practicing?

I remember I stood and listened for a minute and then went toward the sound,

mostly out of curiosity, but also because whoever it was had a wonderful

voice. There was a girl about my age—seventeen—sitting at a window in one

of the oldest colonial rooms, singing and gazing outside.

Even though I knew that the only thing outside that window was a painted

backdrop, there was something about the girl, the gray cape she was wearing,

and the song she was singing, that made it easy to imagine "Plimoth"

Plantation or Massachusetts Bay Colony outside instead. The girl looked as if

she could have been a young colonial woman, and her song seemed sad, at

least the feeling behind it did; I didn't pay much attention to the words. After

a moment or two, the girl stopped singing, although she still kept looking out

the window. "Don't stop," I heard myself saying. "Please." The girl jumped

as if my voice had frightened her, and she turned around. She had very long

black hair, and a round face with a small little-kid's nose and a sad-looking

mouth but it was her eyes I noticed most. They were as black as her hair and

they looked as if there was more behind them than another person could

possibly ever know. "Oh," she said, putting her hand to her throat—it was a

surprisingly long, slender hand, in contrast to the roundness of her face. "You

startled me! I didn't know anyone was there." She pulled her cape more

closely around her. "It was beautiful, the singing," I said quickly, before I

could feel self-conscious. I smiled at her; she smiled back, tentatively, as if

she were still getting over being startled.

"I don't know what that song was, but it sounded just like something

someone would have sung in this room." The girl's smile deepened and her

eyes sparkled for just a second. "Oh, do you really think so?" she said.

"It wasn't a real song—I was just making it up as I went along. I was

pretending that I was a colonial girl who missed England—you know, her

best friend, things like that. And her dog—she'd been allowed to take her cat

but not her dog." She laughed. "I think the dog's name was something

terribly original like Spot." I laughed, too, and then I couldn't think of

anything more to say. The girl walked to the door as if she were going to

leave, so I quickly said, "Do you come here often?"

Immediately I felt myself cringe at how dumb it sounded. She didn't seem to

think it was dumb. She shook her head as if it were a serious question and said, "No. I have to spend a lot of time practicing, only that gets dull

sometimes." She tossed her hair back over the shoulder of her cape. The cape

fell open a little and I could see that under it she was wearing a very

uncolonial pair of green corduroy jeans and a brown sweater. "Practicing?" I

asked. "Singing, you mean?" She nodded and said in an offhand way, "I'm in

this special group at school. We keep having to give recitals. Do you come

here often?" She was standing fairly close to me now, leaning against the

door frame, her head tipped a little to one side. I told her I did and explained

about wanting to be an architect and about the solar house. When I said I was

going to the Temple of Dendur, she said she'd never seen it except from

outside the museum, and asked, "Mind if I come?" I was surprised to find

that I didn't; I usually like to be by myself in museums, especially when I'm

working on something. "No," I said. "Okay—I mean, no, I don't mind." We

walked all the way downstairs, me feeling kind of awkward, before I had the

sense to say, "What's your name".

"Annie Kenyon, she said. "What … what's that?" I said "Liza Winthrop"

before I realized that wasn't what she'd asked. We'd just gotten to the

medieval art section, which is a big open room with a magnificent choir

screen—an enormous gold-painted wrought-iron grating—running across the

whole back section. Annie stood in front of it, her eyes very bright. "It's from

a Spanish cathedral" I said, showing off. "668 …" "It's beautiful," Annie

interrupted. She stood there silently, as if in awe of the screen, and then

bowed her head. Two or three people coming in glanced at her curiously and

I tried to tell myself it was ridiculous for me to feel uneasy. You could walk

away, I remember thinking; you don't know this person at all. Maybe she's

crazy. Maybe she's some kind of religious fanatic. But I didn't walk away,

and in a couple of seconds she turned, smiling. "I'm sorry," she said as we

left the room, "if I embarrassed you."

"That's okay," I said. Even so, I led Annie fairly quickly to the Hall of Arms

and Armor, which I usually go through on my way to the temple. The Hall is

one of my favorite parts of the museum—one is greeted at its door by a life-

sized procession of knights in full armor, on horseback. The first knight has

his lance at the ready, pointed straight ahead, which means right at whoever

walks in. Annie seemed to love it. I think that's one of the first things that

made me decide I really did like her, even though she seemed a little strange.