Chapter Text
When Andrea is seven, she hears Buddy Rich play for the first time.
In their Friday afternoon music class at school, they are learning about different musical genres. Their teacher, Ms. Gilpin, starts with rock and pop and country before moving on to more alien territories.
Mozart is their introduction to classical music. The song Ms. Gilpin plays for them is bright and crisp. As she’s listening to it, Andrea has the sensation of flying, skimming lightly across the surface of a lake made of pink bubbles. This is the picture she draws when Ms. Gilpin hands them white sheets of paper and crayons and requests that they sketch out how the music made them feel. A couple of the other students snicker at her picture when she stands up to explain it.
Ms. Gilpin takes the drawing from her and says, “This is perfect, Andrea. Well done.”
Emily Morton jabs Andrea with a pencil when she sits down. Her father has told her to ignore Emily, so this is what she does. She gets jabbed six more times before Emily gets bored. Andrea ends up with an eraser-shaped bruise on her arm.
After everyone has explained their pictures, there are still five minutes left in class. Ms. Gilpin drums her fingers against the CD player and then says, “Do you guys want to hear my favorite?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, just slides in another CD and presses play.
“This is Rhapsody in Blue,” she says, and then the song starts, and it burns brilliant patterns of color inside Andrea’s head.
The bell rings, and their teacher, Mrs. Harris, returns to the classroom signaling the end of music class and the end of the school day. The other children grab their backpacks and hurry (“walk, please” Mrs. Harris says “James, Katie, Ari that means you, too”) out into the hallway. Andrea doesn’t move from her desk.
“Andrea,” Mrs. Harris says. “Your dad is going to be waiting for you outside.”
“I want to hear the rest,” Andrea says, voice barely audible. “Please.”
“Sorry,” Ms. Gilpin says. “This is my fault. I started a piece, and we didn’t have time to finish. I don’t mind staying with her.”
“All right. I’ll let her dad know where she is,” Mrs. Harris says.
Ms. Gilpin restarts the song and comes to sit beside Andrea, perching on top of one of the desks. When it’s over, Andrea asks, “Why is it your favorite?”
“That’s a good question,” Ms. Gilpin says. “I suppose it’s because it was my mother’s favorite. And it makes me feel happy. Why do you like it?”
Andrea thinks. “It feels like fireworks,” she says.
Ms. Gilpin smiles. “That sounds about right.”
Andrea’s dad arrives. He apologizes to Ms. Gilpin while Andrea is gathering all her worksheets and folders and cramming them into her backpack.
On the ride home, Andrea can only talk about Rhapsody in Blue. The next afternoon a CD (Great Performances: Gershwin) waits on her bed. She finds her dad in his office and thanks him. “I thought you might like it,” he says. She doesn’t listen to anything else for two weeks.
Then, Ms. Gilpin introduces them to jazz.
She starts up a song she says is called Caravan and hands them crayons and paper again. The song starts, and there is no way Andrea can draw what she feels. Jazz lights fires under her skin and beats wildly in her blood.
She has nothing to show when they go around the room to describe their pictures.
“How come she didn’t have to draw anything?” Emily Morton asks.
“Sometimes you can’t put into words—or pictures—what you feel,” Ms. Gilpin says.
“Cheater,” Emily mutters to Andrea’s back.
Ms. Gilpin asks Andrea to stay after class.
“It’s okay that you couldn’t draw anything,” she says. “I don’t know if I could either. All music is great. But jazz is the best. For me, it’s the best.”
Ms. Gilpin sends her home with CDs, and Andrea absorbs Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and John Coltrane and Dave Brubeck and Miles Davis.
But when she hears Buddy Rich she knows, she knows she has to play the drums.
She approaches her dad on a Sunday afternoon. “I would like a drum set, please” she says. She had rehearsed this request multiple times in her head, and, now, hearing it out loud, it still sounds perfectly reasonable.
Her dad looks up from the paper he is grading. “You just started piano lessons.”
“I want to play the drums now,” she says.
“Andrea,” he says. “Are you sure? I don’t want to get them and then have you decide you’re bored with them a month later.”
“I won’t get bored with them,” she says. “I promise.”
Her dad sighs.
“Please, dad. I promise I’ll play them forever.”
He thinks, tapping his pen on the table. “Can you wait until your birthday?”
Her birthday is in one month. “Yes,” she says. “I can wait.”
On the calendar in her room, she writes the words “drum set” on her birthday in purple ink.
Early in the morning, the day she turns eight, she runs out of her bedroom to the living room, and there, sitting by the window are her drums. She runs her fingers over every inch of them and thinks “mine, mine, mine.”
That evening, her aunt, uncle, and cousins come over for dinner.
When Uncle Frank sees the drum set in the living room, he looks at Andrea’s dad and says, “Really, Jim? And I’m sure you’re going to waste money on lessons, too.”
Andrea watches her dad’s face tighten. “Not now,” he says. He takes the cake from Aunt Emma’s hands and walks into the kitchen.
Travis comes over to the set and runs his fingers across the cymbal, creating a shivery, silvery sound. He turns to Andrea and says, “Girls can’t play the drums.”
