Tame

           Sleep was beginning to come to Cassandra when she forgot her last name. Granted, in society such a mediocre thing as a four letter word can seem obsolete when you’re not used to repeating it over and over.  School did nothing for this, which is an unforgivable, heartless statement and not one she’d care to admit to anyone.

            It was four o’clock in the morning, so her memory problems didn’t matter, as most situations wouldn’t matter enough to conflict oneself over in the middle of sleep deprivation.

            She was caught up in the haze that followed the moments of loss realization, as all the words, lines, sentences and paragraphs were cut up, jagged and without constancy. Her thoughts did tumble down in heaps, tangles of spider webs that had been suddenly disturbed.

            Arrogant in mind, Cassandra had little reason to question the capability of anyone else in waking her. When the first notes sounded, she had drawn back her curtains with such force that upset her alone.

            Once, when Cassandra was seven years old, she had attempted to skate down a slim sidewalk through England on her bike. When she promptly collided with the unforgiving surface below her, her father had only sighed. He knew the ground below her better than she did, the lesser valued people under her stead, and had predicted what would come from Cassandra’s lack of forethought.

            Currently she had succeeded once more in her thoughtless towards others, but first she had betrayed the ground she walked on by making a fool of herself behind her own window. In the darkness that lingered, unfettered by the customary gas lamps, Cassandra had only guessed at which window the music was coming from. She had chosen the one stretched out into the residence’s main wing, instead of the equal lengths of ancient, slimy outdoor streets.

            The melody rang out closer, sharp and clear to Cassandra’s ears that envied such talent. She passed by portraits on the wall of famous relatives; they were wealthy bankers, politicians and war leaders. She couldn’t notice them.

            The hall gave no suggestion of a twist, turn, or deviation from its straight path until Cassandra spied a sharp turn to the right of her walk. As usual, her hands clamped up before she attempted to do anything people would criticize her for. She’d learned that those were the things worth doing and thankfully her ferocity always won out.

            In this case she neglected to linger before swinging open the door to the basement dwelling. The ground couldn’t now cradle her fall.

            An instrument of cast iron stood farthest from the door frame, the mechanism’s color in full focus with the light following the opened door. With a hasty glance through the room, Cassandra realized that with the blurred coffee shade of the instrument’s skin, it must have basked in shadows before she came in.

            Though the modest walls and unkempt floorboards revealed nothing as to the musician’s identity, the shoes sticking out from under the instrument did. Strange mutterings came from them, and had it been daylight or as a part of a game with her classmates, Cassandra might have laughed. Today she was uncertain as to whether she should interfere or be embarrassed at the sight.

            “Do you want me to fetch the repair man?”

            A loud series of sharp phrases were issued from the shoes after Cassandra had finally spoken up. They continued on up from the floor, onto the position of the only seat in the room. There the figure had glanced up and only saw Cassandra for a moment.

            Cassandra had appeared to be more startled to see the boy in the room than he was of even noticing her. Instead of explaining why he was residing in a room that was intended to remain unoccupied, he spent his time complaining that Cassandra’s abrupt presence had caused him to ram his head against the frame’s surface. Initially shocked that anyone would start a conversation off with her this way, Cassandra remained silent. Though overconfident and born into a noble family, she had nothing lacking when it came to her cunning.

            Gradually her unforeseen acquaintance calmed down enough to grant her a grin and offer her a seat in front of the mechanism. Conversation soon gave way to an hour of music lessons, in which Cassandra experienced time-consuming failures and brief successes. Unlike the other skills built on memory she had practiced, she now found how little the countless failures weakened her. Subtly, her understanding grew of the placement of the keys and where the higher and lower notes came from. She experienced learning something that was outside the realms of lecture halls or business meetings. Her fingers relaxed on the instrument as she tuned her ears into the vibrations made at fluctuating frequencies. She’d ask questions intermittently and only when she was stuck on repeating the rhythms of a song did the questions appear off topic.

            “How long have you been a servant?”

            “I’ve never been a servant.”

            Cassandra gave the boy an exasperated look, “Oh, of course it makes perfect sense that you’re not a servant but live in the hall built for servants. I didn’t understand that till now, thank you for explaining yourself.”

            “What I mean is that though I’ve never been employed as a servant, I can associate with them candidly, unlike people in the middle class. That’s how I prefer to spend my time.”

            “You are a member of the middle class then?”

            “I’m not a part of the middle classes by birth, but associations with its members are unavoidable. At least, that’s what I’ve always experienced.”

            “Hmmm,” Cassandra replied, turning back to the keys before her. She’d never experienced what the musician was describing.

            She felt it would be shameful to admit it, but her family consistently found ways to steer away her interest from the lower classes. Every few years, it’d be a new excuse. Once she had passed by a newspaper stand. With curiosity, she had approached the papers being sold, taking a glance at the headlines. Nearly shrieking, her older brother had grabbed her hand and led her away. Apparently being close by the proprietor of the stand was all right, but the proximity of her to assortments of the working class early in the day was not.

            As she shut her window before dawn, the idea of sleep seemed pointless compared to the reality of how little she had accomplished that day. Tomorrow would transpire with lessons on formulas, tables of arithmetic and calculations involving family funds.

            Cassandra was near sleep when the name came to her, Tame. For all that she was worth, her last name was Tame.