The Hummer by Ilona Agur

A woman’s humming voice drifted out of the kitchen. It melded with clanging pots and pans, boiling water in the kettle, whooshing hot air from the oven — one chaotic symphony. Her solid, soft, solemn melody rose above the noise, and it glued them together.

Whistling pierced through the orchestra. High and demanding. Her humming paused, interrupted. 

As the whistle screeched higher, becoming sharper, the sound of her slippers slapping across marble tiles crescendoed in response. Rhythmic and marked. In the racket of shriek, slap, shriek, slap, the firm slaps prevailed—

A sudden piano rested in the air. For moments, it lingered, the absence of sound almost as deafening as the loudness that preceded it. Then a smooth note slithered through the quiet. “Hmmm, hmmm—”

Click, clack, the pans returned. Knick, knack, the pots concurred. Hiss…a dish sizzled as it hit the stove, fizzing and sputtering. Noises joined in, popping up from the silence like sprouts, each one growing from a tiny seedling of a note to a budding melody line. Above them, atop the escalating mountain of sounds, her theme carried the melodies underneath it: the woman’s humming voice, drifting out of the kitchen.