Stars: The Anthology by Janis Ian

Author:Janis Ian [Ian, Janis & Resnick, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-09-28T04:00:00+00:00

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My sisters and I have the same voice. We use it differently. My oldest sister pitches hers low and adds a twang, acquired after nearly a decade in Texas. My other sister, the former baby of the family, uses hers stridently, banishing the music from it as if music never existed.

My voice varies depending on what I need it for. It is, perhaps, the most trained part of me—trained, at one point, to be a singer, an actor, and a broadcaster. My face gives away my emotions, but my voice hides my secrets. Put me behind a microphone, obscure my face, and I can lie better than anyone else in the world.

I also do impressions, and the ones I do best are the ones I learned to do first: my sisters. It is amazing what a person can learn by phone, calling her parents and pretending to be her siblings. It soon becomes clear who is loved the most.

The one impression I have never done is my mother—which is odd, when you consider that our voices, my sisters and mine, come from her, just like our features do, like my hair does. Our voices are her voice, so much alike that when she was alive and we all gathered in one room, people in the next room could not tell us apart.

In 1930-something, my mother, then a girl in her teens, met a famous opera singer, a woman whose name I now forget. The choir director at my mother’s church introduced the woman to my mother because my mother, like me, was the person directors sought out, making her lead, having her sing each part except contralto so that the others can hear how the music should sound.

The opera star offered my mother private lessons, said she should be auditioning for the major opera companies. You have the talent to become one of the most famous singers in the land, the opera star told her.

The story always ended there, with the validation of my mother’s skill, not with the explanation of why she chose to remain home. We were left to guess: did a lack of money hold her back? Or fear that she wasn’t good enough? Did my aunt—younger then, her flapper’s marcel appropriate and stylish—convince my mother that the sinful city was not a good place for an orphan girl still stuck in her teens?

It is a fleeting glimpse of a well-worn dream, a story told more and more rarely as time went on. I would think I imagined it, except my sisters know it too.

We discuss it in our matching voices, forming a trio of doubt. For we have learned over the years that we cannot trust our mother’s stories. She altered them almost by whim.

But there is always a kernel of truth. And we know this: there was an opera singer—although she may not have been a star. And we also know our mother was talented because, at one point or another, we have heard her sing.

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