My Piano Teacher Talks to God
I started taking piano lessons in the first grade, shortly after my classmate, Larissa, began. On Tuesdays after school, Ms. Kim would arrive at our classroom door and Larissa would be whisked away to some unknown part of school. It felt unfair, her escape, how she got to leave her crayons and markers out on the table while the rest of us had to clean up her mess. And then one day Ms. Kim came to collect me from our classroom and I got to follow her through the hallways until we came to a room with only a window and an upright piano against the wall. It wasn’t as exciting as I’d imagined, but it was still something special, to be out of class early on a Thursday, carried into another world.
Larissa’s family had a baby grand piano in her townhouse in Riverdale, New York. My family and I lived in an apartment called the Whitehall that I remember mostly for its pigeon infestation and water bugs in the laundry room. We did have a view of the Empire State Building, which changed its colorful lights each holiday season. But we had no room and no money for a piano at the time, so my mom bought me a mini electric keyboard from KB Toys that had only one-fourth of the keys needed to actually play. I had, even from an early age, the desire to “get things right,” so I practiced on that toy keyboard every single day. It always took me a while to readjust from my fake piano to Ms. Kim’s real and very beautiful piano each week at the start of my lessons. But once I got into it, I was pretty good.
Larissa was the friend I was always envious of. Not only did she have a baby grand piano, but she also had a life-size playhouse fully equipped with a kitchen and cleaning supplies. When I came over to play, I was allowed only to clean the house and not ever to cook in the kitchen. I wanted a life-size playhouse of my own, but Larissa said that she got it in the mail from Lysol, her mother having saved up enough coupons to send in for one. But my mom used Mr. Clean and wouldn’t make the switch to Lysol, so I coveted the playhouse. Larissa always wore a headband, a fashion item that never suited me because of my large forehead. And then of course there was the fact that her mom was the music teacher for the elementary classes. The image of Larissa sitting on her mother’s lap and shaking the tambourine as the rest of us kids miserably kept time with our wooden blocks is one that will never leave my mind.
Ms. Kim was Asian and always wore her sleek black hair down and framed around her face. She wore long skirts and blazers and boots. I wanted to dress like her when I would be old enough to choose my own clothes. It was hard for me to connect with the other kids. They seemed content in their light-up sneakers, always wanting to play Red Rover at recess. But I connected to Ms. Kim in a way I hadn’t connected to anyone before. I wanted to do well. I wanted to impress her, more so than to Mrs. Blaine, my first-grade teacher. My teachers had always felt like second mothers to me, making sure I showed up, ate my lunch, and did my work, but Ms. Kim felt like the woman I wanted to become. She was quiet, like me, and spoke only when necessary. She never yelled, but I could sense her disappointment if I flubbed a note or if she could tell I hadn’t practiced enough. So I did my best to make her happy, to make her see that I was serious about piano.
One day after my lesson, my mom was waiting outside the door to the music room with the KB Toys keyboard in her hands. Ms. Kim was confused, but my mom explained that this little keyboard is what I had been practicing on. Ms. Kim cried and hugged my mom. I wondered if she felt sorry for me, or if she was in shock, sheer disbelief that I was able to play so well with only this dinky keyboard to practice on. Maybe she felt bad for all the times she let a stern glare grace the room for a beat too long. Or maybe she believed it to be a testament to her teaching. Surely, if this kid could play, anything is possible.
I have only one picture of us together from a recital. I’m in a black dress covered in pink roses, my hair done in curls and pulled back, out of my face. Ms. Kim has her hands on my shoulders and I stand in front of her — proof that I made her proud. I don’t remember how she took the news that I was moving to Florida. I remember that Larissa cried and wouldn’t let me go when we hugged goodbye. I didn’t understand what it meant to leave someone then, to leave a person or a place or a thing. New York was my home, but I was still young enough to be excited at the idea of moving, starting over. My dad promised I would have a baby grand when we got to Florida, a perk that came with his newfound success. Larissa and I exchanged letters for a while until we didn’t, but I never spoke to Ms. Kim again. I included her in my prayers each night before I went to sleep, mostly asking to be as beautiful and radiant as her. I wondered if she ever prayed for her students, wishing them a good life, to be better at piano; or if she even prayed at all. I couldn’t imagine her brushing her teeth before bed, or reading beneath a blanket. She was too perfect to be human like the rest of us, turning out the light and closing our eyes.
*
My mom found Lynn in an advertisement in the paper. Even though we had a baby grand piano at home, Lynn preferred to have lessons at her house. I was in fourth-grade when I started piano lessons with Lynn, and after about a year, my best friend from school, Emily, started taking lessons with her, too. Lynn had a short haircut and was very thin, her hands like flesh-colored wires.
During our lessons, Lynn often went outside to “talk to God.” I’d sit at the piano bench and watch her from inside as she pulled at leaves from her tree, her mouth moving, but I wasn’t able to hear what she was saying. I wanted to know if God ever talked back to her. I wanted to know what she was asking and what God might be saying in return.