Andrea frowns. “Why?” she asks.
Travis shrugs. “Because they can’t. Only boys can.”
Dustin chimes in. “Yeah. Only boys can.”
Later, she asks her father about this. He tells her that girls can do anything boys can do. This answer is not satisfactory, so after music class on Friday, she asks Ms. Gilpin.
“Wait a minute,” Ms. Gilpin says. She opens up a CD case and slides out a disc. “This is Terri Lyne Carrington. Listen to her, and tell me what you think about girls playing the drums.”
Andrea listens. She decides her cousins are liars.
The year Andrea turns thirteen, she has a growth spurt. She is suddenly the tallest person in her class. She does her best to make herself smaller, slouching when sitting and hunching her shoulders forward when standing.
The only time she ever sits up straight is when she’s practicing. She can focus only on the color and substance of the rhythms and forget about the fact that her limbs look too long for her body and that none of her clothes fit right anymore. She can forget that her body has betrayed her so completely.
It is maddening when she is forced to stop.
Her father is the one who is continually interrupting her, calling her down for dinner, reminding her that she does still have homework, asking her if she wants to see a movie, telling her that if she doesn’t do the chores that she was supposed to do, she won’t be allowed to practice for a week. She doesn’t hate her father. She just considers him one of a long line of annoyances that prevent her from doing as she pleases.
He calls her down to help with dinner on Saturday. She bangs out one last, loud crash on the cymbals before leaving her room.
She is in the middle of putting out silverware when the doorbell rings. “Andrea, could you get that?” her dad calls from the kitchen. She sighs, dumps her handful of forks on to the table, and trudges to the door.
The first thing her uncle says when he sees her is “Good God, Andy, how tall are you going to grow?” as if he hadn’t seen her two weeks ago. She hates being called Andy.
Her aunt hugs her and briefly fingers the cuff of her shirt.
The dinner conversation, as always, floats around Andrea but does not touch her. Because she is not required to participate, her mind returns to the charts she was learning. With her hands hidden under the table, she mimes out the hits and whispers the rhythms to herself.
“What are you doing?” Travis says, and then everyone is looking at her.
“Nothing,” she says, placing her hands back on top of the table.
“You’re so weird,” he says.
“Travis,” Aunt Emma says.
“Dinner tonight interrupted her practice,” her dad says.
Andrea is almost sure these words are meant as a defense. They sound like an apology.
After dinner, her uncle and cousins migrate to the living room because there is some game on. “You don’t mind, do you, Jim?” Uncle Frank had asked. It was clear he already knew the answer since Travis had turned on the TV, and Dustin had made himself comfortable on the couch. Andrea can hear them shouting (“what kind of call is that?” “the refs are totally bought”) while she is picking plates up off the table.
Her dad and Aunt Emma are in the kitchen. They are talking about her.
“She’s going to be tall,” Aunt Emma says. “But Victoria was tall, wasn’t she?”
“Yep,” her dad says. “Victoria was… tall.”
“Andrea needs new clothes,” Aunt Emma says.
“I know. I just don’t…” He stops. “She’s thirteen now, Emma.”
“Jim,” Aunt Emma says. “You just had to ask. I can take her shopping. Next Saturday maybe?”
“Yes, okay,” he says. “Thank you.”
This is how Andrea ends up being dragged all over the mall by her aunt.
Aunt Emma pulls sweaters and shirts and jeans from the racks. In the dressing rooms, Andrea slides on clothing and looks at herself in the mirror. She studies herself from the front and then from the side. She tries to feel at home in her own limbs. She frowns at her reflection and tears the clothing off.
Since none of the clothing makes her feel pretty, she goes for the next best option: clothing that will make her invisible. Aunt Emma does not question any of her choices. She does, however, purchase one red sweater. It lives its life at the back of Andrea’s closet.
Once Andrea has four bags filled with clothing (and one with shoes), she assumes they are done, but Aunt Emma says, “You should have some makeup.”
So, Andrea sits on a white chair while a girl buzzes around her talking about skin tones. Creams are slathered on her face and her eyelids. Lip gloss and mascara are applied with precision. The girl hands Andrea a mirror. Andrea looks like a drawing of herself, a glossy imitation created by someone who only had a vague sense of what her face is supposed to look like.
“What do you think?” the girl asks.
Andrea nods.
She goes home with a small bag that contains tiny boxes filled with tiny tubes of shiny substances that she will never use.
Andrea thinks of the girls who arrive at school, their hair glistening and straight, lips perfectly pink. “It’s kind of stupid,” she says.
“What is?” Aunt Emma asks.
“Putting on all this stuff just so guys will look at you,” Andrea says.
“That’s true. But that’s not the only reason to wear it,” Aunt Emma says.
“What other reason is there?” Andrea asks.
Aunt Emma pauses and then says, “It gives you the option of putting on a face and being someone else.”
Andrea doesn’t want to be herself, but she doesn’t want to be anyone else either.
She washes off all the makeup as soon as she gets in the house.
