Gissely Rodriguez
Breathe
It’s nine-thirty in the morning and the sounds of Hell trumpet beside me, mocking my attempt at a pleasant day. This is only day one of learning how to play an instrument whose name is so tainted that I’m too ashamed to speak it. Regardless, my former gifted student mentality takes control, forcing me to rehearse in my dorm well after the sun receded. I go over our assigned quiz piece until the static in my ears makes my brain itch.
Fine. I’ll take it note by note. D-C-B-A-G-D-C-A-G–wait, no. F-G-D–Fuck. That’s an E. D–No, low D. How long do you hold an eighth note? It can’t just be open to interpretation. Who the hell composed this?!
My breath is stagnant and sharp; swallowing throws me into a coughing fit. The mouthpiece shines with spit, yet my lips and tongue are dry. I reposition my fingers trying to kickstart my salivary glands, determined to make this work. My chest feels hot and my head light, but I don’t care. I breathe in, expanding my ribs, and exhale softly. My aching, sweaty fingers press harder on the tiny holes, and I blow:
Whoo-EEK. Again. Woo-EEEK. No. EEEEK.
My eyes close as I try to contain myself. I blow easily and the note comes out, quietly. I bring the volume up and hold it for a few seconds. My body eases and I have to keep from smiling so my lips don’t lose their position. I can feel myself getting excited and then...EK. Suddenly, I’m blowing pins and needles through this ridiculous instrument.
*****
There I was, standing on that scuffed, black stage, sweating more than a human should be capable of. My knees trembled and I feared I’d collapse before my audition was over. I had no previous experience with sheet music and the notes and staff blurred into one big ink splotch.
“Start whenever you’re ready!”
I glanced up at the director, my future choir teacher, and nodded. My jaw was stiff and my vocal cords had dried out. My brother, Ramses, had paved the way for me in the music department, starting a legacy that scared me shitless. He was a strong vocalist and dancer. Even though I had gotten into theatre before him, he had already surpassed me in every way. I had to prove that I was as good as him, better. I opened my mouth and imitated the song I had memorized the week prior, knowing I wasn’t going to be able to read the sheet music.
I blinked once, twice. The directors mumbled to each other as I tried to collect a single moment from my time onstage. I was dismissed without a word, and immediately I panicked. I messed up. No, no. Please. I want this so bad. What am I going to tell everyone? What am I going to tell Ma? I opened the door to the lobby and was submerged into a cacophonous bubble of hopeful teenagers rehearsing their music. As I mentally prepared myself to never speak to these people again, someone grabbed my arm and yanked me to the side of the auditorium doors. I reeled back as Ramses stooped down to better peer into my soul.
“So? How’d it go?”
Shitty. Happy?
I wanted to snark at him, maybe then he’d stop pretending to care. I wanted him to acknowledge my worth as his adversary; I wanted the weight of this one-sided rivalry to bear down on his shoulders, but I knew if I reacted in any unpleasant manner, he would tell Ma and I would lose, again.
“Honestly, I don’t really remember. I was so nervous–I think I blacked out for a second.” I pulled my arms tight around my abdomen and let out a cheap laugh.
Ramses stood up straight, his 5’10” frame effortlessly overshadowing mine, “You did great.” He spoke with the resolve of an unrelenting mountain that I was trying to knock down with petty insecurities.
*****
I ran my fingers down the gray-black gown draped over my body. It hung loosely over my stomach and tight on my chest, reminding me to breathe through my diaphragm. Not once did I ever rehearse my music outside of class, yet I strode onstage with a confidence no sophomore in high school should have. As my choir teacher lifted his arms into a horizontal-football-post position, my hands, slick with sweat, gripped the front of my dress. He flicked his wrists and a soft hiss would sound as we all took our cue to breathe in. His arms bounced once, twice, and the sopranos hit their first notes. Their melodies were like petals floating gently, beautifully, astride the gusts of wind that were the altos. I wanted so badly to be as perfect and as striking as them, to shine like a crystal set into an elegant gown. But I was an alto, doomed to a life of imperceivable notes and harmonies that would be nothing without the melody.
*****
“1, 2, 3, 4! 5, 6, 7, 8! 1, 2, 3, 4!”
I lifted my leg into the air with as much control as possible, the tired muscles weighed me down. I leapt and plie´-d and arabesqued the best I could. I focused on each minute movement of my body until breathing became an afterthought. By the end, I was lightheaded from forcing my body to take in the oxygen it had been begging for during the entire last half of my routine. Everyone huffed and puffed their way over to our choreographer, eyes shifting to each other, gauging one another's degrees of panic. The only one of us who strode forward as if daring anyone to tell him he did less than amazing was Ramses. He kept his chest up and his eyes forward; his face was set like a marble sculpture–hard, cold, and emotionless. My lips pressed together to keep myself from making a face and fixed my gaze on our choreographer.
