Like Mandarin - Kirsten Hubbard [39]
Because I didn’t want to meet her eyes, I watched over her shoulder as Earl selected a half-eaten burger from the trash can and despondently shuffled away.
I slumped in a metal folding chair at the edge of the Little Miss Washokey crowd. In the years since my last pageant, the school administration had built a cement stage outside the elementary wing. It gave the pageants and school performances a little more credibility, though the tape deck and the curtain strung up between two poles appeared to be the same.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Mandarin. About how melancholy she’d sounded at the A&W when she’d talked about the ocean, the strawberry fields. I’d never met anybody with such changeable moods.
Except maybe for Momma, who was sitting beside me, her restless hands folded over the purse in her lap.
“I just don’t think Lindsey’s any good!” she hissed in a voice that wasn’t as quiet as she thought. “She’s off tune. Though you can’t say anything bad about that dress. Deborah’s sewing is exquisite. Ooh! Now that was a sour note. What a way to end her act! That’s all the judges will remember, the last impression, almost as important as the first. But she wasn’t as bad as the Shaw girl, Petra? No, the brother’s Peter, her name must be—Shhh!”
I wiped a fleck of spit from my cheek.
The MC, somebody’s grandpa in a rumpled tuxedo, had stepped back onstage. He tapped the microphone, even though it was obviously working just fine. “Next is the lovely little Miss Taffeta Carpenter, singing Andrea Bocelli’s ‘Con Te Partirò’ …”
He hunched over the microphone and added, “In Italian.”
That was exactly how Momma said that last part. Conspiratorially. Like if we spoke about my sister’s talent in loud voices, it might disappear.
I hadn’t been able to carry a tune as a child. So Momma had me recite things like Shakespearean sonnets, “Jabberwocky,” and the Gettysburg Address. Once, I delivered that famous speech by Chief Joseph: From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. I wore an Indian princess costume, with lipstick circles drawn on my cheeks. But that performance didn’t go over well with the judges. Despite Chief Joseph’s having been part of Oregon’s Nez Perce tribe—not Wyoming’s Arapahoe or Crow or Cheyenne or Shoshone—the chief’s gloomy words probably reminded them of the parts of Native American history they’d rather forget. Like impoverished reservations, or the Trail of Tears. When it came to Indians, most white people in these parts believed that it was best to linger on the positives, like fry bread and dream catchers and turquoise jewelry.
Taffeta stepped out from the shadows backstage. Her blue dress looked ultramarine under the makeshift spotlight, one of those clamp lamps used for pet reptiles. Her cheeks glowed with a fever flush. The MC lowered the microphone to her level. She leaned in so close I heard her lips rustle against it.
Without any warning or any musical accompaniment, without so much as a drawing in of breath, my sister began to sing. Nonsense syllables, escalating into the first crescendo: “Con teee … partiró …”
Although most opera music made me want to retch—mostly on account of my mother’s obsession with it—when Taffeta sang that song, it became my favorite song in the world.
I forgot about Mandarin as the power of Taffeta’s voice coursed through the crowd. Taffeta felt it too. She tipped back her head and closed her eyes, like one of those child pop stars on the Disney Channel. She held out one hand plaintively while the other became a fist that pummeled the air. Her voice seemed to echo off the dim hills around us, transcending the whole town, all the people in it. For four minutes, we were cultured and worldly. Maybe even Italian.
She deserved a shower of roses, a standing ovation.
I wanted to climb onto my chair and call out, That’s my little sister!
Then Momma whispered into my ear. “Oh, she’s like an angel! This is all I ever wanted! All I ever wanted!”
And just like that, she ruined it.
I brought my knees up into my chest, aiming