Hiroshima Dreams

May is my least favorite month. For one thing, it’s supposed to be spring, but it’s usually cold. For another, the annual cello recital occurs. Each year, I have to talk my way out of it. Once it’s over, Ms. Nga goes on and on about how nice it would have been if her best student had bothered to play.

“The cello is an overlooked instrument,” Miss Nga is lecturing me. “The whiny violin gets all the attention; the pounding piano. This is because the cello gives voice to sadness, longing, and loneliness. You are my best student because you understand this. Therefore, you will do two songs at the recital.” She says this like she’s doing me a favor.

“I don’t Do the recital, Ms. Nga. Remember? My hands will freeze like icebergs and I’ll embarrass you.”It

“I don’t train my students to play for themselves. It will be fine. You’ll just apply yourself to it . . .”

“She is a virtuoso, my best student ever. She must play in public. Otherwise, all of this work is for nothing. If she doesn’t play, I don’t see any reason to continue her lessons.”

Even Obaachan agrees that I should play for an audience, although her instructions are different from Ms. Nga’s. “Meditate on the music and you will forget the audience.”

Meditation is the very opposite of “applying myself” or making an effort. It is about not trying and allowing things to come to you.

And since I’ve been meditating, things do come to me. Like I go to bed knowing what the weather will be the next day, so I can lay out my clothes. I can feel it if a test will be postponed, or easy or hard. My talent for knowing what someone will say increases, and I also understand how they feel. It’s said that we use only 10 percent of our brains. Maybe meditation gives a nudge to that percentage. That’s the only way I can explain it.

I also dream more vividly, then carry the dreams with me all day like a secret life. I dream that I am flying above the city of Providence like an angel. I dream of other families who have lived in this house. When I wake up, I can almost hear the walls breathe their names, and picture them moving through the rooms: a man opening a window, a woman walking through the hall in a long dress, a little boy playing with jacks. I wonder, Will the house remember us when we’re gone, too? Will the scent of Mom’s brownies float through the hall, or Obaachan’s incense?

Sometimes my dreams actually happen. Like I dreamed that my teacher was hurt. That morning the principal said she’d been in a car accident and would be out for a few weeks. I dreamed a man in a suit came to our house. The next morning, there was a knock at the door. “Jehovah’s Witness.” Dad peeked out the window. “Don’t answer.” The man left pamphlets saying that the world would end.

There are two dreams I keep having over. In one, I’m in the white smock walking down corridors. In the other, there’s a woman with red hair. She stands in a green field waving to me. As I walk toward her, the red hair on her head turns completely white.

The night before my cello recital, though, I have a nightmare. I am walking to the stage in my white dress. The audience is there, their faces hard, like Cole’s when the kids make fun of him. When I draw my bow across the strings, a yowling sound is emitted from my instrument, the sound of cats fighting, screaming, and dying.

In the morning, I sit at the table with my arms crossed. Sally is looking over Dad’s shoulder while he reads the paper. “Sally, what are you doing?”

“Did you know that since you started middle school, you’re a little hard to take first thing in the morning.” Dad finally looks at me. “What’s the matter?”

The whole day, I’m in the worst mood of my life. I won’t play games or talk to anyone. I can’t eat. The recital is at two o’clock. At one, Mom tells me I should be dressed. I put my dress on as slowly as possible. It’s too big so it will fit for Communion, too.

Once we are there, Ms. Nga pulls me away from my family and I have to sit in a chair right on the stage. I feel so angry at her for making me do this that I hope my bow strings do sound like a dying cat. That will show her.

When Ms. Nga gets up to speak to the audience, her foot slips on a piece of sheet music someone has dropped, and she lands on one knee. I look up. Her face is as red as mine probably is. Her voice quivers as she recovers, then she speaks in her slow accented voice, about how hard the children have worked. When I realize that she is as scared as I am, my anger melts and I want to do well for her.

I am first so I can get it over with. She calls my name. I stand, then cross to the chair at the center of the stage. I place my music and lift my bow. I focus on a spot in front of me on the floor: Mu, Mu, Mu. Then I smile to myself when I realize what word begins with Mu: music.

Ms. Nga sounds the piano key, the first note of the accompaniment. But I don’t try like she’s told me to; I let the music come to me, so that I am Mu and music, one with the notes, the motion of my hands.

I begin with Bach’s Suite no. 1, a piece that reminds me of children dancing. Then I go right to my favorite piece, Fauré’s Elégie. An elegy is a poem or a song for the dead. It was Fauré’s first composition for cello. When I play it I feel like I am expressing all the sadness in the world, that I am telling Fauré himself that even though he became deaf and sad in later years, he is still heard now.

It is over so quickly that I am convinced I missed notes. But Ms. Nga is beaming at me. The audience is clapping. Mom, Dad, and Sally are crying and laughing at the same time. Obaachan’s hands are to her lips like a prayer.