Plaid, Pigtails, and Perpetual Autocracy

By Katie Henry

            I was eight years old before I learned to breathe.

            I learned how to breathe in a warm room in the Mormon Temple in Oakland, standing with twenty other little girls in three straight rows. In front of us was the woman teaching us how to breathe, a pretty just-out-of-grad-school girl with a pixie cut and a pastel dress.

            “Breathe in, and hold it,” she said, drawing her hand up from her stomach to her throat. Next came the sound of twenty loud, gasping breaths. She nodded, and reached out to a girl in the first row. She pushed the girl’s shoulders, which had come up to her ears, gently down. “Good,” she said. “Now you know the wrong way to breathe.”

            We giggled, because everyone knew there was only one way to breathe. But the woman shook her head. “Watch me,” she said. She planted her feet. “Watch what my stomach does.” We saw her mouth open, and watched as her diaphragm pushed out slowly, then receded, and gasped as she breathed in and out without a sound.

            “When you’re born,” she told us as we mimicked her silent breaths without success, “You breathe from your diaphragm, you breathe silent. As you get older, you re-learn, looking at your parents, your siblings. Here, you are born again, and this time, you don’t re-learn anything.”

***

            The summer before third grade, I auditioned and was accepted into the San Francisco Girls Chorus. You probably haven’t heard of it, but it’s one of the most prestigious children’s choirs in the country. The SFGC sells records, travels to foreign countries, and produces highly trained young musicians every year.

            I wasn’t nervous on my audition date. I didn’t see any reason to be. I could sing; I would hear a song once and days later, be able to sing all the verses. I didn’t know how selective the Chorus was, and so I didn’t doubt myself for a second, not even when I messed up the first note of my song.

            “I told you you shouldn’t have sung The Star Spangled Banner,” my mother, ever the optimist, told me in the car ride home. “Adults have a hard time singing that.”

            “Then I’m better than the adults,” I said, munching on my complimentary audition cookie. “They liked it. At first I started to sing it like the First Nowell, so I stopped, and we talked about how they’re simpler—”

            “Similar, honey.”

            “Uh huh, and then, then I tried again, and then they clapped things for me, and I had to repeat it. And then I got a cookie.”

            “Well, I hope you get in, but don’t get your hopes up, okay?”

            I rolled my eyes. Tone deaf people like my mother never understood how easy singing was.

***

            Even through the welcoming brochure called the SFGC curriculum “rigorous” and “stimulating,” and far as I could tell, the singing was the easy part. After you learned to breathe right, and keep your mouth relaxed and round, it was just like what I’d been doing since I could talk. We were even learning the Christmas carols I already knew, to prepare for our first big concert.

            The hard part was remembering all the many, many rules. Practice was twice a week, from 4 to 6, at the Mormon Temple in Oakland. You were expected to arrive on time, with your music folder, a pencil, and water. There was one break, at 5, for fifteen minutes.

            During rehearsal, you were silent and attentive at all times. When asked to stand, you stood immediately, and assumed the singing position: shoulders back and relaxed, feet shoulder width apart, head straight, arms relaxed at sides. If the door opened, you didn’t look at it. Eyes were on the conductor at all times, and when not singing, you were smiling genuinely.

            At first, I balked at all the regulations, but they did end up making sense. If your body was relaxed, it was easier to sing. If you got distracted by the door opening or closing, you might miss the conductor cutting you off, and you’d end the song a beat after everyone else, and twenty pair of eyes would turn to you, and when the conductor mentioned that focus was essential, you knew who that comment was meant for.  

***

            The San Francisco Girls Chorus wasn’t a religious choir, exactly, but the big concert was the Christmas concert at Davies’ Symphony Hall. We started preparing early. The first year, it seemed odd to be singing “Away in a Manger” and “Silent Night” in October, but in some ways, it just extended the holiday season.

            I thought it would be easy, since I’d memorized my family’s Christmas songbook by the age of seven, but I kept discovering new things that I was doing wrong. You couldn’t hit the high note in “Silent Night” under pitch. There were only two notes in the word “angels” in “O Come All Ye Faithful.” And the youngest girls, the ones in Level I like me, were only allowed to sing two verses of a song, tops, even if they knew the whole song by heart.

            I remember once my mother was discussing the situation in Israel at the dinner table with some Jewish family friends (I can’t remember which, suffice to say, we have a lot of them), when I felt a need to break in.

            “Mommy, that’s wrong.”

            My mother raised her eyebrow, probably wondering how exactly I’d come to have an opinion on US aid in Israel.

            “It’s not pronounced Israel, it’s pronounced Is-Rah-El. Beth said so, it changes your vowel shapes otherwise. We have to say it in the First Nowell every single verse.”

