I Found a Guitar in the Basement

I Found a Guitar in the Basement

CHAPTER 1

HIDING FROM THE BARBARIANS

​ I found an old guitar under some tiki torches in the basement.

​ It said "Martin" on the top. Wondering who Martin was, I dusted it off with some furniture polish and started playing.

​ "That was your mother's guitar," my grandparents said.

​ "She played guitar?"

​ It was a new piece to the puzzle of my Mom.

​ My Mom's guitar. I loved it. I slept with it. I practically shredded my fingers, trying to play.

The Grands discouraged me.

So I played all the time.

Miss Vollmer was the one who really taught me how to play guitar. She's among the few decent teachers in Maple Heights.

​ The guitar strings were rusty. So we restrung it. Then Miss Vollmer showed me how to play a D. Then a G. Then an A.

She showed me how to strum. She even gave me bandages for my blistered fingertips until calluses developed on my left hand.

That was last year

Now, Miss Vollmer lets me skip study hall to play guitar in the music room. I don't even need a pass. And of course, Emma, my best friend, comes along.

Miss Vollmer lends me one of the school's six-string guitars. They're nice. They haven't been destroyed by the barbarians. Yet.

The barbarians are the kids who wreck everything. They should go to their own school, located inside a Roman coliseum.

Emma and I hide from the barbarians in the music room. Inside, there's this old cinderblock stairway that echoes when you sing. That's where I play. I sit on the fourth step. Emma parks her wheelchair at the foot of the steps. Agatha goes out to smoke. Agatha's this cranky old lady who is Emma's aide. She doesn't really do anything for Emma. Mostly because Emma won't let her.

I play my favorite chord progression: C Major 7 to F major 7 to A minor 7, around to G, then back to C Major 7.

Miss Vollmer sits at her computer. But if I stop playing, she yells out, "Keep going, Willie."

Sometimes Miss Vollmer will reposition my pinkie finger on a string, and say, "press harder."

She brings me sheet music, like right now, this very second, Miss Vollmer is handing over a new song. "Willie, every time I hear this song, I think of you."

This is her third year teaching. So she's still full of enthusiasm. Soon the Maple Heights school system will drain all that out of her.

"Thanks. That's so nice."

Emma says, "I heard this song on the bus."

"You guys need to be singing this." Miss Vollmer smiles, her freckled face is as cheery as a poppy seed muffin, unlike my own dour face with my heavy forehead.

"I'll try," I adjust my glasses and tune a couple strings.

"Now girls. Some of these lyrics are a little grown-up," Miss Vollmer says, hoping we won't report her to the office. "So I'm not suggesting you sing all the words. Got it?"

"I'm cool."

"Play it," Emma says, not exactly a patient kid, but neither am I.

In C, I'm finger-picking, with Miss Vollmer singing. It's C-F-G-C. Easy.

Miss Vollmer sings, "Friday night at the road house, it's dollar a beer night."

Emma and I exchange our look. "Gramma would freak."

Miss Vollmer sings on. "With a fake ID. Skirt well above my knee, I play pool. Boys play darts. They think they're so cool... They think they're so smart."

Miss Vollmer nods at Emma to start the tambourine beat. Here comes the chorus, with an F: "It's always this way in (G) This old town... (C) Living here just (AM) gets me down. (F). Without a doubt, (G chord) we gotta get out (C/ F chords) Baby let's not (G chord) fight (F chord) Let's escape (G chord) this (F chord) roadhouse (G chord) tonight."

Miss Vollmer points at us. "Three, two, one, go."

I sing the melody, Emma kicks right in with the harmony. We go all the way to the third verse. "You've got a guitar and your Dad's old car. I'll write some songs. Let's escape in the night. Staying here is just all wrong. You know I'm right."

"You guys! Awesome! Emma how did you figure out the harmony so fast? Willie. It's like you were born with a guitar in your hands. " Miss Vollmer says, shaking her head.

"Maybe." Emma swings around in her chair. I grin. This is fun.

We go on and sing the last chorus.

Miss Vollmer rubs Emma's shoulders. Emma half-smiles.

"It's always this way in this old town... Living here just gets me down. Without a doubt. We gotta get out. Baby let's not fight. Let's escape this roadhouse... tonight." I finish in C, F, B flat, back to C.

"Whose song is this?" Emma asks. I could care less. It's sort of a stupid song. I mean, if you're going to escape, do it. Don't sit around whining.

