Page 33 of The Giver of Stars
‘Hey, girls?’ said Alice, when she had got her giggles under control. ‘What would you do, if you could do anything you wanted?’
‘Sort out this library,’ muttered Sophia.
‘I’m serious. If you could do anything, be anything, what would you do?’
‘I’d travel the world,’ said Beth, who had made herself a backrest of books, and was now making armrests to go with it. ‘I’d go to India and Africa and Europe and maybe Egypt and have me a little look around. I got no plans to stay around here my whole life. My brothers’ll have me minding my pa till he’s dribblin’. I want to see the Taj Mahal and the Great Wall of China and that place where they build little round huts out of ice blocks and a whole bunch of other places in the encyclopaedias. I was going to say I’d go to England and meet the king and queen but we got Alice so we don’t need to.’ The other women started to laugh.
‘Izzy?’
‘Oh, it’s crazy.’
‘Crazier than Beth and her Taj Mahals?’
‘Go on,’ said Alice, nudging her.
‘I’d … well, I’d be a singer,’ said Izzy. ‘I’d sing on the wireless, or on a gramophone record. Like Dorothy Lamour or …’ she glanced towards Sophia, who made a decent fist of not raising her eyebrows too far ‘… Billie Holiday.’
‘Surely your daddy could fix that for you. He knows everyone, don’t he?’ said Beth.
Izzy looked suddenly uncomfortable. ‘People like me don’t become singers.’
‘Why?’ said Margery. ‘You can’t sing?’
‘That’ll do it,’ said Beth.
‘You know what I mean.’
Margery shrugged. ‘Last time I looked you didn’t need your leg to sing.’
‘But people wouldn’t listen. They’d be too busy staring at my brace.’
‘Oh, don’t flatter yourself, Izzy girl. Enough people got leg braces and whatnot around here. Or just …’ she paused ‘… wear a long dress.’
‘What do you sing, Miss Izzy?’ said Sophia, who was arranging spines into alphabetical order.
Izzy had sobered. Her skin was a little flushed. ‘Oh, I like hymns, bluegrass, blues, anything, really. I even tried a little opera once.’
‘Well, you got to sing now,’ said Beth, lighting a cigarette and blowing on her fingers when the match burned too low. ‘Come on, girl, show us what you got.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Izzy. ‘I only really sing for myself.’
‘That’s going to be some pretty empty concert hall, then,’ said Beth.
Izzy looked at them. Then she pushed herself up onto her feet. She took a shaky breath, and then she began:
‘My sweetheart’s murmurs turned to dust
All tender kisses turned to rust
I’ll hold him in my heart though he be far
And turn my love to a midnight star.’
Her eyes closed, her voice filled the little room, soft and mellifluous, as if it had been dipped in honey. Izzy, right in front of them, began to change into someone quite new, her torso extending, her mouth opening wider to reach the notes. She was somewhere quite distant now, somewhere beloved to her. Beth rocked gently and began to smile. It stretched across her face – pure, unclouded delight at thisunexpected turn of events. She let out a ‘Hell, yes!’ as if she couldn’t contain it. And then, after a moment, Sophia, as if compelled by an impulse she could barely control, began to join in, her own voice deeper, tracing the path of Izzy’s and complementing it. Izzy opened her eyes and the two women smiled at each other as they sang, their voices lifting, their bodies swaying in time with the beat, and the air in the little library lifted with them.
‘Its light is distant but it warms me still
I’m a million miles from heaven but I’ll wait here till
