Last night was bad. My mom found out about my solo in the winter concert. She knew I was in choir and I had told her about the concert itself. She was okay with it, well more like she didn’t care to give me a hard time about it since I supposed to be blended in with the rest of the students in the choir. But when Mrs. Marshall ran into me and my mom at the grocery store, she found out. When I saw Mrs. Marshall, I tried to make sure that they didn’t run into each other, but that didn’t happen.
“Mrs. Mariposa,” Mrs. Marshall extended her hand out to my mom. “It’s nice to see you again. We met during open house. I’m Liz’s choir teacher.”
“Oh, yes. How are you doing, Mrs. Marshall?” My mom never forgot my teachers’ names.
“Fine. Fine. You must be so proud of Liz.” Mrs. Marshall looked so excited to talk to my mom about me.
Normally, I didn’t care if my teachers talked to my parents. I was always a good student and my teachers always raved about me and my work. This time wasn’t all that different, except I didn’t want my mom to know about the ‘great thing’ I did in class. I tried to plead with my eyes at Mrs. Marshall to stop and not say anything, but she wasn’t focused on me, she was looking at my mom.
She continued, “She has such a beautiful voice, that it was an unanimous decision to give her the solo.”
The blood drained from my body. My mouth tasted like acid. My mom turned to me and glared. Her voice remained even as she addressed my teacher, “Oh really? That’s nice of you to share. I’ll be sure to tell her dad as well.”
Now, I didn’t want Mrs. Marshall to go. I didn’t want to be left alone with my mom. I didn’t want to get yelled at, talked down to, or chastised for something that wasn’t bad. I knew it wasn’t bad. I knew they didn’t like it, but that still didn’t make it wrong. But Mrs. Marshall left to finish her shopping and my mom didn’t say anything to me until we got into the car.
She screamed at me the whole ride home. I tried to tune her out, to disconnect from my body. That was the only way I’d be able to get through it. Every so often, I’d listen to the words she said. It was the same old stuff—don’t waste your time, you should focus on your studies, you’ll embarrass yourself and the family, you’re not good enough to sing in public. I tried not to pay any attention to it, but it was hard. I mean, as much as I disagreed with it, she was still my mom and I was brought up to listen to my elders, especially my parents.
When we got home, my dad was there. She had me unload the groceries while she filled my dad in on the trouble I got myself into at school. He had this look of disappointment on his face. He didn’t yell at me, no, he always left that up to my mom. He just looked at me disapprovingly and talked about how I disobeyed their wishes.
After I finished putting the groceries away, while my mom still read me the riot act, I went to my room for the rest of the night. I knew they would never understand. I knew this would happen. That didn’t stop it from hurting or from me being torn between obeying my parents wishes and doing something I wanted to do. Something I was good at. Something that wasn’t hurting anyone. They acted like I doing something against the law like robbery or murder. Singing didn’t hurt anyone. Why couldn’t they see that it made me happy?