"Ever heard of the band, Reckless? No?" Miss Vollmer holds up a vinyl album. The cover has a big drawing of a turquoise eye. Emma and I stare at this antique relic. Can't figure out how they got music out of those round black platters.

"Way before your time," Miss Vollmer shakes her head.

"So retro," Emma says.

Enter a barbarian: Dante the Gargoyle has been in my class since kindergarten.

"Uh, uh. Miss Vollmer?" He stands in the doorway, itching his belly button.

"What now Dante?" Miss Vollmer's enthusiasm level drops.

He wipes his nose on his arm. "Uh, uh. ICan I, uh, have a book cover?"

"Have a tissue." Miss Vollmer points at the box.

"Uh, no, uh... Mister Healy says I gotta cover my book by like today, uh, or else."

"This is the music room, not the book cover room."

"Uh, uh, yeah, I wuz hopin' ya maybe had a grocery bag or sumthin."

Now Fred Mitchell pops in. His knuckles drag on the floor, "Yeah so, uh, hey, yeah, hey, you got like a book cover?"

The bell rings. Miss Vollmer closes the door behind us, shunning barbarians.

Gargoyle and Fred crowd me and Emma. "It's the retard twins."

Emma and I look at each other. With perfect timing, claws out, we hiss like cats. The barbarians run.

Because Emma's in a wheelchair and I'm her best friend, we get to cut the lunch line.

We grab our trays, acting like nothing happened.

Being called a retard by two morons stinks.

We say we'll let it roll off of us, but.

I want to get out of this rat hole school. With its thriving population of barbarians, water dripping from ceiling tiles and our cardboard pizza on styrofoam trays that never get recycled. Some days I see a way out. But not today.

CHAPTER TWO

THE GRANDS

BAM BAM BAM on my bedroom door.

"Honey. Let me in." It's my Grandmother.

"Go away."

"Wilhelmina. Honey. Let me in."

"Why."

BAM BAM BAM. "We don't lock doors in this house, Willie, honey? You know that."

"Gramma. I'm working on something."

"Willie. Open this door. Gramma rattles the door knob.

"I'm writing a song." I'm strumming, humming, writing, rhyming, singing to myself, "Feeling something missing/But I never knew to ask..."

BAM BAM BAM. "What about your homework?"

You know, when a song comes into my head, it just comes. Without warning. Right now, this song is like, flooding my brain, so I have to write it down. Despite the annoying grandmother outside my door. "Feeling something's lost to me/But I never knew the task?The mask? The past? And it just couldn't last?' I look at the rhyming app on my phone.

BAM BAM BAM.

"I'm waiting!"

"Gramma, I'm writing a song."

"Open up Willie. I mean it." BAM BAM BAM.

"Gramma. Why? Why why why?"

"Because I said so." BAM BAM BAM.

I can hear Gramma breathing through the door crack.

"I'm right in the middle of ---"

"Willie honey please." Gramma says.

I cave. Open the door. "What."

My Gramma's big green eyes look like balloons. "Willie. You know I hate it when you lock your door. What if there's a fire?"

Then she slides her way past me, she's picking at my things.

"No fire. What are you doing?"

"Don't get smart with me, missy."

She picks up an empty soda can, looks around my room, straightens the bed spread and sighs.

"You know Gramma, when you say, ‘don't get smart with you,' do you want me to stay stupid? Is that what you're advising? So you want me to stay stupid. With you?"

"Of course not," Gramma pokes around my bureau, closing drawers. "That locked door makes me nervous."

"You make yourself nervous."

She drops her arms. "Why lock your door? What are you hiding?"

"Nothing. I'm writing a song. I need to focus."

Sighing, she picks up my clothes. "You couldn't put these in your hamper?"

"I'm writing a song."

"Don't you have homework?"

"Of course I have homework."

"Wasting time with that guitar, just like ---"

"My Mom. That's right, Gramma. Just like my Mom. Glad to be like my Mom."

Gramma always starts this. It's like the theme of my life: don't be like your Mom.

"Willie honey. I just worry. This is the age when kids get into trouble and I have to keep an eye on you."

"Stop."

With an arm full of laundry, she leaves, her face like a wounded deer.

My Gramma. She's got a few different faces.

There's her fake face. She puts on the fake face when patiently listening to someone, like Mercy Wilkins in the Food Mart, a lady who goes on and on. Gramma puts on her fake face and nods politely.

