The Singing Stick, page 23
On the first day of the new school year, Chekpawee and the rest of the student body filed into the auditorium for a special assembly. On the elevated stage that doubled as a gym floor was a musical ensemble, their chairs arranged in a semicircle. The musicians were dressed in school uniforms.
Once the summoned throng had settled into the theater seats facing the stage, Superintendent Davis strode in from the wings. The packed auditorium rustled down to quiet.
“We at Genoa are so proud of our marching band!” the superintendent bellowed. “For years, the band has been living proof of what you students can do if you submit to proper instruction and apply yourselves. Quite so!”
A round of courteous applause.
“This academic year,” the superintendent continued, “an illustrious bandmaster will lead our marching band. He’s none other than ‘the red rival to Sousa,’ Mr. James Riley Wheelock!”
Wheelock joined the superintendent on stage to a tepid ovation. Chekpawee sat on her hands. Like most of her schoolmates, she had never heard of any Sousa, let alone his “red rival.”
“Mr. Wheelock is a model Indian,” Superintendent Davis said. “An Oneida from Wisconsin, he graduated from Carlisle in Pennsylvania, one of our sister schools. Many of you have relatives who attended there.”
The bandmaster’s fancy red uniform with gold braids impressed Chekpawee, as did his bearing. He was tall and stout as a bur oak, with broad shoulders.
“After graduating from Carlisle,” the superintendent prattled on, “Mr. Wheelock attended the prestigious Dickinson College Preparatory School. He then returned to Carlisle, succeeding his brother Dennison as school bandmaster. During his summers off, he took the helm of the United States Indian Band, the only professional red man’s band in the world.”
Chekpawee yawned. The superintendent had a habit of using twenty words when one was plenty.
“During the late European war against the kaiser,” he droned on, “Mr. Wheelock served in the army as a second lieutenant attached to the 808th Pioneer Infantry. He conducted an all-black regimental band that was judged the Best Infantry Band in all the American Expeditionary Forces. The group won the signal honor of playing for President Wilson before he sailed home from the Paris Peace Conference.”
By now, Chekpawee was testing how far up she could tip the bottom of her seat before the crack at the back would gobble up her skinny rump.
“During Mr. Wheelock’s time overseas,” the superintendent yapped on, “Carlisle Indian School closed its doors. The elimination of his former post has conspired to our great fortune. Quite so.”
He pivoted to the bandmaster.
“Chief Wheelock, you’ve lived an exemplary life. A red man can succeed in the white man’s world! Welcome to Genoa!”
This round of applause was warmer. The new bandmaster bowed.
Chekpawee had often observed this act of bowing at school plays and concerts. Like a salute to student officers, it was said to be a gesture of respect. But why did no one seem to bow except when on a stage? And why did Mr. Wheelock bow, but not Superintendent Davis?
“I’m honored to join the faculty here,” Mr. Wheelock said. “As Mr. Davis told you, I’ll be leading our renowned band. But today my purpose is to boost the orchestra.” He gestured to the musicians behind him. “As you can see, our orchestra is no bigger than a family of wolves.”
Mr. Wheelock then jumped off the edge of the stage.
A collective gasp went up in the auditorium. Nobody was allowed to do that.
“Who can tell me the difference between a band and an orchestra?” the bandmaster asked, strutting along the front row of theater seats.
An older boy raised his hand. “A band marches. An orchestra sits.”
Laughter rippled through the assemblage.
Mr. Wheelock grinned. “Indeed,” he said. “A band often marches while playing! If you have trouble doing two things at once, the orchestra is by far your better choice!”
More laughter.
Chekpawee sat up straighter in her seat. This Oneida man from Wisconsin had her father’s kind of voice—a voice everyone with a good heart wanted to listen to.
“I know what else!” a girl said. “Only boys can be in the band!”
“Correct,” Mr. Wheelock said. “So, young ladies, if you wish to make music, the orchestra is your ticket!”
