LET IT BE or: How I Found My Voice
March’s Prompt: Change, Growth, Rebirth.
After five years of attending an all-girls school in Saudi Arabia (and essentially having no contact with boys) my family and I moved back to Lexington, Kentucky, just in time for junior year of high school: a time of proms, underage drinking and lots of teenage hormones. My mother, concerned about the latter two things, liked the idea of me attending the small private Catholic school, which was within walking distance of our house. As she saw it, the discipline and structure would be good for me since I had just spent five years in such an environment. Plus, she felt that because the school only had 600 students total, I would be less intimidated and have an easier time fitting in than I would among a high school populace totaling in the thousands.
I mean just look at the above photo. Doesn’t it seem like that kid would be better off in a smaller school…? Or home schooled…?
Mom gave me the choice of which school I’d like to attend. I’d seen enough high school movies (including Grease) to know that I didn’t want the daily intimidation of being lost at a large public school with kids openly drinking, shooting up drugs and having sex under the bleachers[1]. I wanted a nice experience. I wanted structure and discipline. And I wanted to study a lot. So I chose Lexington Catholic High School.
Little did I or Mom know, attending a private school didn’t mean the absence of drugs, drinking and sex — it just meant it was all done on the sly[2]… except during the occasional high school dance when some freshman girl would drink too much, pass out in the school yard and require paramedics to come and pump her stomach [3]. Also, just as my parents wanted their kids to have structure and discipline, so did the parents of half the other students. There were so many young men and women who were expelled from their county schools and were sent to LCH to get on the straight and narrow. One guy even came there as a trade-off for going to juvenile detention. Much of the other half of the school population was made up of kids who had grown up together in the private school system and had known each other since kindergarten. Talk about an ironclad clique. Had I known this before I made my decision, I might have chosen differently.
But there I was; odd girl with a weird name, newly arrived from a foreign country, again. And now with added teenage hormones, awkwardness and years of baggage of being the uncool girl in school. And that made it all the worse.
So what does any gal do when she wants to fit in and be part of the cool crowd? Honestly, I still don’t know the answer to that. But I’ll tell you what she does not do. She does not opt to join the choir and then also try out to sing solos in talent shows. I’m pretty sure this is a surefire high school career killer. But it’s exactly what this gal did! Though, in my defense, the solo part was sorta by default…
Mark Howard[4] was a great guitar player and he was really cute. I liked him, and, for a minute, he liked me back. By this time my hair had grown out from that disastrous attempt at a pixie cut, and also I had learned to actually smile when a boy talked to me so as to appear more approachable. It was as good a time as any to ask Mark to collaborate on a song for the talent show at the end of the semester.
I was obsessed with the Beatles at the time, so Mark suggested a duet of the song “The Night Before” with him also playing guitar. I tried not to read too much into the reason he chose such a bittersweet song. But then he hand wrote the lyrics on a sheet of notebook paper. Hand. Wrote. That’s like the written version of making someone a mix tape — it takes care and effort. Granted, the internet wasn’t around then so he couldn’t just Google the lyrics and text them to me. But still! How romantic!
I was so pumped by our musical and intellectual synergy that I might have glossed over a few red flags:
FIRST: Mark’s near obsessive concern about the decorative sword mounted above our fireplace. Our rehearsal sessions took place in my parents’ living room, presumably to dissuade the gentleman from making any untoward advances. As soon as he walked in and saw the mantle he said, “Holy f*ck! I’m scared.” I tried to assuage his fear by telling him the sword was purely ornamental. It was like the Arabic version of the American Gothic painting — you know the one with the husband and wife holding a pitchfork… okay maybe not a great example. The point is, it was just art. The sword wasn’t even sharp. But to a 16-year old boy who had never been out of Kentucky, it just looked like the weapon that the villain wielded in Raiders of the Lost Ark, before Indiana Jones shot him. Remember that scene? Google it.
SECOND: The upcoming school trip to Washington D.C. was two weekends before the show. Mark was going. I was not. I knew it would take a lot to convince my parents to let me go so I didn’t even bother asking. I should have guessed that on that long bus ride there Mindy Watson would fall asleep with her head on his shoulder. AND I should have guessed that Mark would develop a crush on her and that they would start dating when they got back. But I wasn’t expecting that a week before the show Mark would totally bail on performing in the talent show with me because it didn’t feel right anymore. That one threw me.
I was pissed, but even more than that I was annoyed that the jerk had left me in a lurch potentially making me miss out on my singing debut. I scrambled to find a replacement guitarist, but no luck. Then I remembered there was a consumer recording booth in the mall where I’d gone with my cousin and we recorded a kick ass version of Hall and Oates “Private Eyes.” I went down there and asked if I could get just the music. And it turned out they had two of my favorite Beatles’ songs. One of them was Let It Be, which is my favorite song of all time. The significance of the lyrics was not lost on me and I decide this would be my song.
There will be an answer if you let it be. Screw you, Mark!
I already knew the words and so I spent three nights practicing in front of the mirror to nail down my stage presence. Then I selected my performance outfit, which was a mohair sweater with a wildcat on it in sequins. It was stagey but also classy (shut up, it was the 80s.) And I prepared for my stage debut.
I imagined the look on Mark’s face when the curtain rose and I nailed the song. It would be regret mixed with sadness, mixed with admiration, mixed with jealousy.
Eat your heart out, Mark.
I was fine during the school rehearsal, and I was fine during the dress rehearsal. And then came the day of the performance and I was fine as I was on stage behind the curtain. Then the curtain rose. I took a deep breath and… I was not fine.
I completely froze.
The music began and I opened my mouth to sing and nothing. I stood there motionless and mute through the first verse. The only sound was the sweat trickling down my sides underneath my wildcat sweater… oh and the snickering from several of the kids in the audience.
For what seemed like weeks I stood there panicking inwardly and doing nothing outwardly. I watched the worried faces of my friends Lee, Chuck and Kevin in the front row, pleading with me with their eyes and also their lips and their hands to get on with it. The music continued to play mercilessly, creeping into the chorus.
I took a deep breath, praying that if ever a sinkhole would magically appear and swallow someone up, it would be now and to me saving me from this horror.
Then I closed my eyes and JUST BELTED IT OUT, figuring if I was going down, I might as well give it my best shot. I didn’t care about stage presence. I just wanted to get through the song.
And I got through it. And I was decent.
…sure, when I later watched the video, the beginning featured a scared hostage being force to sing for her life, but the end was actually pretty okay… you know what? It was more than okay.
It was good.
I had done it.
My mother said she was proud of me for standing up for what I wanted. Chuck said he was relieved that I didn’t fuck it up. Even Mean Girl, Katie approached me after and said that she didn’t know I such a good voice. Mark came over too but I pretended I had to run to the ladies room and avoided him the rest of the night and the following week.
So it all worked out. It was my first experience in being authentic. It was the first time I trusted my instincts and was rewarded for it. It was the first time I found my voice and used it to great effect.
As a nice side note, after this, Kevin, who had previously just been my buddy, saw my courage and got up his courage to ask me out. He became my boyfriend… well secret boyfriend. I certainly couldn’t tell my parents I was dating a boy. As a first-born first generation Iraqi Muslim teenage girl, that might have been too much authenticity for my parents.
And that would be a road I would spend many years in the future working on crossing.
But for now, I was good.
Thanks for reading. If you liked it, please share. And look for my book, THE WRONG END OF THE TABLE: AN IMMIGRANT LOVE STORY — coming soon!
