I.
Mary’s Flute
Mary shuddered each time she heard the eerie creak from her small corner bedroom. The cherry wood cabinet above the kitchen stove always shelved one bottle of Jack Daniel’s No.7 Tennessee Whiskey along with one old-fashioned glass. After her mother opened the cabinet, eager for the bottle, some type of music would usually follow. Laughter, conversations on the phone, and slow dancing wouldn’t be uncommon. The small kitchen led into a measly living room with an analog television and a wooden rocking chair that had been a staple in multiple households. Beside the rocking chair was a coee table with water stain marks from glasses being placed without a coaster. Mary hardly went in the living room except for when her parents were attending a dinner — usually church-related — and she and Matt were left alone. She looked forward to those nights. As the older brother, Matt would microwave a frozen dinner and they’d spend the evening watching whatever their television oered. Besides that, Mary hardly left her room. It consisted of several simple objects: her twin bed sourced from a donation to the church, a nightstand beside her bed, a dresser, and a wooden desk. Her room’s decor included textbooks propped on her desk, a gooseneck lamp, and a square mirror on her desk.
Then there was her ute.1 Promisingly hidden in her desk drawer, the Geimenhardt ute, her hope for a better future.

She’d seemingly spent the past year of her life saving for an instrument she prayed would open enough doors. The ute she wiped down each night with a small pouch of silver polish and woolen cloth guided her future. She often wondered if the hard work would be enough: the past two summers were spent weeding the Brunson’s, Weaver’s, and Gardner’s yards, graciously accepting each quarter, dime, and nickel. Mary’s shift at Erickson took place for four hours, frequently between dierent neighborhood gardening aairs. She admired the dresses and jewelry in the store as she stocked, shelved, and organized the small shop. Just down the street was the classical music store—HoMann’s. As she toured HoMann’s between dierent shifts, the instruments seemed to be untouchable. Even when Mr. HoMan took the instruments out of their cases and let Mary feel them, they were still out of her grasp. The brass housing and the silver-plated keys on the Geimenhardt Flute almost mocked her.

Between Tchaicovsky’s Chanson Twiste that Mary had borrowed from her school’s attempt at a music conservatory, she could hear the glass being set on the coee table in the living room. Mary concentrated on the sheet music propped upon a stack of books against her bookshelf while her eyes jumped from note to note and her ngers followed in succession.

A glass shattered.

1 Mimicked “Miriam” by Truman Capote. “Then she met Miriam” (Capote 1). I absolutely love how the short sentence, straight to the point, grabs the reader’s attention and shifts the momentum of the story.
Mary squinted her eyes, trying to ignore the noise. She glanced over the sequence of notes she’d struggled to master.

“If it weren’t for us, she’d be in Korea rolling around in the mud with the rest of the orphans,” the angry woman shrieked.2 “She should be grateful we chose her.”

Mary xated on the music sheet, playing louder to drown out her mother’s words. She hardly remembered thirteen years ago when she was adopted from Seoul, South Korea. Only the yellow walls and cries of other orphans lingered in her mind. She couldn’t recall the fourteen-hour ight, meeting her now-brother, or deciding to live in the small Minnesotan town.

Footsteps started approaching, each with a stronger sense of resentment. Through trembling ngers, Mary quickly stued her ute in its case and hid it in its drawer.

II.

Mary’s hair was split evenly and the two sides straggled down her face.3 She looked around the dressing room, approached a mirror, and analyzed the opposing gure. Her slanted eyes and elevated cheekbones immediately divided her from the rest of her family. When she handed her birth certicate to the pageant registrar, she couldn’t help but cover the “Place of Birth” section with her thumb.

2 Mimicked“AGoodManisHardtoFind”byFlanneryO’Connor.“ThechildrenhavebeentoFloridabefore,”theold lady said. “You all ought to take them somewhere else for a change so they would see dierent parts of the world and be broad. They never have been to east Tennessee.” The way the author structured the sentence so the speaker isn’t the name allows more description, while forcing the reader to think.

3 Mimicked “Miriam” by Truman Capote. “Her hair net had slipped lopsided and loose strands stragggled down her face” (Capote 4). I loved this sentence structure because it made me think of Miriam in a way that made her seem a little lost. I thought this was pretty tting way of describing Sarah.
Mary xated Mary brushed the velvet curtain aside and condently grasped the same ute that she’d earned from HoMan’s eight years ago. Looking around at the hundreds of eyes before her, Mary realized her intuition served her right. The audience didn’t make an impression on her: they only acted as a reminder of her work. Each step towards the music stand was a step away from her past and one towards a brighter future. The applause was drowned out by her thoughts, focusing on perfecting each measure. She knew exactly what she wanted so she waved, smiled with intention, and carefully lifted her ute.