            Our family friends looked at me, then at her, and then at my baby sister, who offered no opinion. And my mother shrugged and said, “She’s in this Chorus…”

***

            By December, Chorus had completely taken over my life. Before, rehearsal had been a two days a week deal in Oakland, but as December 23 loomed closer and closer, the pace picked up. My parents began carting me three times a week to the San Francisco Girls Chorus Headquarters in the City. Rehearsals were longer, and consisted of the entire Chorus, more than 200 girls in all. I stood with my own Level, Level I, but if I craned my head, I could see the Big Girls in back of me, the ones with tight shirts and makeup and a tendency to call Level I girls “adorable.” In the giant rehearsal hall, all the girls would stand together, hands at sides and silent, as Beth raised her hands to cue the accompanist.

            Beth was the Chorus School Director and the one who would conduct us at the big Davies concert. She was approximately 5 feet tall, had poufy, short hair, and was absolutely terrifying. I was eight, an age at which nothing terrified me, especially not authority figures, but Beth Aviakian scared the crap out of me. This was probably due to her method of establishing control. As she conducted songs during rehearsal, her eyes would skim the line of Level I girls in front of her, trying to detect anything out of place. And then, like a rabid, vicious bird, she would attack.

            If a girl so much as glanced away from Beth and her sharply moving hands: “Excuse me, I’m over here! I’m over here!” If that failed to elicit a response, she’d move to the unlucky girl and personally conduct an inch away from her nose.

            If a girl fidgeted, or clasped her hands in front of her: “I’m sorry, do you have to go to the bathroom? Well, you should have gone before, or would you like me to stop the entire rehearsal for you?”

            If a girl failed to smile during the bow: “You look like you’re attending a funeral! No one wants to hear you sing if you look like that!”

            After seeing her reduce my immediate neighbor to tears, I was determined to show Beth that I was made of stronger stuff. I stood tall, kept my hands relaxed, and showed off my pink braces at every opportunity. Even as the rehearsal dragged into the night, even as my legs shook and my eyes drooped, my nose itched and my throat grew sore, I didn’t let it show, because that was what they wanted. Beth told us a story the first day of group rehearsal, about not letting it show.

            “Once,” she said, as we sat on the cold floor, grateful for the break. “We had an outdoor concert, in the spring. And one girl, who was right in the front row, got stung by a bee. But did she cry, or whine? Did she stop singing, or run off stage? She did not. She kept singing, and smiling, and finished the concert.”

            When I told my father about this, he tried to explain the concept of a “parable,” but I was too busy drawing treble clefs on my arm to hear.

***

            I have never been as excited in my life as I was on December 23, 1998, at approximately 8 PM. Sledding down hills, riding a horse, even my little sister being born paled in comparison to walking out under hot white lights for the first time. I thought, for a second, we were having a small earthquake, but quickly realized that the rumble was the sound of two thousand people clapping. Maybe I was giddy from the large amount of caffeine I’d ingested over the previous half hour, or maybe I was just thrilled at the idea that my family was watching me, but I had a sudden desire to wave to the crowd. As I lifted my hand to thank the fuzzy phantoms of the audience, a Big Girl in back of me grabbed my wrist and yanked it down.

            “They’re not clapping for you,” she informed me out of the side of her mouth. “They’re clapping for all of us.”

            I would have told her just how much I cared about her opinion, but the opening cords of “Adeste Fideles” started, and I was lost again.

            Anyone who has ever loved something will understand what I mean by “lost.” I was caught in a web of Latin phrases and harmonies and the closeness of 200 bodies around mine. When I sang then, and when I sing now, I can consciously feel myself pouring out the song, and pouring out a bit of myself with it, feeling empty, but whole. This, I knew, was what I had wanted all along from Chorus. I hadn’t wanted the rules, or the terror more commonly known as Beth, or the hours spent standing absolutely still. But I had wanted this. I had wanted to do something I loved, and to share it, and if rules were the price of admission, I could do that. I could deal with the hideous uniform dress (whoever combined pink and brown plaid should be shot) and the tights that seemed to itch on purpose, if it meant standing tall on a slick-floored stage and listening to grandstand applause.

            That night, for the first time in Chorus, I smiled genuinely.

***

            After December 23^rd, everything seemed to get easier, incrementally. I stopped fidgeting during rehearsal. I learned how to properly name notes and theory terms (e.g. “quarter rest” instead of “that weird squiggly thing”). I fell into correct posture instantly, learned how to blend my voice with others, and stopped questioning the rules. My parents chalked it up to getting older, but I knew differently. I understood Chorus. It was the only place where I knew exactly what was expected of me, and instead of feeling confined, I felt relieved. Growing up is hard, and having one place where I knew exactly what to do was comforting. Chorus was my rock, and my home.

            I didn’t like middle school. I didn’t like my school, didn’t like my teachers, and was by and large ambivalent about the kids around me. I closed myself off, hid in the library, and anxiously awaited Chorus practice. My middle school teachers would have had heart attacks if they’d seen me at rehearsal. The same girl who ignored them during class and felt a desperate need to constantly correct them, that same girl was silent and willing at Chorus. I found real friends in Chorus, girls who weren’t dying to date five boys (preferably at once) and plaster obscene amounts of makeup on their faces.

