It was a black tie affair but she didn’t wear a tie, black or otherwise, because she was a woman. To her, it was a white cocktail dress affair, a cheap one she borrowed from Valeria, a cousin of hers endowed with the same shapely figure. “You look like Madeline Monroe, Grizzy!”
That’s what they called Griselda: Grizzy. It was a childhood nickname she embraced in her youth, but now that she was an adult in her mid-twenties, the embrace had weakened considerably, and she preferred Griselda.
Grizzy stood in the corner of the grand ballroom facing an equally grand piano with an ebony surface that cast her curvy reflection in its mirror-polished finish. She ran her gloved hand across the glossy fall board before she slowly lifted it to reveal the shielded keyboard underneath. She placed her three middle fingers on a set of black keys and allowed her thumb and pinky to rest lightly on two white keys. Three sharps and two naturals one might call it, but not Grizzy. She didn’t know the first thing about playing the piano, or any instrument for that matter, but not for lack of interest.
She had always been intrigued by music and the possibility of creating it, but as a poor child growing up in a low-income household and attending high-poverty public schools, her only exposure to musical instruments was through underfunded music classes. When her third grade music teacher Mrs. Tarango played La Cucaracha on a recorder, Grizzy asked her mother for a recorder, but it was too expensive. When Grizzy was introduced to the guitar a year later, she asked her mother for a guitar, but it was even costlier. When Grizzy fell in love with the sound of the piano and asked her mother if they could get one, her mother replied, “¡Estás loca! Pianos are for gringos!” And for Grizzy, her mother’s ignorant words seemed to ring true at the time because none of her relatives had pianos in their homes, and neither did any of the other families living nearby. They were simply too expensive and took up too much valuable space in those meager households with limited square footage.
The only time she ever saw a piano in someone’s house is when she would accompany her mother to housekeeping jobs at affluent homes on the other side of town. Predominantly owned by white folks, these abodes were far from humble, and had rooms with names that were foreign to Grizzy, like studies, solariums, and parlors or music rooms. Can you believe it? Entire rooms dedicated to the art of music! One particular residence had a baby grand in its music room, and Grizzy once took a break from her dusting to glide her fingers across the keyboard the way most people do when they don’t know how to play the piano; calling it a “slide” the way most people do when they don’t know that it’s called a glissando.
“¡No juegues con eso!” her mother yelled from the adjacent billiard room, “It’s expensive!”
“I was cleaning it!”
“¡Mentirosa! Close it and just clean the outside!”
Grizzy could still hear her dead mother’s voice echoing in her head as she looked down at her glove-covered fingers resting on the keyboard, but she could only resist the urge to hear the wonderful sound of the piano a moment longer before she bore down on the keys and produced a dramatic discord. She followed it with a slide that caught the attention of Roger, a slender young white man in a tuxedo standing nearby.
“I was just cleaning it,” she claimed, retracting her hand like it had been caught in the cookie jar.
He smiled and approached her. “Do you play?”
“No.”
“Wanna learn?”
“Right now?”
“I could teach you something.” He made a gesture toward the piano. “May I?”
Grizzy stepped aside and he pulled out the piano bench. Before he sat down, he flipped his tuxedo tails behind him like a dignified concert pianist. Roger began to play and what followed was the most plodding rendition of “Chopsticks” imaginable. Even Grizzy was unimpressed. She scanned the room to see if anyone else was witnessing this embarrassing display and nobody seemed to notice.
Roger stumbled toward the end of the piece and then stopped abruptly before looking up at Grizzy with unwarranted pride. “That could be you,” he boasted.
“I’m good,” she replied with a dismissive wave.
“I could have you playing that way in a week.”
“I don’t want to be a part of that,” she said.
“Do you know the name of that piece?”
“No.”
“It’s called Chopsticks. Do you know who wrote it?”
“Some Chinese guy?” shrugged Grizzy.
“A sixteen year old American girl named Euphemia Allen composed that piece in the late 1800’s. She called it The Celebrated Chop Waltz.”
“You just said it was called Chopsticks.”
“That’s the common name for it now. My guess is that people didn’t want to say The Celebrated Chop Waltz so they chopped it, so to speak, and it became Chopsticks.”
