The Girl Who Sang at High Noon / Pie Jesu
Lichtkind (Child of Light), 1972
The Girl Who Sang at High Noon
There was once a little girl who sang at noon. Not at night, when songs belong to dreams and darkness can hide the face of the singer. Not in the blue hour of morning, when the world is still half-dreaming.
At noon.
When the sun stood directly overhead and even the shadows gathered themselves small beneath her feet.
She carried a melody that belonged only to her. No one had taught it to her. She could not remember learning it. It seemed to have arrived with her, stitched somehow into the small body she inhabited, as natural as breath and nearly as necessary. When she was very young, she assumed everyone had one.
So she sang.
She sang while she played and while she wandered. She sang when she was delighted and when she was afraid. Sometimes the tune came out as laughter. Sometimes as tears. Sometimes as a question asked for the seventeenth time. Sometimes as anger over something adults considered impossibly small. Sometimes it came out as stories nobody had time to hear.
Sometimes as silence that wanted someone to notice that it was not peace.
But it was always hers.
She did not yet know there were acceptable notes. She did not know a face could be studied before entering a room. She did not know that sometimes love could be present and still fail to reach you. She did not know how to disappear.
She learned.
No one taught her deliberately: That would make the story much simpler. There was no monster hiding in the house, no villain creeping through her bedroom door, no single hand reaching out to steal the song from her throat.
There were only people.
People who loved her.
People who were tired.
People who were afraid.
People carrying wounds they had long ago stopped acknowledging.
Her father had once had a tune of his own though she never heard it.
His song had been beaten out of him long before she arrived, and he had learned that a man survived by swallowing certain notes.
Her mother loved her fiercely. But there were rooms inside her daughter she did not know how to enter because no one had ever entered those rooms inside her.
It is difficult to hear a child calling from across the room when another child has been screaming inside you for years.
And their parents had been children once.
And theirs.
And theirs.
There were staircases everywhere.
So the girl learned.
She learned which feelings changed the temperature of a room. She learned which questions received answers and which received sighs. She learned when tears brought tenderness and when they brought discomfort. She learned which pieces of herself were easy to love. She learned which notes made people smile.
And because she loved them, she hummed those notes.
At first, she hardly noticed the difference. Children are astonishing that way: They can bend themselves around the shape of almost anything and call the shape home.
But the old tune didn't disappear.
Sometimes it escaped- when she was tired, when she was frightened, or when something beautiful broke through her defenses before she remembered to contain it.
And sometimes when the pressure became too great, the tune stopped sounding like music at all.
She cried.
Then she screamed.
She beat her voice against the walls of the world until it came back to her as an echo.
Someone know what I mean.
Someone feel this with me.
Someone know that I am here.
People sometimes came.
But not soon.
Or they came with answers when she needed arms. They repaired the thing that had broken when she needed someone to understand why it had broken her. Perhaps they explained why she needn’t be afraid when what she needed was someone willing to be afraid beside her. Perhaps they loved her in every language they knew.
But somehow none of those languages sounded quite like hers.
Eventually, the girl stopped screaming.
Everyone was relieved. They thought she was getting better: she was getting quieter.
There is a difference.
No one saw the staircase. Everyone has one. It rose somewhere between the child she had been and the person she was learning to become.
She climbed it carrying everything she thought she needed.
Be useful.
Be pleasant.
Be reasonable.
Be strong.
Do not need too much.
Do not feel too loudly.
Read the room.
Watch the faces.
Learn what belongs here.
Learn what doesn’t.
The higher she climbed, the heavier it became.
Then one day she lost her footing.
There was no single step that caused the fall, which mattered because later, people would search for one. They would want to know where it happened.
Which stair was broken?
Who left something in the way?
Who should have been watching?
But the girl had been losing her footing for a very long time.
She fell.
One step.
Then another.
Then another.
Her dress snagged as she fell, leaving a ragged tear. She reached for the railing and missed. Down she went through every version of herself she had learned to become. When the fall ended, her small body was still, her dress torn, her hair matted with blood.
And there she lay.
So tenderly.
Fashioned so slenderly.
A little thing beneath an impossible weight.
The strangest part was that the girl kept living.
Years passed.
Her body grew.
She learned things.
She became capable.
She became useful.
She laughed when things were funny.
She comforted people when they hurt.
She learned how to love them in the languages they understood.
Most of all, she learned their tunes. She became very good at hearing the smallest changes in them, the note of irritation, the tremor of disappointment, the shift that meant danger, the silence that meant something was wrong. She could enter a place and feel its weather before anyone else noticed clouds. People sometimes admired this about her.
They called her perceptive, intuitive, nice.
They didn't know she had learned to predict storms because once, long ago, she had been caught outside in one.
She learned when to speak.
When not to.
When to laugh.
When to soften herself.
When to become interesting.
When to become invisible.
She became whatever survival required.
