Several days before she arrives, there are already whispers among the camp counselors that a violin prodigy is coming to study at Summer Strings. “I heard her father left them,” Madeline says. “For some underage actress in Malaysia.” We are sitting outside the dining hall in our matching T-shirts and shorts, eating turkey and cheddar sandwiches.
“Well, my parents said that her mom cheated on him first, with one of her uncles,” Shirley replies. “It was in all the Shanghai newspapers.” She scrapes the mayonnaise off her bread and lets it plop on the ground, startling a cicada by her feet.
The one thing we know for sure is that Luis, our Summer Strings director, poached her from Tanglewood with promises of a full scholarship and extra, private lessons. When her mother drops her off at camp that week, she stands stick-straight, her eyes preternaturally calm. She is dressed in camp uniform: a bright red T-shirt over a navy-blue pleated skirt, her tights dotted with treble clefs.
The scar is what we notice first. A purplish blotch in the shape of a peninsula, stretching from the corner of the girl’s mouth to the ridge of her left cheekbone. The rest of her face is thin and unremarkable. She resembles our country cousins, the ones from Shandong who keep their skin pale and marvel over the iPods and scented body lotions that our parents bring back once a year, packed tight in their suitcases.
Her mother is a former news anchor from Shanghai, as beautifully coiffed as her daughter is plain. She parks their Lincoln Town Car in the middle of the drive and fusses with her expensive-looking handbag before marching the prodigy in her tights right up to the registration office. The gate that cloisters us from the rest of the world closes softly behind them.
“I heard she hits her when she misses a note,” Madeline says. “That’s where she got that funny-looking blotch on her face.” We shudder as we think about how the scar might feel, pressed up against our finger pads. Hard and rough, like the crenellated groove of a violin string.
“What if she was just born like that?” I ask.
“It’s a possibility,” Madeline says and shrugs. “That, or her mother used a metronome.” Shirley slaps me on the arm to stifle my giggles.
We are first-year counselors at Summer Strings this year. Sixteen, newly licensed, and eager to be away from home, even if it means teaching violin to first graders. Summer Strings was founded on Shinichi Suzuki’s belief that all children, big and small, can learn to become great musicians. There are music camps dotted across the country dedicated to his practice books and patented lesson plans. Some of Suzuki’s principles include rote learning and group participation. Discipline and higher purpose are Summer Strings’ unique add-ons.
Madeline, Shirley, and I share the kinship of those who see each other once a year, the reality of the past nine months slipping away under lurid nights spent practicing scales and sneaking Diet Coke into our dorm rooms. There is a college prep program for dancers happening at the same time as our camp, and we hope to infiltrate it, their lithe bodies and precise musculature calling to us from across the quad. We are of the age where everything warrants comparison. Hair, body size, smell, weight. You measure yourself against your peers and find all the ways in which you are lacking.
The admissions officer barrels out of the building while we are still finishing lunch and assigns us to show the girl to her room. We watch as the prodigy suffers a kiss on the forehead before walking over to us with her violin case in hand. She is contained, self-possessed and, in her wholeness, she resembles an adult. We hate her passionately, from the very start, the way that girls hate the things that appear out of nowhere to threaten their way of life.
“Wendi’s in Lockwood,” the admissions officer tells us. “Room 305. You know what to do.”
Shirley pinches the skin above her belly and throws away the rest of her sandwich before we set off across campus. Madeline rattles off our normal script. The girl walks beside us, holding herself straight and smelling like the expensive soap that our mothers use on special occasions. “Dining hall is to the right, your key card will get you in,” Madeline points out. “First Aid is downstairs, in case there’s an emergency or something.”
Wendi peers down at the lanyard around her neck. From this angle, with her head lowered down to her chest, her scar looks almost pretty. It is marbled pink and white in some places.
“Where are the rehearsal rooms?” she asks.
“They’re next to the dorms, in the music building.” Madeline tightens the headband holding her hair back, a subtle sign that she is annoyed. She points to a low, white building punctuated by casement windows.
“And what’s there?” Wendi gestures toward the woods beyond it.
“Nothing,” Shirley says. “Just cicadas and walking paths. You should really stay on campus, for your own safety.”
“What we do here is important,’” Madeline recites. “‘And nothing should distract us from our work. That’s our motto.”
It’s the third week of camp, and the other students have already settled in, forming their own little routines. When we arrive at Room 305, we are surprised to find that Wendi is rooming in a single with a private bathroom and kitchenette, complete with hot plate. In the bedroom I share with Madeline on the fifth floor, we keep a packet of Oreos and a teddy bear with black button eyes to comfort the children who get homesick.
