The Westminster Abbey children’s choir gathered on the church’s stage on a chilly January afternoon to sing Handel’s “Zadok the Priest.” For the fourth-grade singers, this session was more than practice—it was an audition. Only the strongest would remain to sing at Prince Charles’s coronation four months later.
This was the rehearsal that would decide everything.
Miss Mitchel, the choir mistress, strode past two rows of choir boys and girls, her pleated tweed skirt swishing against her black nylon tights. Polished lace-up shoes stomped on the stage floor. Then she braked as if she were about to crash into a wall. A waft of stale lavender and mothballs trailed behind her like a bridal veil.
“Someone is singing off-key,” Miss Mitchel shrieked above the sound of twenty young vocalists. Fortissimo. Piercing. Sharp.
“It’s you!” Miss Mitchel turned, planted her feet, leaned in, and pointed her index finger at Juliet’s face. “You!” she trilled in her soprano voice, “It’s you who’s singing out of tune!” Her voice rose with the weight of authority, firm enough to hush the entire hall.
Drops of her spittle sprayed Juliet’s forehead.
“Not true!” she wanted to scream. She wanted to shove Miss Mitchel in the chest and shout, “Rubbish!” Instead, she lowered her head.
“Look at me when I talk to you.” Miss Mitchel’s voice was now a nasal, and loud,
contralto. Her glasses slid down the bridge of her nose, exposing hawk-like brown eyes.
A sneeze. A cough. A stifled giggle. Silence.
Juliet bit her lip and lifted her chin as if to outstare a sergeant. Her cheeks burned. Ever since she could remember, her mother had said she expected Juliet to be singing ‘Ave Maria’ with her parents¾choristers at Westminster Abby. Now that her dad had died only five months earlier, the weight of the expectation was heavier.
“Leave the stage, Juliet,” Miss Mitchel squawked. “Now.” She stepped aside as if to wave Juliet on to walk Captain Hook’s plank.
Juliet began to hiccup as she always did when she was nervous. Her tongue turned into a dry sponge. Shoes glued to the ground, her legs refused to move.
“Mom will crap on me big time,” she thought.
There, standing on the stage with all the other ten-year-olds, she wished that Peter Pan would take her hand, scoop her up, and fly her over Buckingham Palace to the Never Never Land. There she could live with him and Wendy, and Tinkerbell, and the Lost Boys, and never have to grow up.
Peter, I need you. Where are you?
“I said now!” Miss Mitchel pointed to the exit door.
Juliet willed herself to lift one foot, and then the other, and clomped across the stage and down the stairs. The door grunted as she pushed it open. She blinked, and blinked again, as the icy drizzle ran down her fringe into her eyes and down her cheeks.
“I’ll never sing in front of anyone again, ever!” Juliet shouted at no one after the door closed behind her. “I’ll only sing to myself!”
Dad had known how hard she’d tried to hit those high notes. He’d heard her sing when she showered, sing when she skipped alongside him to school, and sing together as he washed and she dried the dishes. Waving his hands as if he were a conductor, he tried to help her conquer those sour notes. But deep down she’d worried that her singing was not good enough to make it into the famous Westminster Abby choir. Deep down, she knew she’d only kept going to choir practice after her dad died to please her mom. Now that Miss Mitchel had expelled her from the choir, she’d lost the only way she knew to earn her mother’s love.
“Dad.” Juliet lowered her head is if she were praying. “She’ll ground me and won’t let me watch telly.” She sniveled. “And stop my pocket money.”
Then she looked up at the heavens hoping to see her dad. Instead, she saw the shadows of Peter Pan, Wendy, and the boys, flying along with the cottony clouds.
“Hey, come back for me,” Juliet yelled. She jumped up and waved her arms. “Take me with you to the Never Never Land.” Her plaits bounced against her back.
“Don’t leave me behind, Peter, what am I going to tell Mom?” Juliet cried out. “She’s gonna flip so bad.”
But the silhouettes, even little Tinkerbell’s light, dissolved into the distance. Nose running and eyes weeping, she slumped home along the Thames pathway, worrying about how she could ever face her fellow choristers. Or rather, ex-fellow choristers. She wiped her nose on the forearm of her school blazer and scuffed her shoes on the cracked pavement.
