【文章內(nèi)容簡介】 ad retired from teaching piano. He was deaf. “Like Beethoven!” he shouted to me “We’re both listening only in our head!” And he would start to conduct his frantic silent sonatas16. Our lessons went like this. He would open the book and point to different things, explaining, their purpose: “Key! Treble! Bass! No sharps or flats! So this is C major! Listen now and play after me!” And then he would play the C scale a few times, a simple cord, and then, as if inspired by an old unreachable itch, he would gradually add more notes and running trills and a pounding bass until the music was really something quite grand. I would play after him, the simple scale, the simple chord, and then just play some nonsense that sounded like a cat running up and down on top of garbage cans. Old Chong would smile and applaud and say “Very good! Bt now ou must learn to keep time!” So that’s how I discovered that Old Chong’s eyes were too slow to keep up with the wrong notes I was playing. He went through the motions in half time. To help me keep rhythm, he stood behind me and pushed down on my right shoulder for every beat. He balanced pennies on top of my wrists so that I would keep them still as I slowly played scales and arpeggios17. He had me curve my hand around an apple and keep that shame when playing chords. He marched stiffly to show me how to make each finger dance up and down, staccato18 like an obedient little soldier. He taught me all these things, and that was how I also learned I could be lazy and get away with mistakes, lots of mistakes. If I hit the wrong notes because I hadn’t practiced enough, I never corrected myself, I just kept playing in rhythm. And Old Chong kept conducting his own private So maybe I never really gave myself a fair chance. I did pick up the basics pretty quickly, and I might have bee a good pianist at the young age. But I was so determined not to try, not to be anybody different, and I learned to play only the most earsplitting preludes, the most discordant hymns. Over the next year I practiced like this, dutifully in my own way. And then one day I heard my mother and her friend Lindo Jong both after church, and I was leaning against a brick wall, wearing a dress with stiff white petticoats. Auntie Linds daughter, Waverly, who was my age, was standing farther down the wall, about five feet away. We had grown up together and shared all the closeness of two sisters, squabbling over crayons and dolls. In other words, for the most part, we hated each other. I thought she was snotty. Waverly Jong had gained a certain amount of fame as “Chinatown’s Littlest Chinese Chess Champion.” “She bring home too many trophy.” Auntie Lindo lamented that Sunday. “All day she play chess. All day I have no time do nothing but dust off her winnings.” She threw a scolding look at Waverly, who pretended not to see her. “You lucky you don’t have this problem,” Auntie Lindo said with a sigh to my mother. And my mother squared her shoulders and bragged “our problem worser than yours. If we ask Jingmei wash dish, she hear nothing but music. It’s like you can’t stop this natural talent.” And right then I was determined to put a stop to her foolish pride. A few weeks later Old Chong and my mother conspired to have me play in a talent show that was to be held in the church hall. But then my parents had saved up enough to buy me a secondhand piano, a black Wurlitzer spinet with a scarred bench. It was the showpiece of our living room. For the talent show I was to play a piece called “Pleading Child” from Schumann’s Scenes From Childhood. It was a simple, moody piece that sounded more difficult than it was. I was supposed to memorize the whole thing. But I dawdled over it, playing a few bars and then cheating, looking up to see what notes followed. I never really listed to what I was playing. I daydreamed about being somewhere else, about being someone else.The part I liked to practice best was the fancy curtsy: right foot out, touch the rose on the carpet with a pointed foot, sweep to the side, bend left leg, look up, and smile. My parents invited all the couples from their social club to witness my debut. Auntie Lindo and Uncle Tin were there. Waverly and her two older brothers had also e. The first two rows were filled with children either younger or older than I was. The littlest ones got to go first. They recited simple nursery rhymes, squawked out tunes on miniature violins, and twirled hula hoops20 in pink ballet tutus21, and when they bowed or curtsied, the audience would sigh in unison, “A,” and then clap enthusiastically. When my turn came, I was very confident. I remember my childish excitement. It was as if I knew, without a doubt, that the prodigy side of me really did exist. I had no fear whatsoever, no nervous