Leaves by Elizabeth Jordyn Blakely

 

The doorbell woke me up from a nightmare. Still asleep and confused, I almost stumbled while I was walking toward the door. The only thing I could see through the peephole was the enlarged version of one of my roommates, Vanessa. I remember it was only five days before Thanksgiving and it was really cold outside. But her face and her Home Depot uniform were totally covered in sweat. I opened the door, and I noticed she had at least six grocery bags in each hand– “Help me, Luisillo, this is heavy.”  While I was helping her, I got suspicious about the plan behind that brutal grocery shopping:  maybe Vanesa wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving  ”The American Way”.

My friend Mauro, his two sisters, and I had arrived at that same apartment only a few months before Vanessa. I had arrived from Argentina, after leaving from Buenos Aires a week after former president De la Rua resigned from presidency, in the middle of a civil war. We joined Cocho, a foreign student from Mexico, his mother’s second cousin and her five children. This last one, his aunt, who was not in exile like most of us, had been married to a Chilean nightclub owner who left her for a “table dancer”. When we arrived, there were eleven in that apartment. With Vanessa joining us a few weeks later, there was one more. We were twelve, living in a three bedroom apartment in Doraville, ten minutes away from downtown Atlanta.

“We are twelve, and I love that number,” Vanessa shouted in a cheerful accent from Bogota, Colombia. “We only need Jesus and we can have dinner.”

She knew that I hated the idea. Around those days, during my first few months in America, I got addicted to a book of short stories and essays by Julio Cortazar, an Argentinian writer. In one of his stories, “Casa Tomada” or “Taken House,” the author wrote about a group of intruders who were taking over, little by little, his house in Argentina. The whole story was a metaphor of what he was experiencing while being in exile in Paris. The military government that forced him to leave was “taking” his country. His house.

The afternoon that Vanessa showed up with all the groceries, I was having nightmares about people breaking into my apartment: An Immigration Officer entered through the back door. I would scream and run around the house, but I could not find any doors. He chased me until Vanessa and the doorbell woke me up.

I was not really aware who Sigmund Freud was at that time, but I could interpret the semantics of my dream up to a certain point. My nightmare had to do with the fact of feeling far away from home. l was also living  and working illegally in the country because my  tourist visa had expired by that time and, since the socio-economical situation was really unstable in Argentina, I had  decided to stay.  But overall, I was in a country whose culture I didn’t fully understand, trying to speak a language that sounded foreign to me and somehow funny to my bosses and co- workers. 

In the sitcom Seinfeld, when Festivus, the celebration for the “rest of us” was happening, everybody reunited with the  practice the “Airing of Grievances”. Each person at the table would tell everyone else all the ways they have disappointed him or her over the past year. I did have some particular feelings for my bosses, and I wanted to address them in some way. But the bottom line is that I thought that I had nothing to celebrate.

Vanessa and I did not have a lot in common. She had arrived in this country a long time before me  and, although I guess  maybe she had once been in similar circumstances of the negativity that I was now lost in,  she somehow had found her way out. What surprised me at that point about her, was that although she missed Colombia the same way that I did Argentina, she always managed to try to incorporate herself into the American culture. Her spirit was always full of joy and optimism. That, instead of being contagious, was disturbing for me.

 With all that shopping, Vanessa got everybody in the apartment, totally thrilled with the idea of having a first “Thanksgiving”. Each room mate — except me– started  making plans for the big dinner even though that event was still five days away. Everyone was so excited that they didn’t notice that the phone started to ring…

I picked up. It was Vanessa’s ex-room mate calling with some urgent information. When she took the phone I instantly understood a change in the expression of her face. She gasped. She cried. She was speechless. Then she laughed. When she hung up, she started jumping around and hugging everybody.

“I got my work permit !!!!”

I looked at her with the last drop of my Argentinian arrogance and said, “Soooooo you belong to the Man, now. You are not a wetback anymore. Yeaaaaahhhh, we should all celebrate, now.”

