"Nina Kiriki Hoffman - The World Within" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Nina Kiriki)

"I don't know," Aria said. Books fluttered from the shelf, thumping on the rug,
each thump a punctuation.

Mrs. Bridge turned and watched the books, which thumped down, jumped on end,
thumped down again, stacked themselves.

Mother's hands were clutched so tight about her tea cup the knuckles showed
white. Her mouth was open and her eyes stared, but not at the books or anything
in the room. Aria had seen her go to this not-here place before, some evenings
when Pell was louder and more irritating than usual. Never before with company
right in the room.

"Who knows what you want?" Mrs. Bridge asked, watching the books. The books
opened and clapped loudly in a chorus.

"Who cares what I want?" Aria said. Why was Mrs. Bridge asking questions? Why
wasn't she screaming out the door as others had done before her? How could she
just sit there and watch the books dance, as though she saw such things every
day?

The books fell to the floor as if they had never been animated.

"I, for one, would like to know," said Mrs. Bridge.

What do I want? Aria wondered. She glanced around the apartment. The records --
all her mother's. No CDs here. No money for them, no desire for them -- at
least, her mother had no desire for them. The fragments of tunes and songs Aria
heard from other apartments in the building, from boom boxes and car windows and
the windows of houses Aria walked past on her way to schoool, the "new music"
her mother said was not music, all these scraps of sound called to Aria.
Everyone else knows my language, music sang, and you, you are not allowed to
hear and learn it.

She thought of sitting in the music room and pounding on a wood block while the
other children had instruments to play. She had talked to Mr. Steel about
renting an instrument. A clarinet, she thought, a tone like melted butter, a
range from the stars above to the bottom of the sea. But her mother had only a
little money, and none for things like instrument rental.

"You are your instrument," Mother would say. "Take care of your voice. Train it.
Use it. Sing this chorus again." Sheet music from a thrift store, words whose
meaning Aria did not know but whose sound she learned from listening to the
records. She practiced half an hour every afternoon, when she came home from
school and before most of the people in neighboring apartments came home from
work. She didn't want anyone to hear her. She was afraid of her voice. Sometimes
when she sang it got loud. It got away from her. It soared, carrying the tune.

She would sing for her mother in the evenings, trying to keep her voice softer
than it wanted to be. Her mother would listen and smile.