Seeing Wendi reminds me of my first time at camp, nine summers ago. Back then, I clutched at my mother’s tan, hairless legs and refused to leave the parking lot. “Stop embarrassing me,” she said, peeling me off by the back of my shirt. She dragged me by the arm to the administrative building and smiled at the other parents while she did it. I played my part by not crying out or stumbling backward, our regular Punch and Judy routine. It was hard to see Wendi resorting to any of these tactics. We imagined her, a seasoned traveler, playing concertos in front of foreign dignitaries.
“That’s everything,” I say as we show her the bedroom with its scuffed-up floors and its closetful of extra sheets. I wonder if she regrets turning down Tanglewood. “Do you need to call anyone, to let them know you’re okay?”
“I’m good,” she says. Indoors, stripped of all context, we can see how small she is. Her body is sexless, without curves or any other defining features. She looks no older than nine or ten. “Can you bring me down to see Luis?”
“I think he’s in rehearsal right now,” Madeline says, giving us a look. “But we can see if he’ll make time to meet with you.”
We climb up the steps to the music building. Inside we can hear the sound of sheet music being stuffed into book bags and students tuning their instruments. The corridors are dark and air-conditioned. Despite how difficult it is to be in practice all the time, there is something sweet, almost reverent, about a place buzzing with concentrated energy. It reminds me that no matter how badly I botch the vibrato on a Mendelssohn or the bowing on a Kreisler, there’s always a collective I can sink back into.
At the door to the concert hall, we wait for a pause in orchestra practice before slipping our way inside. It’s a group of advanced students, with Luis standing tall at the head of the semicircle, his back radiating tension. He is the director of the camp, a Portuguese American violinist whose wife is more successful as a flautist with the Boston Philharmonic. His style of teaching is without warmth, prone to uncontrollable outbursts. “Pianissimo, not pianississimo!” he can be heard yelling at a class of ten-year-olds sawing their way through Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor.
Shirley is one of his favorites, so when she comes into view, he bends down and allows her to whisper to him. “Send her in,” we hear him say, and Shirley stands by as we open the double doors to the concert hall. Wendi gives a strange little nod before walking down the aisle. Onstage, Luis is shrouded in light. His expression is difficult to read. The students position their bows on their laps, instruments perched on their knees.
“Maybe we should have warned her,” I say.
“Warned her about what?” Shirley asks as she brushes past the door. We attempt to linger but Luis shoos us away with a firm shake of his hands. “If she wants to play teacher’s pet, we should let her.”
Madeline stays quiet until we are situated back outside. The air is hot but dissipated, the clouds lending the campus a dark and heavy feeling. Only the cicadas, who chirp incessantly, seem happy in the summer heat.
“Let the genius find out on her own,” she says, narrowing her eyes out into the middle distance. “I’m sure she’s dealt with worse, hasn’t she?”
Luis’s methods are strange, a bit unorthodox. He believes that being a good musician requires a strict, whole-body regimen. His favorite pupils undergo health assessments with the nurse twice a week, to ensure that they are eating and exercising properly. Fruit, nuts, little to no meat. We perform breathing exercises at night and are told never to call our parents or to leave the campus under any circumstances. Every year a handful of students fails to make it to the end of camp. We imagine that they are ferried home in the middle of the night, never to be seen or heard from again.
The first thing we teach beginners at Summer Strings is how to construct a violin out of an empty Kleenex box. In an empty rehearsal room that smells like craft glue, little kids aged six to eight sit on the floor and follow our lead. We take the boxes relieved of their insides and stretch rubber bands across the middle as strings. Paper towel rolls are inserted for the neck. In lieu of tuning pegs and scrolls, we ask the children to draw symbols on their rolls to decorate them. Rockets, dinosaurs, that sort of thing.
The second thing we teach our students is posture. We get the kids to pose with their feet turned out, left foot forward to face the music stand. Shoulders relaxed, spine in alignment, chin on chin rest. Whole weeks could be spent teaching someone how to lift a bow to the violin string or how to execute a down stroke just the right way. It’s an elaborate choreography. The goal of our work is performance, and a Suzuki student learns how to bow at the waist, to give thanks to the audience that animates them. Wendi the prodigy is long past these rituals. We imagine that she was born with a violin in her hands, that she sprang forth from Itzhak Perlman’s head like a Eurasian Athena.
The head counselor decides to put her into our affinity group.
“Be nice,” he says to us at breakfast one morning, looking meaningfully into our eyes.
“I’m always nice,” Madeline says, smiling as she takes a bite of fruit. I glance over at Wendi, who is sitting alone with her head bent over a bowl of oatmeal. She kicks her legs back and forth under the table when she thinks no one is looking.
At our first affinity session later that afternoon, she sits quietly on the edge of the circle while the rest of the girls grab cookies and cups of lemonade off the table.
“How’s everyone’s week going?” I ask as we settle into our seats on the floor.
“Hard,” one girl mumbles through a bite of chocolate chip.
