The Piano Teacher's Son

The Piano Teacher's Son

The wagon lurched drunkenly over the dusty dirt road, every bump from every rock and pothole sending daggers of pain into Fanny’s already mangled heart. Every rotation of the wheels meant the travelers were another meter closer to the Hardigree homeplace, and to Fanny giving up the one she loved most. 

Reg chattered excitedly, his five year old countenance alight with excitement. This was the first trip he had ever taken, the farthest he had ever strayed from the comfortable two story home in Atlanta. As he eagerly demanded every detail about their destination, Fanny fought to choke back tears as she looked at her son. He was her entire world. On the long road back from Washington DC, Fanny had been terrified and alone in the world. It was only the thought of Reg, the tiny bundle in her arms, that kept her strong. Despite the journey and the unknown face her now shameful life had assumed, Fanny had been able to gaze at her child’s face, his eyes closed in innocent slumber, and find something worth fighting for, something to protect at all costs. She found her heart again.

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Little Reg had never known his father. When he returned from playing in the streets with other little boys and saw them return home to both a mother and a father, he had, on occasion, ventured to ask Fanny who his father was. Her unsatisfactory response about his father having fought in the Civil War, and upon walking home from Virginia after the Confederate army had lost to build a house for his family had never answered his questions. If he had built a house for his family, where was that house? He and Fanny lived alone and they were his family...right? But that was all Fanny had to say to Reg on the subject, and the young boy accepted the impasse as a topic of conversation for another time. 

In actuality, everything Fanny had said was the truth. However, she did not yet feel comfortable telling her son the story of a young girl, sent to teach piano to the daughter of one of her Father’s war friends, and how her entire world had been burnt to ashes by that simple arrangement. 

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Six years earlier, a younger Fanny had heasitantly rapped on the door of the simple, unassuming Hardigree home place, her bonnet shielding her ivory skin from the blazing tendrils of the Georgia sun. The woman who answered the door had obviously at one time been quite beautiful, but now no one would venture to describe her as such. It was as if the lifeblood of the woman had been sucked from her very being. Her hair, though respectably arranged on the top of her head, was dull and brittle looking. Her skin had a pallor that was not far from that of a corpse, and the dark rings around her eyes spoke of illness and sleepless nights. However, a sweet smile graced the woman’s wasted lips as she welcomed Fanny into her home. 

Sitting in a chair beside the fireplace as Fanny entered the room was a short and wiry man with thin, greasy brown hair and a hard set to his jaw. His brown eyes swept up and down Fanny’s figure twice, causing the hairs on her arms to curl on end. He introduced himself as Reginald Samuel Hardigree, his expression morphing from a leer to a practiced mask of polite sensibility as he asked Fanny to have a seat by the fire as they discussed the new arrangements. Fanny was to live with the Hardigrees for three months to teach their daughter Laura to play the large upright piano that dominated the parlor of the simple house. 

Beside her father, Laura, a young girl of about seven or eight years sat on the hearth playing with paper dolls. She was a pretty girl, with long blond hair arranged into pigtail braids on either side of her round face. Her huge brown eyes were wholly absorbed on the dolls in her hand, and the play of light across her cheeks made her look both innocent, and otherworldly. The girl did not seem made for this place, with its unforgiving gray walls and spartan decoration. She was like a forgotten princess, doomed to live a life of obscurity, never truly realizing her true identity. Despite her qualms about the girl’s parents, Fanny took pity on the child and decided to stay, both to appease her father, who had fought with Reginald in the war, and to share with the child a gift that had provided Fanny with a much need escape from reality on multiple occasions. Given her parents, if anyone might need a distraction every now and then it was this girl.

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That night, Fanny awoke from her bed in the attic to a rough hand clapped over her mouth. In terror, Fanny tried to scream for help, but the hand pressed tighter over her lips. So much stronger than herself, the other arm of her intruder began to rip off her night gown as Fanny thrashed around, struggling in vain to free herself.

“Listen here pretty girl” a voice in the darkness whispered in her ear, the sickly sweet stench of hard liquor assailing Fanny’s nose, “If yer gonna live in my house, being paid by the money ah work my ass off to make, yer gonna have to get used to pleasin’ your boss and obeyin’ orders.” Fanny whimpered. “Now don’t trah to scream, because the only persons who would heer yah are the slaves out back, and thar too skeered of me to help yah”. 

Fanny continued to struggle, but, alone and disoriented in the darkness, it was pointless. With a few well placed punches, Reginald was able to rip off the remains of Fanny’s night gown and have his way with her naked body. As he said, resistance was pointless in the moment, and no one would have believed her if she were to report it to the authorities. She was a young woman in the middle of nowhere while the South was being reconstructed after the Civil War, and Reginald, a landowning veteran would not face procecution for raping a young girl in his own house. In fact, the police would probably say she had it coming. 

