Whatever Gods May Be by Kai Harris #2
Except my mom wasn’t as easily moved. Her dreams were different from my granny’s dreams, and mainly involved getting out of the South.
When she was accepted to UofM, she happily moved to Michigan and never looked back, besides on Thanksgiving, when we all—my parents reluctantly, I enthusiastically—visited Granny in Georgia.
It was during one of those visits when Granny first told me her Jubilee story, playing an old recording from the Gospel Music Hall of Fame Series featuring a remastered collection of the Singers from the early eighties.
Unlike my mother, I shared in its glory.
Granny’s dream became my dream, and had it not been for my parents’ insistence, it would have been my inheritance.
Now I was here, but struggling to take what was mine.
I stood from my seat and, with a deep inhale, stretched down to my toes, then back up to lift my hands to the sky.
After three breathing stretches, I started to hum.
I had never had any formal vocal training, but the one thing I did have going for me was this: Singing was as natural to me as breathing.
I sang in the shower, I sang when I was happy or sad or angry, I sang myself to sleep most nights.
But if anyone asked me about it, I pretended like Granny’s musical talent had skipped two generations instead of just one.
It hadn’t skipped me, though. And all I had to do to prove it was make it through one silly audition.
I started with scales. There was no piano in the room, so I matched my pitch to Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal,” a song I happened to know was in the key of A minor, which shares the same notes as C major.
As my voice climbed up and down each note, I felt the tension begin to release from my shoulders, my neck, my face.
I rolled my head in small circles and enjoyed the release.
I opened the search bar on my phone and typed Natural Woman Aretha Franklin instrumental, then scrolled until I found the soundtrack to Granny’s favorite song.
The familiar notes began to play from my speaker, and I couldn’t help but smile as I started to sing the soothing melody.
“Oh!” I screeched in surprise, as my eyes floated open between the chorus and the second verse to find a pair of light hazel eyes locked on mine.
My gaze trailed down from his startled expression to a set of sultry, full lips that went from speechless to smirking as we stared.
I dropped my phone, which was still noisily emitting Aretha’s ballad.
“My bad,” I said, cringing at the loud thud my phone made as it hit the floor. “I didn’t know anyone would be here.” The hazel eyes crinkled at the edges. Laughter.
I bent to scoop and hush the phone, pretending to check it for damage when really, I was wondering if I could stay crouched and hidden forever; but then I heard his throat clearing behind me.
I stood to survey him fully and immediately lost my breath.
It wasn’t that the guy standing in front of me was the finest person I’d ever seen.
I mean, maybe he was, at least non-celebrity (no one can top Michael Bae Jordan); it was that he was my exact brand of fineness—dark chocolate skin, soft eyes, thick lips and nose, sturdy build—all wrapped in one.
When he flashed me a toothy grin, I almost fell back down.
Somehow, I managed to stay standing, reaching to smooth my hair but realizing it was braided back in two plain plaits.
Typical, I would meet the finest guy ever on protective hairstyle day.
“My bad, it’s usually empty here. But I mean, wow. Your voice!” His voice was a melty milk chocolate bar.
“Oh.” I blushed. “I was just fooling around.”
“If that was you fooling around, I can’t wait to hear the real thing.” He tucked his hands into his pockets, then added, “So, are you new here? Freshman?”
“Sophomore,” I said, leaning against the armchair to steady myself. “Maybe a music major, if I can figure out this audition.” I laughed, too deliberately. “I transferred this week.”
“I knew I hadn’t seen you around before. I’m Jrue. And as luck would have it, I happen to be a music major.”
I rolled my eyes. “Seriously?”
“You think I’m lying.” Jrue laughed. “I mean, I’ve done some strange things to talk to cute girls before, but let’s not forget, you’re the one who invited me in here.”
“What? No, I didn’t, I—”
“Your voice invited me,” Jrue said with a wink.
I rolled my eyes, again. “So, did you need something, or can I get back to—”
“I think I heard Aretha Franklin, which, dope, but”—he paused and grimaced—“I know you’re not planning on singing that for your audition.”
I sank into the armchair and placed my face in my hands. “See, I knew I couldn’t do this.”