One day when I came over, Lynn had the TV on, but the program was just a running list of names ascending on the screen. Lynn explained it was Yom HaShoah, a Holocaust remembrance day. The channel scrolled all the names of the victims over the course of a few hours, nonstop, with no other video or music. A black screen with white letters. The program played while we practiced. I always felt bad that I had never learned Hebrew or attended Hebrew School. I never even had a Bat-mitzvah. But I had been to Israel with my family when I was seven-years old. I had complained of the heat and was bored at all the museums. I’d return when I was 24 and visit the same spots I had seen as a kid, no longer bored but crying my way through each guided tour, each ceremony, each prayer.
I didn’t have the same verve to impress Lynn as I had for Ms. Kim. But instead a noxious competition manifested between Emily and myself. Lynn often spoke of how gifted Emily was, how she had natural talent. Even though I had the baby grand, my skills took longer to hone. I felt like I had to practice for hours to get each piece right, whereas Emily could sight-read music on the spot. Emily had a piano at home, too, a white, upright piano in her living room. Emily hated playing piano. Her parents threw a lot of parties during which her mom would want Emily to put on a dress and play for all the guests. She said she’d even pay Emily a hundred dollars a pop.
Another thing Emily hated was the idea of a recital.
“It’s not like anyone even wins anything,” Emily told me.
“You can win a ribbon,” I offered. “But it’s also to show your skills, to show how much you’ve practiced.” I was starting to lose interest in playing, too, but I recognized in it the ability to grow, to improve, and that was something I felt I needed, still need, in my life.
“But I don’t practice,” Emily said. “And I don’t need a ribbon to tell me anything. I’ll never play a recital.”
And she didn’t. I attended recitals season after season, year after year, in old churches or basement auditoriums, wearing scratchy dresses and shiny shoes, praying to God that I wouldn’t mess up a note. And in a way Emily was right; it didn’t matter how well I did or didn’t do. But I knew it made my mom proud. She liked to see me play, to see me all dolled up — a performer.
The last time I ever played was at a competition, a 45- minute drive south in Coral Springs. I practiced my piece for weeks, preparing to perform before a classroom of judges. I was so nervous, and even though I’d spent hours rehearsing, it felt like it wasn’t enough. No matter how much I’d prepared, I felt green.
I’ll never forget the tights, though. The black tights, the one pair I ever had, the way my mom rolled them up, slowly with her thumb and forefinger, and then placed them over each of my feet. How when they started not to fit anymore, she took a scissor and cut them at the waist. Every time I grew, another centimeter got cut so I could fit in them. I always wondered why she didn’t just buy me another pair. But that’s the thing, she was persistent. She was more persistent with those tights than I could ever be at piano, at maybe anything. The way I want to give up when things are hard or go to sleep when I’m depressed or how my negative thoughts spiral beyond the ability to come back to myself. I kept those tights through college, through rushing sororities and date nights with boys, and eventually threw them away when the cut in the waist got so deep the tights fell down under my butt when I walked. I remember my mom with those scissors, big and red in her hands. I was scared she’d cut my skin by accident. I was scared every time I had to play the piano in front of her, in front of the judges, in front of all my piano teachers over the years. I was scared that I would never be as good as I wanted to be. I would never be like Larissa with her lovely little playhouse and headbands. I would never be like Emily, cracking my knuckles and playing a perfect symphony. I would never be like Ms. Kim, so modest and cool, or like Lynn, believing so hard and true. I would certainly never be like my mom, finding solutions to problems all the time. I felt instead like I was always creating the problems, or that I was the problem — this girl with a slit in her tights, barely holding it together, barely getting through her “Minuet in G,” barely picking up her chin enough to see she isn’t smiling.
*
The stress of piano transforms into the stress of most adult things in adult life. With a diagnosis of generalized anxiety, there are therapists and medications and trial and error. There is a parade of unease. First there are PSATs, then SATs and ACTs, then there are advanced placement courses and research papers, and then W2s and taxes. There are things you can prepare for, like perhaps all of the above, and then the unthinkable, un-prepare-able things, and then it feels like you are always walking an almost nonexistent line between chaos and order, between wanting to drive your own car into a tree versus working out, getting your errands done, going grocery shopping, and picking up an iced latte all before noon.
I often talk to myself while driving; something I admit to my students, for which they subsequently make fun of me. But when I talk, I am not simply thinking aloud. I am sorting things out, having deep conversations, sometimes telling jokes, but mostly trying to prove myself into existence, into mattering.
I think of Lynn in her backyard, her gentle talks with her higher power. I think of how I attempt to pour my unease into writing, and the droplets of anxiety that are left, where do they go? I cradle them in my depression naps, I text them frantically to my husband and mom, I channel them aggressively into exercise, doubling up on classes at the gym, or spread them out on long hikes through the Los Angeles mountains. My favorite, though, is taking my worries shopping. Sometimes there is even a baby grand piano right there in the middle of the mall, a young man or woman sitting at its helm, playing with such elegance.
I no longer know how to play the piano. When I pray, I ask a lot of questions. Lately, I have not been getting so many answers. I’m angry more than I can stay calm. I’m confused more than I’ve been able to find any peace. Sometimes I feel like I’m not good enough to be a believer, the same way I felt unworthy of competing with piano, like my being is unredeemable.
But still, I close my eyes and say, “Please be with me, help me see the way, help me.”