“I hate it here,” chirps another. “My sister is at 4H, riding horses. I want to go there next year.” This sparks vigorous nodding from the rest of the group.
“Well,” Madeline says, tenting her fingers and peering over them. “You know what our motto is . . .”
“What we do here is important,” the girls recite. “And nothing should distract us from our work.”
“Good,” Madeline says. “Now, I’d like you to welcome our latest member. Wendi, why don’t you stand up and introduce yourself to everyone?”
Wendi looks up from her lap.
Unlike the other girls, who are dressed in T-shirts and shorts, she is wearing a turtleneck that outlines the scar on her face and the same treble clef tights. She scowls for a moment, then recomposes herself before standing. “Hi, my name is Wendi, and I’m taking lessons with Luis.”
The other students look at each other, impressed. “I’ve been playing since I was four and a half,” she continues. “My parents were the ones who got me into it.”
“They say you’re really good,” Chocolate Chip blurts out. The rest of the girls let out a titter.
Wendi thinks about this for a minute. “I am,” she replies. Her plainspokenness elicits more giggles.
“I want to hear you play!” says 4H. “Will we?”
Wendi shrugs. “If he picks me.”
Every Summer Strings culminates in a recital made up of the year’s best soloists, selected by Luis. He arranges everything, from the order of the performers to the chosen piano accompaniment. Soloists are almost guaranteed a place at Berklee or Julliard after graduation.
“Will your parents be at the concert?” 4H asks.
“No.” Wendi shakes her head. “My parents are too busy. Plus, they’ve been to a million of these things.”
“I wish my mom was too busy! She comes to every one of my performances.”
Wendi smiles but stays silent.
“How did you get that scar?” Chocolate Chip calls out.
“Catherine!” Madeline says.
“It’s okay,” Wendi says. “I don’t mind.” She turns to the girl and widens her eyes. “I gave it to myself,” she says, touching the flesh by the side of her face. A slow grin starts to spread across her lips.
The room goes silent. I glance at Shirley, not sure whether to laugh or to say something out loud.
A few of the girls start letting out nervous giggles.
“That’s cool!” Chocolate Chip says out loud.
“Rad!” says another.
Madeline, Shirley and I struggle to control the room while Wendi continues standing.
“Don’t tell lies, Wendi,” Madeline says. “It’s not good for you.”
“I’m not lying,” Wendi replies. “I really did it. It was easy.”
“Liar,” Shirley says.
“How did you do it?” someone asks.
“I climbed up onto a stool when my mom wasn’t looking,” she says. “Then I pressed my face against the stove.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because I was bad.”
The girls start rocking back and forth in their seats. Some are laughing uncontrollably, with their hands pressed to their mouths, their cookies and lemonade forgotten.
“Okay, everyone, give us a minute,” I say, grabbing Wendi by the hand and ushering her out into the hallway.
Shirley and Madeline rush into the A/V closet to wheel in the television. I watch from outside the door as they put on a VHS tape of Midori performing in 1986. At Luis’s request, we always end our affinity sessions by watching the same video. He thinks it’s good for the girls to have a role model, someone to aspire to. In it, Midori, the famous Japanese American violinist, is performing Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade for Violin and String Orchestra in front of a full audience. The videotape is old, and the visuals are blurry, but Midori’s confidence still pulses across the screen.
Everyone watches carefully for the final moments. Toward the end of the concert, the E string on Midori’s violin snaps. Without missing a beat, she passes her 3/4 violin to the concertmaster and takes up his 4/4. With a few short strokes, she manages to break his E string too. While Bernstein continues conducting, she takes up the associate concertmaster’s violin and finishes the concert without another mistake. It was the performance that made her a star. She was only fourteen.
Madeline and Shirley slip out of the darkened classroom. We check to make sure that the rest of the girls are sufficiently occupied before turning back to Wendi.
“Why would you say those things?” Madeline asks.
“Because they’re true.”
“They’re not true. You just like the attention, don’t you?” Shirley says.
Wendi stares back at us.
“You’re provoking the other girls,” Madeline explains.
“And if you continue down this line, we’ll have no choice but to report you,” I add.
A flicker of uncertainty crosses her face.
“We don’t want to tell. But if you keep this up, Luis is going to need to know.” Wendi’s hand feels warm in mine, a creature resting in its cocoon. For a moment, I’d forgotten it was there.
“Will I be sent home?” she asks. “If you tell?”
Madeline gives us a look before nodding. Wendi’s smile fades. She appears to be contemplating something.
“Okay,” she says. “I’ll stop. I don’t want Luis to find out.” She pauses, looking up at me. “I want him to like me.”
“Do you promise?” Madeline asks.
