Practice Room B

(Esther, 1999: this is the very beginning. I was seventeen. I've left it the way I wrote it, exclamation points and all. Please be nice to her.)

Wednesday, December 24, 1997

THE LETTER CAME. I passed the tape round!!! I'm invited to the live audition in March. I read it standing at the mailboxes in the lobby and then I ran all the way to the store in my slippers, in December, down Northern Boulevard, and burst in and Umma was ringing up a man buying lottery tickets and eggnog and I just held it up. She read it over the man's shoulder. The man said congratulations. He didn't know what for. He said it anyway!

Appa was in the back unloading the Christmas Eve delivery. He read it twice, and folded it back along the same folds, very carefully, and put it in the front pocket of his apron, and said, "Now practice." And went back to the boxes. But he kept the letter in his apron pocket all night. I saw him touch it twice.

Everybody at school has seen Titanic already. It came out Friday. I haven't. I'm going to see it after March. I'm making a list of things I'm doing after March. It's long.

Merry Christmas from Practice Room B, where it's about fifty degrees because the back door doesn't close right, and I'm practicing in fingerless gloves like a girl in a sad movie.

Practiced: 3 hrs 30 min (scales, Kreutzer, Bruch, Bach, the Paganini, and then Silent Night for Umma, once, at closing time)

Thursday, November 27, 1997

Thanksgiving. The store was open, of course. The store is always open. 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., 364 days a year, and the one day we close is Korean New Year's Day, and even then Appa goes in to check the cooler.

A lady from church brought us a whole turkey dinner in foil pans at 4 o'clock, and we ate it in shifts in the back, standing up, next to the boxes of ramen. Danny ate most of it. Halmoni ate rice and kimchi next to her turkey and looked at the cranberry sauce like it was an insult.

And tonight, while we were closing, Umma told me something I didn't know. She studied piano. In Seoul. At a university. For two years. And then she married Appa and they came here in 1985 and there was no piano, and then there was the store, and there was never a piano again. She told me this while counting the register, twenties, tens, fives, in stacks, not looking at me. I said, why didn't you ever tell me? She said, "What for?" And put a rubber band around the twenties.

I asked if she still can play. She held up her hands. She has a burn on one from the coffee machine and her knuckles are big. She said, "These are for the store now. Yours are for the violin." Then she said, "Go home, it's late," and I went home, and I've been looking at my hands for an hour.

Practiced: 2 hrs (it's a holiday, allegedly)

Saturday, November 22, 1997

We recorded the audition tape today! In the church sanctuary, because it has the best sound of anywhere we know, and the pastor said yes as long as we were done before the youth group. Mr. Kim from the choir brought his tape deck and two microphones on stands and a pair of headphones and was very serious about all of it. Umma closed the register for two hours, which she never does, and sat in the last pew with her purse on her lap like it was a real concert.

Bach Adagio: four takes. Bruch: two. Paganini: SEVEN. The seventh one was the best. Or the one that was least bad. Mr. Kim said you can't hear my mistake in the fourth line if you don't know it's there. I know it's there. It will be there forever, on a tape, in an office, in a building in Manhattan.

Mailing it Monday. Certified.

Practiced: 4 hrs, if you count recording, which I do

Thursday, November 13, 1997

Paganini Caprice No. 13. The one they call "The Devil's Laughter," because of the slides in the double stops that sound like somebody laughing at you. Which it IS. It is laughing at me.

Tragedy tonight: Danny's Tamagotchi died while I was practicing. He'd left it on a box of Choco Pies in Practice Room B "to keep me company," which means he wanted me to feed it, and I didn't hear it beeping because of the double stops. He came in at nine and found it dead and said I killed it with Paganini. He is twelve. He is not speaking to me. He has already started a new one.

Practiced: 3 hrs 45 min (1 hr 30 of it on the Paganini) (RIP Tamagotchi)

Sunday, November 2, 1997

After church, while Umma was doing the books at the kitchen table, I saw the checkbook open. I wasn't snooping. It was just open. And I saw the check for Mr. Aronov, for October, for my lessons. And I knew what lessons cost, I mean I knew the number. But I never saw it written in Umma's handwriting in a checkbook next to the check for the electric bill and the one for the produce guy.

Appa gets up at 4 a.m. to drive to the produce market in the Bronx. He's been doing it for twelve years. Before he came here he was an engineer. He built bridges. Well, he did the math for bridges. Now he builds pyramids of oranges in the window, and they're perfect, every one. Umma says he does them with a level. I don't think that's a joke.

I didn't say anything about the checkbook. I went to the store and practiced.

Practiced: 4 hrs 15 min

Saturday, October 18, 1997

Lesson with Mr. Aronov. Two hours on the Upper West Side, on the first movement of the Bruch. Mr. Aronov is from Russia, he is about a hundred years old (sixty-something), and his favorite word in English is "Again." I have heard "Again" eleven thousand times since I was fourteen. Today I played the opening, the long G string part, and he said, "Again." And again. And the fifth time he didn't say anything, he just nodded and looked out the window, and that's the best he's ever been to me, and I nearly fell over.

Then he said, "Now, the rest of it," and we went back to "Again."

The 7 train home. It comes up out of the tunnel in Queens and all of a sudden there's the whole skyline behind you in the window, and I always turn around to look, even though I've seen it a million times. By the time I got to the store it was dark, and Appa was restacking the oranges, and he asked how the lesson was, and I said "Again," and he laughed. He knows.

Practiced: 2 hrs lesson + 2 hrs 30 min at the store

Friday, October 3, 1997

Hi. I'm Esther. I'm a senior in high school in Queens and I play the violin, and in March I'm auditioning for conservatory, and Mr. Aronov, my teacher, says I should write down every day what I practiced and how long, so I can see it. So I decided to write it here, where I can't lose it under my bed. (Also, my brother Danny said I couldn't make a web page. Danny: I made a web page.)

Why "Practice Room B": My parents own a grocery store on Northern Boulevard. When I was fourteen the neighbors in our building complained about the practicing (Practice Room A = our apartment = CLOSED). So Appa cleared out a corner of the storeroom at the back of the store, behind the walk-in cooler, between the ramen and the rice. There's one light bulb with a string. There's a folding music stand and a stool, and sacks of rice that are good for sound, and the cooler hums a note that is almost exactly a B-flat, a little flat. I tune to it for fun. That's Practice Room B. I've practiced there almost every day for three years.

My audition list:

• Bach, the Adagio from the Sonata No. 1 in G minor (and maybe the Fuga, if they ask, please don't ask)
• Bruch, Violin Concerto in G minor, first movement
• Paganini, Caprice No. 13
• scales and arpeggios, three octaves, all of them, forever

Five months. Okay. Okay okay okay.

Practiced: 4 hrs (scales 45 min, Bach 1 hr, Bruch 1 hr 30, Paganini 45 min)

-- Esther

[ newest entries | 1998 >> ]

[email protected]