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this room.”
    â€œI mean your fingers. I’m learning to play the piano.”
    â€œOh—well, that’s very nice, Lucresse. I guess it’s all right if you sit there, as long as you pay attention to our songs too.”
    â€œI will. I really will.”
    â€œIt’s all right with you, isn’t it, Janet?” Miss Bunce said.
    â€œOh, sure. It really is,” Janet agreed, sticking the toe of one shoe through the open back of my chair.
    After the last bell that afternoon, I dashed back to Miss Bunce’s room and offered to stack the songbooks for her. She let me. I asked her if she studied music when she was nine. She said yes. I told her I hoped I’d be as tall as she was when I grew up and that her hands were beautiful. She looked at me with mild, not displeased, surprise.
    â€œIs there anything else I can do for you?” I asked.
    â€œNo. Just don’t squirm in class while the leaves sing ‘Welcome, Sweet Springtime.’ ”
    â€œI won’t,” I promised, and I could hear my breath going in and out.“But there is something else I can do for you, Miss Bunce. I can play the piano for the singing while you lead, if you just show me how.”
    Her head jerked up nearer the ceiling. “Show you how ?”
    â€œOh, I’m sure I can play—it’s just that I don’t know what yet, if you see what I mean,” I said reassuringly.
    Probably from a reasonable urge to get rid of me as promptly and kindly as possible and get home, she suggested that I play something for her.
    I sat down before the orderly keys, my hands in my lap. I was in no rush. I judged it would take her at least an hour to teach me all I needed to know to beat the keys into ringing sound the way she did. “What shall I play?” I asked. “Which ones?”
    â€œYou mean, which keys ?” she said, her voice catching. Then she smiled. “All right, Lucresse. Play C-sharp.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œLucresse, you haven’t had piano lessons, have you?”
    â€œNot until now.”
    â€œDon’t you see? If you want to play the piano, you need instruction.”
    â€œYes. Sure.” I thoroughly agreed. “So I can play the accompaniment and you can lead the singing better.”
    â€œNow, Lucresse, what I’m trying to tell you is that we don’t give piano instruction in the public school system. Do you have a piano at home?”
    â€œNo,” I said desperately.
    â€œI see,” she said, examining my suffering eyes, my dress, my good shoes, and doubtless reckoning that my family, like most families enduring the recent downturn of the economy, was forfeiting other pleasures to clothe me so well. “There is instruction in the trombone and trumpet, starting in the sixth grade. Why don’t you wait until next year and study one of those instruments?”
    Not only did I not wish to explain that I had reason to believe Iwouldn’t be in the sixth grade in this school’s system, but I was now overwhelmed with desire to play on the provocative keyboard.
    â€œBut I don’t want to play something you blow,” I said, trying to cry. “I want to play the piano—now—so I can play it for the program. I want to the way Ben wants to do the introductions and sing ‘Welcome, Sweet Springtime’ by himself.”
    â€œOh he does, does he?”
    â€œAnd he can—if you’ll let him. And I can—if you’ll show me how.”
    She turned her pinched face skyward. “Why is it I can’t get the people I need to work this way?” she asked heaven. “The mothers on the costume committee, for example. The leotards came from the factory last Tuesday, but only the Lord knows if the wardrobe the ladies are supposed to be making will be ready on time.”
    I ceased urging the tears that wouldn’t come. “Miss Bunce, if you’ll let Ben do the introducing