I ended up selling the electronic keyboard because my boyfriend no longer used it to compose music and I stopped practicing on it. I had quit piano over a decade ago, when I was thirteen years old, when I also quit Girl Scouts and CCD classes, so what was I thinking, buying an electronic keyboard, when my graduate stipend only paid $500 a month? Not that I told my parents just how poor I was – my parents didn’t leave the Philippines for the United States in order to have their children to be poor!
But here I was, going into a pawn shop on lower Greenville Ave. It was the nicest pawn shop that I could find in Dallas, being a part of a national chain of pawn shops, with wide aisles, a pretty blue awning, and bright lights. Still, at first I didn’t want to go inside, a voice in my head scolding, “Do you know any Filipinos going into pawn shops? Filipinos don’t go into pawn shops!” But I don’t need the keyboard, I replied. “Then give it to somebody who does, or sell it in a garage sale!” But I don’t know anybody who does, and I need the money. Also, people who live in efficiencies don’t have garages. “Why don’t you ask Mom and Pa for money?” In an emergency, I will. This isn’t an emergency. “You’re going into a pawn shop – how is that not an emergency?” When I no longer have anything to sell, then I’ll go to Mom and Pa. I don’t want to bother them with my problems. I’m the oldest child. I’m the first one in grad school. I can handle it. “You’re too proud.” Maybe I am. I have to be.
I entered.
I was the only Asian in the pawn shop. The rest were white, black, and Latino. I felt alienated and strange – this was the place where people go when they need to get some money but want to remain anonymous. Anonymity, that’s my strongest weapon; nobody knows you’re the oldest child, the brightest child, the quietest child. Speak up. Speak up!
“Can I help you?” a nice-looking blond woman asked behind the counter.
“I, I’d,” I squeaked. Clear your throat, Miss English major, you sound like a little Chinese girl. I could hear my mother scolding me, “Don’t drink out of the bowl like that, you’re not Chinese!” I’m Filipino. What does it mean to be Filipino? My mother, holding up the check-out line in Albertson’s because the cashier overcharged her ten cents, ignoring the angry looks of the other customers and the embarrassed look of her eldest child. My father, smiling as he offers a white man a beer, all the while thinking, “No white man will ever marry my daughters, he will only manipulate,” and then cracking a joke, making the white man laugh. Me, working, working, working, showing that the little Filipino girl is just as industrious as the Japanese boy, as respectful as the Chinese girl, as cute as the Vietnamese beauty, as outspoken as any white.
“I’d like to sell this.” I held up the keyboard and the adapter and, before the lady could say another word, laid them on the glass counter, which housed jewelry and guns. I ignored looking at the rest of the pawn shop, at the poor white family inspecting a battered TV with attached VCR, at the Latino teenagers discussing over the gold chain crucifixes, at an old black man staring at his tool kit, high up on the shelf with a price tag much dearer than what he received from the shop.
She scrutinized the keyboard, plugged in the adapter, and turned it on. A cheesy maramba beat came on, and I felt embarrassed. It sounded like bad karaoke. “$35,” she appraised. I’m no good at haggling. “Okay.” With the weekly petty cash clenched in my hand, I left the pawn shop into the still-too-hot, early autumn Texas sun, which burned away the strange alienated chill of the shop. There, that’s one less possession tying me down.
But I felt strange without the keyboard – I’ve never lived in a household without a musical instrument. My parents had the piano in their house, which my youngest sister now only played. The middle children, a sister and a brother, also quit long ago, even earlier than I did. I wasn’t aware of it then, but when I was a baby, my father had a guitar in the house, his guitar from his adolescence of serenades and night singing. When my parents could afford it, as with most Filipino families, they bought a piano for us kids. It was a sign that they’ve moved up the economic ladder – See, we can afford a musical instrument as expensive as a piano, our children don’t have to work such that they can take piano lessons. My selling the keyboard seemed to indicate that the meaning behind the piano – the immigrants’ dream that their children will do better than they -- wasn’t important. After all, I was a poor grad student, living on $500 a month. Thank God my parents paid for my car, or I wouldn’t be able to afford to eat.
Not that I told my parents just how poor I was – my parents didn’t leave the Philippines for the United States in order to have their children to be poor!
But my poverty was different than the poverty of those in the Philippines; I chose mine. My parents and grandparents had no choice but leave or remain poor, had no choice but to go into careers that ensured economic security. If I were my mother’s generation, I would have probably turned out to be a nurse because that was a well-paid career for Filipinas back then. Any career that wasn’t a pragmatic occupation and immediately paid was not a choice. My choice to go into grad school, including the temporary life of a poor grad school student, studying creative writing and the liberal arts, would not have been possible without the forced choices of my parents, to go for the mythic American Dream. I would have been the most selfish, insensitive person in the world if I didn’t realize that.
From the pawn shop, I headed for my school’s English department to check my mail box. As soon as I stepped into the English department, Margaret, the secretary, said, “Oh, Rufel, Dr. Smith was just here, looking for you. He said that you have a story due today.”
“I have a what?” I spun to look at the calendar. Today was the deadline for a creative writing assignment in my one-on-one Direct Studies in Fiction course with Dr. Smith, and I had forgotten. “Margaret, if you see Dr. Smith, tell him I’ll get it in his box later today, okay?”
I heard her Texas-twang voice reply, “All right,” as I sprinted out the door, hoping that I wouldn’t run into Dr. Smith as I headed for the student center.
There was an underground area in the student center which housed the food court, a cappuccino bar, various conference rooms, and a carpeted atrium with comfy chairs and couches nestled in groups. I had a favorite chair in which I usually wrote stories, long-hand with a pencil on loose-leaf filler paper. After getting a coffee, I settled down, and stared at the blank paper.
When Dr. Smith gave this first assignment two weeks ago, I had intended to write a fantasy story. I had intended to slant the whole course towards a study into fantasy or magical realism, something that I was thinking about for my master’s thesis. But work as a graduate assistant and doing creative debt management intervened, and I had done no preparation for the ten page story now due. Nothing fantastic or magical realistic would come.
What came, instead, was the faint sound of a piano in one of the conference rooms. It sounded like Chopsticks. Even though it had been years since I played, I still couldn’t resist seeing somebody playing a piano.
Nobody was there. “Okay, you must be going insane, Rufel.” The piano was a baby grand, something that I had never played before; I was used to uprights. I couldn’t resist. Making sure that nobody really was there, I set myself on the piano bench, lifted the keyboard lid, and started playing one of three songs that I knew by heart. I knew Chopsticks, Heart and Soul, and what I played.
I played La Paloma.
Afterwards, I went back to my comfy chair, picked up my pencil, and wrote “Piano Lesson.”
© 2000 Rufel F. Ramos