There's Gramma's delusional face, like when she's got a project going, like making pie crust from scratch. Or planting two hundred tulip bulbs. Her delusional face is a semi-bipolar-I-can-take-on-the-world face. The tip of her tongue touches the corner of her lip in a hyper-driven effort to do something completely unnecessary.

Gramma's prettiest face is when she's calm and certain, her forehead smooth, with a bit of her smile. Which is a spectacular smile, BTW. I love this particular face. She should wear it more often. She wears her prettiest face when she's ironing. Or when I come downstairs wearing an outfit she picked out for me.

Then there's her hurt face, which I call her wounded deer expression. This particular face appears only after I say something wrong. The shock and pain on her face appear. Usually, I've said something terrible. But I didn't realize how terrible it was until I've said it.

When Gramma wears her wounded deer face, the foundation drops from beneath my feet. I feel terrifyingly alone. I flood with regret. Gramma turns away, still wearing her wounded deer expression like she is right now.

What did I say? I said, "stop," that's all.

Next, Grampa arrives, like he always does, breathing heavily, stinking of sweat, motor oil and onions, wearing his Viet Nam Vet cap. "Grampa to the rescue."

"You know," Grampa breathes on me, "your Gramma understands that at his age, you take her for granted. You can't help it."

He hands me a handkerchief. Grampa's face is as cute as an old man muppet, with dimples and cornflower eyes.

"What's so bad about songwriting?"

"It scares your Gramma."

"That's her problem." Now I'm crying.

"Yes. But your Gramma, see, she –

IN UNISON: "Went through so much with your Mother."

Both of us just sit there on my bed, looking out the window for a while, like we have since I was little. Outside, there's the roof of Grampa's shed. Below, our mowed green lawn, our pear tree and Emma's house on the left.

Looking out at our neighborhood, everything is the same every day.

Maple Heights, Ohio. If you don't like change, live here.

Even the curtains Gramma made for my room are still hanging, my dolls still sit on a shelf.

Grampa says what he usually says when Gramma and I fight, "You know Willie, every day, your Grandmother does double, triple and sometimes a quadruple amount of stuff to help you."

"Big deal. I don't ask her to do anything."

"She makes sure you take vitamins. She combs that snarl out of your hair."

"Yeah but. She doesn't trust me."

"She will. When you're thirty-three."

"She won't let me lock my door." Tears leak down my neck.

"Don't lock your door, Willie," Grampa kisses the top of my head.

"When I was little, I'd dance and sing, and she'd be thrilled."

"Oh, we loved you singing and dancing," Grampa says. "Why'd you stop?"

"Gramma invented like forty million new ways to disappoint her."

"She's trying to raise you like a lady. A lady mechanical engineer."

"There will be no lady mechanical engineer."

"Well..." he says with a wince. "Your grades could be better."

"Don't hold your breath."

"Well, math and science are important, Willie."

"I am totally uninterested."

"Get interested."

"Gramma's expectations are crazy. She makes me want to run and hide and disappear into a song."

"You try to disappear? Into a song?"

"Music is my only available escape hatch."

Grampa changes the subject. "Whatcha reading?" He looks at the books on my table, "Oh Dickens. Charlie Dickens."

"Yeah. Oliver Twist."

"That's a good book."

"It's sad. Oliver's an orphan. Like me."

"You're not an orphan, Willie."

"But I'm a burden."

"No you're not," Grampa hugs me. "You are loved to bits, forever and always, you are our little girl."

He kisses me a bunch of times on the top of my head and then stands.

"Welp." He claps his hands. "Glad we had this talk."

I fingerpick my guitar. "Gramma needs to see a therapist."

Grampa says, "Lillian won't do that."

I run my fingers along the guitar frets, "Why."

"Aw, Willie. Just move on."

"Why's Gramma always on the edge of a meltdown?"

"It's a long story."

"Tell me."

He closes the door.

CHAPTER THREE

BROKEN DOWN SCHOOL

The radiator rattles and hisses. If you touch it, it'll fry your hand. Florescent lights reveal every pore in the face of our vile math teacher, Miss Hellin.

Her goal in life? To move on to the next unit.

I'm staring holes into my math worksheet.

A dark feeling of failure washes over me like an E-minor chord, followed by a A-minor chord; a musical sentence of doom.