When Reginald finally left, Fanny clutched a blanket around her bruised body and sobbed silently into the night. The moon was full, and somewhere an owl hooted to his mate, calling her safely back from a hunting trip. Somehow, his call seemed lonely and forlorn, a haunting cry in the dark midnight. The call of the owl comforted Fanny, as if the large bird in the wood knew exactly what had happened, and was mourning the loss of a young girl's innocence and with her, cried into the night, transforming pain into a song. 

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The days at the Hardigree homeplace became a blur of dark, sick shame for Fanny, with a glimmer of light whenever she taught Laura. The girl was a joy to teach, and her young, able mind quickly grasped the music notes Fanny showed her, and soon the house was filled with scales and Arpeggios. Laura adored Fanny, and just as Fanny had predicted, she threw herself into the music with the frantic vigor of one trying to escape their circumstances. Soon their friendship blossomed to include long walks through the wood relishing the natural splendor around them. Laura was a joy to be around, and the only positive part about living at the Hardigree homeplace for Fanny.

Three months later, Fanny burst into the door of Reginald’s study, rage exploding like a fiery halo around every pore of her being. “I would like to resign and return to my family in Pinfield.” Fanny said, her jaw clenched as she spat the words in his face. “I am pregnant. With your child. Because of you I will never marry.” With that accusation, the reality of her situation fell with the full weight of its horrible force upon Fanny’s shoulders and she crumpled to the floor, sobbs racking her body. 

“Get up you miserable girl” Reginald spat. “We’re goin’ to fix this. I have a buddy who is going to Washington DC fer some business with them Yankees. You will go with ‘im to have the baby, and when ya return ah’l have a place fer ya. Never said I was no monster.” 

Horrified, Fanny found herself in the back of a wagon bound for Washington DC. With the revelation of what he had done to her, she watched as all her hopes of marrying and settling down vanished before her eyes. She was a single woman, pregnant and alone. Her own family would surely reject her, as would all of the polite society wherever she went for the rest of her life. A child out of wedlock! How was she ever going to raise it? In the misty dawn, Fanny could have sworn she heard an owl calling yet again, its forlorn cry mirroring her own distress. 

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Six months later, on a cold December morning, Reginald Edgar Hardigree made his entrance, kicking and screaming, into the world. As Fanny gazed into the eyes of her newborn son, his skin bright red and covered with wrinkles, she was speechless. He had not been on this earth for three minutes, yet his tenacity to live was almost too much for Fanny. In her eyes, he was the most beautiful creature on the planet. Completely overcome by emotion, Fanny vowed that whatever would befall her and her son, he would always be loved, and in that moment, Fanny was filled with a burning faith that no matter what happened, she would survive and protect this child with all that she had. A shift occurred in Fanny that day. No longer was she the knocked up piano teacher whose life was an endless ocean of shame and helplessness, instead she found something greater than herself, something to live for. She straightened her shoulders, strengthened her spine, and said goodbye to the girl she once was, turning her back on the smoldering ashes that were the remains of her life. 

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When she returned to Georgia, clutching little Reg tightly in her arms, Reginald sent the two to Atlanta to a house he had bought by calling in a favor from one of his other war friends. Fanny avoided her parents, knowing that now they would reject her and have nothing to do with her or her son, and instead moved into the house claiming that the boy’s father had fought in the War and was killed so that they both could have friends and be recognized in the Atlanta social scene. 

The years crept slowly by for Fanny. Reg grew at a remarkable rate and she watched him grow with immense pride at the little man he was becoming. His brown eyes, so like his father’s, were keenly disposed to grasping the inner workings of machines, and he regarded any opportunity to fix things with unveiled delight. But her happiness at his progress was cloaked with dread. As a condition for the house they were staying in, Reginald had forced Fanny to agree that when the boy turned five years old, he would come and stay with his father’s family to be educated and learn about farming. Maud, his wife, was unable to have any children after Laura, and at that time girls were unable to inherit land. To keep from selling the homestead, he would take her son and then legitimize him as his own, stealing Reg away from Fanny forever. As the years clicked by and Fanny became more and more in love with her son, that threat loomed over her head, causing her to sob into her pillow at night when she thought the boy was asleep. He was her son, but only for a short while. Like any fairy tale, there was a deadline on happiness, and once her time was up, it was all over. 

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Now, as she bounced along the dirt road, her son chattering eagerly beside her, Fanny wondered who was to blame for all this pain. Her mangled heart throbbed and she wondered how she was expected to bear it when Reg would no longer be hers. She knew the answer: she wouldn’t. Her life was once again a swirling ocean of shame, and she would carry the loss of her son forever, as helpless to keep him as she was to prevent his conception. At least Reg was young. He would miss her at first, but his little mind would heal and eventually he would be happy with Laura as an older sister and many other playmates around the farm. Despite her qualms, Reg would have a better life if he was legitimately his father’s. He would have a future. So Fanny put on a brave face and held her son’s hand as they arrived, once again, at the front door of the Hardigree home place. She knocked three times and waited for a reply.

Both Reginald and Maud opened the door. Without looking Fanny in the eye, Reginald took little Reg in his arms, handed him to Maud, and said “here is your son”. And there Fanny left her heart.