Roger could see in Grizzy’s blank stare that she was losing interest. “Do you have a nickname?” he asked.
“That’s a weird question.”
“Why?”
“You don’t even know my first name and you’re already asking me if I have a nickname.”
“Is that too forward?”
“It’s just weird.”
“My apologies.” Roger stood up and shook her hand. “My name is Roger. What’s yours?”
“Griselda.”
“Oh, like the famed countess of patience and obedience.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Roger chuckled. “It means I’ve studied too much European folklore. Do you go to school?”
“I go to work.”
“Where do you work?”
She paused. “I clean houses.”
Roger paused as well. “That’s great.”
“It sucks.”
“You don’t like that line of work?”
“No. What do you do?”
“Me? Well, I have three jobs.”
Grizzy rolled her eyes.
“Seriously. I’ve been working since I was eight years old.”
“Why?”
“I’m an orphan. Both my parents died in prison.”
Grizzy was taken aback. Her own father had died in a tractor accident while working as a farmhand when she was five years old, but it was a personal tragedy she would never share with complete strangers. She peered at Roger, waiting for him to retract the statement and apologize for his miserable attempt at dark humor.
“I apologize,” he began. “That’s not something I usually share with complete strangers, but for some reason, you don’t feel like a stranger to me.”
Grizzy had heard about people “sharing a moment” with each other, mostly in sappy films, but Roger’s words gave her a tinge of emotion that she would later qualify as a genuine shared moment.
“Where do you work?” she asked.
“During the day I work construction, at night I wait tables at Delancey’s, and on the weekends when I’m not studying, I play piano.”
Griselda laughed and Roger slowly joined her, but he didn’t know why.
“I gotta go,” she said.
“Where are you going?”
“My friend is calling me.” Griselda waved to a woman in the distance and when Roger turned around, he also exchanged a familiar wave with her.
“You’re friend is Rita Fortuna?” asked Roger.
“Well,” she hesitated, “she’s my boss.”
“You work at the foundation?”
“I clean her house.”
“Oh, got it.”
“Mr. Fortuna is out of town so she asked me if I had a fancy dress at home and here I am.”
He regarded her dress and smiled with approval. “And I’m glad you are, Griselda.”
She blushed and offered her hand. “It was nice meeting you, Roger.”
“My pleasure.” He shook her hand, then held onto it a moment longer. “Maybe we can talk some more after the ceremony?”
“Okay,” she said with a polite nod, then walked away.
Crowds shuffled into the hall and mingled throughout as friends and family members of Mrs. Myer’s gathered at her table. When Grizzy arrived, Rita Fortuna introduced her to the group as an “associate” but the warm reception that followed didn’t help put Grizzy’s mind at ease. She was not accustomed to social events, and meeting strangers filled her with such anxiety that instead of making eye contact she would focus on their attire, and then fawn over what they were wearing. It was a diversionary tactic she used to avoid attention; a coping mechanism that she developed from her mother, who believed that toeing the lines of social stratification guaranteed a certain acceptance, not to mention job security. “Don’t touch anything unless you’re cleaning it,” she would remind Grizzy before each cleaning job. “And don’t look at anybody or get in anybody’s way.” In her mother’s eyes, her employers already knew everything they needed to know about her just from her occupation, so why open your mouth and confirm it? Just shut up and do your job.
Despite the friendly greetings, Grizzy still felt like they were judging her by her appearance and skin color, so she continued to distract them from asking her (and likely affirming their guesses about) what she did for a living.
That’s when the piano saved her. It was the opening glissando to Rhapsody In Blue, but to Grizzy, it was just the dazzling sound of accomplished musicianship. It gave her goosebumps, but she was surprised to see that the music appeared inconsequential to many of the others in attendance, as if they walked around all day to the sounds of Gershwin. Pianos are for gringos! Maybe they were used to it, but Grizzy was spellbound. She moved through the crowd to see who was playing, but it was difficult to tell who was at the piano because it was crowded and the man at the piano was facing the other way, manipulating the grand instrument with his masterful hands, while the tails of his tailcoat dangled over the back of the piano bench.
“Griselda!” shouted Rita Fortuna, tugging at her arm.
“Yes?” asked Griselda.
“Run and grab me a ginger ale.”