Wait for It

Darlene Eliot

You went up too soon. Now you’re stuck with your feet dangling from the piano bench, your ribbons and ruffly dress in the spotlight, your toes scrunched and curled in your shiny black shoes. All because you wouldn’t wait your turn. Because you forgot what the lady with the scratchy voice and the chains hanging from her glasses told you to do when you walked past the statues and the seats with your Mom: Don’t go up until we tell you to.
          But you got scared and marched up the steps before the skinny kid in the bowtie could walk behind the curtain and the judges could pick a number for his halting Ode to Joy. And the scratchy voice stopped you before you played four keys. And the ping pong ball in your chest dropped all the way to your stomach and bounced against the walls. So, you pulled back and folded your hands and pressed them into your stomach. And you almost cried, but stopped so you could still get McDonald’s and watch TV on school nights with your Mom and Dad and your Barbies.
          The keys start to blur. And you blink. And blink. And blink. Like the time you froze when you could have slammed the kickball and brought everybody home, but the bases and the pitcher and all of home plate blurred. And everything was quiet, except the pounding in your ears. Like here. Right now. With the heat in your cheeks. You turn your head, but the light’s too bright to see your Mom. Are you supposed to play? Or stop? Right now? Play? You unfold your hands and lean forward, fingers ready, your chest full of cymbals and horns and wide-open windows. Then you hear a scratchy voice, softer than before, like a sprinkle of marshmallows in hot chocolate. You lean forward, your fingers on the keys. All right, the voice says. You may begin.

Darlene Eliot’s fiction has appeared in Epiphany Magazine, BULL, New Flash Fiction Review, Does It Have Pockets, Bellingham Review, and elsewhere. She lives in California.

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