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Show Body of Water Our second tour in Hawaii, my mother joined the Julie Singers, an amateur choir that performed all over the island. She accompanied the singers and sang as well, wearing their navy blue muu muu with a white peter pan collar and a floppy red bow. Many of their songs were military standards, but they also sang contemporary music like "Up^Up with People" and "What Color is God's Skin," songs that left me puzzled, where were the people going? My father and brothers and I would drive to the mall to watch them perform, pointing to my mother sitting at the piano, her back straight and hands poised above the keys, awaiting the nod of the conductor. As she played, she kept time with her entire being, becoming the beat, her foot breathing on the pedals, the almost imperceptible nod of her head, her body moving in and away from the keyboard like a swing. In those moments, my mother was no longer my mother, the one who packed my lunch, did laundry on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and made me eat quenelles even though I hated fish. She occupied a different space, one I only later learned to recognize as her own. I was proud of her in her thin blue muu muu, loved to imagine I could pick her voice out from the other sopranos, and happy when she would practice the new pieces at home. She seemed a star. My mother learned to play and sing from her mother, in long afternoon sessions at the piano, the light fading behind the Black Hills, years before her father ran off with the maid. My grandmother both painted and sang, as a way perhaps to imagine other possibilities, other endings, to a life that had held so much promise. When my grandmother flew to visit us in Hawaii, she wore skirts that flirted with her knees, heels 144 |