Wendi rubs the side of her nose. “Yes,” she says. “I promise.” She stares down at her shoes. Black patent-leather Mary Janes with a flower pattern over the toe. I imagine her mother picking them out at the department store, taking them lovingly out of tissue paper before presenting them to Wendi.
“Please don’t tell Luis about me.”
We remain silent, taking in her discomfort and the knowledge that we are the ones who have caused it.
“I’ll be good,” she says. “I promise.”
I look down at her hand and imagine my mother staring at me from her seat. Please, I hear myself saying. I promise to be better. My hand prickles as I remember the heat of those moments.
I glance at Wendi’s scar and think about the pain that must have caused it. With her head bowed toward the ground she resembles a bug, an insect with her wings folded against her back. I drop her hand, overwhelmed by the urge to stomp on her shoes, to crush her like a cicada underneath my feet. Like me, Wendi is a broken string in need of fixing. I close my eyes and imagine the sound of her shell as I snap it in half. The cry that comes out of her mouth—a perfectly sustained E.
By the time I came to teach at Summer Strings, I’d had my share of humiliations at the hands of my craft. I learned that by middle school, a violinist knows whether or not she has the skill and the fortitude for a career on the orchestra circuit. Like Wendi, I started practicing when I was four years old, marking finger positions on my bow with corn cushions and working my way through Suzuki’s practice books with the help of my mother’s constant attention. My teachers always complimented me on my technical affinity for the craft, but I lacked the vitality to make a movement really sing. My whole life I was second violin, listening to CD recordings of Midori in the car while my mother cried tears of rapture.
At fourteen I was one of three soloists chosen to perform in front of a visiting maestro, a male violinist from Beijing. Usually, my mother accompanied me to my weekly violin lessons, but the performance was on a Saturday and my mom was at work, at the local hair salon, so my father drove me to the music school instead. I was so nervous beforehand that I trembled in my seat, and once I was onstage, I could feel every mistake I made in my memorization.
Afterward, the maestro from Beijing walked into the spotlight in his crisp white shirt and black pants. He gave me a thorough dressing-down. “Do you realize that your face conveys every single mistake you make, so that your audience can see?” he asked. “It is obvious what you are doing when you are onstage. Please, make it enjoyable, if not for yourself than at least for others.” To my embarrassment, I burst into tears right in front of him, watched by my father, my violin teacher, and an auditorium full of students and parents. The maestro tried to soften his tone, but it was already too late. I sobbed my way through the rest of his notes and when he was done, I walked stiffly off the stage.
I stayed in the wings to watch the second performer, a Taiwanese American violinist, approach the music stand. He was slightly younger than me but played with great technical skill and confidence. His style had bravado to it. He used little flourishes with his bow hand and made subtle movements with his upper body. When I heard the visiting maestro begin to compliment him, I stalked out of the theater and back into the rehearsal room to put my instrument away.
I loved all the accoutrements of my craft. The rosin I rubbed on my horsehair bow. The violin cases like tiny, elegant coffins lined in felt with Velcro straps to keep my instrument safe. The tension of the wooden tuning pegs and the precision of the small metal ones that I adjusted while trying to find the perfect pitch. My bow had a tiny butterfly inset that made me feel happy when I looked at it.
My violin teacher, an Argentinian man with a rounded belly, found me in the rehearsal room and gave me a warm hug. “I’m so sorry,” he said as I pressed my face against his broad chest. “I can’t believe it. I never should have put you up there. It’s like he’s never talked to a child before in his life.” He was shaking with anger. It was one of the rare moments I had seen an adult express sympathy over something I was experiencing.
Tears blurred my eyes as I packed up my things. I wrapped my body in my coat and braced myself for the cold. My father was waiting for me outside with a look of concern on his face but no tenderness to bridge it. “What happened to you up there?” he asked when we were seated safely in his car. “Why did you let him talk to you that way?”
Where were you? I felt like yelling back. Who is my protector? Instead, I stared in silence as we drove through the city and back toward our house, where I knew my second punishment was waiting.
When we got home my father retreated to his study, and I hid upstairs in my bedroom until my mother came home. I could hear her footsteps as she walked up the stairs and stood outside my bedroom door, thinking.
“Gillian?” she asked. “Can I come in?”
She pushed the door open without waiting to hear my response. When she wasn’t accompanying me to my music lessons, my mother spent her evenings washing hair and sweeping floors at the hair salon. Her moods came on slowly, like the crescendo of a long orchestra piece, until they overshadowed the quiet phrases that came before and after. She stood in front of me while I stared down at the slippers on her feet. The toes were molded into the shape of Wile E. Coyote.
“What happened to you today?” she asked. Her tone started soft and pliant. An adagio. “Why did you play so poorly in front of all those people?”
I stared down at the ground in front of me and shook my head.
“Was it because you didn’t practice hard enough?” she asked.
“No,” I whispered.
