Part II, Chapter 3: "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan

"Of course you can be prodigy, too," my mother told me when I was nine.

I was a dainty ballerina girl standing by the curtains, waiting to hear the right music that would send me floating on my tiptoes.

I was like the Christ child lifted out of the straw manger, crying with holy indignity.

In all of my imaginings, I was filled with a sense that I would soon become perfect. My mother and father would adore me. I would be beyond reproach.

I had new thoughts, willful thoughts, or rather thoughts filled with lots of won'ts.

So now on nights when my mother presented her tests, I performed listlessly, my head propped on one arm.

She seemed entranced by the music, a little frenzied piano piece with this mesmerizing quality, sort of quick passages and then teasing lilting ones before it returned to the quick playful parts.

She seemed entranced by the music, a little frenzied piano piece with this mesmerizing quality, sort of quick passages and then teasing lilting ones before it returned to the quick playful parts.

The girl had the sauciness of a Shirley Temple.

She was proudly modest like a proper Chinese child.

And she also did this fancy sweep of a curtsy, so that the fluffy skirt of her white dress cascaded slowly to the floor like the petals of a large carnation.

Our family had no piano and we couldn't afford to buy one, let alone reams of sheet music and piano lessons.

And then he would play the C scale a few times, a simple chord, and then, as if inspired by an old, unreachable itch, he gradually added more notes and running trills and a pounding bass until the music was really something quite grand.

He balanced pennies on top of my wrists so I would keep them still as I slowly played scales and arpeggios.

He marched stiffly to show me how to make each finger dance up and down, staccato like an obedient little soldier.

And Old Chong kept conducting his own private reverie.

But I was so determined not to try, not to be anybody different that I learned to play only the most earsplitting preludes, the most discordant hymns.

We had grown up together and shared all the closeness of two sisters squabbling over crayons and dolls.

A few weeks later, Old Chong and my mother conspired to have me play in a talent show which would be held in the church hall.

But I dawdled over it, playing a few bars and then cheating, looking up to see what notes followed.

But then I saw my mother's face, her stricken face.

I assumed my talent-show fiasco meant I never had to play the piano again.

"I'm not going to play anymore," I said nonchalantly.

"Too late change this," said my mother shrilly.

In the years that followed, I failed her so many times, each time asserting my own will, my right to fall short of expectations.