And she became so good at it that eventually even she forgot there had ever been another girl.
Almost.
Because sometimes, surrounded by people who loved her, an unbearable loneliness would rise from nowhere. Sometimes someone would list her traits: call her articulate,wry or observant and something deep inside would ache. A longing to be known coupled with terror at the thought of being seen. Sometimes she wondered why love never seemed to reach all the way inside.
She didn't understand that love kept arriving at the door and meeting the person she had assigned to answer it.
Downstairs, the girl breathed.
Barely.
But she breathed.
She had fought so hard to live.
Eventually, someone found her, and then everyone came to see. People do that when suffering becomes visible. They gathered around the little body at the bottom of the staircase.
They saw the torn dress.
The blood in her hair.
The terrible strain left upon her face.
And because human beings cannot bear a mystery for long, they began trying to explain her.
“I thought she was happy,” said another.
“She never said anything.”
“She was so independent.”
“She was loved.”
That was true.
“She had everything she needed.”
Perhaps the person who said it believed that was true too.
Someone shook his head.
“What a waste.”
No one meant to be cruel.
They simply did not know her.
And how could they?
The woman nearest the stairs had a tear in her own dress hidden beneath her coat. The man beside her had not sung his own tune in forty years.
Another kept rubbing an old scar on his wrist without knowing why.
A woman at the back of the crowd stood perfectly straight while somewhere inside her a little girl pounded against a locked door. A man held his young son’s hand and silently prayed the boy would never discover the staircase he himself had fallen down.
There were children everywhere.
Old children.
Frightened children.
Lonely children.
Children wearing wedding rings.
Children carrying briefcases.
Children raising children.
Children teaching other children how not to cry.
Children who had become so accomplished at surviving that no one remembered they were wounded.
All of them gathered around the girl. All of them trying to understand what had happened to her. None of them noticing the blood in their own hair.
Then the Neighbor came.
No one remembered sending for Him. He lived nearby. He had always lived nearby.
The crowd moved aside.
He didn't ask what happened. He didn't inspect the staircase. He didn't ask who was responsible. He didn't explain why the girl had fallen.
He simply looked at her.
And wept.
The room became quiet.
There was something unsettling about the way He cried. Not because His grief was loud but because it was intimate. He cried like someone grieving a person He knew. All her life she had wanted someone to feel what she could not explain.
He did.
And somehow everyone understood:
He knew the girl.
Not the girl they remembered. Not the capable one, the quiet one, the difficult one, the good one, the strange one.
Not the version of her that had learned to answer the door.
Her.
He knew the tune. He remembered its first note. He had heard it when she sang at noon. He had heard it when singing became crying. He had heard it when crying became screaming. He had heard her beating her voice against the walls. He had heard the silence afterward.
He knew every stair. Every bruise. Every prayer that had never become words. Every need she had learned to reject before anyone else had the chance.
The little girl had known that no one cared.
She had known it with the terrible certainty only a child can possess.
And she had been wrong.
Not foolish, not faithless, not ungrateful.
Wrong.
Someone cared.
Someone had always cared.
The Neighbor knelt beside her. Her eyes were open, blindly staring, watching even now. So He reached down and closed them.
For the first time in a very long while, the girl did not have to watch anyone’s face. She didn't have to measure the room. She didn't have too anticipate disappointment. She didn't have to determine what version of herself would be safest. Her eyes could close.
He already knew who she was.
He slipped one hand beneath her shoulders. Another beneath her knees. Someone in the crowd whispered,
“Careful.”
The Neighbor looked up.
“Yes,” He said softly.
“With care.”
That was when I recognized her.
I don’t know how I had missed it.
Maybe because I had spent so many years looking at her through everyone else’s eyes, or because I had been searching for someone stronger, wiser or less frightened. Someone who could explain herself.
But I knew her. The blood did not hide it. Neither did the torn dress.
I stepped closer and the Neighbor watched me. I looked down at the child in His arms.
“Is she dead?”
He said nothing.
Then I heard it. A sound from somewhere beneath the blood and bruises. Before it reached my ears, my heart stuttered to match it's rhythm.
A hum.
Only a few notes.
Small.
Unsteady.
Almost frightened of itself.
But I knew them. I had known them before I knew words, before I knew fear, before I knew how to enter a room and become what the room required. Before I knew there were acceptable notes. The vibration traveled through the floor into the center of my ribs, the place where my breath always catches when I'm afraid. My throat itched with the urge to complete them.
It was my tune.
My knees gave way.
The girl was alive. She had been alive all this time.
She had fought so hard to live.
I wanted to reach for her. I wanted to apologize.
For forgetting.
For calling her fear weakness.
For calling her sensitivity a burden.
For resenting the walls she had built without ever asking what had happened that made a little girl believe she needed walls.
For treating survival as though it were a character flaw.
For spending years trying to become someone better without ever asking what had happened to the person I already was.
But the Neighbor shook His head.
