Between Two Worlds

My mother wanted me to be a prodigy. Not the kind they celebrate on talk shows — a child who plays Mozart at four or solves equations that make professors weep. No, my mother's version of prodigy was simpler and, in its own way, more impossible: she wanted me to be the perfect Chinese daughter AND the perfect American success story. At the same time. In the same body. At home, I was Mei-Lin. I spoke Mandarin at the dinner table, used both hands to accept things from elders, and understood that my mother's sharp words were just love wearing its work clothes. I ate bitter melon without complaining. I practiced piano because she had sacrificed everything — her career, her country, her language — so that I could have the luxury of practicing piano. At school, I was Melanie. I spoke English without an accent (I worked at this — hours in front of the bathroom mirror, sanding down the edges of my vowels until they were smooth and American). I laughed at jokes I didn't fully understand. I ate peanut butter sandwiches instead of the pork buns my mother packed, because the one time I brought them, Jake Miller said my lunch "smelled weird" and I decided right then that some parts of home were not safe to bring to school. The problem with being two people is that eventually they start arguing with each other. My mother said: "You should be proud of where you come from." My school said: "Fit in. Blend. Be normal." My mother said: "In China, children respect their parents." My friends said: "Why can't you ever hang out? Your mom is SO strict." And I stood in the middle, a hyphen between two words, belonging fully to neither. The night everything broke was a Tuesday. My mother had signed me up for the school talent show — piano, of course. She'd chosen the piece: a Chopin waltz she'd once played herself, back in Shanghai, before everything changed. I could hear the hope in her hands as she set the sheet music on the piano. But I didn't want to play Chopin. I wanted to play the song I'd been secretly learning — a piece by a Korean-American composer that sounded like both of my worlds at once. Something that was classical AND contemporary. Eastern AND Western. Like me. When I told her, she didn't yell. That would have been easier. Instead, she sat very still and said, in Mandarin: "I gave up my whole world so you could have this one. And you won't even play one song for me." I played the Chopin at the talent show. I played it perfectly. And I hated every note. But the next morning, I left the Korean-American composer's album on the kitchen table with a note: "This is me too, Ma. Can you listen?" She did. She played it three times. She didn't say anything. But the next week, she asked me to teach her the piece. And for the first time, I felt like both of my worlds were sitting in the same room, listening to each other.