“Okay,” she said, bending down. Her nose was damp and slightly greasy. “Get up, Gillian.”
I felt her grip underneath my armpits as I stumbled to my feet.
“Listen,” she said as we stood face-to-face. She tried to get me to look at her by taking my chin in her hand. Her hands were small objects, coarse but useful. “Why have we been paying all this money,” she said, “for you to waste it like this?” Her voice was pitching forward, a tempo shift. “Tell me, are you good at anything? How am I supposed to call you my daughter? Can’t you do anything right?”
I scrunched my face up and closed my eyes, waiting for the slap that never came. In truth, my mother could get me to obey without ever touching me. At times the desire to be good was so strong that I wanted to be plucked from this earth, to be let loose from my mother’s grip and die. For a moment I stopped breathing.
After a while she loosened her grip and I listened as she walked into the other room. “Your methods aren’t working,” she hissed into the phone. From the tone of her voice I could tell she was talking to Luis. “You promised she would be better by this year, but she is nothing but mediocre. Her regular instructor I can excuse, but you . . .” It took him a half an hour to soothe her.
The next summer, I started working with Luis directly. String quartet was where I met Madeline and Shirley, the other players in my year. We practiced close to twelve hours a day, alternating between string orchestra, quartet, and private lessons. In group sessions, Luis stalked between the music stands in a white shirt and black pants, commanding us when to start and to stop. He asked us to repeat the same phrase, in his deep, penetrating voice, until we reached a state of satisfactory performance. He rapped our fingers with his baton to emphasize a point. When we cried, he let out a gigantic sigh, to let it be known that we were wasting precious practice time.
“Why are you here?” he asked me once, during one of our private lessons. We were standing in the practice room attached directly to his office, a place with padded panels on the walls and dark oak furnishings.
“Because my parents asked me to come.”
“And why did they ask you to come?”
“Because they want me to become a violinist,” I said. “Isn’t that obvious?”
He looked at me for a moment, the mole on his left cheek taking up prominence over his long, sallow face. “That’s not good enough,” he whispered. His body moved closer to mine. “They don’t simply want you to be a violinist.” He tapped his fingers on the top of my music score. “They want you to become something more than human.”
He picked up his instrument and began playing a measure of the Sibelius I was supposed to be mastering. I watched as he rocked his torso back and forth along with the music. He was able to ply emotion out of the chords in a way that I envied. I worried that I didn’t have enough vitality to play it. “Your heart’s not in it,” he said. “And it shows.” He smiled to himself. “But it’s okay, Gillian. You’re not alone. You’ll see. The others were like you, and just like you, they will get beyond it.”
He asked me to stretch out on the floor and practice eight-count breaths as he knelt down beside me. Feeling his eyes on me, watching my chest rise and fall, lulled me into a strange sense of peace. “Can you hear the sound of the cicadas in the room?” he whispered. I imagined the hum of the insects, droning a steady beat.
I shook my head to indicate that I knew nothing.
“They’re fascinating, if you ever take a moment to study them.” He stood up and walked to the front of the room. “Some of them spend up to seventeen years underground, just waiting. That’s a bit older than you, isn’t it?” The temperature in the room seemed to drop by several degrees. I was beginning to feel lightheaded, sleepy.
“Did you know that while they mature, they are referred to as nymphs?” he continued. “Once they emerge, their time on earth becomes limited.” He paused. “That’s when they start to make that beautiful noise. It means they’re ready to mate, to start the cycle all over again.”
Luis opened his violin case and extracted two long strips of cloth, wrinkled and frayed from repeated use. He asked me to remain seated, with my butt planted on the floor. I watched his movements as if we were moving through a vat of thick, clear jelly. “Our bodies were made to play these instruments,” he said as he began to restrain my feet, tying the knots around my ankles. “We just have to teach our minds how to remember what the body already knows.”
After tying the restraints, he asked me to lie back down with my legs fastened together. My breathing grew shallow. Together, we airmarked the finger positions for the Sibelius as if I were playing an invisible instrument, drawing movements with my upper body as the music played in my head. While I practiced, I wondered if Madeline and Shirley had gone through the same treatment. Had they enjoyed it? Were they better or worse off than me?
That first night, I airmarked the piece thirty times before Luis was completely satisfied. “Good,” he said, stroking my knee over the top of my jeans. The muscles of my body ached but my mind felt empty, at ease. “You did well, Gillian,” he said. “I’m proud of you.” He touched my cheek with the same fingers that coaxed music out of his violin. “Remember, nobody remains a nymph forever.”
“Something’s definitely wrong with her, right?” Madeline asks at lunch the next day.
“She’s deranged,” I offer.
“Delusional,” Shirley replies. I watch as she scrapes the skin off her apple and chucks the red onto her plate.
