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Yearbooks were contraband at Mom\u2019s House. They were pieces in a proverbial chess game between parents, one who was trying to win, and the other who was just trying to love their kids. Marking more poignantly the end of the year than the book itself was the sequence of exchanges which followed the initial distribution of the order slips.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not paying for those things, they\u2019re a waste of money. If you want one, you figure it out.\u201d A sample of the conversation between my mother and seventh grade self when my penniless fingers gripped the slip. On occasion, and mostly because I had learned to be a genius at orchestrating and timing these kinds of asks, they\u2019d result in a check complete with her bubbling signature, a font I\u2019d eventually memorize each detail of as I loomed over her shoulder silently. The wrong addition of words or body language could disrupt the execution of the signature, and crush schoolgirl dreams of bag-lunch field trips, so I\u2019d become a master of asking. The yearbook question, however, was not one to be asked.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It was never confusing to me that she would get so worked up over something as insignificant as a yearbook. In my distant memory, I could picture my dad\u2019s office in the house they shared during their marriage. A shelf so high it made me dizzy to look at was clad with the spines of books, each enumerating a year of his schooling. My mother had no shelf of this kind.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n However, her rage ran deeper than mere jealousy: a realization I came to by recalling my father sitting at the bench of the piano. It was a Rudolf with a key cover that had the tendency to fall shut on the hands of little girls, but nonetheless pulled me back in with the ruby tone of its harp. He had gotten it as a gift for my mother, and would routinely occupy the bench as we were getting ready to leave the house, due to its proximity to the door, and the fact that my mother was never ready on time. Despite the recitals he gave multiple times a day, I had only ever heard him play a couple of songs\u2013songs which he had learned for my mother to accompany the gift. My mother never touched the keys. Instead, she would extinguish his playing with a tidal wave of strongly worded aggression, and we\u2019d make our way to the car drenched in silence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n She left him and took the piano. Paying more than its worth, she had it moved to a house in the same neighborhood, just a few streets away, with identical architecture. It lives in the same room, the key cover now restrained with a metal hook like a collared dog. My penniless seventh grade fingers are now the sole occupants of the keys.<\/span><\/p>\n When the police show up, the piano sinks into the red and blue which flood in from the cars parked by the front window. This happens often enough that my sisters and I make a game out of naming the officers. We can easily distinguish \u201cButterscotch\u201d from \u201cNewbie\u201d; being able to differentiate these characters proved advantageous for foreshadowing how the night would go. They\u2019d be called by either parent for a myriad of squalls, almost always pertaining to someone\u2019s violation of \u201cthe agreement.\u201d This is the state we live in, the state we play in. High ranking officers are our Barbie Dolls, and court ordered documents are our origami paper. I will learn to camouflage into the red and blue, becoming well versed with my right to remain silent, and most importantly, I learn not to be another problem. This becomes a state of survival. A state which turns bodies into breathing corpses, dreams into sustenance, and success into irrelevance.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Unfortunately for me, many of this year\u2019s main events did not find their way between the covers of the Conackamack Middle School yearbook, since there is no \u201cmy mother guilted me into no longer seeing or speaking with my father\u201d section. When they distributed the yearbook orders, I begged an acquaintance to let me thumb through the glossy pages. The cathexis of the still, smiling images that could simplify the dynamism of a school year into recent, yet eerily distant memory drew me in. The orchestra concert became abstracted from the pieces we played, which weren\u2019t even mentioned in text between the obscure images of bows on strings.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Even in my own memory, I simplified the night of that concert into a generality. I hadn\u2019t told my dad the date of the concert; it wasn\u2019t a good idea for my parents to be in the same room. Contrary to popular belief, you can\u2019t see the crowd from the stage. The lights are too bright. I didn\u2019t know he was there until I spotted him in the hall after. I\u2019d suddenly be overcome with an anxiety too intense for a child of my age to process, an anxiety linked to abuse and trauma. I’d go on to confess to family crisis counselors and family court judges that this anxiety pertained to seeing him. In reality, it came from my mother\u2019s eyes watching. He\u2019d wait in a corner, clutching flowers and the occasional small gift bag. I\u2019d have to calculate a moment to break away from the feigned congratulations of my mother (these events were more of an image thing for her). A conversation of short exchanges would pass between me and my father. I\u2019d receive the flowers. I\u2019d retreat to my mother, cello on back. I didn\u2019t want to just collect flowers. I wanted a father.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This would happen at every concert. Every recital. Every Honor Society induction. One concert in particular I returned back to my mother, an impatient and disappointed look on her face. She asked to take a photo. Us, in the hallway of my middle school, her grandiose dress bought just for this occasion stuck to her skin as she sucked in her stomach, hand on hip, smiling for the camera. I hate pictures.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n On the last day of eighth grade, they call my name several times over the loudspeaker. They say I haven\u2019t picked up my yearbook order. I tell them this is impossible, that I never bought one. I get the book, a \u201cpaid\u201d slip rubber banded around the cover with my dad\u2019s name on the receipt. It goes into my backpack, sure to be hidden from my mother. This would happen every year to follow.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n We move again before I start high school. Again, in the same town, but this time a neighborhood a few miles away. The piano won\u2019t fit in the new house. We were supposed to be out of our old house during the real estate showings, but my mom was at work, and I had nowhere to go. I sit hugging my knees on the floor of my closet, listening to the commotion of the happy home buyers. The couple looking at the house has a kid. He starts playing the piano. Timid key strikes turn into a melody of Beethoven. He\u2019s better than me. They buy the house. My mom tells them to keep the piano.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n High school passed quickly. Suddenly, I\u2019m on the stage for graduation. My string quartet is playing Pomp and Circumstance as our classmates file into their seats with a sense of order that was absolutely foreign for Piscataway. I\u2019m playing the shit out of my half notes. I know this will be the last time. I\u2019m adorned in yellow and black robes, six honor cords, and that ugly Honor Society bib, my bow diving into the cello for each attack. I don\u2019t know how I got here. I\u2019m glad I have the books to recount each year, if I can ever find the courage to pull them out of hiding.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n My Dad waits by the exit. He has congratulations, flowers, and a request for a photo. His mom takes one with her \u201cthirteen-year-old flip phone that works just fine\u201d (she refuses to get an iPhone). She sends me grainy images of me and my father. We even get one all together. I\u2019ve only seen my grandma cry twice. Once when her mom died, and once when she asked me why me and my sisters can never acknowledge her and my dad at our school events.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n My time in early schooling resulted in much objective \u201cyearbook\u201d success. Orchestra, High Honor Roll, marching band, anything I could do to evade my mother, and most importantly not to be another problem. Each memory has become tainted with those twisted moments of confusion, with having something and being reprimanded for indulging. I didn\u2019t feel like I was soaring, I felt like I was trying to keep my head above water just long enough not to be extinguished by the tidal wave of aggression. I don\u2019t know how to acknowledge my life, and I can\u2019t bring myself to navigate the relationships I\u2019m left with. Estranged because my life doesn\u2019t make sense in the way yearbooks can make sense of a school year, I look to the moments that have been abstracted from the images. In doing so, I\u2019m able to form an understanding that success isn\u2019t synonymous with compliance. When we dare to act without fear of another\u2019s dictatorship, we breathe our own authentic love into our lives.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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