Vanessa looked at me like a peaceful grandmother–she was two years younger than me–and said. “No, Luisillo. What makes me really happy is that I am better person now, but not because I have the stupid permit.  It’s not about the goals that you have in life. It’s about how you deal with suffering and adversity.” 

In that moment, I understood that at least at that moment I had one thing to celebrate around those days: the fact of that I at least had very wise friends. 

 A day later, I enrolled in “English without Barriers” a private language school, a few hours away from home. Luckily, I had an English teacher, Mr Veelout, who patiently explained the origins of the Thanksgiving holiday. “Do you know the story?” Mr Veelout asked.  “It is all about people that are new to America, fighting, surviving and finally showing progress in the New World, thanks to the helping hand of the natives.”  I answered affirmatively, with no other words and a lot of thinking.

That Thanksgiving I invited more people and the capacity of the apartment ended up being greatly surpassed. We ate on the floor, with soap opera magazines spread out as our tablecloths. We started calling that the “Night of the Orphans”. A bunch of immigrants and some native residents, eating some cheap frozen trash food, and some homemade traditional delicacies, telling  stories, dancing and laughing.

Five years later, the old apartment in Doraville is on its way to being pulled down by one of those developing companies that think about “your” family, not mine, first. My  first Thanksgiving “family” spread around the country: Vanessa started her own Hardware Retail Company, Cocho’s aunt re-married the Chilean Night Club owner, and I started a ”College Writing” class, with the purpose of making my English less and less foreign. However, every last Thursday of November, all of us fly, walk or commute to bet together somewhere and to celebrate heartbreaks, disappointments, and disillusions, bad credit, lack of transportation and distance, as a genuine part of life.

As Vanessa says, “God will never put you in a situation that you can not handle. But you better deal with it with a smile.”  

Cold Bright day. White Breath. Beautiful low peach winter sun. Birds are singing in the middle of pale tree. Storm brought snowman to a new jacket last night. He is smiling with carrot mouth. Picked up the newspaper. Under the sunbeams, colorful advertisement becomes stained glass. Looked up the garden. Small playground is covering by decade of time and scent of snow.

The boy just came back from New York City from his college study. On the way back, from the train station to his house, he could not find Tatami store where he used to go to get a little snack from oba‑chan.  In a small white town, small stores are closing rapidly. He noticed his mother holding a big bag of huge chain supermarket with English letters. His mother gave him it for a trash bag last night.

His Father is hiding his face by newspaper. From boy’s sight, Dice‑K is smiling with Red and White sports wear.

“Dad, Red Sox won last night,” said the boy.

“What was the score?” said the father. They are still talking thorough the wall of gray papers.

“3‑2″ says the boy.

After a tiny silence, “Yes!!” the father says. “Now I can go to work without worries.” His voice was clear than he used to.

That voice reminds the boy of  his childhood.

Steams of rice and miso soup are playing with the sunbeam.  Small table. The boy’s feet are not used to floor sitting anymore. Mother comes to the table.  A bit of run from the kitchen. When he is carrying his egg roll to his mouth, his younger sister, one hung over young lady, comes down the stairs as she knows the breakfast is ready. She just came back at early morning with a half destroyed cosmetic face. The boy notices that their conversation is getting less. Even in the living room, many new plastic friends came. They do not talk. People talk to them. Passing the salt, refill the rice to dad, give egg rolls to sister, mother pour the miso soup. Even in a little quiet breakfast, the boy was crying in his mind from family warmness. The boy was homesick. There is no more jet lag. He thought. How warm the family is. “You are not finishing your meal?” says the mother.  “She is trying to lose her weight,” she whispers to son and husband. “You look good on it!” the mother cheered her. The sister never opens her mouth except carries her rice and she gone to the restroom as known as a cosmetic room.

The boy wondered what to do that day. He decided to go to the city. At the entrance, as he tie his shoes, smell of grandmas zouri and smell of younger sisters Chanel are mixing. One winter morning. This is the smell of his house. This is the smell of Japan.