Not yet.
There would be time for words.
For now:
Lift her with care.
So I reached for her.
Slowly.
She was lighter than I expected.
So young.
So fair.
So tenderly fashioned.
And for the first time, I understood that nothing about the child in my arms needed to be corrected.
She needed to be known.
I used to think healing meant becoming someone new: Stronger, braver, less afraid, less sensitive, less complicated. Someone who could walk into a room without measuring it. Someone who could stand in the light without wondering how she appeared from every angle.
I don’t believe that anymore.
I think healing may be going back.
Down the staircase. Past every step where we learned to leave something behind.
Past the fear.
Past the shame.
Past the expectations.
Past the faces we learned to read before we learned to read our own.
Past every place where someone we loved handed us a burden they had once been handed by someone they loved.
Down and down until we find the child.
Not dead.
Never dead.
Only wounded.
Tired.
Waiting.
And perhaps we all have one: The boy who learned that tears were dangerous. The girl who discovered that being useful earned affection. The child who became funny so nobody would notice the fear. The one who became perfect. The one who became invisible. The one who became angry before anyone could hurt him. The one who became agreeable before anyone could leave her. The one who learned every song in the world except the one that belonged to them.
We love through wounds. Listen through walls. Reach toward one another with hands that are still trembling from our own falls.
Even our masks deserve tenderness. They were built by frightened children trying to keep something precious alive.
So perhaps we begin differently.
With ourselves.
With one another.
With the child beneath whatever we have learned to become.
Carefully.
Because underneath the armor may be something tenderly fashioned.
Something young.
Something fair.
Something that fought very hard to live.
Lift her with care.
I still visit the staircase.
She doesn’t always want to try to come upstairs. I don’t make her anymore.
Sometimes I sit beside her. The Neighbor sits with us. For a long time, none of us speaks. He doesn’t seem bothered by silence. He has never once asked her to explain herself. He already knows. I am the one learning.
Learning her face.
Learning her fears.
Learning the difference between what she wants and what she came to believe she wanted.
Learning the tune.
Some days she lets me hold her hand. Some days she doesn’t. The Neighbor never seems disappointed.
She has moved.
Not to the top. Not even halfway. But she's no longer lying exactly where she fell. Some days she sits on the third step. Some days she retreats to the bottom again. Once she made it to the seventh and then could go no farther. I sat with her there until the light changed.
I used to think awareness itself would be the healing. It is not.
Awareness is only the beginning of the long, awkward work of staying near what was once abandoned.
The Neighbor never counts the steps. He doesn't say “almost” or “soon”
He only stays.
I have stopped demanding a finished song from either of us.
When the old tune surfaces now, it is fragmentary, a few notes, then silence, then the same few notes again.
I don't know how to sing the whole thing yet. I don't know if I ever will.
What I know is smaller and harder:
I no longer look away from her as quickly as I used to. I no longer hate her for the ways she kept us alive. I no longer believe that becoming someone stronger and less complicated is the only path left.
Healing, for me, is still mostly just this,
returning,
sitting down,
listening for a broken tune,
and not running when it hurts.
The noon light is still high above us.
We have not reached it.
The tune still comes in fragments.
We have not finished it.
But I hear her now.
And we are no longer pretending the staircase does not exist.
Pie Jesu is Latin for “Merciful Jesus.” In the Requiem, its a prayer for mercy and rest. That image became important to me as I wrote the Neighbor, the one presence in the story who doesn't diagnose, explain, hurry or demand. He simply knows, grieves and stays.
Author’s Note
This short story was inspired by Michael Jackson’s “Little Susie / Pie Jesu” from HIStory. It's an original fictional and spiritual reflection on childhood survival, the hidden self, grief and healing.
I have many interpretations of “Little Susie,” and this story explores only one of them. I know many listeners (including many Michael Jackson fans) experience the song primarily as dark or even unsettling. But I have always heard something deeper in it. Understanding the emotional and artistic depths from which he created has long made this song a favorite of mine.
For years, I sat with its imagery and symbolism from an author’s distance, pondering what it meant. But recently, something shifted. Instead of analyzing it from the outside, I put myself squarely within the song. I listened as if the lyrics and symbols were reflecting me directly.
That single shift changed everything. Even the Pie Jesu requiem took on a whole new power. It moved from a beautiful, solemn chant to a raw, personal prayer. It opened up a deep reflection on mourning, leading me to ask what kind of peace I was seeking for myself. Placing my soul directly inside the piece brought thoughts I’ve carried for years into sudden, sharp focus, aligning the song with exactly where I am right now.
This story is not intended to explain the song but to enter into a raw, open conversation with it. I don’t think a work like this yields only one meaning, and I hope others will spend time with the piece themselves. Sit with its imagery. Listen beyond the first discomfort. Ask what it awakens, what it grieves, what it leaves unresolved. You may hear something entirely different than I did.
I hope you do.
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