Chitra Divakaruni - One Amazing Thing

Or, “Remember that favorite dress you had when you were in kindergarten, pink with cherry blossom flowers all over it, and bows? You loved it so much. You insisted on wearing it to school every day. We had to hand wash it each night so it would be clean and dry by morning. Now-black, black, black, all the time. Do you even wash that T-shirt? And is that black lipstick ?”

You get the idea.

My parents thought my metamorphosis from charming caterpillar to stinging wasp came from teenage angst combined with evil American influences, but they were wrong. I gave up on being a pleaser because of my older brother.

My parents believed-and I secretly agreed-that Mark was the perfect child. In fact, he hardly seemed like a child at all. He was polite and obedient and serious about his studies. Most of his friends were from Chinese school. He wanted to become a scientist specializing in cancer research, and by ninth grade had already written a paper that went on to win a national science award. My parents would have preferred that Mark become a doctor or a businessman. (In addition to the supermarkets he inherited, my father owns a large Chinese import-export business that my mother helps him run. They’re terribly proud of that business and were hoping to pass it on to Mark.) But they understood and admired Mark’s humanitarian calling-and made sure all their friends did, too. I’d overhear them at Spring Festival parties: “Anyone can get a medical degree and make money, but to spend your life discovering a cure for those poor, suffering people-ah!” They would stop there, overcome by emotion, forcing the listener to complete the sentence: “Now that’s true dedication.”

“AND THIS IS THE YOUNG MAN I REMIND YOU OF?” TARIQ ASKED.

I KNEW IT WAS USELESS TRYING TO COMPETE FOR MY PARENTS’ attention by being good. For a while, I tried to hate Mark, but my heart wasn’t in it. When he had time (which wasn’t often, what with his schoolwork and Kumon classes and music lessons and science fair projects), he let me come into his room and check out his old Dragon Ball Z cards or listen to his favorite bands (downloaded from illegal Internet sites, he confided to me). I would watch him play Knights of the Old Republic and give him advice, which he sometimes listened to. When I had trouble with homework, he tried to help, though most of his explanations went above my head. He spent weeks on science projects that awed me: elegant solar systems that rotated at different speeds around a sun, or intricate contraptions with beakers and burners that extracted water from ink. And he let me touch them. How could I not love him?

But I had to do something about my pathetic standing at home. I didn’t plan on being seriously bad, like the girls the aunties gossiped about who ran away from home and got pregnant. I wanted to be just sufficiently disobedient to force my parents to notice me. I started with little rebellions-not making my bed, refusing to go to Chinese language class, coming down late for dinner so the family would have to wait for me, not turning in homework on time so the teachers would send home a note for my father to sign. I slept late and missed the school bus, forcing my mother to drive me to school. I acted up in class and got sent to detention, where I became friendly with kids who smoked in the bathrooms and got into fistfights and drank cough syrup to get high and cut themselves.

Soon I was getting plenty of attention at home. Gramma cried and talked about evil spirits; my parents yelled, grounding me, taking away my iPod, cutting off my allowance. It didn’t satisfy me the way I’d thought it would; I only felt emptier. But I couldn’t just turn around and become my old good-girl self. I was too stubborn. I started dressing in black and experimenting with cough syrup myself-thanks to Gramma, who catches chills easily, we always had some lying around. One day I skipped school and went to this tattoo parlor with Kiara and got my eyebrow pierced. Boy, did that get me a lot of parental notice!

Things were going downhill fast when Mark came to my room one night. I told him to get out-I thought he was going to lecture me, like the others-but he didn’t get angry. Instead he gave me a long, narrow box, and when I opened it, I saw it contained his old flute. I remembered that, although now he played the violin, for a while he had taken flute lessons. He gave me a stack of music books and offered to teach me. “Let’s just keep it to ourselves,” he said. I think it was the idea of having our own secret that appealed to me. I suspect he knew it would.

We decided to meet for lessons after school at a park in another neighborhood. Mark warned me that he would be able to teach me only the rudimentaries of flute playing, but the very first time I put my lip against the embouchure, I had the strangest feeling, as though I had done it before. And perhaps I had, in some other lifetime. How else did I learn so fast?

I loved our afternoons in the park and the walk back home together, when I gabbled on about school and my friends (ex-friends, really, since I no longer hung around after school let out). Mark raised his eyebrows at the cough syrup but told me that cutting was not cool because kids who started doing it often developed serious mental problems.

Soon there wasn’t any more that Mark could teach me. He downloaded sonatas off the Internet onto his iPod for me. (Mine was still confiscated.) Bach and Handel and some Mozart. And he gave me a book about the lives of the great composers. I read and reread that book late into the night instead of doing homework. My favorite story was Beethoven’s-not so much for his music (I prefer Bach) but for his tragic life. I thought often about his troubles: his beloved mother dying early, his alcoholic father, his dead brother’s son, whose guardian he was, giving him all sorts of trouble. No one in his family appreciated him the way they should have. Mostly, I dmired his ability to keep going after he realized-early in his career-that he was going deaf. I would have thrown myself into the Danube, but he just went on composing.

I went to the park straight after school each day with Mark’s iPod and my flute. I’d find a bench hidden behind some overgrown shrubs and listen and practice on my own until it turned dark. Sometimes kids stopped to watch me, but I knew what to say to make them move on fast. My grades didn’t get much better. My parents yelled at me for coming home so late. And I still wore black. But inside, something had changed. I no longer wanted to waste my energy on being bad.

One afternoon, when I thought I was ready, I invited Mark to the park and played all the sonatas I’d learned for him, plus a few short melodies I’d composed. I expected applause when I finished, but he just sat there looking at me. Then he said, “Lily, you have a gift. You can’t waste it. I need to tell Mom and Dad so they can get you lessons.” At first, I refused, but Mark can be persuasive. Soon I was in our living room, playing the flute for my astonished parents and Gramma. I messed up a few times because I was so nervous. In spite of that I must have sounded pretty good, because afterward they all hugged me and my mother cried and said I should have told them. The next day they arranged for me to have lessons with Mrs. Huang, who everyone in Chinatown agreed was the best teacher around. My parents got me an expensive new flute, too (although they rented it from Brook Mays, just in case).

Just like that, I became the subject of much admiration at home and amazement at parties. (“Wah! Did you hear about that Lily? Learned to play Beethoven overnight, all by herself! Others practice until their fingers are bones, but that one, she’s a born genius!” Gramma would rush in to avert the evil eye then: “No, no, she makes lots of mistakes still, not half as good as your Caroline.”) I watched Mark carefully to see if he minded my ascension, but he appeared relieved. He was busy with college preparations. He had been accepted to MIT and spent much of his time on the Internet, checking out professors’ credentials and student ratings, deciding who he wanted to do work with. Dually blessed in their gifted progeny, my parents went around smiling all the time-humble smiles, of course.