The Ukulele Performance of an Insane Woman
Reuniting with my college classmate after her attempted murder trial
College years
Everyone loved Sarah. A graduate of our own college, she knew how to relate to us and make us feel important, and we were quick to accept her as our friend, ally, confidant, and even mother at times.
But officially, she was our shepherdess, which made us her sheep. Our relationships were to mirror those of Jesus and his disciples, and even those of us who knew zilch about Jesus (like myself) signed up and started going to church because spiritual stuff aside, Sarah was just so intoxicating to be around as a human being.
So about a year or two after graduating from college, when I received a text from Sarah asking if I was available to help Tina on her moving day, I was not one bit surprised to discover that she’d kept in touch with her all those years. She must have been her sheep, too — a particularly lost one because I never saw her at church.
In fact, in our sophomore year, Tina was charged with home invasion and armed assault with intent to murder after breaking into her ex-boyfriend’s dorm (on another campus) and stabbing him multiple times with store-bought knives, leaving him with near fatal wounds.
He survived, and his family sued his university and the security guard who handed Tina the key to his dorm room in the middle of the night, thinking the two were still dating. As for Tina, she was seen no more around the campus after the incident, and it would be many years before I found out that she was eventually acquitted by reason of insanity.
The event made national headlines and left the upstanding members of our prestigious institution reeling from both shock and shame. But as students who would graduate on the heels of the biggest recession of our time with a new credential to live up to, we all quickly forgot about it and moved on with more urgent things in our lives, like studying for exams, applying to grad schools and Fortune 500 companies, and getting wasted at mixers.
Tina and I weren’t friends, but we knew each other through Sarah, which made the whole acquaintance thing a bit uncomfortable. Really, as the more “enlightened” sheep, I should’ve been “reaching out” to her and trying to help her see how incomplete and meaningless her life was so she’d come to church with us.
I did frequent her dorm cafeteria a lot though (not because of her, but because of the food there), and we did have lunch together a few times. And I did always feel a vague affinity for her because of her quiet, stern demeanor, which both attracted and repulsed me. Even as I felt drawn to her in ways I couldn’t explain, I always thought there was something “off” about her, which held me back from getting to really know her.
When we heard that she was arrested and thus found out who she really was, I almost felt vindicated. But I still thought about her at times, with a heart full of pity, unease, and guilt. I thought about her eyes in particular — her big, round, beautiful eyes which were slightly protruding, like they were reaching out for something that kept getting away. At the same time, they were sinking deep into something far, far away from all that they beheld, pulled by a force known only to a handful in the world.
So when our eyes sometimes met across the crowded cafeteria, I always shifted a little on my feet, unnerved by how quickly she could turn that hollow, consequential expression into a passable smile. I returned the smile but not the beseeching gaze.
The lost sheep, found
The class of green graduated with two fewer students than it started out with: Tina and one other woman who committed suicide in her dorm room her freshman year. Both had a history of depression. Both were Asian American. Both had a brush with God (to the extent owning a cross pendant or hanging out with Sarah or me is any indication). Tina, I’d find out many years later, also had bipolar disorder and a history of alleged sexual abuse by her father and attempted suicide.
As Sarah and I pulled into the driveway of Tina’s place, I felt a knot forming in my stomach and almost regretted coming. Was it a pang of guilt about my indifference toward her all those years or anxiety about seeing a woman with a felony charge, I couldn’t tell.
Like a frightened child, I followed Sarah through the front door, which was left wide open. I was instantly surprised by how nice the house looked: clean, spacious, and modern, with columns and sparkling clean hardwood floors. I’m not sure why, but I expected a much smaller, much dingier place.
As we made our way upstairs, we ran into a young man who introduced himself as Tina’s landlord and housemate. He greeted us warmly and made small talk like an average friendly stranger. Sarah did all the talking while I stood there awkwardly, trying not to betray my uneasiness as questions screamed in my head: “Did you ever run a background check on your tenant? Did you know she tried to murder someone? Were you ever afraid she might harm you?”
When we reached the corner room just beyond the open concept kitchen on the second floor, Tina popped out. “Hi!” she greeted us with a big smile. I thought about giving her a long, big hug before coming, but her cheerfulness quickly made me decide against it. Instead, I tried to make the whole reunion as casual and uninteresting as possible. “Hey.”
Then as Tina and Sarah sat on the edge of her bed catching up excitedly, I began to scan the room. Suitcases, boxes, papers. Some clothes and hangers, unmemorable paintings, and music scores strewn all over the bed and the floor around it. A little like mine.
“Do you play?” I asked, relieved to break my own nervous silence. “Yep,” she replied, “I’ve been teaching myself the ukulele actually.” Then without another word, she got up from her bed and reached for one of the boxes on the floor from which she pulled out the instrument.
I watched her with bated breath as she sat in front of the keyboard with the ukulele pressed on her lap and shuffled through some music sheets until she found the one she wanted. She set them neatly on the music stand and without so much as what would’ve been a totally appropriate self-effacing prelude like “I’m not that good,” she began playing. Her fingers strummed the strings deftly, and just as I was about to identify the familiar tune — Somewhere Over the Rainbow — she began to sing.
“Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly
And the dreams that you dream of
Once in a lullaby.”
Mesmerized, I stared at her. The singing, so vulnerable and altogether surprising, sent shivers up my spine, yet the singer, so free, carried on unflinchingly. Her own vulnerability did not hinder her. I remember very little how she sounded, but I remember the deep impression it left on me. How it would haunt me for years to come every time the song played.
“Someday I’ll wish upon a star
Wake up where the clouds are far behind me
Where trouble melts like lemon drops
High above the chimney tops that’s where
You’ll find me…”
The performance transported me out of this world, over the figurative rainbow, into one that Tina had resolutely forged for herself through all those years of digging deep into her well of trauma, violence, and grief. She persevered there until at the bottom of that abyss, a stream started to rise and finally she could drink again.
In that world, in words sung rather than spoken, she laid bare her troubles and dreams, shedding a layer or her and then another. In that world, so far away from this one and impervious to both its judgment and its indifference, I saw her — for the first time since the incident — as someone other than a killer or an ill person. In that intimate, impenetrable space carved out for the three of us, perhaps by chance, perhaps by providence, I was no longer afraid of her.
We moved all her boxes into her moving van and said our goodbyes on the front porch. We must have been there for no more than an hour. I left her place in a kind of trance, and when Sarah and I got into our car, both of us took a moment to catch our breath. We didn’t say anything for a long time.
Then, suddenly realizing how providential the meeting had been, I looked up at my good shepherd and said, “Sarah, thanks for asking me to come.”
“Of course,” she said firmly, “I’m glad you could come.”
And just like that, having seen Tina as she showed herself, not as the world knew her, we drove away, never to see her again.
