Straight Up Onyx

The girl’s back was always ramrod straight when she played the piano, her hands insistent, relentless even, and her eyes she kept fixed on the heavens. While away from the instrument, her spine bent in on itself; even the girl's skin seemed dull and bored, her heavenly alabaster turning blotchy pale. Those lips, they scrunched off their own accord into a colorless pout; her eyebrows suddenly felt the need to accompany one another upon the middle of her brow bone.
"I'll just never leave the piano," thought the girl to herself one day.
The girl’s parents cared not too much for the well being of their only child.
“I’m not to leave the piano,” she had told them.
“For how long, dear?” replied either her mother or father, possibly both.
“Forever, of course,” she replied, deadpanned.
“Well,” said either her mother or father, the one turning to the other.
“I’ll have the housekeeper bring your things down,” one, or maybe both, of them said, as they pivoted in unison and left earlier than necessary for their dinner reservation.
And so the girl, but fourteen years old then, stayed night and day by her piano. It became a makeshift bed, a broad dinner table, even a mirror, if the lighting from the back window was bright enough. Whenever this light was sufficient, the girl would play a most complicated piece, Blue Rhapsody or one of Mozart's Piano Concertos maybe, and as soon as her fingers finished flying and brushing across her world she'd stand and face herself in the broad reflection, and she'd sigh at the sight of her own beauty, and sit back down.
The housekeeper brought her meals and clothing everyday, noticing that the girl didn’t seem to mind leaving the piano for the restroom, which she was grateful for. She was not grateful, however, for the shards of mirror glass she had to sweep up after the girl had attacked it with her shoe. When the housekeeper inquired about the incident, the girl simply replied, “I saw myself, and my piano was clearly not in the bathroom with me. Unacceptable.”
The housekeeper, baffled, resolved never to inquire again; the girl was eccentric beyond anything she could handle.
Word soon spread throughout the neighborhood of the girl’s unusual resolution.
“She won’t come out,” they whispered.
“She’s been murdered!” they sang, “She’s gone dumb!” they cackled, “She’s gone mad, she’s lost her wits, she’s in the asylum!” they exclaimed. They wrote it on the sidewalks with chalk; they painted it on the walls of her home. Had the town possessed billboards, they’d all shout of the girl’s seemingly scandalous ways.
One boy listened to the town’s talk, and, speculative, chose to listen to something else before talking himself. He knew the way to the girl’s house; one would only need to look to the sidewalk for the path of colorful insults leading to her front door. With the intention of asking the girl about the rumors herself, the boy strode towards the house, and as he neared, he heard music.
He, of course, was hearing the girl’s own dreams and interpretations of breathing, for that is the purpose of piano keys. With each key she grazed, she allowed herself another moment of life, another inhalation of air. Instead of proceeding to the front door, however, the boy detoured towards the back of the house, where heaven’s melodies stemmed from. After walking through some bushes and around the west side of the building, he found himself staring at the back of the girl, ramrod straight, and she playing the piano, her world. He sank to the ground and sat and let the most beautiful harmonies soar right into him and back out again. The girl never turned.
The next day the boy rounded the west side of the house and the bushes once more, sitting, again, facing the girl, who faced her piano. This time he had brought a small chest, small enough to fit in a breast pocket. As the girl played, the boy opened the chest and angled it toward the window so that it would capture the sound, for he found himself longing to hear her playing at all times.
After just three days of his coming and going, the boy could not sit outside the window without longing to sit beside the girl on her bench, up close to the noises that kept him up at night, streaming from the tiny, wooden chest. A week into his routine the boy lost his composure and banged on the window, startling the girl and causing her fingers to twitch as they stopped abruptly. When she turned, the boy dropped the chest and let it fall to the earthy ground, for she was the most beautiful person he had ever seen. Eyes of the purest onyx, like the piano itself, stared back at him. Her alabaster skin shone, her red lips forming a perfect ‘O’ in surprise.
The girl did not know who he was, nor was she very interested. She turned back to her piano, then, and continued where she had left off.
“Silly boy,” she said to herself under layers of music, “trying to make me come out so he can laugh at me. I shan’t.”
The boy did not give up. He picked up the chest and came back the next day and knocked on the window again, motioning for the girl to unlatch the window, but the girl would not falter. She only looked his way for a moment, and went back to her playing. They continued this routine for another week, he insisting on her unlatching the window, her completely uninterested in his pleas. The eighth day of this, however, was different, for the girl’s parents had not yet left for the country club when the boy began knocking on the window.
