For In Every Dawn Sleeps Darkness
By Angelle M. Chandler

Chapter 3

Before – Christine (Interlude I)

He was always there. Always. There was never a time when I turned from the world's cruelty, eyes brimming, sobs hitching in my throat, that his arms did not enfold me in an embrace of warmth, understanding and, most of all, love. He had become my entire world, sheltering me from the derision of others, from the wicked, selfish attempts of some to thwart me in my stellar rise to greatness. Oh, yes – the twin monsters of jealousy and petty spite followed me, lashing out with poisonous tongues to strike me down again and again, but he was always there to pick me up again, to love me and make me believe in myself again. Tenderly wiping my tears, soothing me with the sweet balm of his music.

It was always the music. If I was born for music, then he was the maestro that gave me life. The music flowed through him like water, and he poured it out over my parched and thirsting soul until I was filled, overflowing – yet always yearning for more. And how I yearned – I didn't just want to hear the music, or sing it – I wanted to be the music, and nothing less would do. And he felt it too, saw inside me and knew that I had the unique capacity to let the music truly live, through my voice, my life, my very soul. He would teach me, he said, if I would promise to do more than merely practice – I must do exactly as he said, in everything, and obey him without question. The divine spirit of the music would not shed his glory upon just anyone – to become a true aficionado, I would have to devote myself to the music, body and mind, and put aside all other worldly cares and desires. My heart must never be divided. There would be only the music – and through it, in the only way he knew to express it to me – his love. Or there would be nothing.

It is unfair and misleading if I've characterized him as cold or uncaring. At times he may have seemed aloof, but I never for a moment doubted his devotion. The music was his first love, but the music lived within me, flowing between us, joining us, drawing us ever closer. His only desire was to see me succeed, and to this he devoted his entire existence. He coached me exactingly, demanding much, always knowing when I gave less than all that was within me. It was not enough for me to hit every note, to pronounce each phrase – even those in languages I did not speak -- with exquisite care (though he coached me in these as well). Technique was not enough, he told me often enough. Anyone could learn the physical act of singing 'correctly' – what he demanded was perfection in every sense, including that of emotion. We do not listen to music simply to hear it, he so often chided me when I was tired and cranky from hours of lessons. We listen to music to feel it bringing us alive, warming us as the rest of the world cannot. That, Christine, is what I expect from you. Make the music live.

Great expectations. Too great, perhaps, with no room for the failure it would seem to invite. But it wasn't, not with him as teacher and guide. I strove with all I had to please him, my heart overflowing at the praise he gave when he felt I deserved it. But never too much praise – only enough to make me try harder next time. Almost perfect, my dear Christine. So close. Perhaps next time…Shall we take it again?

And we did, him encouraging me always to go one step beyond what I thought was the limit, to find more within myself, and me – his Christine – willing to do whatever it took to please him.

I never did.

When the policeman came to the classroom door, Mother Assumpta hovering behind him like a black-and-white-robed shadow, I knew before he spoke that something awful had happened. I felt it inside of me, in the deepest part where nothing but the music could ever reach. That place was empty now, cold and lifeless, and I began to shiver so much that the elderly Mother Superior hastened away to fetch me her own black knitted shawl. Black, of course, which was only proper for a young girl in mourning.

It seemed a nightmare with no blessed awakening when they came to me with the idiot tale of his death; how he had stopped at an ATM machine for cash on his way home from the university so that we could go together for ice cream at the tiny store on the corner, a 'mom and pop' operation so old-fashioned that they didn't even accept credit cards. That day was my birthday, and it was to be a surprise, an unexpected treat. A teenaged kid, later found to have been hopped up on a giddy cocktail of PCP and heroin, walked up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned, and the kid pulled a handgun from the baggy pocket of his striped woolen hoodie and shot him in the throat, then ran off. He didn't even take the money. It fluttered to the ground over my father's body, then caught in the wind and was carried, wet with his blood, away.

It was four days after my birthday that they put my father into the ground. Mother Assumpta and all of the Sisters attended the funeral service, a long, drawn-out Latin affair made all the more horrible by hearing the words of my beloved libera me spoken in such a context. There was music, also; solemn, mournful, bereft of life or feeling. Afterwards, I stood at the graveside under the thin April sun, dry-eyed though those around me, friends and co-workers of my father, wept. There was no point in tears. He was gone, forever, and with him my only other happiness – the music.

I was eight years old.

Farewell, Daddy.

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6 May, 2006
AMC