“Will we get to wear natty uniforms like the band members do?” another girl asked.
“Even better! We’ll outfit you in the finest formal attire our tailor shop can produce.” The bandmaster paused. “How else do the band and orchestra differ? Anyone?”
His gaze ranged from one side of the auditorium to the other, as if he were memorizing every face.
“A band has three families of instruments,” he said when nobody answered. “Brass, woodwinds, and percussion. An orchestra may have all these. But it also has a fourth family: the strings. Would you like to hear some of these instruments played?”
Chekpawee edged forward in her seat.
“I’ve asked each of our current orchestra members to perform a few bars from ‘America’ by Theodore Moses Tobani.”
The bandmaster stepped aside with a nod to the first musician.
This boy, a bassist, stood up as he played. He rubbed a stick across a set of strings attached to a huge wooden box balanced on a peg on the floor. The instrument’s voice was so low pitched and resonant that it shivered Chekpawee’s seat.
A violinist played a much smaller stringed box, cradled beneath the chin. Its voice was high and smooth.
A harpist plucked strings stretched in a wooden frame that resembled a massive hunter’s bow. Her fingers produced a magical cascade of sounds.
Helen Washington, Chekpawee’s enemy, was the pianist. She pressed black and white keys on a sort of table. Some keys produced tones as soft as a river’s lapping against the bank. Other keys rolled like thunder.
A percussionist beat an upright bass drum that reminded Chekpawee of forbidden tribal drums. But this drum seemed lonely. The throb of its voice was muffled and feeble. If only the drum could be laid at the heart of a circle of drummers and singers, and the power of the Creator brought down!
“Orchestral music is richest when we’re able to unite all the instruments,” Mr. Wheelock said after the last demonstration. “To prove that, we’ll conclude our brief program by performing ‘America’ as a group. We have only eleven members, so our music will sound weak and ‘full of holes,’ as we musicians say. To plug those holes, we need you to join us! You don’t need any prior musical knowledge or experience, merely the desire to learn.”
Then he held a black stick aloft in one hand—another instrument.
“Before our finale, though, I want you to meet one last member of the woodwind family. This clarinet and I have been friends since my school days at Carlisle. We’ve traveled the world together. To Leipzig, Germany, where I studied music. To London, England, where I was in an orchestra. To the front lines of the Great War, where we played for troops as they headed into battle.”
The bandmaster propped the clarinet against one shoulder.
“For however long I’m alive,” he said, “I aim to contradict, with all my being, the old saying that ‘the only good Indian is a dead Indian.’ I intend to show the world that, with proper training, Indians can master music, the highest of all the arts. If we are equal to our white brothers and sisters in music, we can be equal to them in anything.”
The auditorium burst into spirited applause. A few students, forgetting themselves, even whooped, earning them instant reprimands.
Superintendent Davis stalked back onto the stage. His face was a storm cloud above his red-striped tie.
“What Mr. Wheelock means to say,” he said, “is not that you can be equal to white people but that if you give the same effort, you’ll enjoy a degree of success. Quite so. Am I not correct, Bandmaster?”
Mr. Wheelock replied by lifting his clarinet to his lips.
At that moment, in Chekpawee’s eyes, the bandmaster wasn’t a famous musician come to teach at the school. He was her father, holding the neck of Flute. He was her father, blowing into Flute’s brass mouthpipe. He was her father, opening and closing Flute’s finger holes. He was her father, warbling birdsong through Flute’s open beak.
Can you hear this music, my dead brother? Can you hear?
MEDICINE
AUTUMN 1920
In the band room, Chekpawee lowered her eyes before Mr. Wheelock’s steady gaze.
“This child,” Big Stick said to the bandmaster, “wishes to be in your orchestra.”
“Oh, she does, does she?”
The bandmaster was even taller up close than he’d looked on stage—a craggy mountain of a man.
