Unknown Story
Kuvakäsikirjoitus Teksti
- Exposition
- I'll try!
- You have to be a prodigy like Shirley Temple!
- Confict
- I don't feel like myself, I don't want to do this anymore!
- Rising action
- I hate this it's so boring.
- You have to have a good singing voice!
- We didn't immediately pick the right kind of prodigy. At first, my mother thought I could be a ChineseShirley Temple. We'd watch Shirley's old movies on TV as though they were training films. My motherwould poke my arm and say, Ni kan. You watch. And I would see Shirley tapping her feet, or singing asailor song, or pursing her lips into a very round O while saying Oh, my goodness.Ni kan, my mother said, as Shirley's eyes flooded with tears. You already know how. Don't need talentfor crying!
- Climax
- Before going to bed that night I looked in the mirror abovethe bathroom sink, and I saw only my face staring back - and understood that it would always be thisordinary face - I began to cry. Such a sad, ugly girl! I made high-pitched noises like a crazed animal,trying to scratch out the face in the mirror.And then I saw what seemed to be the prodigy side of me - a face I had never seen before. I looked at myreflection, blinking so that I could see more clearly. The girl staring back at me was angry, and powerful. Sheand I were the same.
- Falling action
- I'm a terrible daughter theirs no way I could be a prodigy.
- Pleading child, and Perfectly Contended are two halves of the same song!
- So now when my mother presented her tests, I performed listlessly, my head propped on one arm. Ipretended to be bored. And I was. I got so bored that I started counting the bellows of the foghorns out onthe bay while my mother drilled me in other areas. The sound was comforting and reminded me of the cowjumping over the moon. And the next day I played a game with myself, seeing if my mother would give upon me before eight bellows. After a while I usually counted only one below, maybe two at most. At lastshe was beginning to give up hope.
- Resolution
- I played this strange jumble through to the end, the sour notes staying with meall the way.When I stood up, I discovered my legs were shaking. Maybe I had just been nervous, and the audience, likeOld Chong had seen me go through the right motions and had not heard anything wrong at all. I swept myright foot out, went down on my knee, looked up, and smiled. The room was quiet, except for Old Chong,who was beaming and shouting Bravo! Bravo! Well done! By then I saw my mother's face, her strickenface. The audience clapped weakly, and I walked back to my chair, with my whole face quivering as I triednot to cry, I heard a little boy whisper loudly to his mother. That was awful, mother whispered Well,she certainly tried.
- Let's just get this over with, it sounds good so far.
- When we got on the bus to go home, my father was humming the busybee tune and my mother kept silent.I kept thinking she wanted to wait until we got home before shouting at me. But when my father unlockedthe door to our apartment, my mother walked in and went straight to the back, into the bedroom. Noaccusations, No blame. And in a way, I felt disappointed. I had been waiting for her to start shouting, sothat I could shout back and cry and blame her for all my misery.
- I opened up the Schumann book to the dark little piece I had played at the recital. It was on the left-hand page, Pleading Child. It looked more difficult than I remembered. I played a few bars, surprised at howeasily the notes came back to me.And for the first time, or so it seemed, I noticed the piece on the right-hand side. It was called PerfectlyContented. I tried to play this one as well. It had a lighter melody but with the same flowing rhythm andturned out to be quite easy. Pleading Child was shorter but slower; Perfectly Contented was longer butfaster. And after I had played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song.
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