Her calendar has become a series of color-coded deadlines. Julliard (in blue) requires their prescreening materials by December 1. So does Eastman (in green) and Berklee (in yellow). Oberlin (in purple), the New England Conservatory (in black), and Shaffer (in red) require their materials by December 15. All the money she earned over the summer goes to application fees. The recording she creates with her instructor, Mr. Henry, is actually fairly decent.
She still gets rejected. Eastman is first. Then Berklee. Then Oberlin.
Her dad, she thinks, becomes more cheerful with every rejection email that comes in. Especially since she’s already received early admittance to Rutgers, Barnard, and NYU.
“They do still have music programs, Andrea,” he says.
“Not real music programs,” she says.
“Well, how many applications do you still have out?” he asks.
“Three,” she says. “But I’m not getting into Shaffer.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Dad,” Andrea says. “I’m not getting into Shaffer.”
The New England Conservatory and Julliard reject her the same week. When she gets home from her lesson on Thursday, she sees that her dad has left a printout describing Rutgers’s music department on her desk. There’s a sticky note attached that reads “take a look.” She wants to trash the papers but doesn’t. She ends up looking up their faculty. It’s really not a bad program and, anyway, who says that you have to go to a top program to get the attention of Lincoln Center? (Everyone. Everyone says this.)
But then there’s an email from Shaffer. She gets as far as the dates for auditions before she realizes what she’s reading. After taking a wild, bounding leap on to her bed (and nearly braining herself against the wall), she writes a reply.
She pounds down the stairs when her dad arrives home. He looks at her and says, “Good news?”
“Shaffer,” she says. “I got an audition. It’s in March. They’re going to send me a date. And a time. And I need to call Mr. Henry. Because I probably need extra lessons between now and then.”
Her dad stares at her.
“It’s Shaffer, Dad.”
“Yeah,” he says. He shakes his head then smiles and pulls her into a hug. “Congratulations! That’s amazing.”
“It’s not a guarantee or anything. They could hear me and still hate me,” she says.
“They wouldn’t hate you,” her dad corrects. “They might not like your drumming.”
“Yeah. Sure,” she says. “But I have a chance, and that’s what matters, right?”
“Absolutely,” he says. “But just out of curiosity, when do you have to let NYU know?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “April, I think. Why?”
“Just something to keep in mind,” he says.
Andrea feels her smile drip from her face. “You’re not happy,” she says.
“No. That’s not it,” he says. He places a hand on her shoulder. “I just want you to keep your options open.”
She shakes him off. “If I get into Shaffer, that’s where I’m going,” she says.
“Of course,” he says. “But even you said that there’s no guarantee that you’ll actually get in.”
Andrea has a sudden vision of the future her dad imagines for her. It is safe and practical. It is getting a useful degree and meeting a nice guy and getting a house and having a kid. It is boring as hell.
“The auditions will either be on the first or the second of March,” she says. “They’re going to send me an official time and date next week. I can take the bus into the city. I just thought you should know.”
“Andrea,” her dad says.
She goes back upstairs.
She schedules four extra lessons with Mr. Henry. Her last lesson is the night before her audition. He tells her that she’s as prepared as she’s going to get.
He also tells her this: “Other people will get into Shaffer because their auditions are good. But for you to get in, you’re going to have to be great. You’re going to have to be the best.”
She nods and wonders why everyone seems to think that good drumming necessitates having a dick.
Her audition is at ten thirty in the morning. Her dad drives her to the bus stop. When they arrive, she tries to climb out of the car before her dad can say anything. He stops her, wrapping his hand around her forearm.
“Wait, Andrea. Wait,” he says.
“What? The bus is going to be here any minute,” she says.
“I know,” he says. “Let me know when you get into the city.”
“Okay,” she says.
“Your aunt will be picking you up when you get back, so make sure that you tell her when you’re going to get in.”
“Okay,” she says.
“And let me know how the audition goes,” he says. “You’re going to do great.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” She slams the car door shut.
She arrives at the school thirty minutes early. There are other applicants wandering around. The only other drummers she sees are guys. She sits down and looks at her charts again. A female trumpet player sits down beside her. Andrea can feel her fidgeting. She taps Andrea’s arm. Andrea glances over at her.
“Hey,” the girl says.
“Hey,” Andrea replies.
“So, like total sausage fest, right?” she says.
“Sure.”
“Someone told me that being a girl works to my advantage. Like an affirmative action kind of thing.”
“Okay,” Andrea says.
“I mean, you’re a fucking drummer. You’re probably like one of five girls auditioning. If you don’t get in you could probably sue for discrimination or some shit.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
It is a relief when they finally call her in. They ask her to play three pieces rather than two. She doesn’t know if this is a bad sign or not. When they thank her at the end of the audition, she says “you’re welcome” like an idiot. A woman on the panel smirks. Andrea scurries from the room.
She crams all of her stuff back in her bag and looks around for a bathroom. She locks herself in a stall and throws up twice.
Once she’s headed out of the city, she checks her phone. There is one message from her aunt (“I hope everything went well. Let me know when you need me to pick you up!”) and one from her dad (“I know it went great, but I wouldn’t mind getting a text telling me so. Love you”). She texts her aunt her arrival time. She starts a message to her dad but doesn’t send it.
She watches recordings of Terri Lyne Carrington the rest of the way home.