He’d been oiling a trombone. Now he rested the shiny brass instrument on its bumper and folded his hands atop the tuning slide.
“What’s your name, little one?” he asked Chekpawee.
“Vera Whiteman,” Big Stick said.
“Vera Whiteman can’t speak for herself?” he said.
“The girl hasn’t spoken since the day she arrived, two years ago now. But she’s smarter than she seems.”
“How old are you, Vera Whiteman?” Mr. Wheelock asked.
“Eight, maybe nine,” Big Stick said, her rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the polished floorboards as she impatiently shifted side to side.
“You must eat more meat,” he told Chekpawee.
“She’s always been sickly,” Big Stick said.
Mr. Wheelock smiled coolly at the matron. “Thank you for the introduction. You may go.”
Big Stick’s shoes squeaked out of the band room. Mr. Wheelock detached the trombone’s bell from the slide and deposited each part in an instrument case.
Then he pulled up two folding chairs. He seated himself in one and directed Chekpawee to the other.
“So, ‘Vera Whiteman, eight, maybe nine,’ ” he said, mimicking Big Stick, “you want to join my orchestra. Tell me why.”
She said not a word.
Mr. Wheelock leaned back and crossed his legs. “I’m prepared to wait.”
Chekpawee let her eyes roam. Instrument cases. Metal music stands. Sheets of paper covered with black lines and dots and squiggles. A wooden music desk on a conductor’s rostrum. The ivory baton Mr. Wheelock had waved in the air while directing “America,” flapping his arms like a graceful man-hawk.
And there—
His clarinet, erect on a three-footed stand. Next to it, a leather instrument case stamped with gold White Talk.
She rose from her chair and made her way to the gorgeous black stick with its glistening silver keys. She touched it timidly, expecting Mr. Wheelock to yell at her.
He didn’t.
She hoisted the clarinet from its perch.
“Take the cap off the mouthpiece,” he said.
Somehow, she understood. She gently removed the shiny metal cap and set it aside.
The black stick was heavier than she’d expected. Onstage, its cylindrical shape, plus how it was held, had reminded her of Flute. Now it seemed clumsy and foreign.
And forbidden.
Among her people, only men would play such an instrument.
All you need, the bandmaster had said in the assembly, is the desire to play.
Chekpawee closed her eyes. She tried to picture how Mr. Wheelock had clutched the stick. In her mind, he kept shape-shifting into her father. So she imitated what her father had done with Flute. She positioned her left hand at the top of the instrument and her right hand at the bottom.
Forming her mouth around the clarinet’s tip, she discovered a strange slice of wood attached to the back of the mouthpiece.
“That’s called a reed,” the bandmaster said.
She tightened her lips, bit down, and blew.
The only sound that came out the clarinet’s bell was her own wind.
“Try again,” Mr. Wheelock said. “This time, relax. Don’t bite.”
Wind again.
“Don’t feel discouraged, child. That reed isn’t for beginners. It’s a number five—the thickest, hardest, toughest reed to play. Your breath support has to be strong.”
She blew again with all her might.
Wind.
“A remarkable beginning, Vera Whiteman,” Mr. Wheelock said, extracting the clarinet from her hands. “Next time, we’ll try a one and a half. Maybe a two. But I must tell you, the reed size is not our fundamental problem.”
She stared down at his shiny black shoes as she waited for him to say more. The shoes seemed a perfect fit for his enormous feet. She doubted he’d ever had blisters or sore heels or bent toes.
“Look at me when I talk,” he said, not unkindly.
To her, the white man’s custom of looking people in the eye still seemed disrespectful. But already she wanted to please the bandmaster. So she ratcheted up her gaze from his burnished shoes, to the sharp crease of his pants, to his bright-red suspenders, to the buttons parading up his crisp white shirt, to his dark chin, to his brown eyes boring down.
“Every musical instrument,” he said, “is a mirror of the person who plays it. This clarinet won’t speak until you speak.”
