Page 47 of When Worlds Collide
“Ah. I play clarinet.” He shrugged.
“You play the clarinet?” I exclaimed.
“Hey! Careful,” he scolded me, gripping my ankle tightly and holding it safely out of the way of my other foot. “This is art.” He tapped my foot, and I went back to reclining.
“I didn’t know that.”
He hummed. “I also took violin lessons, but I wasn’t very good. My teacher did not like me.” He smirked at some remembered incident.
“Why?”
“She caught me trying to pluck it like a guitar.” He mimed holding a violin, but strumming it. He screwed his face up and jerked his head around, as if he were an 80’s head-banger, and I burst out laughing. He stopped, shaking his head to flip his hair out of his face and shot me the kind of grin that I imagined would have gotten him out of all sorts of trouble at school.
As soon as that thought entered my mind, another rode in on its heels, a curiosity that had simmered in the back of my mind.
“Why did your parents send you to New York? Was it just because they didn’t want you to pursue being a singer?”
Immediately, the smiled slipped from his face, but he didn’t dismiss the question outright.
“That was part of it,” he says slowly. “When the scouts held open auditions in the city, they would not let me go. I think they knew I would have gone anyway,” he huffed a small laugh. “So, they left me with my halmeoni for the weekend. She lived alone, so they thought I would not go and leave her.”
“What happened?”
“My halmeoni took me,” he chuckled as he continued. “She waited in line with me all day. It was so hot, but we waited for hours, and ate flavoured ice cones to cool down.”
“What happened at the audition?”
“They rejected me.”
“What!”
“Hey, stop squirming.” He lightly flicked my toe. “Like trying to put polish on a squid.” He tutted, holding firmly onto my foot.
“I’m nearly done,” he said, holding my gaze, “if you promise to not move, I will tell you the rest of the story.”
Contritely, I nodded.
“Okay. The scouts did not like me.” He shrugged. “I did not sing as well as I could. I was nervous. I was only eleven. My voice…” he gestured vaguely at his throat, “I was young.” I stifled a laugh.
“What happened with your parents? Did they find out?”
He made a noise that was somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. “That is when they decided to send me to New York.”
I couldn’t imagine it. I didn’t know his folks, and I didn’t want to unfairly judge them on a situation I wasn’t there for, but I just could not wrap my head around the idea of sending my eleven-year-old away because of a dream they wanted to follow, even if I didn’t agree with it.
I kept my mouth closed but–
“I can see what you’re thinking, jagiya,” he said. “You think so loud, it wakes me up in the night.” His tone was firm, but his face was anything but as he looked up at me, eyes soft.
“It wasn’t just that,” he continued. “They wanted to move abroad for business. This was a convenient excuse.”
He paused for just a second too long, and I watched, mesmerised at the play of emotions as they crossed his face.
“I wanted to stay with my halmeoni, but they said she was too old. I think they believed America would be the best opportunity for me. To learn English, to see more of my family, and yes – to forget all about being a performer.” His lips twisted in a wry smile. “That did not work.”
I was beginning to see a familial pattern… “Was your uncle…”
He nodded. “My uncle – my imo – was halmeoni’s second son. My father’s brother. He felt the same as she did. He also believed I should be allowed to follow my dream.”
