The Wonderful Musician

Abstract

27 SUSAN BRIANTE The Wonderful Musician • e were already in the forest when Anne came to us and said: “My sisters / do you remember the fiddlers / of your youth?” Of course, we did. Because we remembered when the music stopped playing, and we remembered much later when we turned off our radios, packed up our dowries, left our families, and headed far from the homes we had made but had never settled into. For years we had ticked like bedside alarms. Clucking at one another’s children. Clicking photos of our cupcakes. Days stretched taut as a snare as we listened to engines revving in our driveways and watched as someone else pulled away. Then we sparked quick as matchsticks and were gone. ‘ When first we came to the trees, we thrashed like water in a dishwasher . We could not undo our habits. We wished we could feel clean. But who would we be when we let ourselves have what we wanted? The years filled buckets, then barrels. We watched the moon rise to the surface and fall like a fish. We turned the color of rocks and bark. Who could say we weren’t happy? ‘ When Anne asked us to consider the wonderful musician, we didn’t understand why we had never seen him. Had we wandered all of our days drunk on solitude, airsmacked and dumb? The trees held no windows, but Anne opened doors between the branches. See how the little ones cry and squirm. See how the notes swirl like smoke. Little fingers. Little needs. Which one were we? w 28 Before we could ask, Anne pulled us further into the thicket, a pedagogy. We tittered on the promise of revenge. When the woodsman appeared, everything we thought we knew rivered away. ‘ Nobody gets justice. Nobody finds love. The scrubby oaks crackle. The twisted paths of the mind flare. We have run out of time. All the trees are flames. ...