Ramses’ self-assurance stoked a rage in me that burned deep in my stomach. While the rest of us pranced about like newborn lambs, he glided across the stage like a gazelle. Ramses’ specialty was aerials, which only made him stand out more fading us into the background. Of course, he was so confident–no one else could do what he did, there was no standard to hold him to. Regardless, he still practiced until his shirt was soaked and he was panting like the rest of us, acting as if he struggled just as much.
*****
The abrupt applause exploded throughout the auditorium. My first year of choir was drawing to a close like the heavy, velvet curtains before me. The fabric bashed together with an almost imperceptible thud, and the giggling, crying, and shrieking commenced. We all rushed offstage to find our families and bask in their praise. My parents sat in the section of lifted rows in the back of the auditorium. After being stopped every few feet by my friends and their families, I eventually made my way to my parents, only to find my brother had already beaten me.
“Hey! What’d you think? ¿Les gusto?” I bounced on the tips of my toes attempting to expel some of the manic energy overwhelming me. My mom scanned me up and down, her face tight. I stopped bouncing.
“We liked the show. You both did very good. I didn’t like you running around all crazy like that.” She spoke with her hands clasped in front of her, obscuring the playbill she was holding.
Right. I should’ve come straight back to them—calmly—and accepted any notes they had for me, just like Ramses. I should’ve done better. Ramses stood quietly beside me, hands in his pockets, ever the sentinel. No jittery energy or actions from him. I didn’t even have it in me to hate him at that point. After a year of boiling to the brim every time we were together, I was exhausted. My anger devolved into the volatile simmer of resentment. I’d resigned myself to the knowledge that I’d never be his equal. But watching my mother gently adjust his bowtie and lovingly pat his cheek parted the fracture in my ego a bit more.
I had just climbed into my usual seat in my mom’s brown-ish Pathfinder when my brother asked my parents if I could ride home with him instead. My mom saw no problem with that, and frankly, I didn’t want them to see me spiral into self-loathing, so I languidly slid out of my seat. My parents called out a sharp “be safe” before driving off. I stiffly fell into the passenger seat of my brother’s forest green Saturn and absentmindedly ran my hands over the cold, beige fabric beneath me. Ramses started the car and the dusty vents shakily vrrr-ed alive, shooting stale heat straight up my nose.
As he had never been comfortable sitting in silence, Ramses talked and talked. But, in that moment, listening to him was debilitating, so I, too weary to care, responded with one-syllable non-words. I lifted my finger and played with the air vents, showing that I was far more interested in anything but our conversation. Eventually, he stopped talking. There was never such a thing as an easy silence between us, but something felt particularly tense. I sat up straighter and angled myself away from my brother instinctively. He gripped the steering wheel, his posture rigid.
I imagined that he’d grown weary after eighteen years of loving someone, who believed they hated you; perhaps the sick feeling he got whenever I glared at him had grown to be too much; maybe watching me sit in his passenger seat, ignoring him, unbothered, was his undoing. I don’t remember at what point in the ride he decided he didn’t care anymore, or perhaps he cared too much to let things go on as they had been any longer. I do remember my attention snapping to him when he asked me why I hated him. I watched as his statue-like façade shattered around him. His tears pricked and cut his throat to the point that his once smooth, solo-worthy voice had turned into a sharp screech. He gasped for air as he apologized again and again, begging me to forgive him. My head pounded, and my heart had slowed as if it too, was scared to make a sound. I wanted to hold his hand, comfort him somehow, but I stayed still. I remember the way his mouth contorted into a silent scream, and how his grating gasps pierced my eardrums.
We were outside for so long that Ma eventually came out, announcing her presence with a knock at my window. We tried to clean our faces faster than the speed of the glass rolling down, but she knew.
“¿Qué están haciendo?” Her arms were crossed tightly, and she bent down to gauge the truth from our teary eyes.
I cleared my throat and tried to think of a response that wasn’t, “Oh, just discussing the resentment I have for your son.” But before I could, Ramses spoke,
“We both just got emotional about this being my last concert ever and me graduating. We were just about to go inside. Sorry for staying out here so late, Ma.”