“Do you think he makes her practice on the floor, like us?” As I talk, I can feel the restraints inching their way into my ankles.
“No,” Madeline says. “I bet her mother would kill him if she knew.”
“She thinks she’s really special,” Shirley says. “But we don’t need her. She needs us.”
“What we do here is important . . .” I start to whisper. We dissolve into a fit of giggles.
Despite our promise to Wendi, we decide to report the incident to Luis. We find him in his office in between classes and rap on his door to let him know that we’re waiting outside.
“Come in,” he says as we push the wooden door open. In front of his desk is a pupil wiping back tears with the palm of his hand. “You’ve caught us in the middle of discussing a new practice plan,” Luis says.
He doesn’t have to explain because we already know. Behind Luis’s desk is a row of cello cases of varying heights, with plexiglass windows placed near the top. The boy sniffles, mucus dripping from his nose. We turn our eyes away as he leaves.
Luis faces us as soon as the door clicks behind him.
“Wendi’s not following the rules,” I begin.
“She’s telling lies to scare the other girls,” Shirley continues.
Luis walks toward his desk and perches on the edge. He pauses to take it all in. “It’s very brave of you to come forward like this,” he says. He picks a notebook off his desk and begins to tap it on his knee. “I’ve started to notice a few things myself,” he continues. “She’s been woefully underprepared for her lessons, and she’s starting to look a little unhealthy, don’t you think?” He stares meaningfully at Shirley’s slender frame as he says this. “Do you think she’s having a hard time adjusting?”
Madeline steps forward and puts her hand on her chest. “I feel personally responsible,” she volunteers. “We should really be showing her the way.”
“Yes, that’s right.” He opens his notebook and scrawls a few notes. “Why don’t we start by shadowing her in the lunchroom and see how that evolves? Let’s call it Phase One in her correction.” He gives us a knowing smile and touches us each by the hand, pressing our fingertips between his palms. “Thank you, girls, for coming in. Together we can show her the importance of what we do.”
The next morning, we accompany Wendi to the nurse’s office to watch her get weighed. Ever since our affinity group, her hair has been giving off a strange, unwashed smell. The nurse motions to her to mount the scale. “Sixty-four pounds,” she announces as she consults a pad of paper. “We’re going to need to trim a few of those, missy,” she says. “Before the big recital.”
Wendi hops off the scale and gives us a long look. Her scar seems to throb and deepen in intensity. The nurse laughs. “Staring me to death won’t get you out of it,” she chuckles.
The nurse’s office issues Wendi a disciplinary card, which means that she can only go to the dining hall in the presence of a chaperone. In the lunch line we watch as she takes fruit instead of a sandwich, rice cakes instead of potato chips. Shirley attempts to make small talk as we sit down at one of the round tables. “What are you planning to play, for the audition?” she asks. Wendi plucks a grape off its stem and refuses to answer.
“Why did you tell Luis?” she asks, crumbling a rice cake slowly onto her plate.
“Because you need to be corrected,” Madeline replies with a soft smile. “Don’t you agree?”
Over the next few days, Wendi leaves her room only to practice with Luis or to eat at the dining hall under our supervision. There is a slight improvement in her appearance. The scent of soap has returned. From outside her door, we hear strains of music that indicate she’s practicing. She no longer attends our affinity group. Sometimes, we bring her the teddy bear to sleep with.
In our off-hours, we practice feverishly in our own rehearsal studios. During breaks we huddle and fantasize about being concert soloists, performing out in the world. We imagine the outfits we would wear. Dresses in forest-green, with a high slit up the leg. Gold bracelets encircling one bicep. I tell the girls about the men who would throw flowers at my feet. How they would whisper about my long neck. My fast and nimble fingers.
In each of our fantasies we are orphans, without Luis or a family of origin. We make people cry with our talent, our inarguable goodness.
Although it’s strictly forbidden, one late night I sneak into the office to call my mother. There is a rotary phone tucked behind the admissions desk, and if I angle myself just right, I can avoid being seen. My heart throbs as I dial the number. I let the phone ring once, twice before I place it back in its cradle. All I want is to hear my mother’s voice on the other end, but when I think about what I might say, my mind draws a blank. I wonder if she sits at home at night and thinks about me.
At auditions for the final concert later that week we sit in a row with the rest of our peers, our instruments perched lightly on our laps. Most of our parents have been discouraged from attending, preferring to see us at the recital in our final form. Luis holds a clipboard with the list of students who are trying out this year.
Shirley is the first of us to go. We watch as she positions herself on the soloist’s chair and starts on Kraft’s Sonata No. 1 in B Flat Major with its slow and stately melody, like a funereal march. I think about the time she’s spent practicing with Luis, going over the same few chords repeatedly.
