At thirteen, after eight years
of piano lessons, I lost myself
in a Mozart Sonatina. It was
a competition. I was sitting
at a grand piano at the front
of a church. The judge sat
in the first pew. My dad sat in the back.
I made it through the long runs
of the first movement. Through
the slow diminished chords
of the second. I was clumsy,
my rhythms uneven, my fortes not
convincing, my arpeggios stuttered.
My fingers did not know what they were doing,
though we had been practicing
together for months, though they
had had many good teachers.
I wore a pin-striped tuxedo,
a white ruffled shirt. It was fitted too tight
in my shoulders, but it made me
feel what, like a man? At least
not like a girl. God, I wanted
it over. At the end of the third movement,
I reached to the top of the treble keys
before coming back down
in the final run, but somewhere at the top
my hands returned to the notes of the first movement.
There was nothing to be done
but to finish the thing the way it had begun.
The judge shuffled through
the sheet music, trying to discern
what had happened. I did not cry,
not until I left the room
and I held my dad and he told me
the terrible lie that I had done fine.
He said it with so much love,
but it wasn’t true.
I don’t know where the lines are
between truth and love. Why do we
protect each other the ways that we do?
What else could he say? It doesn’t much matter.
He loved me. I grew out
of the shirt. I told myself the truth.