“And how do you know so much about the Songbird. Have you been studying it?”
Yolanda nodded, shrugged then shook her head. “I originally hoped to get your part but then tried out for whatever was left. The important thing was that I get a part.”
“Maybe you should have tried harder for the part of Songbird?”
“You should know better than anyone else how impossible that part is. How many women do you think have the vocal range the Songbird requires? I mean, it’s positively crazy. And then you...you go and hit that high C like it was nothing.”
Sonya smiled. “I’ve heard you sing. You have a beautiful voice.”
Yolanda shrugged and turned to shove all her makeup into a small cosmetic bag. “I can hold a tune, and that’s about it.”
“You undersell yourself. All you need is a little training.”
“Don’t get me wrong, but I think that vocal training is for the birds...as it were. Either you can sing or you can’t.”
“That’s not true. Your vocal cords, or vocal folds; they’re muscles that you have to train. You have to work it and train it and maintain it. You should have heard me the first time I tried to sing. I had a small and frail voice with barely a half octave range. Slowly, I built on that. I had a teacher who showed me breathing exercises.”
“I find that hard to believe. Your voice sounds so natural and effortless.”
Sonya shook her head. “Well, it’s not. Believe it or not, I hated those singing lessons. I thought all the breathing thing was so silly, not to mention useless. I was like you. I thought either you can sing or you can’t. But, with time, my lungs opened up, my vocal cords became more pliable, and I was hitting higher and higher notes. But then...” She choked on the words and stopped talking altogether.
“Then, what?”
Sonya shook her head dismissively. “I like how you decorated the place. Really cute, and young.”
“Don’t change the subject. What happened?”
“A few years later, late into my teens, I...” She hesitated, weighing her words. “Singing wasn’t such a priority, and maintaining my voice took a backseat to other...endeavors.”
“Like what?” Yolanda sat and looked up at Sonya, waiting for her to spill her life right there on the dinette table.
“I got hooked on opium.”
Yolanda gasped. “You? Regal Sonya? Hooked on opium? I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it. And believe me when I say that it just about killed me.”
Yolanda took Sonya’s hand in hers. “How horrible. How did you get out of it?”
“Friends and family who believed in me were a great help. I had people who took me away from areas where opium was so readily available. It took a while, but I was finally able to regain control and with that, I found my voice again.”
Yolanda bit down on her bottom lip. “I know of a few people who succumbed. I’d say you were lucky to get out of that addiction alive.”
Sonya nodded, silently reliving those horrible days.
“China was so horribly hit by the rampant opium addiction. So many young lives destroyed.”
Again, Sonya nodded. Indeed, though she’d made it out alive, she’d seen others around her losing their lives over the drug.
“Did you know that England was the one who introduced opium to China?” Before Sonya could respond, Yolanda continued. “We suffered our biggest humiliation after that, and many say that’s why England did it. They wanted to weaken China, and they did so by weakening its people. They got so many people hooked.”
“What about you? Were you ever affected?”
Yolanda shook her head. “I was too young. I heard the words opium and addiction and all that. I knew it was a bad thing. And I remember when this addiction epidemic killed our Empress. Oh, how my mother cried. That’s all I really remember about it.”
Since they were getting comfortable with discussing touchy topics, Sonya decided to play the part of the spy Zwick thought she was. “What do you think of Zwick?”
Yolanda’s eyes widened in surprise at the sudden change of topic. “Think of him? I don’t know. Do you think he’s an opium dealer, or what?”