Kikuta Norihiro, an international student from Sapporo, Japan, recently graduated from Berklee.

The fifty-seven bus has a strained relationship with its riders.  It is a bus with unrivaled convenience and comfort.  It takes its loyal followers sometimes within feet of their final destination.  While it is a good friend to many, it is also an unreliable friend, a friend that should not be depended on in desperate situations.  Many have fallen victim to its sporadic schedule.  Classes have been missed, deadlines passed, and relationships ruined because of an incredibly late fifty-seven bus.

The events leading up to waiting for the outbound fifty-seven can be especially grueling.  The decision to get off the train at Kenmore Square and switch to the bus is quite a difficult one.  To remain on the train would be almost unbearable.  Especially seeing the bus race past you on Commonwealth Avenue while the train slowly creeps to each of its seemingly endless stops.  However, waiting for the bus for almost an hour could potentially ruin any schedule you had planned.  It is a risky endeavor, switching from the train to the fifty-seven, but like all risks, a great reward may be in store for you.

If you manage to muster up the courage to get off the train and head for the bus stop then your journey has only just begun.  Very often you’ll emerge from the depths of the Kenmore subway station to see the bus rounding the bend, and heading for the stop to pick up a crowd of patient fifty-seven enthusiasts.  If this is the case, consider yourself lucky.  Another, perhaps less glamorous, situation will have you waiting for the beloved fifty-seven for the better part of an hour.  Finding yourself in such a predicament can be quite frustrating. A perturbed crowd forms around you: a crowd distinguished by rolling eyes, visible restlessness and perpetual glances at watches, cell phones, or any other time-keeping device.  The crowd grows ever more irritated as a fleet of undesired buses go by.  After a while you’ll notice that the same buses start to repeat themselves.  Still though, the elusive fifty-seven has yet to make an appearance.  Tensions are high as the crowd grows in size.   By now a few have given up and started to walk to the Blanford street train stop.

The true supporters of the fifty-seven will stick it out to the bitter end.  Those brave enough to withstand the prolonged wait, the excruciating frustration and the merciless taunting of other passing busses will be rewarded with the smoothest, fastest ride up Commonwealth Avenue that the MBTA has to offer.  The fifty-seven speeds past the train, cutting off any timid motorist on the way.  It flies by Boston University, ignoring any unnecessary stops.  The speed and agility of the fifty-seven make up for its highly suspicious schedule.  Before you know it, you’re in Watertown, while the fools who took the train are barely past Boston University.  Yes, the fifty-seven is quite the bus, but only if you dare to take the risk.

Aidan Sherry is currently a student at Berklee.  This essay was written for his College Writing 2 course.

As a child, I thrived on my family’s songs and piano music.  But I did not know then all that music could do for me.  Through it, I played out my desires, pain and turmoil.  Through it, I invented melodies to validate my dreams of a healthy future.  After abdominal surgery, my dissonant piano compositions screamed so I didn’t have to.  After the deaths of my parents, the dirges I wrote spoke a grief as no words could.  And after I birthed a stillborn baby, only music could comfort me.

For Reva, a child with a birth defect much like cerebral palsy, music allows her to let out what is inside.  But because she cannot speak, because unlike me, she cannot communicate how music soothes or inspires or impassions, I cannot know all that music does for her.  I can only guess.

A triangle of light stretches into the music room.  The door creaks.  As my arms stretch to meet or catch or steady Reva, her leg braces chink in empty plastic overtones.  In a language no one speaks, her favorite word pierces the air.

“Eemee!”

Reva’s oversized forehead emerges over dark eyes, a perfect nose and delicate chin.  I cannot decipher her stare.  In the style of adolescent peers, her mahogany hair is tied back.  Loose ringlets reveal a carefree nature at odds with her body.  Her blouse is creaseless, patterned to match the full skirt that will never twirl.  Well-made clothes fall at odd angles.  The stiff brace encasing her torso keeps me from getting too close.  As I search, looking for the keyhole to unlock Reva’s world, she erupts again.