Mr. Wheelock loosened a couple of screws on the mouthpiece and slipped off the fragile reed. He raised it in front of her.
“This is the clarinet’s vocal cord. It’s a piece of cane. When you breathe over it, it vibrates, like this.” Fluttering his hand. “This causes all the air moving through the instrument to vibrate too. And that vibration produces sound.”
He curled his fingers over the reed so that it disappeared.
“No reed, no vibrations. No vibrations, no music—no voice. Do you understand?”
She felt like she was listening to one of Grandfather’s stories.
“The day you arrived at this school, you decided not to speak.” He patted the front of her throat. “You threw away your reed. Am I right? No reed, no speech—no voice.”
Taking up one of her hands, he laid the tough yet delicate reed in her palm and closed her fingers around it.
“I’ve got a beat-up clarinet over there in that closet,” he told her. “I’ll let you play it, but only if you resume talking. Understand?”
His eyes were an eagle’s, bold and piercing.
“That’s the deal,” he said. “When you’re ready to find your voice, come back and see me.”
Her fist tightened around the reed.
“Now you should go to class,” he said.
She didn’t move.
“Do you require an escort?” he said.
She wagged her head no.
“Words, please, Vera Whiteman.”
Chekpawee’s mouth was on fire. She gulped down the flames.
She could feel the reed singing in her hand. She could feel its medicine.
“Hiya,” she whispered in Dakota. As if the bandmaster weren’t Oneida. As if a Reading House hadn’t cut out his native tongue.
“In English, little one.”
She moistened her lips. She coughed up air, making room for speech.
“No class,” she said to Mr. Wheelock in a croak, the first words she had uttered in two years. And her very first words in White Talk.
“I . . . stay . . . here.”
BELONGING
1920–1921
Vera learned to assemble her beat-up black stick. She learned to attach a reed to the mouthpiece using the metal ligature. The vibration of that reed, caused by her breath, created sound.
“In time,” Mr. Wheelock told her, “you’ll develop your wind and learn to control your clarinet’s voice. That begins with your posture. No slouching.”
She learned to sit up straight, relax her shoulders, and hold the stick at a forty-five-degree angle from her body. Her grip on the stick had to be firm yet loose enough to keep her fingers nimble on the keys.
“Your hands will become stronger,” Mr. Wheelock promised. “Your fingers will become longer.”
She learned her stick had holes and metal keys. By blowing into the mouthpiece and manipulating her fingers, she could produce twelve basic musical notes, in lower and higher octaves.
She learned notes could be read off a page, like words in a book. Or—you could dream them up.
She learned that, with practice, musical technique could be mastered, like doing sums in arithmetic class. Breath + fingering = tone. But good music required more than technique. It was more like cooking class, where you made the most of the ingredients on hand.
“Whatever music you have,” Mr. Wheelock told her, “you must find your own way to play it. All I can give you is a place to start.”
She learned to alter the sounds she made by changing her embouchure—the way her lips closed around the sweet spot on the mouthpiece. Or by altering the flow of her breath. Or by changing her tonguing and phrasing . . .
She learned to build a note of music in her body and in her mind before offering it her breath and finishing it in the air.
She learned that no matter the competence she gained, there was always more to learn. Mr. Wheelock, accomplished as he was, still practiced daily.
She learned in orchestra class to watch Mr. Wheelock’s baton out of the corner of her eye while reading the sheet music on her stand. She learned to follow the baton’s pace as well as its cues about dynamics and other matters of interpretation.
She learned to appreciate the voices of other instruments and how to make her clarinet sing with them, contributing her part to the whole. She learned that playing music with other musicians—even with Helen Washington, pounding on the piano—was much more satisfying than playing alone.
She took a private lesson with Mr. Wheelock nearly every day. She visited the band room whenever she could contrive it, simply to be where he was. In his presence, she felt safer. Like she mattered. And belonged. She learned to be comfortable speaking aloud.
