Read Online The Daughters: A Novel by Adrienne Celt - Free Book Online Page B

thrown by snow blowers over the course of the winter. The sidewalk was perpetually wet and salted, and my shoes were already near ruin, white-streaked and saturated.
    Baba Ada seemed to have decided to ignore my attitude and walked in brisk steps, her nose pointed upward into the crisp air. She held my hand, my cotton gloves sticking against the mended suede of her own. And she quizzed me on sounds, quick, like a drill sergeant.
    This was a game Ada had devised, based on her assumption that my whole body—mouth, lungs, brain, and tiny ear bones—hadoperated as a precision instrument from the time of my birth, and perhaps before. Very likely she whispered to my mother’s pregnant stomach and listened for phantom reactions, as if her very hope was sonar.
    The game was simple. If we were sitting in a restaurant and someone accidentally struck their knife against a glass, Ada would turn to me with an expectant gaze until I said “B minor?” Or whatever the note might be. That was how I won.
    Perfect pitch, to Ada, was part of my birthright, written in my blood. Which wasn’t to say I could be casual about it. She was irritated if I hummed a song just a shade flat in her presence, even if I was mimicking something I’d heard on the radio. And since she was proud, she liked to show me off. In church I named the organist’s key changes; walking down the street with Ada and one of her friends, I called out the different pitches of car horns. People laughed and admired me and handed me candy. Adults, anyway; none of the hauteur or exactitude I learned from Ada earned me many friends at school. But I didn’t mind, because I had her. Once, when I was ten, a waiter in a café dropped an entire tray of glasses near our table, and when the shock in the room wore off I said to Ada, “Shostakovich?” She stared at me for a moment and then laughed so hard her eyes leaked tears, which cut tracks through the pale powder on her face. Then she signaled the clumsy waiter back and ordered a piece of chocolate cake, which we shared, occasionally breaking into renewed giggles.
    On this day, however, as I sulked along the sidewalk, she pointed to things—a squeaky gate hinge, a bookshop’s entrance bell—without so much as a command, and I named them in an insolent monotone.
    Near the entrance to the small rehearsal room, which wereached by way of an alleyway door and a dusty hallway that wove through the church, a round-cheeked woman stood, taking names as each participant arrived. She was particularly tall, milling around with the adult chaperones, so I could see the ribbed archway inside her mouth when she threw back her head and laughed. In the middle of such a laugh, without warning, she sneezed three sharp reports from her nose, and I felt a creeping sensation up the back of my neck. I turned to glare at Ada, hoping that my expression would communicate something cutting. See, I’m going to catch my death of cold. But she just shooed me forward.
    I placed myself on a low stool and watched the other children. The boys had formed a pack to one side, leaving only their backs visible from where I sat. The girls simply looked uninterested—one was zipping and unzipping her jacket, while another slowly unraveled her glove.
    “All right!” The sneezing woman, who seemed to be in charge, looked at her watch and walked to the front of the room, hopping up on a small wooden box. “I’m Mrs. Baker. You can call me Noreen, or Noree.” She beamed at us and wiped her nose with one finger. My stomach pinched slightly, but I stayed still. Baba brought me here , I thought. She must have known this woman, must have trusted her.
    “ Hi, Noree .” The children around me all spoke in unison, as if they’d been prepared for this exact interaction, this bubbly woman standing before us. The boys had assumed seats, interspersed with the girls, and looked calm and composed.
    “Now tonight we’re not going to start with anything too tricky.