 ”Eemee!”

 Hear me.  Here! Me!  Give me!  What is she saying? What does she want?  What does she feel?

She steps up her pace to greet me and tips into my body as her mother lets go.  Her fists unroll and clench my biceps – it is her hug – while she laughs deep from her center.  She smiles openly, lots of tongue.  Saliva drips, turning my collar a deep blue.   

“Eemee!” she shouts, splattering me in a high soprano. 

“Hello, Reva,” I say.

Where are you today? I wonder. 

At 14, Reva vocalizes when the radio is on, laughs with music, squeals to her father’s piano-playing, and shoves him aside to make room on the bench.  All her favorite toys are musical.  I am hoping that music will help her communicate who she is, just as it has done for me.

“When Reva was born, she didn’t track a moving object, suck or swallow,” her mother remembers.  “She resisted being cuddled; her muscles were tight.  She had to be fed with an eye dropper.  We could tell there was a lot going on inside, but it was going to be difficult to find it.” 

Seeking a diagnosis, Reva’s parents took her for a comprehensive work-up. 

One clinician said, “You’re lucky that she has a lot of personality.”

A pediatric neurologist said, “Well, she’s friendly.  She’ll probably walk and talk, but I can’t tell you any more than that.”

A wise pediatrician advised they were better off not knowing.

“When you have a diagnosis, you know the trajectory,” Reva’s father once said.  “Then you shoot for expectations. With a diagnosis, the school says, ‘Okay, that’s the maximum you can count on.’  The state will determine the anticipated achievement level.”

Reva’s parents don’t determine her expected achievement level.  They expect a lot from Reva, speaking to her as they would an adult, giving her choices. 

“Reva, do you want this banana or this apple?” her father says, gesturing like a juggler.

Reva stutters a “b-b-b-b,” pointing her elbows every which way.

“Every minuscule step forward is enormous for us,” says her mother.  “We spoon fed her for years.  Watching her try to eat on her own is enormous.”

Now Reva eats with a fork.  Now she makes choices.  But her limitations are not always her own.  A few years ago, Reva’s teachers had low expectations and she regressed.  When her parents transferred her to a new school, she learned new sounds.  When they saw something inside Reva responding to music, they called me.  I am Reva’s music therapist.

Once, music saved my life.  When I was born, my mother succored all five pounds of me with song until I slept.  When I was 4, my grandmother fed hearty piano tunes to my skin and bones.  At 9, when a birth defect prevented toxins from escaping my body, playing piano opened a path for my pain and despair to exit.  I imagined myself inside the sounds and escaped into the raindrops of Chopin’s Prelude.  At 14, I conducted my own orchestral suite, feeling superhuman strength, as instruments of passion trembled and pulsed under my control.  After experiencing music’s inspiring power, all it had done and could do for me, I decided to become a music therapist.           

A bass drum sits in the spotlight of my studio, showing its veined skin.  It vibrates with Reva’s steps.  She reaches for it. 

Boom with her left.  Boom with her right.  Boom off the wall.  Boom from the ceiling.  Her breath comes back to her.  Heavy, hefty scent, dust displaced, hard to inhale.  Faster now, a frenzy.  Blurred hands, wild dance, beat, beat, beat, stop.  Exhale.  Rest.

She twists left and gawks at the piano.  It resonates with a low hum, ripples across her eyes.  She drags herself toward it, one leg chafing against the carpet.  I come from behind to rescue her, lift her limp trunk, and position her on the bench.  She studies the keys, then splashes them with too many fingers.  Ting-a-ling on black, then slices of white sounds.  They sparkle, then float.  I smell her sweet scent.  Her face reflects the ivory, her skin translucent against the ebony.  She shows her teeth in pride.

When Reva makes music, everything sways.  The room comes alive with displaced molecules.  I shiver.  And while the walls are thick with the music of generations, today, I hear only Reva’s story – the one she tells through music.

