Beggar's Choice

I’m not supposed to play you this record.

You don’t have school tomorrow, but that’s not why. My mother would come into my room on Friday’s before midnight and she’d tell me to go get the record player. I had to set it on the floor, and plug it in. I had to look at the record. She’d make me stare at it. Memorize it. Until I could see the tiny dots that made up the letters. The illustration on the front would move from side to side and I’d think it was going to come to life. I’d imagine the tiger turning real and swallowing me up. When I couldn’t look anymore, I’d beg her to take it away.

Then, she’d play the music.

Only some of that is true, but I don’t know which parts. Each time you recall a memory, you change a percentage of it. It’s something like twelve or thirteen percent, but I don’t know which. I can only tell you what I know, and I can’t feel guilty. I can’t feel guilty for what I don’t know. I can only remember what I’m allowed to remember. It’s almost midnight on a Friday, and you wanted your friends to sleep over, but I told you, it was too dangerous. What if one of them brought a foreign record over? Or a cassette? What if one of them started to sing? President Bush says America is in the throes of a spiritual crisis. He’s going to have Barbara teach us all how to read. Wouldn’t it be nice to see some books in the house? Wouldn’t it be nice if the bookcases weren’t empty? I told you that you could go out tonight, but you didn’t want to. I’m being tested, I believe. Because what teenager wants to stay home with their mother on a Friday night? I wasn’t allowed to go out. Not Friday night, not any night. I could call you ungrateful, but do I really believe that? It’s important to base how you feel about people on your belief system. The one you form when you’re very young, and people are doing their best to hurt you. How they hurt you plays a large part in who you grow up to be.

How have I hurt you?

Will you tell me?

I only kept this one record, and I’ve never played it for you. It sits in my bedroom around those photographs and that candle. That place you call a shrine. A shrine to my mother. Not because I want to honor her memory, but because I want to lock her spirit in one place. A place where I can see her. It’s okay if she’s close to me. I’ve already been hurt. You can’t hurt someone past the bone, you know. My mother, she always found the bone. Then, she’d lose interest. The record would play, and I’d sing along. She hated that. The way I could find the notes that she couldn’t reach. The confidence with which I knew each scratch on the record.

You’re home because you want to watch all your comedies. Your half hour delights. The laugh tracks. The easy fixes. I wish we had a family like the ones you see in reruns. I don’t know if there were ever families like that. On my street alone, there were so many record players. In the summer, when the Fridays were longer, we’d all open our windows and hear what the other houses sounded like. How the other hurts go down. My best friend lived across the street and her father would play opera. The most beautiful opera. I don’t know which one. Or maybe there was no opera. I don’t know why I would say I had a best friend. That doesn’t sound like me.

What do you think you’ll forgive me for first? The way I cling to you or the way I lie? The way I lie without meaning to lie? When you stand, do you feel as though you’ll stand forever? I can’t stand without wondering when I’ll fall. When it’ll all go down for me. Like quicksand. I get pulled into the earth, because I’m too weak to overcome the soil. Do you see how I can open myself up to you? Talk to you while I keep one eye on the clock? That’s because on the other side of midnight, we don’t need any music. The record goes back to its place underneath my bed. The dots go unexamined. The tiger doesn’t feed. I go to sleep and you stay up all night.

Because that’s what teenagers do.

When we reached the 90’s, I thought we’d be safe from all the sounds of the lost tracks. The albums that only had one good song on them. I remember President Reagan telling us that we could be perfect if we let ourselves see past the shame in pride. Past reciting our worst sins into the mirror. That’s why my mother got rid of our mirrors. She didn’t see the point in punishing your reflection. My mother died not having looked at herself in years. That’s why I put mirrors everywhere. Do you see how I’ve fixed the things you didn’t even know were broken?

And did I ever ask you to thank me?

I want you to look at the record. You don’t have to look for long, but just look. You have to have an appreciation for what I’ve done, or I can’t promise I’ll keep doing it. I need some circus for my bread. I need to know that even though I’m a beggar, I’m a beggar with a choice. Just one choice. Just one thing I can say I did for myself. And for you. Look at the record and ask yourself what it would feel like to spend all night staring at that tiger.

It won’t hurt. It’s only a few minutes until midnight. You can do it for a few minutes, can’t you? I had to do it for so much longer than that. The record would play, and it felt like no one was ever going to turn it off.

Even if I play it one day, I’d never make you listen.

I’d play it in my room.

Just for me.

And I’d turn the volume down so low, you’d never know there was music.

You might be in here dancing, but you wouldn’t know why.

You wouldn’t have a clue.