from Bridget Dunn

It was spring, but a nasty Chicago spring. A patch of ice sitting in the middle of the grass, littered with black and gray, intermingling what was once snow with dirt and traces of pavement. I had been inside the gym during rehearsals, when a crowd of colossal eighth graders gathered around a piano. But now, the winter had passed, and the days of my mom plunking the starting key or playing the instrumentals on her CD player every Sunday were over. 

On opening night, my dad and I would walk through the hallway to the gym, and he would buy a bag of the saltiest popcorn I’d ever tasted. Just hours before, the floors were covered with scooters that could crush ankles, and dodgeballs that once left an imprint on Danny Shannon’s arm. Now, rows of folding chairs faced the giant stage, and two blocks of wood with painted bricks stood at each end. Before the show would start, we could hear soft whispers behind it, and the overture began. 

There’s a moment in The Music Man where she sings:

Sweet dreams be yours, dear, if dreams there be

I’m not sure if it is a real memory, or if my flair for dramatics in girlhood filled in the blanks. 

Sweet dreams to carry you close to me

I think about the pinkish haze of the spotlights and the salt from the popcorn and how I wished I was older. 

I wish they may and I wish they might

It’s a lullaby and I already know all the words. 

Now goodnight, my someone, goodnight

It was almost always on my birthday, and the artificial cheese from Portillo’s afterwards came with a buzzing feeling. 

From the back of the gym, at the folding table with my mom and her sheet music and pencil, I fell in love – with showtunes, with storytelling, with Mr. Rice, the Sue Sylvester of middle school plays, and his annual, dress rehearsal proclamation that the show would be canceled if they couldn’t get their act together, topped off with a dramatic walk-out. 

Whenever I think about it, I need a glass of water. 

*

So, why is it that I read out loud, 

nearly every single day. 

I read Cisneros 

with a voice as steady as the young Esperanza. 

But when I read about me, 

or about those rugged, rocky cliffs, 

my voice forms cracks and crevices - 

a defense against a shaky fear that I may think 

of what I’m reading, 

how fragile and delicate this story I tell. 

That I could cry

seem weak, emotional, 

and not the strong woman I pretend to be 

sometimes. 

*

For weeks after I left that job, I looked inside at a note from a mentor tucked inside of the book he gifted me. How Green Was My Valley. He wrote that the book was about embarking on a new chapter, that it spoke to him at a time he needed it and he had wished he read it sooner. 

It disappoints me that I can’t remember the exact moment I discovered that the screenplay for How Green Was My Valley was written by a man named Phillip Dunne, the grandson of Irish immigrants Peter and Ellen who settled in Chicago.

One day the information simply became known to me, and I could not escape this euphoric idea that I was linked to such a storyteller - that we carried the same semblance of suffering in our stomachs from a manufactured famine. In school, I lived to hear praise from my teachers, even from Mrs. Carr who said that animals didn’t have souls. My love language was the one of quiet narcissists and child readers: words of affirmation. 

I carry the name of my maternal great-grandmother, Bridget, but from my father’s side, I inherited hunger. 

Would I be here,

Watching my students pretend to read, 

If not for a subconscious soundtrack 

Of dualities?