Having the bandmaster at the school was a little like having a father again. And having music was like being born again, with a new voice. This voice came on the breath of the Creator, who in White Talk she was learning to call God.
Once the summoned throng had settled into the theater seats facing the stage, Superintendent Davis strode in from the wings. The packed auditorium rustled down to quiet.
“We at Genoa are so proud of our marching band!” the superintendent bellowed. “For years, the band has been living proof of what you students can do if you submit to proper instruction and apply yourselves. Quite so!”
A round of courteous applause.
“This academic year,” the superintendent continued, “an illustrious bandmaster will lead our marching band. He’s none other than ‘the red rival to Sousa,’ Mr. James Riley Wheelock!”
Wheelock joined the superintendent on stage to a tepid ovation. Chekpawee sat on her hands. Like most of her schoolmates, she had never heard of any Sousa, let alone his “red rival.”
“Mr. Wheelock is a model Indian,” Superintendent Davis said. “An Oneida from Wisconsin, he graduated from Carlisle in Pennsylvania, one of our sister schools. Many of you have relatives who attended there.”
The bandmaster’s fancy red uniform with gold braids impressed Chekpawee, as did his bearing. He was tall and stout as a bur oak, with broad shoulders.
“After graduating from Carlisle,” the superintendent prattled on, “Mr. Wheelock attended the prestigious Dickinson College Preparatory School. He then returned to Carlisle, succeeding his brother Dennison as school bandmaster. During his summers off, he took the helm of the United States Indian Band, the only professional red man’s band in the world.”
Chekpawee yawned. The superintendent had a habit of using twenty words when one was plenty.
“During the late European war against the kaiser,” he droned on, “Mr. Wheelock served in the army as a second lieutenant attached to the 808th Pioneer Infantry. He conducted an all-black regimental band that was judged the Best Infantry Band in all the American Expeditionary Forces. The group won the signal honor of playing for President Wilson before he sailed home from the Paris Peace Conference.”
By now, Chekpawee was testing how far up she could tip the bottom of her seat before the crack at the back would gobble up her skinny rump.
“During Mr. Wheelock’s time overseas,” the superintendent yapped on, “Carlisle Indian School closed its doors. The elimination of his former post has conspired to our great fortune. Quite so.”
He pivoted to the bandmaster.
“Chief Wheelock, you’ve lived an exemplary life. A red man can succeed in the white man’s world! Welcome to Genoa!”
This round of applause was warmer. The new bandmaster bowed.
Chekpawee had often observed this act of bowing at school plays and concerts. Like a salute to student officers, it was said to be a gesture of respect. But why did no one seem to bow except when on a stage? And why did Mr. Wheelock bow, but not Superintendent Davis?
“I’m honored to join the faculty here,” Mr. Wheelock said. “As Mr. Davis told you, I’ll be leading our renowned band. But today my purpose is to boost the orchestra.” He gestured to the musicians behind him. “As you can see, our orchestra is no bigger than a family of wolves.”
Mr. Wheelock then jumped off the edge of the stage.
A collective gasp went up in the auditorium. Nobody was allowed to do that.
“Who can tell me the difference between a band and an orchestra?” the bandmaster asked, strutting along the front row of theater seats.
An older boy raised his hand. “A band marches. An orchestra sits.”
Laughter rippled through the assemblage.
Mr. Wheelock grinned. “Indeed,” he said. “A band often marches while playing! If you have trouble doing two things at once, the orchestra is by far your better choice!”
More laughter.
Chekpawee sat up straighter in her seat. This Oneida man from Wisconsin had her father’s kind of voice—a voice everyone with a good heart wanted to listen to.
“I know what else!” a girl said. “Only boys can be in the band!”
“Correct,” Mr. Wheelock said. “So, young ladies, if you wish to make music, the orchestra is your ticket!”
“Will we get to wear natty uniforms like the band members do?” another girl asked.
