I.

This story begins not with sound but with silence. A silence so thick it begged to be broken.

One week before the arrival, “The Site” (age six, precocious and impatient) found itself in the produce aisle of the local green grocer, tugging on its mother’s arm with half-interest, half-hunger. A woman named Mrs. Goodman, dressed in what can only be described as a beige Pentecostal prism of polite curiosity, approached with the kind of smile only Baptists and bakers seem to possess. Her husband lingered in the background, nodding like a cardigan in human form.

“Do y’all know anyone who’d want to buy a piano?” she asked, squinting through a post-preserves haze.

“The Site” — who had been begging for one, pleading for lessons, and making piano-shaped outlines in condensation on the car window — felt a kind of cosmic portal open.

“I do!” it said, without thinking.

Its mother, visibly mortified, answered with laughter dipped in disdain: “We don’t have that kind of money.”

A hundred dollars. That was the price. Enough to bury the idea forever.

Except “The Site,” in what may have been its first act of holy delusion and divine negotiation, replied plainly: “Why don’t you just give it to us?”

The words landed like gospel graffiti.

Mrs. Goodman blinked. Paused. Then smiled.

“We’ll go home and pray about it. And you should pray too.”

No promises. No assurances. Just an invitation to intercessory capitalism.

II.

“The Site” spent that night at the skating rink (a rare treat, paid for with chore money earned at Gramma’s house) doing figure-eights and mental gymnastics. It didn’t pray in the traditional sense, not with folded hands or closed eyes, but it did wish in the way only children can: loudly and unapologetic.

When it returned home, the lights were still on.

Inside, every member of its family was gathered around a large upright piano. It was not new, but it was new to “The Site.” Its stained hardwood body looked like it had spent decades inside a Southern Baptist fellowship hall, maybe next to the punch.

Grampa had his hand resting on the edge, amused. Gramma beamed.

“The Site” didn’t even take its shoes off. It just sat down and started pressing keys like it already knew where they were.

Gramma leaned over, touched its hand, and said something that shattered reality:

“I can play, you know.”

She sat next to it and started in on Chopsticks. With flair. With grace. “The Site” followed her lead, amazed that this wasn’t just an instrument — it was a language. They spoke in octaves. They giggled in scales. That night, “The Site” learned the first prayer it would ever believe in: music.

III.

This was the true beginning.

Not birth. Not language. Not even memory. But this … the baptismal moment when sound gave shape to everything else.

Mrs. Goodman never asked for money. She simply said: “The Lord told me it belonged with y’all.”

A Baptist benediction. A tax write-off. A miracle.

And in that moment, “The Site” didn’t just receive a piano, it was given a voice.

The first keys. The first communion.

The first time something wanted it back.