The Scottish Exodus

The Stick Dropper: A Remembrance Dedicated to St. Angela, Patroness of Arcane Ecclesiastical Instruments

I was nine when my sister Angela started first grade, and my mother instructed me—very sternly, —to wait for her each day after school by the bike rack so we could walk home together. It was the supposed to be the safety-in-numbers philosophy in action, but I could’ve been kidnapped and missing for 48 hours or walked the entire 4 blocks home three times in the time it took Angela to put all the worksheets and parent notices in her backpack, zip up her coat and put on her mittens, and dawdle out the first-grade classroom door. She was as slow as a 100-year-old tortoise dragging itself out of a bog. It was agony waiting for her, sitting on the bike rack with no more bikes or kids unlocking their bikes— 3:15 PM, those kids would all be home now, eating fruit roll-ups and watching cartoons, bikes safely parked in the garage.

I wanted to get home as fast as possible so I could rush through my math homework—long division doesn’t need double checking-- and then watch TV until dinnertime. My favorite shows, re-runs of What’s Happening and Good Times, came on just at the tail end of the cartoons. The longer I waited for Angela, the more evident it became that she was sabotaging my plan for a stress-free afternoon sitting on the sofa chewing leftover pieces of Halloween candy and laughing at The Chipmunks. At this point, I entertained violent thoughts of what I’d do or say when Angela finally stood in front of me ready to walk home. Then I’d see her, finally, a few feet away, doing the special walk that made her pigtails bounce, and I’d feel horrendously guilty for thinking of killing her five minutes earlier. Angela was a total slowpoke, and it was irritating. She was also missing her two front teeth and was mischievously cute.

“Come on!” I’d say, tugging the sleeve of her lavender corduroy coat, “Mom’s gonna be mad that we’re late!” But our mom really wouldn’t be mad because she knew Angela was always the last one out of the school; I just tried to make Angela think she’d be mad so I could make her walk faster. From this I learned that Angela wasn’t bothered compromising someone else’s social plans—even if they only involved hurrying home to watch T.V.—and that the threat of Mom’s fiery anger as a result of our tardiness did not incite any feelings of fear on her part. So then I tried something else: I ran half a block ahead of her thinking that it would spur on some Big Sister/Little Sister competition between us. I thought, for sure, if I ran, she’d copy me. She copied lots of other things I did: I had pink All-Star high-tops, so did she; I wrote fan letters to Punky Brewster and Kirk Cameron, so did she. She didn’t copy the running half a block ahead, instead she just continued the manic shuffling that made her pigtails bounce, and yelled to me about what happened in music class that day. Angela loved music class—loved playing the xylophones and the cymbals, singing the songs with the coordinated hand movements, learning continuous variations of the Mexican Hat Dance.

One particular day, as I walked home half a block ahead of Angela, I heard a low plinking sound behind me. It was as if someone was throwing a heavy coin on the ground. I turned around to tell Angela to hurry up, or else—and I saw her dropping a gnarled gray stick on the ground, listening intently to the noise, picking it back up, and then dropping it again. “Andrea, doesn’t this stick make a pretty noise when I drop it?” she said. I looked at her annoyed for holding up my cartoons, but I was intrigued by what she heard when she dropped this stick. She dropped it and picked it up the entire way home, each time enthralled by this mini-percussive instrument. I wondered why I didn’t hear the same thing.

That year Angela asked for a violin for Christmas, and my parents—God Bless Them—actually went out and rented a tiny kid-sized violin for her. When we finally got home and I parked myself on the sofa, Angela would play songs that sounded like cats suffering from appendicitis. I told her to shut up: Alvin and the Chipmunks were singing “Born in the U.S.A.” and I couldn’t hear them. She usually moved into the next room, but she never stopped playing. She always tried to get me to listen to different fiddle tunes or lullabies or whatever else she taught herself to play. “This is a good song,” she’d tell me, “This one is about a turkey who is trapped in a pile of straw!” Then she’d play the song and laugh because she could hear the turkey gobble-gobble in between the notes. I never heard the turkey, but then again, I never walked home dropping a stick just because I rejoiced in the simple solid noise it made hitting the pavement.

Now Angela, 20 years old, still as slow as she was in first grade, makes entire congregations of people cry when she plays her violin. I’ve been one of the crying ones, too, and sometimes I wonder if I am unable to hear the mood or tune of a song because I hear the voice of the person playing it instead. I hear Angela laughing, pretending to conduct an orchestra of her dolls; I hear her playing guitar in the basement, singing something by someone who isn’t half the musician she is. I hear her dropping sticks. I see myself walk the half block back toward her so we can go home together.

Andrea K. Devenney

Copyright ©Andrea K. Devenney, 2009, all rights reserved.