The Solo

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He had never meant for anyone to hear him sing alone. Singing was different when there were twenty other children around you, all wearing white shirts that smelled faintly of starch and the wooden closet behind the sacristy. You could disappear inside the sound. But one Wednesday evening, after choir practice, Sister Margaret touched him lightly on the shoulder and said, “I think you should sing the solo on Sunday.” The boy looked behind him, certain she was speaking to someone else. She wasn't. The solo was only eight lines long, but by the time he walked home they had grown into something enormous. He imagined forgetting the words. Or his voice cracking. Worst of all, he imagined the whole church becoming terribly quiet while everyone waited for him to fail.

He practiced everywhere. He sang softly in his bedroom with the door closed. He sang while brushing his teeth, while taking out the trash, and once beneath his breath in the grocery store until his mother smiled and pretended not to notice. At choir practice, his hands trembled so badly he folded them behind his back. Sister Margaret taught him where to breathe and told him not to worry about singing loudly. “Sing it like you're telling someone something important,” she said. Saturday night he lay awake listening to the house settle around him. The furnace clicked. A car passed somewhere beyond his window. He whispered the first line into the darkness and then the second. Before falling asleep, he decided he would rather wake with a fever. God, apparently, had other plans.

Sunday morning arrived bright and cold. The stained-glass windows spilled red and blue pieces of heaven across the pews, and the church smelled of candles, old wood, and incense. When the organ reached the familiar measure, Sister Margaret looked at him. The boy stepped forward. His knees felt hollow. He saw his mother halfway back, and beside her his father, who gave him the smallest nod. Then the church became quiet. He opened his mouth, and for one terrible second nothing came. Then the first note appeared not loudly, not perfectly, but clear and true. He followed it into the second, and then the third, until suddenly he was no longer thinking about the people or his shaking hands or the possibility of forgetting. He was simply singing.

His voice rose into the high wooden rafters where sunlight floated with the dust. It seemed impossible that something so small could travel so far. The final note lingered for a moment after he stopped, as though the church itself were reluctant to let it go. Then the organ returned, and the choir joined him, and he stepped back into the safety of all those other voices. Nobody applauded. It was church, after all. But Sister Margaret smiled. His mother wiped at one eye. His father nodded again, only this time there was something different in his face.

Years later, the boy would forget the name of the hymn. He would forget some of the faces in the choir and even the exact color of the stained glass that morning. But he would remember standing alone before all those people, frightened nearly beyond endurance, and discovering that courage did not arrive before fear. It came afterward, one trembling note at a time. And whenever life asked him to step forward again, and it would, many times, some part of him would return to that little church, take one breath, and begin to sing.

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