Listen! Read Online Free PDF Page B

moment, the school bell rang, and students ahead of me began to move. I had to start walking, so I left my heel behind, in the mud.
    Now, instead of a heel, three nails stuck out of the bottom of my shoe. I had no heel, but I had nails to walk on. Every time I took a step, the nails rang out against the floor. My broken shoe made more noise than it had before the heel fell off. I tried to walk on tiptoes down the long hall. When I reached my classroom, I quickly sat at my desk.
    My teacher, Mr. Peters, came up beside me and placed the heel on my desk.
    “Is this yours, Eve?” he asked. “I found it in the mud outside.”
    I nodded, my face red with shame. Everyone stared at the big clunky heel on my desk.
    I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to press the heel back onto the nails.
    When I got home from school, Mother was still at the canning factory.
    I took off both shoes and ran toward the river. My sister ran along beside me.
    “What are you going to do?” she said. She could see the shoes in my hand.
    “I’m going to throw them in the river,” I told her.
    “You’d better not, Eve,” she said. “Mother will be upset.”
    “I don’t care,” I said. And I really didn’t care.
    When we reached the shore, I threw the shoes as hard as I could. I watched them bob up and down in the water before they sailed away.
    The next morning, I told Mother I couldn’t find my shoes. I told her I couldn’t go to school.
    Mother made me look in every room of the house. She made my sister look, too. We searched until the school bus arrived. Mother had to leave for work and I still had no shoes to wear.
    My sister was loyal. She did not tell on me.
    I stayed home from school that day, and my sister rode the school bus without me. When Mother returned home from work, we searched for the shoes again.
    Mother was not happy with me, but she finally took me to the shoe store. She had to buy me a new pair of shoes.
    I never told my mother about throwing the shoes into the river.
    I was not proud that I did not tell the truth. But I got to own a pair of normal-looking shoes. I didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for me or laughing because we were poor.
    *
    Because Eve knew how to perform, she made the others at the table laugh. Roma and Liz and Jessie understood Eve’s story very well.

Chapter Eight

Piano
    Roma’s sister Liz worked as a musician and music teacher. She held up a black and white photo that Roma had seen before.
    “I was sixteen in this photo,” said Liz, as she passed it around the table. “Roma was eighteen and had already left home. She won a scholarship and lived in residence at university. After Roma left, I lived alone with Mam. I still had two more years of high school.”
    Liz continued. “The photo shows the living room of the house where Roma and I grew up. I am sitting on a piano bench, facing a piano. Myhands stretch over the keyboard, and a music book is propped in front of me. But I am not looking at the notes on the page. As you can see, I’m staring down at the keys. I have a serious look on my face.”
    *
    Liz’s story:
    You won’t be surprised when I tell you that Mam always wished for a piano. Many of Mam’s deaf friends owned pianos. Why did deaf people want pianos?
    Anyway, Mam could not afford a piano. So one of our grandmothers decided to search for one. She found and bought a second-hand piano, which she gave to Mam for her fiftieth birthday.
    A big moving truck arrived at our house to deliver the piano. The following week, my grandmother paid to have the piano tuned.
    Mam loved that piano. Right away, she wanted me to learn to play. I banged at the keys, but Mam didn’t want that. She wanted me to learn properly. Roma had left home, so I was the one who had to learn. That’s what Mam thought.
    I had no interest in learning piano. I wanted to listen to the radio. At my high school, I had learned the words to popular songs. I began to go to school dances with my friends. I wanted