I tried to keep a convincing and not-at-all-shocked expression on my face as we waited for Ma to assess our lie. It was clear she didn’t believe us, but she accepted her son’s words and went back inside. I turned to my brother and for the first time, I saw him. My siblings and I know that we’re not allowed to hate each other–that’s our mom’s big rule. I stared into his utterly gigantic brown eyes and suddenly all I could see was the eight-year-old boy who yanked a first-grader to the ground for pulling my braids. I saw the boy who used to speak up for me during arguments because I was too frightened to. I remembered how, for two weeks, he helped me figure out which song from Children of Eden would best showcase my voice for my audition; how he stayed up late on a school night to help me rehearse until my throat was strained and the notes came out crooked. He did all those things for me, meanwhile, I had been doing everything I could to beat him at something.
*****
Sometime after Ramses had graduated, we went on a drive–I have no idea why or what we were doing before that. I do know, however, that all we wanted were a couple of Wendy’s 4-for-4 meals. We’d always order two–I’d give him the burger from my meal, and he’d give me his chicken nuggets. Usually, we’d drive home, turn on one of our shared comfort shows, and ravage our tepid dinner. We always finished before the first episode was over, but we’d keep watching late into the night. But that night, we decided to pull into the deserted Target parking lot and listen to a playlist we’d comprised of songs from our childhood. We laughed and talked about school, friends, work, the sadness I felt as a fry fell from my grasp to the void beneath my seat. We somehow made our food last longer than usual, neither one of us wanting a reason to end the night.
Eventually, we decided it was time to end our Midnight Parking Lot Extravaganza. Ramses scrolled through Spotify, finding the perfect song to end our night with. As the speaker coaxed out the sweet piano of A Thousand Miles by Vanessa Carlton, we started dramatically whisper-singing the lyrics until the song picked up tempo and we joined Vanessa with fries in our mouths and freedom in our lungs. Ramses stomped his feet on the floor of his car, while I slapped my thighs to the beat. I banged my hands on every surface of his car and watched as my brother threw his head back and belted. I laughed at how visible the tendons in his neck had become through the sheer force of singing. Our sugar-laden drinks made our throats thick with sticky syrup. We were no longer weighed down by the strict metronome of a sophisticated choir song, nor focused heavily on when to breathe and when not to breathe as we pirouetted ‘til our calves bled. We sang. And screamed. And laughed until we choked. Lacking any perfection our directors had ingrained in us over the last few years, surely breaking their hearts.
I had never been happier.
*****
It was my last choir concert and the pain that cut through my chest was unbearable. I sat in the front row, trying to stifle my sobs. My hand pressed deeply against my mouth leaving red marks. My fellow choir members whispered around me as they watched me fall apart in my worn, burgundy seat. I hadn’t realized how much this final performance meant to me until I looked out into the shadowed crowd and couldn’t find my family. I didn’t hear the impatient babble of my baby brother, nor the raucous cheering of my older siblings as I stepped onstage. My siblings had been too busy with work, which I’d understood. My parents, however, had made it very clear that they wouldn’t be in attendance. Fair, since our relationship had crumbled over the last two years. At some point, I had decided to stop conforming to the ideals they had set for me, and they didn’t appreciate that. Still, some childish part of me had hoped they would be there. Like they had been for Ramses.
As we wrapped up our final piece, I noticed a bundle of dark curls floating near the steps to my right. My breath stuttered and I missed the final note of my last song. As the audience applauded and everyone rushed offstage, I lost sight of those curls and desperately hoped I hadn’t imagined them. I searched frantically, pushing carelessly through the shifting crowd of teenagers, everyone shifting me back and forth. I had barely broken through the first wave when I felt my feet lift off the floor as someone crushed my body, forcing all air from my small frame. I buried myself in my brother’s arms and wept until his shoulder was thoroughly soaked.
“I’m so proud of you.”
“Ma and Pa . . . they didn’t—”
“They don’t matter. You did this. You’re the only one that matters.”
I hadn’t realized it until then, but in that moment, I knew that no matter how badly I screwed up, to Ramses, my worth would always be gold.
*****
EEEK. I stumble between notes, my fingers tripping frantically over the holes on this tiny, infuriating instrument. This children’s toy should not be wearing out my lungs so easily. Somewhere off to my right, I hear someone playing as if they came out of their mother with a recorder in hand. Some distant part of me already dislikes these people for doing so well on the third day of practice. As our professor begins teaching us how to breathe, I take a step inside my mind and throttle fifteen-year-old me.
Let it go.
This is not my passion–it’s a grade. No one is judging me or competing against me. My worth will not be measured by an arbitrary skill. My professor raises his recorder to his lips, forming an awkward lump in his mask. We all follow suit. He taps his foot, giving us the beat, and counts us in. I take a steady breath, and blow.
