The Clarinet Teacher

What to do?

I was eleven years old, living in Nampa, Idaho in 1950. Two of my friends played clarinet. I thought I had to have one, too. Money was always tight, so I’m not sure why Mother agreed to help me get one. Maybe it was the number of times I said “clarinet.” Maybe it was something else.

Music was important to Mother. A tall upright piano with pictures of relatives on top stood in the front room. At family gatherings, we’d stand around the piano and sing hymns like, What a Friend We Have in Jesus.

Despite having to charge groceries at the neighborhood market all winter to feed her family of seven, Mother managed to pay for piano lessons. Mrs. Stokes was paid one dollar to teach piano to four of us for half an hour each. Our responsibility was to practice, which I did. This was the beginning of my love of music.

Though Mother didn’t make it happen overnight, before too long she arranged to make payments of $10 a month to buy a clarinet for $120.

That instrument was something to behold! Silver keys on black wood — ebony, I learned. The pieces fit together with cork. When taken apart, each piece fit into an indentation in the carrying case, which was lined in red velvet.

It came time for my first lesson. I was to go to the music store on a Saturday, a day I liked because I didn’t have to go to school or church.

I got ready to go to town early that morning, proudly carrying that black case as I walked into the music store. I was directed to the basement, which was used mostly for storage. I went to a small room where I met Mr. Wingling, who would teach the eight sessions that came with purchase of the instrument.

I was a shy girl, intimidated by adults, obedient to their commands. I followed his instructions, opening the clarinet case, with its gorgeous interior, while he stood watching. A thin, skeletal man with long soft fingers — unlike the work-roughened farmers’ hands I was used to seeing — he bent over me, his body brushing mine as his smooth hands touched the instrument case. “Lovely. Just lovely.”

Somewhere inside, I felt a scuttling of unease.

He showed me how to finger the clarinet, to attach the reed carefully, and to blow through it to make music. He gave me a simple assignment for the next week.

“You have to learn how to breathe deeply, from the diaphragm,” Mr. Wingling said at the next lesson. Then he showed me by putting his hands against the lower part of his rib cage. I tried, but apparently, I was so dumb he had to show me. When he did, he lifted my blouse and put his smooth, bony hand on my diaphragm. Then his fingers slowly extended upwards to my breasts, a part of me that even I was not to touch.

I turned cold as stone. Goose bumps covered my skin. My just-developing nipples grew rigid. I heard words but could not answer. His very white hands were long, bony, and clean.

I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to leave, to be anywhere but in this little room with this man touching me. Outside, I could be with my sister, looking in store windows, or having an ice cream cone.

The sound of another student approaching caused him to move away. Shaking, I began to take the clarinet apart, breaking the thin reed in doing so, feeling his eyes on me.

“I’ll see you next week.” A look crossed his face, like he’d won or something.

The stairs were long and difficult to climb. The sunshine wasn’t warm enough that day.

What should I do? Who could I tell? My sister? Mother must not know. She might take the clarinet away, angrily demand her money back, or go into the music store and tell the owner what had happened. I couldn’t risk any of this.

I was afraid that mother and other people would look at me questioningly. Was I telling a lie? What did I do to provoke him? Mother might become more protective and uncertain about me.

Nampa was a small town. Everyone knew everyone else’s business. You knew they knew. They knew you knew they knew. Society was held together by these tenuous, often erroneous threads.

His hands had made me aware of my budding breasts and some idea that a world existed beyond being a child, containing mysteries and feelings too complex — and too simple — for me to understand.

Through the week, I thought of little else but the coming Saturday. To go again without saying anything might be seen as consent for him to touch me again.

I went. He did. I agonized.

“I have to leave a little early. My sister is waiting for me,” I said.

“Would you like to invite her down here?”

“No!”

He saw wild fear in my eyes and laughed.

I tried to avoid being near him, coming late, leaving early, suffering in silence through his groping, until the eight lessons were over.

“Would you like to take some more lessons?” Mother asked me at the conclusion of the series.

“No, not for a while. I can learn at school and by practicing,” I said, looking past her to a distant place we couldn’t see together.