Madeline is next. She plays the lento from Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen, a piece as thorny and complex as she is. We watch as her interpretation slides between trills and avid string picking, the sweat prickling under my armpits matching her own.
I decide on something simple. The minuet in Mozart’s Sonata for Piano and Violin in E Minor, the same piece I botched onstage when I was fourteen. When my regular violin teacher first taught it to me, he told me the history of the sonata. How in Mozart’s time, women were only allowed to play the piano because the violin, which required a woman to lift her bare arms in public, was deemed too sensual. I liked the idea of subverting the woman’s role, of stirring emotion with the thrust of my head or the movement of my wrists.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath, focusing on the puff of rosin that rises as my bow contacts the string. I perform in a daze, reciting notes to myself until my mind shuts off. Pinky flat, vibrato in fourth position. Mozart wrote the piece after his mother’s death. The alternating violin and piano melodies were said to be his way of speaking to her. I imagine what I would say to my mother if she were dead. I love you. I need you. I promise to be good.
Wendi is the last of us to go. We watch as she walks up the stairs, her violin tucked firmly under her arm. She wears a concert dress, and her hair is in a French braid. She pauses on the line of painter’s tape and takes a deep bow.
“What are you playing for us today?” Luis calls out from his seat. The question is a formality. He already knows each of our performance pieces, inside and out.
“A selection from Bach’s Violin Partita No. 1 in B Minor.”
“Great, whenever you’re ready.”
Wendi brings the violin to her chin. We watch as she positions her bow near the bridge, her arm jutting out like an insect’s wing. I glance at Shirley, who wipes her hands on her skirt. Madeline links her arm in mine, in anticipation.
Zzzzzrrriiiinnnkkk, zriiiiiiiNNNK.
Wendi slashes her bow against the string and yanks it back as hard as she can, causing the chords to reverberate through the auditorium. ZZZZZZZZzzzzzriiiiiiNNKKKKKK! ZRINK! Luis stares at her without expression. I watch as several students press their hands to their ears. Subtly, his neck muscles begin to tighten.
ZZRINKKKK! Zrink! ZzzzZZZZZRINKK!
“Enough!” Luis says, slapping the armrest beside him. “What is the meaning of this?”
Wendi doesn’t reply. Instead, she takes the violin off her chin and presses it against her stomach, bowing wildly. She plays so furiously that the hairs on her bow begin to break.
Luis turns to look at us. “Get her,” he says, gesturing toward the stage. Madeline lets go of my arm, and I rush up the stairs. “I’m not done yet!” the prodigy yells while the crowd begins to rustle in their seats.
I glide across the floor and stretch my hand out for the instrument, aware of the eyes fixed on me from below the stage. “Give me the violin,” I whisper, bending low to the ground like an animal handler, embarrassed to be seen. Wendi brings the chin rest back up to her shoulder and begins to play a few chords of my Mozart sonata. As her fingers trill through the first run, I realize that her rendition is far better than mine.
As I lunge toward her, she drops her bow and begins to loosen the violin pegs, twisting them so hard that the strings begin to push out from the neck and the bridge starts wobbling. The strings unspool from the scroll like fingernails growing on a corpse, a wild and unnatural thing.
“Give it to me, Wendi.”
I swipe at the instrument a few times before I manage to pull it from her grasp. We both stumble backward. Her eyes widen and her arms flail at her sides. As she regains her footing, she seems surprised that her instrument is no longer with her. She stares at the violin clutched to my chest as if she has no idea how it got there.
I wait for her to charge at me but without her violin she looks forlorn, like a child again. She opens her mouth, but no sound comes out. We watch as she composes herself. She smooths down the front of her dress and marches briskly across the stage as if nothing has happened. The students below us start to whisper.
Downstage, Madeline and Shirley are waiting. They grab Wendi before her feet touch the final step. She looks up at me, surprised. Then instinct kicks in and she begins to struggle.
“We’re taking her back to her room,” Shirley whispers as we walk toward the back of the auditorium. As we exit, we can hear Luis apologizing to the other students for the disruption.
Sunlight shocks us as we burst out of the music hall. We hurry past the dancers, performing exercises on the green, oblivious to the drama unfolding on our side of camp. The buzzing of the cicadas creates a wall of sound, ever present. Back in her room, we toss her onto the bed. Shirley runs to the closet and starts ripping extra sheets to make restraints. Wendi screams, a primal sound. Her body thrashes against the mattress as we attempt to hold it down.
“What is wrong with you?” Madeline cries. “Why are you ruining things? We only want to help you!”
Taking the strips from Shirley’s hands, we manage to tie her wrists to the upper bedposts. We leave her legs unrestrained, afraid of being struck by one of her violent kicks. I lay the broken violin down on top of her desk.
“The sooner you comply,” Shirley says, “the easier it will get.”
Wendi screams again, a guttural cry.
