Piano Lessons

          Miss Honeybee says my hands are too small. So the piano lessons must end. My mother breathes a sigh of relief. The Jolly Kid factory where she sews infant clothes does not pay well.
          Still, I have mixed feelings. I don’t like to practice and often resist it, yet once I get going it isn’t too bad. I’ve got the beginner’s book, with a watered-down mustard cover, just like the advanced ones, and I like a few of the songs. I especially practice the happy ones; my favorite is the one of the animals marching two-by-two, although even there they seem to be headed toward the zoo. Cages.
          I’m not sure her real name is Miss Honeybee. I’ve translated from the Latvian, bitite, which means just little bee, a diminutive of bite. Nor is she likely a Miss, since we call her kundze, which means Mrs. Yet she has emblazoned herself in my memory as the ultimate sadistic spinster, found only in literature and children’s small hands.
          A petite, polite woman, she always greets my mother with a smile. We need to go up a hill to her home, which is near the top—halfway between the elegant Oakland Hill area and the grim-towered mental hospital. Like so many immigrant children, all the Latvian children in Kalamazoo must take music lessons. The lessons demanding the costliest instruments are, of course, most prestigious. The piano-lesson kids outrank the clarinetists and flutists. And one especially-envied child has the good fortune to play a full-sized harp.
          My cousin John (name changed from Janis, which had caused much bullying) does not succeed with his lessons either. His mother cleans houses for wealthy families such as the Schwartzes, who own our favorite drive-in, where we take out shrimp baskets on special occasions.
          John’s family does not have a piano, so he comes to our house to practice after school. More often than not, we end up playing games where our closet leads to the magic, leiputria, the land where everything is made of food.
          During one especially unimpressive lesson, the gentle-looking Miss Honeybee keeps rapping John’s knuckles with a ruler. His mother takes him out of the lessons. His parents buy him an accordion, which he prefers anyway, and to balance things out, he is the first in the family to obtain a pet. It’s a rabbit and his father builds a hutch which can be taken into the garage during the winter.
          Once my lessons end, I barely miss them. Now and then, I still practice, or just mess around, trying to reach the pedals below while tinkling the higher keys. My parents decide the piano is not worth keeping. To remove it, they chop it to pieces and a junk dealer hauls it to the dump. I most regret the intricate carvings on the front. The piano had been second-hand even when my other cousins used it—the successful ones whose parents replaced it with a baby grand. My parents are in the new world, and it is the new stuff that counts most.
          Still my parents keep the decorative stool, on which my grandmother tacks a new cover and on which my sister and I twirl each other around and around.