“Even better! We’ll outfit you in the finest formal attire our tailor shop can produce.” The bandmaster paused. “How else do the band and orchestra differ? Anyone?”
His gaze ranged from one side of the auditorium to the other, as if he were memorizing every face.
“A band has three families of instruments,” he said when nobody answered. “Brass, woodwinds, and percussion. An orchestra may have all these. But it also has a fourth family: the strings. Would you like to hear some of these instruments played?”
Chekpawee edged forward in her seat.
“I’ve asked each of our current orchestra members to perform a few bars from ‘America’ by Theodore Moses Tobani.”
The bandmaster stepped aside with a nod to the first musician.
This boy, a bassist, stood up as he played. He rubbed a stick across a set of strings attached to a huge wooden box balanced on a peg on the floor. The instrument’s voice was so low pitched and resonant that it shivered Chekpawee’s seat.
A violinist played a much smaller stringed box, cradled beneath the chin. Its voice was high and smooth.
A harpist plucked strings stretched in a wooden frame that resembled a massive hunter’s bow. Her fingers produced a magical cascade of sounds.
Helen Washington, Chekpawee’s enemy, was the pianist. She pressed black and white keys on a sort of table. Some keys produced tones as soft as a river’s lapping against the bank. Other keys rolled like thunder.
A percussionist beat an upright bass drum that reminded Chekpawee of forbidden tribal drums. But this drum seemed lonely. The throb of its voice was muffled and feeble. If only the drum could be laid at the heart of a circle of drummers and singers, and the power of the Creator brought down!
“Orchestral music is richest when we’re able to unite all the instruments,” Mr. Wheelock said after the last demonstration. “To prove that, we’ll conclude our brief program by performing ‘America’ as a group. We have only eleven members, so our music will sound weak and ‘full of holes,’ as we musicians say. To plug those holes, we need you to join us! You don’t need any prior musical knowledge or experience, merely the desire to learn.”
Then he held a black stick aloft in one hand—another instrument.
“Before our finale, though, I want you to meet one last member of the woodwind family. This clarinet and I have been friends since my school days at Carlisle. We’ve traveled the world together. To Leipzig, Germany, where I studied music. To London, England, where I was in an orchestra. To the front lines of the Great War, where we played for troops as they headed into battle.”
The bandmaster propped the clarinet against one shoulder.
“For however long I’m alive,” he said, “I aim to contradict, with all my being, the old saying that ‘the only good Indian is a dead Indian.’ I intend to show the world that, with proper training, Indians can master music, the highest of all the arts. If we are equal to our white brothers and sisters in music, we can be equal to them in anything.”
The auditorium burst into spirited applause. A few students, forgetting themselves, even whooped, earning them instant reprimands.
Superintendent Davis stalked back onto the stage. His face was a storm cloud above his red-striped tie.
“What Mr. Wheelock means to say,” he said, “is not that you can be equal to white people but that if you give the same effort, you’ll enjoy a degree of success. Quite so. Am I not correct, Bandmaster?”
Mr. Wheelock replied by lifting his clarinet to his lips.
At that moment, in Chekpawee’s eyes, the bandmaster wasn’t a famous musician come to teach at the school. He was her father, holding the neck of Flute. He was her father, blowing into Flute’s brass mouthpipe. He was her father, opening and closing Flute’s finger holes. He was her father, warbling birdsong through Flute’s open beak.
Can you hear this music, my dead brother? Can you hear?
MEDICINE
AUTUMN 1920
In the band room, Chekpawee lowered her eyes before Mr. Wheelock’s steady gaze.
“This child,” Big Stick said to the bandmaster, “wishes to be in your orchestra.”
“Oh, she does, does she?”
The bandmaster was even taller up close than he’d looked on stage—a craggy mountain of a man.
He’d been oiling a trombone. Now he rested the shiny brass instrument on its bumper and folded his hands atop the tuning slide.
“What’s your name, little one?” he asked Chekpawee.