“Hol up, hol up, that’s not what I meant!” Jrue crossed over to my side of the room with a lighthearted laugh and knelt in front of me. “I just meant, well, vocal auditions are kinda formal. Do you have an idea yet of what you’re planning to sing?”
I shook my head. “I just wanted to warm up with a song that makes me feel good, and well, that song is my granny’s favorite.
But you’re right—I have no idea what to sing for this audition, and I’m not even sure if I can.
I’ve never even sung in front of anyone.
Well, besides you, now.” I peeked at him between my fingers with a grimace of my own, causing him to burst into giggles.
“Okay, first things first, I need to hear more about the hopeful music major who has somehow never sung in front of anyone. Then maybe I could help you out?”
“Help me how?” Besides that the timbre of his voice was a balm for my chaotic nerves.
“Well, I’m more of an instrumentalist myself, but I also play organ for the Jubilee Singers on campus. And I happen to know that just last week, a spot opened up…”
“Wait,” I said, my breath quickening at the mention, “you’re not suggesting that I—”
“Just come to rehearsal. I’d love to introduce you to our director.
He’s gonna lose his mind when he hears you sing!
And we’ll see where it goes from there. Between me and you,” Jrue said, leaning in, “Jubilee Singers get dibs on spots in the music major. You make the Singers, you’re a shoo-in.
Just like that, dreams come true!” He turned away, face flushing.
“At the very least, you hang out with me one more time before you realize I’m a big babbling nerd? ”
I blushed back, nodding casually. “I guess that sounds okay.” It was more than okay, clearly. It was my spin on Granny’s fairy tale come true: me here, in this place where she’d once foretold that I might just find something worth discovering in myself. And with my very own Michael Bae Jrue.
“Okay, it’s a deal then,” he said, extending his hand for me to shake. When I placed my hand in his, I could swear an electrical current passed from his skin to mine.
“So, you gonna tell me your name?” Jrue’s hand was still attached.
“Myra,” I said, feeling—like my granny would say—as small as dust before the wind under the intensity of his stare. I broke eye contact and physical contact all at once. “Guess I’ll see you at rehearsal?” I was probably supposed to be playing it cool, but inside I was the exact opposite.
Jrue nodded and began to rattle off instructions, but I was suddenly impatient to leave. I gathered my stuff and rushed out the door.
“Wait, you don’t even know where rehearsal will be!” Jrue called out after me.
How hard could it be to figure out on my own, I thought. Instead of responding, I waved him off casually, leaving the library—and those hazel eyes—behind.
Jubilee Hall was the largest building on campus, six stories and L-shaped, perched front and center on a manicured circle drive and covered with windows.
In the heat of the Tennessee sun, I swatted mosquitos and marveled at the buzzing chirp of what my Google research told me were likely cicadas.
Inside, I found the rehearsal room to the right of the golden staircase in Jubilee Hall, which the enthusiastic student at the front desk recited was reserved for golden alum—folks who graduated more than fifty years ago—and Miss Fisk, the university’s crowned queen.
After repeating my request for the Appleton Room, I was finally directed to an oblong space with framed Black art covering the walls and a baby grand piano situated in front of a short wooden stage.
In this room, in front of that stage, stood the Fisk University Jubilee Singers.
As I remember it, I already knew I loved music back when Granny started reciting her stories, but as she tells it, I never loved music until I heard them.
And maybe she was right. Something about the way her face lit up when she remembered herself as a child made me feel nostalgic for a memory that wasn’t even my own.
When Granny heard the Jubilee Singers for the first time, it had changed her life.
Hearing Granny’s stories each night as a child had changed mine.
I surveyed the room where students sang casual duets in assorted huddles, hyping each other up with shoulder slaps and choruses of “ayyyyy” whenever someone hit a complicated riff or run.
Some folks were sitting and chatting quietly with their friends, while others were studying lyrics and humming along to the melody.
Books and bodies and backpacks were spread all over the place.
And at the center of it all was my gorgeous library apparition.
“Five minutes until warmups,” shouted a voice from near the stage. And suddenly, everyone was moving. It was like a choreographed dance that everyone knew the moves to, except for me. Luckily, just before panic began to set in, Jrue was magically standing at my side.
“You ready?” he said with a sweet smile.