Mother's Day

I attracted plenty of attention as I pushed my oversized cello case, which looks exactly like a coffin, through juvenile hall or my way to the chapel. I was assigned to play at two o'clock.

After passing through a maze of cyclone fencing, I reached a building with a cross on its roof surrounded by statuary The statues were all busts of women, but they did not look like religious figures. They wore wreaths of flowers and necklaces of fruit, like courtesans attending a Roman dinner party.

A group of probation department officers stood outside the front door to the chapel. Over the roar of amplified music coming from inside, I introduced myself to someone with a clipboard and a walkie-talkie, and he leafed through a schedule until he found my name. "Oh yeah, you're up next. Right after this group."

He led me to the chaplain's office, where I could unpack my cello and warm up. "When we call you, you just go through that door and you'll be right on the stage," he explained. After he left, I decided to open the door just enough to peek inside; I was curious to see what kind of act I would be following. The group had eight performers, one playing electric guitar and another playing the organ. The rest played handheld percussion instruments. Their music, which seemed to be a combination of hip-hop and 1960s-style street poetry, was heavily amplified and the audience of prisoners was swaying and clapping along with obvious pleasure. One of the performers was an attractive young woman wearing tight-fitting jeans and a shirt which revealed her belly button. Although she did not sing, and her use of the tambourine suggested a minimum of training, a glance at the all-male audience confirmed that she was the star of the show.

Standing in the aisle between the rows of pews, staring straight ahead and looking none too happy, was Mr. Sills.

I closed the door and slumped into the chaplain's chair. "Am I disturbing you?" a voice asked from behind me. It was Sister Janet, looking radiant as always.

"I don't think having me bring the cello was such a good idea," I said.

"Why not?"

"Listen to what's going on in there! They're all stomping their feet and hooting and working up a sweat, and that's just from watching the girl in the bikini, never mind the music. Can you imagine what a letdown it's going to be when I go out there with a cello?"

"They've got a girl in a bikini?" Sister Janet asked.

"Well, it might as well be a bikini. You watch, this is gong to get ugly."

"Have a little faith! You've got friends in the audience. I made sure that K/L unit was invited. The boys from your class are all there."

To kill time, I asked her about the statues planted all around the chapel.

"Oh, those! Somebody donated them to us years ago, after his company ran out of business. He made statues for cemeteries."

* * *

At precisely 2:00, the amplification was unceremoniously turned off and the hip-hop group was led off the stage. They carried their instruments and amplifiers with them. Unlike at most concerts, where the audience cheers and yells for encores at the end of a performance, this audience had to sit quietly, with staff members posted throughout the room to keep an eye on them. No one looked happy about the hip-hop band being sent away.

A man with an ill-fitting toupee shuffled down the aisle between the pews, turned to face the audience, then read aloud from a clipboard: "And now, Mr. Slazman will play the violin." He shuffled back down the aisle and right out of the chapel.

The silence in the room so unnerved me that I failed to see the raised platform on the stage. I walked right into it, stubbing my big toe and careening forward. I narrowly avoided a fall by using the cello as a ski pole, planting the end-pin into the dais and pivoting toward the audience. I hadn't intended to enter like Buster Keaton, but that's how it came across, and the inmates rewarded me with hearty laughter and a round of applause.

Just as I started to feel at ease I caught a glimpse of Mr. Sills and became tense all over again. He looked like a drill sergeant stuck with chaperone duty during a bad USO show. I stalled for time, explaining to my audience that everything they saw on the cello except for the metal strings and end pin had once been part of a living thing. The spruce top, the maple back with its tiger-stripe grain, the ebony fingerboard, the snake-wood bow with its hair from a horse's tail, and the pieces of ivory which came not from an elephant but from the tusks of a mammoth preserved in frozen tundra for tens of thousands of years. When we play the instrument, I told them, we bring these pieces to life again by letting them speak to us and affect us and, hopefully, inspire us to live more fully.

I had run out of little-known facts about the cello, I advised the boys to let the music wash over them and not to feel they had to "understand" it. I encouraged them to daydream. I told them that the first piece I was going to play—"The Swan" by Camille Saint-Saens—always made me think of my mother. Then I started playing.

With its high ceiling, bare walls, and hard floor, the chapel was as resonant as a giant shower stall. It made the cello sound like several instruments playing at once. The instrument sounded divine in that room, which excited me, but then a rustling from the audience brought me back to reality. The kids were bored, as I had feared.

The rustling grew in intensity; but something about it didn't sound right. It wasn't quite the sound of fidgeting and wasn't quite the sound of whispering either. I glanced at the audience and saw a roomful of boys with tears running down their faces. The rustling that had distracted me was the sound of sniffling and nose-wiping—music to any musician's ears.

I played the rest of the piece better than I had ever played it in my life, and when I finished, Francisco started clapping like a madman. A moment later the applause became deafening. It was a mediocre cellist's dream come true; I had stumbled into the musical version of Shangri-la and been welcomed as a god, and vowed never to play anywhere else.

For my next piece, I chose a saraband from one of the Bach suites. The boys rewarded me with another round of applause, but then someone shouted, "Play the one about mothers again," and a cheer rose up from the crowd. I realized then that it was the invocation of motherhood, not my playing, that had moved the inmates so deeply.

I played "The Swan" again, then more Bach, then "The Swan" a third time. Between pieces I told them stories of cello-related mishaps, like the time I had to go to the bathroom during a lesson but was too embarrassed to tell my teacher. I ended up wetting my pants during the allemande and just had to hope the teacher wouldn't notice since I had a cello between my legs.

At two-thirty sharp the man with the toupee reentered the chapel and signaled that my time was up. The inmates booed, then gave me a final ovation. I packed up my cello and went out the same way the hip-hop band had: down the center aisle, through the silent audience, and out into the garden of funerary statues.

back to top