She Walks in Shadows(70)

“Are you on the staff now?”

“I’m retired,” Circe said. “Had a stroke couple of years back.”

“How sad,” the security guard said. “But if you want to practice here, you need to get a sticker on your ID, like everyone else.”

“Come on.” Circe pointed at the empty rooms. “No one is practicing here now. I just wanted to test out my vocal chords. The doctors say I need intellectual stimulation.”

The guard repeated herself and made it a point to help out Circe with her wheelchair. She grabbed the older woman’s arm.

Circe finally sat down, biting her lip. Visions of pigs and flashing, sting-angry red swirled around in her head, and her fingers crackled with energy.

“Could you wheel me to the bus stop?” she asked. “It’s such a long distance from here.”



In the old days, sting-angry would turn a foolish mortal into a pig. The lady had flicked her fingers several times, so the colors would fly out and drown men while they were eating, until their skin sagged and hung out to dry off round, stupid faces.

Then rocks crashed onto barren earth and exploded in various shades of orange, indigo and yellow. Sting-angry red concentrated in pink flesh, writhing against wilted bones and helpless eyes. Power trapped within a stupid form.

Wait, vengeance. Wait. Colors released soon.



Much later, Circe slipped into the auditorium office, and met with the graduate students there. They remembered her and gave her a sticker for her ID. It was a small, green sticker with the school year listed on it.

“You should practice on Fridays,” her old student Sylvie said. “That’s when the nice security guard Toby comes. He loves hearing people perform. All the newbie guards act more stuckup.”

“Must be part of their training,” Circe joked.

“Oh, yeah. They’re mainly night students who think they can get a degree by doing less work.” Sylvie scowled. “Usually a bunch of ghetto dudes who are compensating for something.”

“I took night classes,” Circe said. “When I first got married. That was the only way that I could get my degree, having to work another job.”

Sylvie immediately backtracked and apologized, but there was nothing to forgive. She had innocent eyes, despite her encounters with harsh reality and having to battle extreme stage fright. Circe had mentored Sylvie for two years.

She straightened up in her wheelchair. Her posture had always been good, even for a singer. She had never had intense back pains, not like her friends who spent their days sitting in front of computers.

“Do you think I could try out my voice on you?” she asked. “It’s been too long and I don’t want to go all the way back to the practice room.”

“Of course.” Sylvie stood back a few paces, to give her old teacher room.

Circe drew in a deep breath. She made sure that her diaphragm expanded and contracted; at least the stroke hadn’t affected that part of her body. Her throat throbbed with anticipation. She heard the accompaniment in her head, a gentle-but-fast piano tune:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion,

shout, O daughter of Jerusalem,

behold, thy King cometh unto thee.

She felt the years peel off her as if they were bits of old skin, the deeper that she dug into the tune. Her gray hair seemed to curl at the ends, as if she had just gotten a permanent. Circe hadn’t gone to a stylist since her stroke and kept her hair at a short, curly bob.

He is the righteous Saviour,

and He shall speak peace unto the heathen.

Sylvie watched as Circe managed to stand, so that she could give her lungs more air, the much-needed air that they deserved for doing a good job. Her voice sounded powerful against the still, stale air in the office, defiance against Grandmother Time and what lay beyond wrinkles and wheelchairs.

“Rejoice, rejoice,” she trilled, letting the notes sail up and down. “Rejoice, greatly.”

As she dived into the repeated phrases, about the King coming to Jerusalem, the linoleum floor seemed to harden into polished wood and the plain white walls fluttered into curtains. Circe was onstage, dressed in a wine-red dress and belting against an orchestra. There was one year when they had done an experimental song cycle based on a novel about ancient Greece and she had volunteered her services when the tenor had fallen ill.

Splatter splash, exile in Rome, wailing purple in mourning, the black in the water —

Circe stopped. She took a moment, to let her vision return to normal, and then sat back in her wheelchair. There was a heavy thud from that, as if she weighed five hundred pounds.

“I don’t know how you do it,” Sylvie gushed, after a few moments of silence. “How do you do it so effortlessly, remembering to have fun and all?”

“If I didn’t sing, I would die,” Circe responded, breathing in hard. “Making an effort is much less dire than testing my body, so I have to belt out when I can.”

She coughed a bit. Sylvie looked startled and then concerned.

“Are you okay, ma’am? Do you need help?”

“No,” Circe wheezed. She fumbled and found her inhaler. “Bad lungs, from years of smoking.”

“You smoked?” Sylvie sounded horrified. “But you’re a singer!”

“Tell me about it,” Circe wheezed, after she gave herself several puffs. “At the time, my voice wasn’t giving out, so I thought I’d be fine. It was a hard habit to kick, but I had to. I got pregnant.”