“Vera Whiteman,” Big Stick said.
“Vera Whiteman can’t speak for herself?” he said.
“The girl hasn’t spoken since the day she arrived, two years ago now. But she’s smarter than she seems.”
“How old are you, Vera Whiteman?” Mr. Wheelock asked.
“Eight, maybe nine,” Big Stick said, her rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the polished floorboards as she impatiently shifted side to side.
“You must eat more meat,” he told Chekpawee.
“She’s always been sickly,” Big Stick said.
Mr. Wheelock smiled coolly at the matron. “Thank you for the introduction. You may go.”
Big Stick’s shoes squeaked out of the band room. Mr. Wheelock detached the trombone’s bell from the slide and deposited each part in an instrument case.
Then he pulled up two folding chairs. He seated himself in one and directed Chekpawee to the other.
“So, ‘Vera Whiteman, eight, maybe nine,’ ” he said, mimicking Big Stick, “you want to join my orchestra. Tell me why.”
She said not a word.
Mr. Wheelock leaned back and crossed his legs. “I’m prepared to wait.”
Chekpawee let her eyes roam. Instrument cases. Metal music stands. Sheets of paper covered with black lines and dots and squiggles. A wooden music desk on a conductor’s rostrum. The ivory baton Mr. Wheelock had waved in the air while directing “America,” flapping his arms like a graceful man-hawk.
And there—
His clarinet, erect on a three-footed stand. Next to it, a leather instrument case stamped with gold White Talk.
She rose from her chair and made her way to the gorgeous black stick with its glistening silver keys. She touched it timidly, expecting Mr. Wheelock to yell at her.
He didn’t.
She hoisted the clarinet from its perch.
“Take the cap off the mouthpiece,” he said.
Somehow, she understood. She gently removed the shiny metal cap and set it aside.
The black stick was heavier than she’d expected. Onstage, its cylindrical shape, plus how it was held, had reminded her of Flute. Now it seemed clumsy and foreign.
And forbidden.
Among her people, only men would play such an instrument.
All you need, the bandmaster had said in the assembly, is the desire to play.
Chekpawee closed her eyes. She tried to picture how Mr. Wheelock had clutched the stick. In her mind, he kept shape-shifting into her father. So she imitated what her father had done with Flute. She positioned her left hand at the top of the instrument and her right hand at the bottom.
Forming her mouth around the clarinet’s tip, she discovered a strange slice of wood attached to the back of the mouthpiece.
“That’s called a reed,” the bandmaster said.
She tightened her lips, bit down, and blew.
The only sound that came out the clarinet’s bell was her own wind.
“Try again,” Mr. Wheelock said. “This time, relax. Don’t bite.”
Wind again.
“Don’t feel discouraged, child. That reed isn’t for beginners. It’s a number five—the thickest, hardest, toughest reed to play. Your breath support has to be strong.”
She blew again with all her might.
Wind.
“A remarkable beginning, Vera Whiteman,” Mr. Wheelock said, extracting the clarinet from her hands. “Next time, we’ll try a one and a half. Maybe a two. But I must tell you, the reed size is not our fundamental problem.”
She stared down at his shiny black shoes as she waited for him to say more. The shoes seemed a perfect fit for his enormous feet. She doubted he’d ever had blisters or sore heels or bent toes.
“Look at me when I talk,” he said, not unkindly.
To her, the white man’s custom of looking people in the eye still seemed disrespectful. But already she wanted to please the bandmaster. So she ratcheted up her gaze from his burnished shoes, to the sharp crease of his pants, to his bright-red suspenders, to the buttons parading up his crisp white shirt, to his dark chin, to his brown eyes boring down.
“Every musical instrument,” he said, “is a mirror of the person who plays it. This clarinet won’t speak until you speak.”
Mr. Wheelock loosened a couple of screws on the mouthpiece and slipped off the fragile reed. He raised it in front of her.
