I have always known a thing before it happens. - Amy Tan

What use for? asks my mother, jiggling the table with her hand. You put something else on top, everything fall down.

After the gold was removed from my body I felt lighter, more free. They say this is what happens if you lack metal. You begin to think as an independent person.

And for all those years, we never talked about the disaster at the recital or my terrible accusations afterward at the piano bench. All that remained unchecked, like a betrayal that was now unbreakable. So I never found a way to ask her why she had hoped something so large that failure was inevitable. And even worse, I never asked her what frightened me the most: Why had she given up hope?