Madeline and I grab the tape player from the floor and insert one of Luis’s recordings into it. His voice begins to drown out her sounds. I think back to our affinity group. “I did this to myself,” she says as she runs a hand down her face. “Liar,” I whisper to myself. My mind is overcome. I have visions of wrapping the sheets around her head, of twisting her fingers one by one until they break. A girl who has the willpower to hurt herself shouldn’t be afraid of pain, I think. “She deserves to be punished,” I say out loud but nobody responds.
“Can you two sit with her while I get Luis?” Madeline asks.
Shirley looks at me and nods.
“I want my mommy!” Wendi cries, as soon as Madeline leaves. Her face is bright-red, her scar dark and purpling.
“What are we going to do?”
I scan the room and spot the teddy bear on the floor. I walk toward it to avoid Shirley’s gaze. “Your mother left you here,” I reply as I set the teddy bear down next to Wendi’s head, careful not to touch the rest of her body. “She wanted you away from her. Don’t you understand?”
The prodigy lets out another scream before lying perfectly still. “I want you to tell the truth.” I bend down until my face is level with hers. “Did you really do that to yourself?”
“Gillian, what are you doing?” Shirley asks.
Wendi twists her feet back and forth across the sheets. Her eyes are round and fringed with lashes.
“You promised to be good,” I say. I eye the hot plate on the counter by the sink and imagine turning the knob, watching the air above it shimmer with heat. I can almost feel my mother’s hand pressing down on me, crying about the lesson that she is being forced to teach.
The sound of cicadas fills the room. I raise my hand as if to strike Wendi, but Shirley runs across the room and holds me back. At the threat of being struck, Wendi’s face goes slack. She makes no sound and her eyes are fixed, unblinkingly, at the ceiling.
Madeline and Luis rush back in. We watch as Luis lays a hand on her forehead. “She’s burning up,” he murmurs. “Must be a fever or something.” He removes her shoes and studies her restraints. He tugs on them before giving us a nod of approval.
“Send for the nurse,” he instructs. “Quickly. The rest of you can stand by while we sort this one out.”
The nurse arrives and rushes into Wendi’s room without giving us a second glance. In the hallway, we catch a glimpse of Wendi’s inert body on the bed before Luis closes the door behind him. We strain to listen as they confer privately. We sit on the floor and register how tired we feel, our bodies draining of excitement.
After a while Luis summons us back. “Girls,” he begins. “I know you did your best.” He gestures to the figure on the bed. The sheets are clean, and Wendi appears to be peaceful. Sleeping.
“The nurse and I agree,” he continues. “Simple restraints aren’t going to work for this one. I need you all to go into my office and bring me the cello case. The extra-large one, next to the piano. Hurry, please.”
Madeline, Shirley, and I struggle to heave the cello case down the steps of the music hall. The sun is bright in the sky, exposing us to the rest of campus. Luckily, the students are in the dining hall, eating. We wonder what the other counselors have said to them to put them at ease. Wendi was stressed; she’s having a hard time adjusting. The case is custom built with a small panel cut out in the front and an awkward, elongated frame. Through the window, we can see the Velcro straps holding the instrument in place.
We take a moment to reflect on the efficacy of our actions. Wendi’s efforts to rebel are admirable, but what we’ve learned over time is that the expression of willpower is never as rewarding as the cessation of pain. When we reach a great performance or when we feel the acceptance of our peers it overshadows all sense of ego and individuality. It brings us to a place of ecstasy, of utter peace. We know that Wendi, who has already achieved so much, should be no exception.
We manage to carry the case into Wendi’s room and unload the instrument onto the ground. The prodigy is still asleep, but someone has changed her into more comfortable clothing. Her restraints have been removed, and her hair is tied back. No one would ever be able to guess, just by looking at her, that she was some kind of genius.
“Thank you,” Luis says, his voice sounding tired. “Now, would you help me put her inside?”
He positions his hands beneath Wendi’s shoulders while Madeline takes her feet, carefully lifting her up and easing her into the case’s velvet padding. We close the lid, fastening the latch. The panel exposes her head to the air and allows us to see her face. The scar is visible again, dark against her pale skin. “Our bodies were made to do this work,” Luis says solemnly. “We just have to train our minds to remember.”
I close my eyes and imagine the next few days, when we will be tasked with the most important parts of Wendi’s education. I can already see a future where she will be grateful, no longer compelled to draw attention to herself or to threaten us with her superiority. I look forward to the morning when she will wake up to find me sitting by her side, the cello case removed and breakfast waiting for her on the windowsill. Her voice will start to whimper as soon as she realizes all I’ve done for her. I can already feel the grip of her hand on my wrist like a tether, a gentle restraint.
“Mommy,” she’ll say as she looks up at me. “Are you proud of me?”