Me and the Piano

this took me embarrassingly long to write

I once bit my piano.

When I was four or five years old, I was obsessed with the guitar. I wanted to turn vibrating strings into blended chords, measures of vibrant pop into harmonious songs, and rattle off global hits on a bubble-covered stage radiating fluorescent light. Because what four year old kid didn’t like the bubbles your parents refused to buy for you? To this day, I still don’t know if it was the bubbles or the denial that got me going.

I made the mistake of telling my parents. About the guitar, that is. They wouldn’t have bought me bubbles to save my life or my imagination, the latter which is already long gone.

Two weeks later, I got a wonderful present. An old, second-hand, shiny-black, out of tune, piano. That night, after rounds of sobbing, kicking, and screaming, I dreamed of being devoured between malicious black and white teeth that chomped down on me like the jaws of a mythological monster made of ivory and wood. I woke up, a knight in shining sparkly pink armor, with polka dots just like Minnie Mouse, determined to prevail in this tale of heroes and monsters.

And so my trials began. Every day, the sparkly pink knight awoke to fierce combat. First, it was the gauntlets and hapless trolls of Hanon, and Czerny, and C Major. They were replaced with the far more formidable warlords and orcs, John Thompson’s Sight Reading and Simple Songs for Children. Sometimes, a simple etude or song decided to gang up on the hapless kindergartener. The pink knight guided her through revenge and guerilla warfare. Realms of sheet music were torn, stubby legs kicked. One attempt at sabotage left the underside of the instrument graffitied with marker and saliva. And above all, my mother, the brutal enforcer, towered over the defenseless child.

At first, delicate, stubby hands more suited to scribbling wilted under the daily pressure of precisely pressing and rapidly roving. The piano suffered a barrage of heavy kicks and punches, like the battering ram the pink knight drove against a witch’s manor doors. It groaned in pain as small fingers angrily mashed its keys, and it nursed a tender bite mark five keys from the middle C that left it scarred for life. Remarkably, the instrument itself tasted of wood and polish, which were not, in the slightest, evil.

But gradually, that black-and-white monster with dull wooden teeth grew on me. And so, the knight in sparkly pink armor put down her lance and tentatively handed the monster moldy bread. Perhaps I found it easier to practice willingly instead of being forced to, or had a secret longing for classical music like a child Mozart. But perhaps, I found joy in the fact that I could speak the language of music while I struggled to speak the language of friendship and English. Of course, the piano and I still were bitter enemies, locked in eternal warfare. We still bruised and hurt each other. But, for a short period of time, we became allies, hammering out jumbled-up jaunty tunes and massacring random songs. We were siblings, in all ways that a stubby-legged, mischievous, Asian girl and a battered, beat-up, and shiny-black piano could be.

It continued so, until one fateful day I was taken hostage and stuffed into a frilly white dress. Realms of fabric and itchy mess skirt squashed my waist, and tight sleeves grasped my tanned arms. From there, I was frog-marched to a hard wooden bench, and led to a teeth-mark-less, brown, brand-new, and dull piano. The windows stained with baby Jesus and various saints stared down at me, criticizing me for my every flaw, harsh and unforgiving in their sculpted stone-like glass features. That piano did not welcome me. The seat was too high, and to the amusement of the restless audience I had to adjust the rusted knob, which stayed firmly in place no matter how hard and how many times I turned it. The pedals were too far from my feet, so a separate little stand with squeaky, rusty pedals had to be brought in. And those dull keys were terrifying to me, scuffed and old, and groaning with the urge to retire. The panel of judges were dressed in their formal, gaudy best of ripoff fashion bought painstakingly overseas from China to America, used best for a new job or workplace but now wasted on a bunch of crying children. They sipped overpriced Starbucks coffees that some poor parent working to curry favor bought.

None of this helped my nerves.

I don’t know how long it took me to get a sense that I should be playing. And then a part of me wanted to run off the stage and never return. But then I remembered sun-kissed afternoons when I pressed fingers to keys amid the yells of others playing ball and ring-around-the-rosy and whatever games that normal children played. I remember my hands slamming white keys, furiously massacring Mary, her little lamb, and possibly the entire flock of hapless sheep. I remembered the taste of polish, sharp and stiff, my teeth crushing into brittle wood, and the shameful pride of imbedding a trophy prize set with molar imprints in the piano itself.

And I played. It was not your typical fairytale playing, for those curious.