“This is the clarinet’s vocal cord. It’s a piece of cane. When you breathe over it, it vibrates, like this.” Fluttering his hand. “This causes all the air moving through the instrument to vibrate too. And that vibration produces sound.”
He curled his fingers over the reed so that it disappeared.
“No reed, no vibrations. No vibrations, no music—no voice. Do you understand?”
She felt like she was listening to one of Grandfather’s stories.
“The day you arrived at this school, you decided not to speak.” He patted the front of her throat. “You threw away your reed. Am I right? No reed, no speech—no voice.”
Taking up one of her hands, he laid the tough yet delicate reed in her palm and closed her fingers around it.
“I’ve got a beat-up clarinet over there in that closet,” he told her. “I’ll let you play it, but only if you resume talking. Understand?”
His eyes were an eagle’s, bold and piercing.
“That’s the deal,” he said. “When you’re ready to find your voice, come back and see me.”
Her fist tightened around the reed.
“Now you should go to class,” he said.
She didn’t move.
“Do you require an escort?” he said.
She wagged her head no.
“Words, please, Vera Whiteman.”
Chekpawee’s mouth was on fire. She gulped down the flames.
She could feel the reed singing in her hand. She could feel its medicine.
“Hiya,” she whispered in Dakota. As if the bandmaster weren’t Oneida. As if a Reading House hadn’t cut out his native tongue.
“In English, little one.”
She moistened her lips. She coughed up air, making room for speech.
“No class,” she said to Mr. Wheelock in a croak, the first words she had uttered in two years. And her very first words in White Talk.
“I . . . stay . . . here.”
BELONGING
1920–1921
Vera learned to assemble her beat-up black stick. She learned to attach a reed to the mouthpiece using the metal ligature. The vibration of that reed, caused by her breath, created sound.
“In time,” Mr. Wheelock told her, “you’ll develop your wind and learn to control your clarinet’s voice. That begins with your posture. No slouching.”
She learned to sit up straight, relax her shoulders, and hold the stick at a forty-five-degree angle from her body. Her grip on the stick had to be firm yet loose enough to keep her fingers nimble on the keys.
“Your hands will become stronger,” Mr. Wheelock promised. “Your fingers will become longer.”
She learned her stick had holes and metal keys. By blowing into the mouthpiece and manipulating her fingers, she could produce twelve basic musical notes, in lower and higher octaves.
She learned notes could be read off a page, like words in a book. Or—you could dream them up.
She learned that, with practice, musical technique could be mastered, like doing sums in arithmetic class. Breath + fingering = tone. But good music required more than technique. It was more like cooking class, where you made the most of the ingredients on hand.
“Whatever music you have,” Mr. Wheelock told her, “you must find your own way to play it. All I can give you is a place to start.”
She learned to alter the sounds she made by changing her embouchure—the way her lips closed around the sweet spot on the mouthpiece. Or by altering the flow of her breath. Or by changing her tonguing and phrasing . . .
She learned to build a note of music in her body and in her mind before offering it her breath and finishing it in the air.
She learned that no matter the competence she gained, there was always more to learn. Mr. Wheelock, accomplished as he was, still practiced daily.
She learned in orchestra class to watch Mr. Wheelock’s baton out of the corner of her eye while reading the sheet music on her stand. She learned to follow the baton’s pace as well as its cues about dynamics and other matters of interpretation.
She learned to appreciate the voices of other instruments and how to make her clarinet sing with them, contributing her part to the whole. She learned that playing music with other musicians—even with Helen Washington, pounding on the piano—was much more satisfying than playing alone.
She took a private lesson with Mr. Wheelock nearly every day. She visited the band room whenever she could contrive it, simply to be where he was. In his presence, she felt safer. Like she mattered. And belonged. She learned to be comfortable speaking aloud.
Having the bandmaster at the school was a little like having a father again. And having music was like being born again, with a new voice. This voice came on the breath of the Creator, who in White Talk she was learning to call God.