The first time her parents knew that music spoke to Reva, they were on a car trip.  Reva was 4.  Her mother was talking about a business deal with ABC Corporation.  All of a sudden, Reva said one of her first recognizable sounds, “A-B.”  For weeks, she’d been hearing “The Alphabet Song” at school.  Her parents began singing it, and as soon as they stopped, she screamed, “A-B.”  They sang for the duration of the trip, and made the decision that music would be part of her life.

“Even now, she’s not able to sustain attention at all,” her mother says.  “Music helps her focus. Electrochemical pulses make her brain go off in different directions.  Music slows down all of that frenetic activity.” 

Music slowed me down when I was in labor.  Panting frantically along with my heartbeat, I began to pace my breathing to the predictable rhythm of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.”  Next, I imposed a calm and even tempo by synchronizing my breaths to slow symphonic movements by Brahms, the composer of lullabies.  Music was my focus for the next 14 hours, as Chick Corea punctuated my terror and Mozart accompanied my body’s contractions.

“Eemee!”  she exhales.  Help me get the yellow tambourine with the blue and red ribbons and the sunny cymbals.  Help me sing a pretty song.  Help me show you what I know.  Help me be me.

I look in her eyes.  Wobbly tiger-eye orbs stare back at me.  My gaze pierces hers.

“What do you want, Reva?”  I ask.

Silence.  Her left arm quivers, then cuts the air and freezes.

I hum the first two notes of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”  My voice flickers between the tones, letting sounds of childhood play in my head.

“Reva, do you hear me?” I chant in my two-note sing-song.

She rocks back with a start, yelps, “Eemee,” reaches with her wrist, jerks her chin left, then pulls a smile.  Her body writhes.  Neck hiccups, head topples, arms contort.  Her back brace keeps her upright, keeps her steady.

“Hello, Reva, won’t you come and play?” I sing.

I strike the tambourine.  She convulses, guffaws.  Her face shakes in laughter while her imprisoned body tries to sway to the swing-low rhythm.

“Hello, Reva, where are you in there?”

“Eemee!”

What do you say when you scream like that?  Is it “Turn on that Pete Seeger music I love?”  Is it “Smell those great cookies mom and I baked”?  Is it “Let’s see a Red Sox game”?  Do you mean “What joy”?  I think it can’t be anything less.  Your sound is too sharp, too full, too whole.

What was it I felt at 14, when I knew that music revealed a passion so great that it could transform people’s lives?  I ache to remember, to connect, to understand Reva.

“We have a window into Reva,” her father says.  “But, only years later can we begin to put the pieces together.  You can guess at what she is saying, but the answer keeps changing.”

Her mother thinks that it’s like that play, “Sheer Madness,” where every night, the ending is different.  “For Reva,” she says, “it’s the same play, different answers.  But when she hears music, something big is happening.”

When I hear music, something happens to me.  I want to scream like Reva, but I have been taught better. When I was a child, I learned to keep my feelings in.  In check.  Inside.  In. 

Sit with your hands clasped.  Your legs crossed.  Behave.  Don’t make a fuss.  Don’t exclaim.  Music is meant to be taken in and chewed.  But don’t ever spit it out unless you have training.

How I envy that about you, Reva.  Your feelings reverberate, intone, explode.  Am I being true to you?  Is it my joy for the music that I project onto you?

No, perhaps it is the reverse.

You teach me what joy is.  Unrestrained, unconcerned about the world’s reaction, you speak in a language I have never learned.  Your communication is raw; mine is reasoned, slower, dull.  From the head.  Your inflections range in pitch and intensity; my speech is limited within these dimensions.  Your emotions are spoken out loud; mine are suppressed somewhere far beneath.

Reva, you speak truth; I find words that will please my listener.  You speak the heart’s words.  I cannot find those, so I give up trying.  You speak music’s language; I am a musician, but I am still learning.

Music speaks to you.  Your melody follows it, your rhythms are as basic as our heartbeats and our gait.  Your response is a familiar answer to unresolved cadences. 

“Eemee!”  I am here, shaking the tambourine, making the cymbals shine, watching the ribbons twirl.  I am singing and laughing.  I am doing what I love.  Here I am, in the music.