That evening, Juliet and her mom sat in silence at the kitchen table eating supper¾canned baked beans on white toast¾when Juliet lifted her fork, stared down at her plate, and burst out, “I got kicked out of the choir this afternoon.”
Her mother coughed, choked. She pushed her chair back from the table across the linoleum floor, stood up, and glared down at her daughter.
“What did you just say?”
“That cow, Miss Mitchel, said I was off key,” Juliet mumbled, squeezing her eyes shut as if that might chase her mother’s anger away.
Her mother’s cheeks flushed. “The daughter of Westminster Abbey Choristers, and you can’t sing on tune? We’ve been choristers for three generations!” She reached for the half-empty bottle of chardonnay on the kitchen counter, poured a full glass, and downed it. “And here I expected you’d be in the choir singing at Prince Charles’s coronation.” She raised her eyebrows and turned her back. “Thank God your father is no longer with us. He’d be so upset.”
She refilled her glass, picked up the cordless phone, and stormed out into the living room.
“I’m going to have to phone Gran and tell her.”
A sob. A splutter. Another gulp.
Juliet stopped chewing, spat her mush onto her plate, and then scraped it into the bin. As she walked upstairs to her bedroom, her mother’s slurred words followed her.
“Nanna, you’ll never believe it! Juliet got thrown out of the choir. Whatever will I do with that child? At least William, bless him, isn’t here to see this.”
Juliet walked straight into the bathroom and slammed the door. She brushed her teeth as if she were scouring a pot, spattering toothpaste on the bathroom mirror. She tiptoed to her bedroom, closed the door, changed into her red and pink check pajamas, and, lips quivering, repeated her pledge, “I’ll never sing in front of anyone again.”
Her room suddenly felt icy cold. Rain beat against her bedroom window. She was about to close the curtains when she heard a bell jingling. Outside, a small light danced against her window. Someone was trying to come in.
“Tinkerbell, is that you?”
The frame rattled. Her bedside light flickered. She shivered. When Juliet plucked up enough courage to look out into the night, she was astonished to see a familiar face looking back at her. Peter Pan wiped the glass with the back of his hand and shouted above the storm, “You’ll never lose your voice. Find another.”
“What do you mean?” Juliet choked as she undid the catch on the window, battling the wind. She finally pulled it open and reached out to Peter. She expected him to grasp her hand and pull her through to fly away with him. But there was no one there. He was gone. Juliet stuffed a fist into her mouth and bit down.
There was to be no flying off into the night. No Peter Pan. No Wendy. No Never Never Land.
The floor of her room began to tilt. She rushed to the bathroom and made it just in time to vomit into the toilet bowl. She rinsed her mouth, again, and again, but the bitter taste lingered. She walked back to her bedroom, stamping her feet.
“If Dad were still alive, he’d also be upset that I’m out the choir,” she whimpered loud enough for her mom to hear. “But he would’ve hugged me and told me he loved me.”
Shoulders hunched, Juliet plopped down on the edge of her bed as if she’d been dumped on the side of a road.
“Dad, what should I do?”
Then she remembered the stories she’d written for her father while he lay coughing and shriveling in his hospital bed.
“Read me that story you wrote,” his voice gravelly, his lips cracked. “The one about the lonely little rabbit.”
If Dad were still alive, he’d tell me to spend more time writing stories. Juliet bit into her bottom lip until it hurt. Peter Pan is right too.
She leaned over, lifted the top left-hand corner of her mattress, and pulled out the notebook and pencil that had been lying dormant for weeks.
She sat up against her pillow and began to write. “Once upon a time, there was a …”
About the Author
Author of the award-winning memoir, Travels with My Grief, Susan Bloch’s fiction and nonfiction writing has appeared in publications including Gemini Magazine, Stirring, Frigg, Glint, and The Hooghly Review, as well as receiving a notable mention in Best American Essays. A lifelong traveler, she lived in South Africa, Tel Aviv, London, and Mumbai before alighting in Seattle. www.susanblochwriter.com.