            As I grew older, I moved up in the Chorus hierarchy. At 13, I started the highest Level of the Chorus School, Level IV. I began taking MUNI and BART home from practice in the city three days a week, and marveled at how self sufficient I’d become. It was the first time I’d felt like I was in charge of myself, and that was liberating. Explaining that to outsiders, that was the problem.

            “So, you know that’s totally weird, right?” My non-Chorus friend David said to me, after I’d mentioned that I was leaving school early for another performance. It was the third time that week.

            “What’s weird?” I said. Beth said that people who thought that Chorus was strange simply didn’t understand it.

            “It’s all weird.” He sighed. “What you do to get ready—”

            “What? Put on the blouse, then the jumper—”

            “The jumper that fits like a potato sack,” he countered.

            “It’s so we can breathe easier. Then…I have to get the tights, then the maryjanes, then tie my hair back—”

            “Oh, with any hair tie?”

            I rolled my eyes. “No, it has to match my hair color, of course.”

            “Jewelry?”

            “No, and if you can’t take your earrings out, you cover them with Band-aids—you know this already—”

            “It’s a rhetorical device. So you don’t think it’s weird at all?” He leaned back and blew his hair out of his eyes. “Pop Quiz. What are the key characteristics of fascism?”

            We’d been learning about Nazi Germany and World War II in History class, so I complied.

            “The nation is more important than the individual citizens.”

            He nodded. “Good. Your Chorus always tells you to act for the sake of the group. Next?”

            “Um…religion connected to Government?”

            “And you wondered why you only did Christmas concerts. Another one?”

            “Corporate power protected.”

            “And tell me, how much do you get paid for all your work?”

            I folded my arms. “David, the San Francisco Girls’ Chorus is not a fascist institution!”

            He grinned. “Ah,” he said. “You’ll notice I didn’t say they were.”

            I told him he was being an idiot, and that furthermore, it didn’t matter whether outsiders saw it as weird. After all, I reminded him, I was auditioning for the elite touring group in six months. Getting in would mean an end to plaid jumpers and pigtails, and I was sure that I’d get in.

***

            I didn’t get in.

            Even though Beth had “consolingly” told me that I could stay in Level IV and try again next year, I was not to be placated.

            “We were looking for a different sound,” she said. “Another year in Level IV would be good for you.”

            I knew what that was code for. It was code for “Yeah, sorry, we don’t like you quite enough, but hey, stay in Chorus so we can keep making money off of you.”

            My mother was not full of sympathy. “I always thought it was creepy,” she said. “You’ll find better things in high school.”

            “I don’t want better things,” I told her. “I only know Chorus!”

            She shrugged, told me it was my choice, and left me alone in my room, my music spread across my bed and stained with tears.

            I wrestled for a half and hour. On one hand, I was going to high school in four months. There would be plenty of opportunities there. On the other hand, I was going to Berkeley High in four months, and was fully convinced it was going to eat me alive. I’d barely gotten through middle school with Chorus, how could I face high school so alone? Doubts that I’d kept swept under the metaphorical rug came to surface. Had I really been a good singer to begin with, or had they taken me only for the tuition money? Why was I, a fourteen year old girl, still expected to dress and act like a third grader? Did I realy want to devote high school to an organization that forced a façade of perpetual childhood? I decided on my next move at least four separate times, each time sure I had made the right choice, only to change it two minutes later.

            Finally, after four hours and countless boxes of tissues, I stumbled down the stairs, into the kitchen, and tossed my Chorus folder in trash.

***

            I couldn’t have known then that I’d made one of the best decisions of my life. In the moment, it seemed like I’d stripped myself of everything I knew, and was walking into an imminent death-by-high-school.

            But I survived my first days of frighteningly open life. No, I didn’t just survive, I flourished. I joined the school paper. I made new friends. And that freshman spring, I sang in the school musical, forgetting all about vowel shapes and blending, and focusing on enjoying myself. I never could have been in the musical, become the Editor-in-Chief of the paper, or done all the things I’m proud of, if I had tied myself to Chorus.

            Giving up Chorus was giving up my childhood, and the simplicity and assuredness that had come in the package. Letting go of people and places is hard, there’s no two ways about that. But eventually, I had to let go of that security blanket, and walk into the darkness alone. I had to learn to breathe on my own, and I had to be reborn. I don’t want anyone to think that I hate the San Francisco Girls Chorus. I see what it gave me every single day. I’m a good public speaker, a skill honed after years on a stage. I know how to be a member of a group, and I know how to listen, and remember. And no doubt, I learned how to sing. As weird and potentially fascist as the San Francisco Girls Chorus might have been, I can’t lose what they gave me.

            During tests, when the door opens, I can feel every head shoot up, but mine never does. Some habits are hard to break And whenever I sing today, rare as that is, I feel the same feelings wash over me. The lift in the heart, the deep breath in, and the soul just pouring, pouring out.