The Piano Studio

Subbed to Monkeybicycle on 10/06/09. Rejected.
Subbed to Left Hand Waving on 06/08/10.


The Piano Studio
By Robert Aquino Dollesin

The three most daunting days of the week were the three days our mother rounded me and my sister up and drove us to Mrs. Hernandez‘s home for our piano lessons.

The studio, which Mrs. Hernandez often boasted as being a premier academy of music, was really little more than a rickety wooden shed -- four walls, low ceiling, concrete floor -- that had been plugged dead center of a stand of mature banana trees in the Hernandez‘ back yard.

The Wurlitzer on which we played sat against the shed’s back wall, beneath a dangling yellow bulb.

The only other thing of significance in the shed was an electric fan that had been tucked into the one corner not littered with springy spider webs. The fan oscillated constantly. Its jittery whir nudged the stale air from one side of the studio to the other.

I was thankful for the fact that my sister, Shirley, had her lesson before mine.

Sitting thigh-to-thigh with Mrs. Hernandez on the wooden bench,, Shirley demonstrated her knowledge of scales, arpeggios, and recently learned songs. Once warmed up, she spidered her fingers above the black and white keys and begin her plunky rendition of whatever song she was currently learning.

Wishing I was anywhere but the studio, I sighed loud enough for Mrs. Hernandez to hear. She glared over her shoulder. I turned my face out the propped open door to stare at the leaves trembling on the branches of the trees.

To pass the time I tracked the geckos that prowled the walls. I found it amazing how translucent the lizards were, the way the outlines of their tiny organs pulsed beneath their skin. I watched awed as they scampered the seams of the ceiling, veering off course only to snatch from the wall a foolish, idling mosquito.

Once, I watched a gecko stalk a large moth that had been batting the bulb. The moth left the light and landed on the wall. The lizard pounced and clamped the moth's maggot-like torso between its jaws. For a long time the moth flapped helplessly. Unable to wing itself free, it surrendered to the gecko.

One evening after a rain, the piano studio filled with mosquitoes. I waited in my chair for one of them to glide gracefully onto my arm. While it perched poised to pierce my skin, I slowly raised my palm, then quickly brought it down to splatter the mosquito dead.

The resounding swat brought an over-the-shoulder frown from Mrs. Hernandez.

Later that hour, Mrs. Hernandez scolded my sister for striking the wrong note. Glancing toward them, I noticed tears of frustration trickling down Shirley's face. Just then a plump mosquito landed on the wall beside me. I raised my palm slowly, then slammed it against the wall. Rolling my hand over, I discovered a red splotch tainted with flecks of black.

Mrs. Hernandez, who was still busy reproaching my sister for her mistake, did not pay me any attention.

"Like this, like this, like this," she was scolding, her own fingers dancing deftly over the piano keys to demonstrate how the song should be played. “Now do it right,“ she told Shirley, straightening her back and dropping her hands into her lap.

If I hadn’t been so afraid of Mrs. Hernandez, I would have shouted out, told the old witch to leave my sister alone. If she didn't frighten me so much, I would have gone outside and found something to stake her heart with.

Shirley began to play again.

Mrs. Hernandez squirmed on the bench and dug-dragged her fingernails over a swelling, reddening node that had suddenly erupted on her left thigh. I looked at the blood on my palm again. I raised my hand, toward the studio's wall and, sharply twisting my wrist, smeared the freshly sucked blood onto the wood.

While Mrs. Hernandez continued to fidget and scratch her thigh, I leaned back in my chair, grinned with satisfaction, and waited for my lesson to begin.