The first time I felt the piercing sting of a metal chopstick was when my dad whipped it on my chubby, eight-year-old hand. He was frustrated that I played the wrong note for the umpteenth time. Like thunder chasing a lightning bolt, the searing pain flashed through my hand just a split second after he shouted. 

“Zhuan Xin!” “Concentrate!”

I sprang off the piano bench and ran into my mother’s warm chest. I sobbed as I watched a red welt form. My dad followed me in.

“You see how the mark look like number one? That’s what makes you number one. Next time you number eleven.”

It hadn’t always been like this. My elementary school held a talent show one evening when I was in first grade. It wasould be the first of the many times I would peer into the sea of faces and see a camcorder pressed to my dad’s eager face. After I plopped down and nervously pressed on my first chords, the audience began clapping along to the staccato notes at the beginning of every measure. I curtseyed afterwards and dashed off the stage. That night, my dad beamed with pride as he showed me the pictures he took. A smile stretched across his face as he remarked how much I looked like a princess, standing in the middle of the other performers.

More recitals followed. My teacher Ms. Park was active at the local Korean church, and she encouraged her students to attend the recitals hosted there. Every night after dinner, my dad urged me to practice on our digital piano while he sat next to me. With a metal chopstick in his right hand and a wooden block in his left hand, he would steadily strike the chopstick onto the block to help me keep pace. I grew frustrated by how closely he watched me. A lot. Oftentimes he would scoot over to the piano bench and try playing the piece himself as I sat sandwiched between his arms.  

“Zhuan Xin.” “Concentrate.”

I did anything but. Sometimes I pressed my thumb down on the veins that ran along his calloused hands from decades of playing classical guitar. Other times, I would fiddle around with the piano lamp that illuminated our arms and faces. The hinge was always loose and the light always bent the wrong way, casting a shadow over parts of the sheet music. 

“No, I can’t play,” I complained, purposely stalling. “The light isn’t covering the entire page!” 

The sighs I received in response gradually grew more tired by the day.

As the years passed, my piano efforts grew more feeble. Every time my dad wrestled me onto the piano bench, I wouldn’t be able to play because of the tears blurring my vision. Every night ended in more shouting from him, crying from me, and red faces from both of us. There was a power outage one night, and the first thought that came to my mind was an overwhelming joy because that meant I wouldn’t have to practice piano. By the time my first year of middle school rolled around, the word “piano” was a sore topic under our roof. My dad no longer had the energy to fight me and left me to practice on my own. The consequences came to a crescendo at my first judged recital. Located in a small auditorium with four professional pianists seated behind a plastic folding table, it was low stakes and primarily meant for young pianists just dipping their toes in the world of competition. Despite that, there was a pit in my stomach on the car ride there because I had only practiced a handful of times (if you could even call them practices). It was a dreary, wet day. The audience was silent as I bowed before my audience and sat on the stiff bench. I tried to concentrate and picture the first notes in my head. They were dancing up and down the musical staff in a blurry haze, but I couldn’t pinpoint which chords were first. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my dad push his glasses up so he could press his camcorder against his face, anticipating my first notes.

I pressed on a key.

It was the wrong note.

I pressed on a chord.

Wrong again. 

The dissonance sounded like fingernails raking down a chalkboard. I turned towards the judges, who were gazing at me in sympathy, and whimpered sorry. The camcorder lowered, and behind its original position was a blank face. I squeezed my eyes shut and somehow managed to pluck the piece from my memory, but the damage was done. When I opened my eyes, I couldn’t find him in the audience. He screamed at me on the car ride home, cursing my ineptitude and fecklessness. After taking a breath to steady himself, he lowered his voice.

 “This is a wake-up call,” he muttered. “I thought you like piano, but you don’t. I’m so stupid for always pushing you to play piano.” I pressed my forehead against the cold glass window and watched the raindrops trickle down the pane, fighting to be the first to pool at the bottom. Meanwhile, my own tears were pooling at the bottom of my eyes.

Amid the verbal missiles he hurled at me that night, my dad threatened to cancel my piano lessons, but even he felt hesitant. Music – specifically classical guitar – defined his childhood and career. It was his lifeline. He finally made the decision: I would no longer attend recitals, but I should still keep my skills sharp. Thus I continued taking lessons with Ms. Park, but I veered away from classical and instead spent the rest of middle school learning and memoriszing “Let It Go” from Disney’s “Frozen.” Despite the difficulty level being an ounce above my level, I never felt the burning pang of anger from having to practice. For the first time, I loved enveloping myself in the arpeggios and glissandos and singing aloud to the melody.  But then my piano lessons abruptly ended my first year of high school. Schoolwork piled on me and the lessons were first to go. Then the casual practicing faded away, too. Throughout my four years of high school, I never touched a piano – with the exception of the few times I played “Let It Go.” I once performed it to a crowd of strangers outdoors when I visited New York City during sophomore year, and it was a captivating party trick at the parties I attended junior year.

It was now nearing the end of my high school senior year, when everything shuttered from the COVIDovid-19 pandemic, and I was caged at home. The days blurred together and time seemed to be at a standstill. Every time I walked past our digital piano, my fingers would itch to fly across the black and white keys again. Call it boredom, call it a need to stimulate my mind, but one night, I printed out some sheet music. The piece was a breezy D major and sounded more involved than it really was. Titled “Beyond the Memory” by a Korean composer called July, it was a daily staple for when I drove to school before the pandemic, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel. I taped the printouts together and switched on the rickety piano lamp. The bottom half of the pages were hard to make out from the shadow, but the tingling in my fingertips didn’t care. Holding my breath, I fingered the first keys. I played a few bars using my right hand and blinked, shocked, at how easily the melody flowed out. My left hand naturally fell into place, stitching in chords for harmony. Then my hands began folding in crescendos and diminuendos. Weaving in and out of sharps and flats, my fingers felt like gliding a warm knife through butter. Everything felt smooth and harmonious – the memories of bitter resentment far away.

I learned a few measures each day. In three months, I had mastered three pieces. It was slow progress, but it was my progress. I wanted to play; I wanted to practice. Throughout this entire time, when my dad made his way downstairs after several hours of practicing his own guitar, he would make the same comment. 

“Good job Ashley.”

Last week I approached the piano, ready to practice my piece again. Mindlessly switching on the lamp, I was about to begin warming up with some scales when I paused. Something seemed different. I adjusted the lamp up and down at the hinge, curious to see what would happen. Instead of falling back into its purposeless angle, the light hinge stayed in place, illuminating the entire area of sheet music. Someone had fixed it. I opened my sheet music, moved the bench closer, and concentrated.