“You’ve got a visitor,” the girl’s mother and or father said, and went to unlatch the window, against their daughter’s protests.
“It’s not good for you to be alone at all times,” they drawled, and helped the boy through the window.
“Have fun,” one or the other said to the children, and left.
“What is it you want?” the girl posed.
The boy only reached into his breast pocket and held out a chest for her to take. After a moment’s hesitation, the girl tenderly took the chest from his hands and opened it. Love, grief, hatred, passion, tenderness, contentment, hope, all of these noises flew at her at once; it was her music. She turned her onyx eyes to the boy, seeing him for the first time. Silently, she handed him back the chest, scooted over but an inch on the bench, and proceeded to play. Gratefully, wordlessly, the boy edged his way onto the seat next to her, and let himself be overcome.
She played all through the night. He stayed at her side. They both refused the food the housekeeper brought with just a nod of their heads. Never was a word spoken between them. In the morning he patted her hands, indicating that she should rest, and left through the unlatched window. A few hours later he came back, but only for an hour or two. And so went the next day, and the day after that. They never spoke.
One day the boy decided he should tell her he loved her. He wished, however, to do so away from the house, somewhere special. He came to her that day, and before she began to play he announced his suggestion.
“Let’s go to the field, today,” he said.
The girl bridled slightly at the sound of his voice; they had been silent so long.
“I can’t,” she said to her slender hands, and only turned to look at the boy when he put his own on her shoulder.
“Okay,” he said.
But he proceeded to make the same proposal every day after. She found herself coming closer and closer to telling him the reasoning behind her defiance; she loved him, she could not stand to let him see her without the magic of her piano veiling her in beauty.
Each time she denied him, the boy became more and more reclusive; he started coming over less often and for shorter periods of time.
“She doesn’t love me,” he thought. “She only allows me here out of pity.”
Still, he could not keep himself away, and though he lessened his hours by her side, the chest he always brought with him, and it sat squat atop the piano, lid open, so it could be filled with her passion.
When it came to the point when the boy would only visit the girl for a half hour at a time, she knew she had to make a decision.
“I must go with him to the field,” she said to herself, drowning in the music. “I must try, for he’ll soon be leaving if I don’t. For good.”
The next day the girl sat, her back ramrod straight, and waited for the boy. Eventually he climbed through the unlatched window, but before he could meekly inquire the girl spoke.
“Yes, let us go to the field,” she said. Her smile was all confidence, but her voice was slight. The boy, however, took no notice.
Reveling in his luck, he reached for her hand, and as he pulled her away from her world, her beauty, he flicked open the chest, and immersed them in music. They ducked through the unlatched window, hands very close to holding, and walked in time to the notes of the girl’s heart. She was sure that the boy’s constant smile was in place only to placate her, now that he’d realized what she really looked like.
“I’ll simply go with him to the field, and soon after turn back,” she told herself. “It’d be rude to run back now.”
She assured herself once she got back to the piano she could play her sorrows and it would make her feel better, for the boy was sure to leave and never return, but the piano would always be.
Right before they reached the field, however, she caught her reflection in the creek and her onyx eyes stared back at her in disbelief.
“I’m beautiful,” she whispered, thinking him unaware.
“I know,” he said, surprising her. He took her in his arms then, the open chest in his breast pocket poking her, and she realized it was the music.
Quickly she reassessed, the piano was not that which garnished her in splendor, it was the music itself. She began to laugh in the boy’s arms, a sound he had never heard before, and he drew her away from him, the better to look into her eyes, to study them.
His face broke out in a glow.
“You’re happy,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. And she was.
From then on they spent every moment together, barely by the piano at all. But wherever they were, she made sure the chest was open, feeding her her own masterpieces, her own exquisiteness.
The boy and the girl grew old, boy and girl they were no more. Their children had moved out of the house, and it was just the two of them again. They decided to move into a smaller residence, somewhere comfortable and quaint.
It was the day they started moving. They were in the barely furnished cottage; the piano had yet to be brought in, and for the first time in the fifty-something years they had been together, everything was silent. The music had run out. The old woman panicked, she looked around her, knowing that this was sure to be the end. Her husband would see her for who she really was now; she knew he’d leave. Who could stand such an ugly woman?
“Huh,” the old man said, tapping the worn-out chest, “it seems we’ve run out,” he said, amused.
The old women braced herself, and watched as the old man raised his eyes to hers.
He lifted one gray eyebrow, made a noise only old men can produce, set his hand on her shoulder and softly, very softly, he kissed her cheek.
“I guess we’ll have to start all over again,” he said.