Mr Amos’s playing was gentle now, though I knew he was only working up to the point where he’d be banging on the keys with such gusto that my singing would be intruded upon by fantasies of attaching thick rubber straps to his hands to restrict the altitude of their bounce. “Mommy-made-me-mash-my-m-and-m’s…Mommy-made-me-mash-my-m-and-m’s…” Every time we sang this absurd line the note went an octave higher until it took on a siren-like wail. Our seventh-grade choir’s one and only warm-up. I felt the vibrations of our mismatched voices ring out over the sturdy back of that upright piano. What a pack of waifs and strays we were: there was Jodie, who had been over-exposed to Broadway as a kid, and whose distinctly Muppet-like alto could be heard above everyone else’s. And there was Hooda in her silk headscarf whose naturally perfect teeth were the first thing I noticed about her. Trinity,…