shrivel up.
She wouldn't care about him except one single thing. And whatever that one thing was, I could just see her with a large three page form like she had today, critiquing his every move.
"You held that rake too long," she'd say, for instance, when he was doing yardwork, scribbling maniacally on the form. "Watch the strokes; make them more staccato. And for heavens sake, rake quietly when you need to be quiet, and more loudly when the raking calls for it!"
Then she'd try to give him just a little positive regard so he'd keep raking. "Ok, nice phrasing on that set," she'd say. "You seem to understand the raking, what it is supposed to sound like."
"Ok," she'd say to him, "you're almost through."
"You're almost through," she said, clearing her throat.
"Oh, okay. Sorry. Is this number 10?" I asked, returning suddenly from my reverie.
"Yes, yes it is. Proceed," she said, turning to her rapid scribbling.
Mercifully, the song was over quickly, and I hopped up from the bench, walking toward her small desk. She looked up at me with an emotionless expression. "That will be all," she said flatly. "Goodbye."
"Bye," I said, exiting toward the anteroom, exhaling with relief. I practically skipped up the long aisle, bursting out into the foyer like I supposed that crowd had so many years ago when they'd left the doors open. Then I ran, really ran, down the stairs and jumped off the last step, landing lightly in the foyer of the library.
Glancing left, I drew a big smile from one of the librarians, who was sitting at the large counter looking out the glass in the tall walnut double doors leading inside. I sensed other kids before me might have done the same thing. We all hated guild, or at least any self respecting kid wouldn't admit it if he or she liked it.
"How did you do?" Mother asked when she came to fetch me.
"Ok, I guess," I shrugged. "She didn't talk to me. She just wrote and wrote on a long form."
"Her evaluation of your playing," she explained.
"I know that. I really know that," I said, turning toward the car window.
"But she doesn't know anything about me," I complained. "She never asked amything about me at all," I said disgustedly. "Is she married?"
"I have no idea. Why?"
"Just wondering," I said.
I was thinking about how we had the Bach Festival in February and the Hymn Festival and how very much I disliked all of them. I thought festivals were fun. Maybe the music teachers conspired to call them festivals so all the kids would come, thinking they were going to have a good time.
Next year I did not plan to be at the Corsicana Public Library in an abandoned auditorium with a woman who would cause her husband to dry up. I just had to think how to get out of it. I had a whole year, surely I could think of something.
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