“I hear you, Reva.  Eemee.”

Suzanne Hanser is Chair of the Music Therapy Department.

Have you ever been cut off by a careless biker while you were strolling peacefully down the sidewalk?  That biker is usually me late for class. However, yesterday morning I was a careful and calm biker who slowly pedaled his way towards you coming from the opposite direction. I observed every detail of your stature when we crossed paths. As if I were a scientist looking through a microscope, jotting down experimental data. Creepy? Yes, absolutely.

The morning was wet and worn‑out from the night’s storm. The only sound I heard was the clinckitty‑clank of metal against metal as I unlocked my bike from a streetlight. The morning dew glistened on the saddle of the bike. I wiped it quickly with the palm of my hand. Moist streaks remained. My ears then tuned in to the sound of bike tires rolling on pavement.

The sleepy‑eyed college students of Boston scattered out along the sidewalks, like cereal poured out onto the floor, with the morning breeze moving them gently in one direction. Unwashed and unshaven faces. Makeup applied in haste. Uncombed hair, like little umbrellas in a cocktail glass, shaded serious expressions. The students are intent upon the first class. These young souls comprise obstacles, perhaps ninety‑five percent of those on my way to the city. My daily bike path is a three‑mile trip from Allston into Boston. In my regular state of lateness and unorganized thoughts, my attention during the bike ride goes back and forth from my watch to worried thoughts, like a clock’s pendulum swinging from second to second. This morning, however, time seemed to be on my side. Every breathing organism on the street was a victim of my critical observation. The weather was also vulnerable in my open‑ended interpretations.

Smiles seem hard to come by the morning after a stormy night. The dreariness spread an uncertainty on every newly awakened face on the street. I spotted one smile within a 3‑mile radius! This smile couldn’t have lasted more than one second as a man in a truck signaled a middle‑aged African American man to cross the street. The outer edges of his lips curled upward and pushed the stubble up also in a smile that concealed years of humility in the face of endless adversity. He was on his way to work. Each day is uncertain, and I assume that the bulk of that uncertainty is felt in the morning. Either your confidence is yet to be gained, or the inevitability of your daily routine has stripped that confidence down to the last sheet.

Some believe that yawns are contagious. I believe the same to be true in the case of smiles. I began to remember a previous bike ride around the same time of the morning, except the sun had decided to come out. Students were talking and smiling on the streets as if each one of them had just been asked out on a date. I try not to let the weather regulate my emotions, however, I remember giving in to the smile. This concept is almost robotic to think that deep emotions can be triggered from a flipped switch in the weather. Who we are and what we feel can directly result from the mood of our environment.

A different store appears in the corner of my eye with each pedal.  They are typically chained companies lined up together, like a group of freshly trained soldiers, links in a chain of imagined security. At this time in the morning, many of the stores had not opened yet, and looked lonelier than most of the uncertain students. The windows were unbarred, unshuttered. They were transparent. They were clear, and unbroken.The signage painted on the windows was neat. I noticed the red, the yellow, and the black lettering. For Sale. Fly Me. Have It Your Way. I thought Boston, the city on the hill, my New Jerusalem.

I see the hands holding their steering wheels. The knuckles were white and hairy. Although his necktie was neat and his shirt collar clean, he had neglected the dirt under his nails, as dirty as the occasional gesture was vulgar. I had won the race through the intersection.

As a driver, you see the pedestrians moving in slow motion across the street. Is their motive only to aggravate the impatient driver? Apparently so. As the person crossing the street, you have a more realistic perception as your shoes scrape the ground. The bozo honking his horn is way out of line, and you would like to take your time because you believe this country to be free.

As a biker, I am the Middleman. I am Moe, the leader of the Three Stooges, stuck between the two troublemakers. We are all stooges in this city game; however, as a biker I have the most balanced view of our madness.

John Duke Lippincott studies at Berklee in the Professional Music Division and is a founding student editor for FUSION.