Tom, Gail, Eddie and Sean are all sitting back in their chairs. They get​ math. They always get it. How do they "get it"? I never get it. Why X and Y? Why mix letters and numbers?

Miss Hellin swoops in.

"Wilhelmina. You should know this by now."

Miss Hellin points with her orange-painted nail. "We're completing the unit. We're moving on."

I nod. She has brown lines drawn around her lips.

"If you don't finish this unit, you'll be left behind."

"Okay."

"We've been over this and over this, Willie."

Miss Hellin doesn't realize, when ​I look up, ​I see her gray nests of hair in her nose. It's distracting.

"Can I sharpen my pencil?"

"I don't know, can you?" Miss Hellin sighs.

"Okay, may I?"

"Yes, you may." She shakes her head.

I walk by the blinking smart board. It flashes a warning: Replace filter. Miss Hellin claims to have called maintenance months ago and they still haven't shown up.

Kids in the hall pop their heads in our classroom and make stupid faces. Blue-haired Tanya yodels at us. Everybody laughs. Miss Hellin lunges at Tanya, who races down the hall. For the million​th time, Miss Hellin struggles with the door, trying to shut it, but it won't. It's broken.

I approach the pencil sharpener. Aiden Foyle lurks nearby. A slithering creature is he. Mustardy hair gelled to a point on the top of his head. Aiden has craftily slid his desk, inch by inch, backwards into the corner to annoy Miss Hellin. Pencil in his mouth, he rocks backwards, eager for prey.

"Hey. Willie, the girl with a man's name," Aiden says and licks his pencil.

"Do you suck your thumb too?"

He removes the pencil from his mouth.

Grinding the pencil sharpener drowns out Miss Hellin's voice.

"Willie boy, heh-heh-heh," Aiden says to me.

"You'll get lead poisoning," I fly by.

I work my way around Emma's wheelchair, whispering, “What's the answer to number four?”

“Shush,” Agatha, the paraprofessional warns, as I infiltrate their borders. Agatha, Emma's cigarette smoking aide, doesn't like me. Agatha's butt leans against another student's desk. How disgusting.

Emma gives me the answer.

Winking at Emma, I slide back to my desk.

Emma and I have been playing together since we were able to walk. Oops. Since I was able to walk. She's the wheelchair girl with the long, gleaming black hair, who struggles to say a long sentence. Of course, I understand Emma perfectly. Just look at her eyes, stupid. Geez, her eyes are sending out messages like, constantly, if you look.

But Maple Heights people don’t see Emma’s gorgeous eyes or shiny hair, they only see the stupid wheelchair and her twisted lips and shaky right hand.

The biggest ignoramuses are at school.

Kids treat Emma as if she's not there. Adults treat Emma like she's an inconvenience, even though they act all cheery and helpful around her.

Meanwhile, I just sit at my stupid desk, pretending to read a book printed in 1990, staring at the clock. The long hand locked at 2:29.

The clock is probably broken.

CHAPTER 4

SEARCHING

After the bus drops me off, I grab The Grands' mail.

Inside, our house is brown. Brown walnut paneling, brown sofa and a brown flower clock.

Brown trimmed curtains. Brown countertops.

I drop the pile of mail on the brown counter.

Electric bill, water bill. Car insurance. The Grands get a lot of junk mail. Like little seats you can ride up the stairs and bathtubs with doors.

But The Grands can’t afford anything.

They’re on a fixed income. So we never go on vacation. Never go to Chili’s for baby back ribs. Never get premium television. We watch news, Ohio State football and re-runs of "Barney Miller."

Here's a bill for the nursing home where The Grands will go when their minds snap. Someday, they’ll be bedded down in The Sweet Meadows Home. I’ll be in college. Ohio State if Gramma gets her way. Berklee School of Music if I get my way.

Upstairs, in bed, I stare at the ceiling.

I project visions of my Mom and Dad. I imagine just sitting on a couch together, eating popcorn, tickling and giggling. A moment of giggling, without drama, without worry. That's the dream.

I wonder: if someone in your family dies young, like my Mom did, in a normal family, you’d forgive and forget about the bad stuff, right? You'd just think of the good. You'd think of the happy times. You'd have framed pictures on the walls, right? And you'd remember that person with a deep unspeakable sadness that lives at the edges of your eyes all the time.

At least, that's how I feel when I think about my Mom.