June looked at Nia, who was wiping the column with a cloth as if the harp might vanish if she blinked. "Honest we can do," she said. "Clapping was never the family business."
So the years arranged themselves around the storefront.
Nia was nine, then ten, then eleven. She learned the walk from school to Eastbridge well enough to do it in rain without ruining the photocopied music, which she kept in a plastic folder June had stolen from the hospital supply closet and then, guiltily, paid for by leaving two dollars in the break room. She learned that the sticky C pedal could be outwitted if she moved it a breath earlier than the page suggested and did not trust the click. She learned Hasselmans' Prière until the prayer was in her shoulders. She learned scales the way other children learn the route to a friend's house, bored and grateful at once. Alvarez was not sentimental. When Nia cried one Tuesday because a new piece refused her, Alvarez handed her a tissue and said, "Crying is a release, not a strategy. Blow your nose. Measure twelve. Slower."
There were days the grief arrived sideways. A woman on the bus had Denise's laugh and Nia missed her stop. A wedding party spilled out of a hotel downtown and Nia stood on the opposite corner, furious at their joy and ashamed of the fury. At home she sometimes set a place in her mind for the rented harp and then hated herself for the ghost furniture. June found her once at midnight fingering the air over the kitchen table.
"Bed," June said gently. "The air will still be here tomorrow. So will the Bach. Sleep is also practice. I will fight you on this."
Nia went to bed. She did not sleep for a while. She listened to the radiator and imagined an answer.
At Eastbridge she became useful, which was both a joy and a slight danger, because useful children can be overlooked as children and employed as furniture. Alvarez watched for that. She made Nia sit and play even when the chairs were not all stacked. "Martyrdom is not a major," she said. "Play."
Other students came and went. A boy named Chris took guitar for six weeks and then joined a team. Two sisters sang in harmony so tight it made the linoleum seem nicer. A retired man practiced flute with the seriousness of someone making up for a whole life of not practicing. They treated Nia with the ordinary indifference of people busy with their own sounds, which was, in its way, a gift. She was not a tragedy in that room. She was the harp kid. Sweep the floor, Nia. Nice run, Nia. You left your folder, Nia.
Once, a parent picking up the singing sisters looked at the harp and said, "That's an unusual choice for a little girl from this neighborhood." Alvarez, passing with a stack of chairs, said, "Unusual is a word people use when they haven't been paying attention. This neighborhood has always had music. It just doesn't always get a brochure." The parent smiled uncertainly and left. Nia stored the sentence beside her mother's sentence about polite hallways.