The Worst Tuba

by Anastasia Jill

I don’t know anything about the tuba but I bought one for seventy-six dollars. It was used with one owner— the man who runs The Band Room.

            “Take care of it,” he warns. “This thing will pack a punch.”

            The brass is raw in my hands, scorching with the summer heat as I carry it all the way home. My breath is clunky and I’m making monkey noises as I trip and stumble back up the sidewalk. Christ, this was stupid. I don’t know what I was thinking aside from not being able to stand one more minute of mom looking at me like I’m not a star like her.

            Why the tuba? Beats the hell out of me. In fifteen years of life, I’ve not found myself to be proficient in song or dance or acting in any form, and especially not instruments, not even the goddamn kazoo. I’d gone to The Band Room with the intention of trying guitar again at mom’s request, but I went with the tuba. It just made sense at the time, like I could finally impress her.

            This ideate dies as I walk in the door, her lips chiding in a rhythmic precision, “Mario, for God’s sake, I may be getting old, but I know that is not a guitar.”

“You’re right. It’s a tuba.”

She shrugs, disapproving. “Why in the hell would you get a tuba?”

My mouth pantomine’s the store owner’s words, “It packs a punch.”

“I have no doubt about that.” Her tone is glum and facetious, the same kind that would get me chewed out, but I’m not about to point this out to her.

She ushers me into the living room and finds some music for tuba – truly, the woman has everything – and places it on the table. Don’t Stop Believing, by Journey. Her hand waves, a limp prompt to begin.

The reality comes together like a supernova heartattack: I cannot read music; I have asthma; I most definitely cannot play the tuba. Still, I try, until my cheeks go colorful with deoxygenation and my lips catch hearty melodies in all the wrong tempos. My chest is heavy and exhausted, my tongue, like roadkill in my mouth, hanging and bloated, shocking and disgraceful. That’s what mom’s thinking. I can see it in her face as I come to a finish.

            “The good news,” she says. “That is an instrument. The bad news. That is not how you play it.”

            My face drops. I can see it in a puddle on the floor.

            “I did not send you to the store with a hundred bucks to waste on an instrument you cannot play.” She stands with her arms crossed, pacing the living room until she’s blocking the framed pictures. I catch flashes of the headshots of her most successful students and wonder, bitterly, where my school pictures are stashed.

            She snaps her fingers to get my attention once she sees my wandering attention. “It’s unprofessional,” she says.

            “Mom, it’s just a tuba.”

            “And last month, it was just a piano.”

            Her eyes find me in the black hole of shame I’ve collapsed into. I press the tuba’s round end into the muscle on my leg, trying to keep my mouth shut. In the end, the pain isn’t enough.

“It wouldn’t have mattered if I played well or not. You wouldn’t give me the benefit of the doubt.” My throat quivers, betraying my bravery. “I just wanted to try and be different.”

“And it was the worst thing I’ve ever heard. Truly, the worst.”

“As you will no doubt remind me, I wasn’t any good at that either.”

She wants to hit me in the face, give me a solid smack, I can tell. She never does, stomping around, this time, stopping by the china cabinet. It’s not full of plates; it’s full of trophies and more framed photographs, all of her. The pride cabinet, she calls it. That damn thing taunts me in my sleep, I swear to God.

I hang the tuba on the arm of the couch, but it doesn’t stay, clanking loudly as it falls to the ground. I don’t pick it up. “Fuck the tuba and this family.”

I know I’ve crossed a line because this time, mom does hit me and I fall backwards, onto my ass, right onto the tuba. My backbone feels bruised but mom has no sympathy. She breathes in and out, patience dying like a comet tail as she tells me, “Watch your language, young man.”

I take a good while getting up, trying to look her dead on. It doesn’t work. She stands over me, a lone creature in my cesspool of foundering. After a moment, she cracks a smile, the first I’ve seen in awhile. “All this over a stupid tuba.”

“I only did this stupid thing for you.”

She looks at me and knows I never wanted any of this, but it would be an embarrassment having me, the dwarf planet sun when she is sequin silver, molten gold, a true superstar in her own right.

Her gaze follows as I walk to her pride cabinet and spy a picture of her from the tenth grade. Before she found her musical theatre calling, she was in the marching band. Not the tuba. She wasn’t as stupid as me.

She goes to the tuba and picks it up off the floor, cradling it close to her bosom. There’s a twinkle in the brass face, a hopeful note that’s already dying. “I’ll take care of it,” she says, disappearing down the hall. She puts the tuba away before coming back downstairs. “Now, I believe you owe me some change.”

Bio:
Anastasia Jill (they/them) is a queer writer living in Central Florida. They have been nominated for Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, and several other honors. Their work has been featured or is upcoming with Poets.org, Sundog Lit, Flash Fiction Online, Contemporary Verse 2, Broken Pencil, and more.