Work Text:
As long as Sparrow could remember, music had been a part of the Oak-Garcia family home.
Father sang them lullabies to go to sleep every night, ever since they were babies. In the morning, when they woke up, their parents would already be playing music in the kitchen as they got breakfasts and lunches ready. And Sparrow started learning piano at age 5, as did Lark. Neither of them kept up with it very well, of course, because getting them to sit still for more than ten minutes to practice was a superhuman feat. But they learned.
Then, of course, there was Mami. Mami ran a classical music radio station, so obviously she was always playing a wide variety of classical, orchestral, instrumental music around the house. She played it while she cooked, she played it while she cleaned, she played it when Sparrow was trying to watch makeup tutorials on YouTube—they would often crank the volume over each other, competing to hear Bach or Michelle Phan, Chopin or NikkiTutorials, until Lark became overwhelmed and yelled at them to stop.
But occasionally, just a few times a year, when she finally had a little extra time, Mami pulled out her cello.
When Sparrow heard the telltale hollow, woody-metal sound of his mamá pulling the endpin out of her cello, he stopped whatever he was doing to crack the door of his bedroom open. He listened as she tuned the instrument, which was multiple notes out of tune after being tucked away in a case in the closet for months. But even the way his mamá set up and tuned her cello was beautiful to Sparrow. She tightened the hairs on her bow, cut off the stray ones that had broken off due to disuse.
Sparrow wandered into the hall and peeked around the corner to watch as Mami rosined up the bow, gentle puffs of the chalky material swirling in the sunlight streaming through the window. Then she slipped the bow onto the seat of the chair behind her while she plucked the strings of the cello, adjusting the big knobs at the top of the instrument to tighten and loosen them until the sound was within the right range of the note she wanted. Once that was done, Mami scooted up to the edge of the chair, situated the cello against her body, and set the bow to strings.
This was Sparrow’s favorite part of the preparation process. Mami played the open strings, letting their pure sounds reverberate through the dark wooden body of the cello and out into the room, enveloping the whole house with gorgeous, full notes. To tune the instrument more precisely, she reached over her bow with her left hand and adjusted the tiny little screws under the bridge. Mami had perfect pitch after working with music for so long, but she still used what she told Sparrow were “harmonic” notes to tune the strings perfectly to each other. This was when she simply placed one finger of her left hand in a specific spot along the middle of a string, and it played a beautifully clear note. The harmonic on the C string matched the G string, the harmonic on the G string matched the D string, and the harmonic on the D string matched the A string. C, G, D, A. Sparrow remembered the order.
After this, Mami always started with scales. Sparrow swore she could go straight into a concerto if she wanted to, but she insisted on warming up before diving into something more musical. As boring as these were, Sparrow didn’t mind them so much when Mami played them. She held the bow like it was as light as a feather, each knuckle of her fingers bent beautifully around the decorative handle. She moved the long beam back and forth across the strings with a fluidity that was mesmerizing to watch, always keeping it parallel to the bridge. Sparrow wondered how she did it—how she kept the bow so straight, how she could change the direction of movement without the slightest hitch in the sound. She had incredible control over the bow as if it was simply an extension of herself.
Father and Mami were so often running around from place to place, taking Sparrow and his brother to and from school, soccer practice, taekwondo. They both worked on top of that, and had hobbies to maintain what they called a “work-life balance.” While they made it all work, they would often stumble through their days until they collapsed into bed, get up in the morning, and do it all over again. As Sparrow grew older, he recognized that his parents’ lives were actually pretty chaotic.
But when Mami decided to take out her cello, she became an ethereal being. Angelic. She teleported into this timeless void, where there was nothing but her and the music, where she was the epitome of grace and poise, where all of her responsibilities faded away and she could express herself through song.
Mami told Sparrow once that the cello was the closest instrument to the human voice; that’s why people loved it so much. Sparrow believed that to this day. The cello sounded like his mamá’s voice in a way he couldn’t quite explain. The emotion and movement with which she played each note rang out like a cry or a laugh or a scream. Sparrow noticed that his mamá tended to gravitate toward her cello when she had had a particularly challenging week at work, when it rained, or when she was thinking about Sparrow and Lark’s late Abuela. She went to her instrument when she didn’t have words for what she was feeling—which wasn’t often. Mami and Father always, almost annoyingly so, had words for what they were feeling.
Sparrow didn’t know what Mami was thinking about on this particular day. Maybe she would tell him later, or maybe she wouldn’t. But maybe, just maybe, he would be able to discover what was on her mind through her music.
Mami finished up with her scales, and Sparrow started vibrating with excitement. He knew what came next.
Saint-Saëns.
The first G of Le Cygne rang out, and Mami was off. Her eyelids fluttered shut and her body swayed with the cello as she played the beautiful tune, maybe Sparrow’s favorite piece of music he’d ever heard—but only when she played it. The recordings he’d found just weren’t the same as listening to Mami’s cello sing that elegant swan song. Maybe it was the rarity with which he got to hear it. Maybe it was simply that she was his mamá, so it was personal. No matter what it was, Sparrow was certain Mami was the best cellist in the world.
Le Cygne built, faded softer, crescendoed again. Mami’s left arm shook back and forth with a most brilliant vibrato as she coaxed a flawless melody from her instrument. The top note, that fantastically long B, always made Sparrow’s heart soar and his breath stop.
And then, too soon, the song was over.
While Mami’s first song was always Le Cygne, the next was always a toss-up. Sparrow waited for her to begin.
Mami sucked in a big breath and crunched the bow to two strings at once, playing a loud first chord. Oh. Elgar.
That meant Mami was feeling something big today. Big emotions called for big songs, and Elgar allowed her to leave everything out in the open.
Sparrow must have gasped out loud, because Mami opened her eyes and turned her gaze toward her boy hiding in the doorframe of the hallway.
“Mi cielo,” she said, lifting her bow from the strings. Sparrow’s face fell.
“Is something wrong?”
“No, Mami.”
His mamá smiled softly. “Did you want to listen?”
Sparrow nodded.
“Then come in, mi amor. You won’t be a bother.”
Sparrow walked into the room and sat in a chair across from his mamá. She closed her eyes, breathed in her cello a few times, and then lowered her bow onto the now white, dusty metal strings and began playing again.
Sparrow didn’t know what was bothering his mamá today, didn’t know why she needed Elgar’s concerto. Maybe she would tell him later, maybe she wouldn’t. But maybe, just maybe, he would be able to discover what was on her mind through her music, through the way the spot in between her eyebrows creased when she hit a high note, through the way her chest expanded in grandiose physical expressions of the song.
And if he couldn’t figure out what Mami was feeling, Sparrow was okay with that. Sometimes, he was learning (as was his father), there simply weren’t words for your feelings. The feeling he experienced now, for example, was one he couldn’t put into words. All he knew was that he would poke his head into the music room every time Mami decided to pull out her violonchelo.