By the time her mother arranges the piano lessons, June has already gotten used to Suyuan's dreams and schemes for her to be great at something. Although she would like to make her parents--especially her mother--proud, she is figuring out that she is more average than outstanding. Doing things to make her mother happy is making her unhappy.
The monotony of the piano lessons, especially when she realizes that her teacher is basically deaf, and the constant practice overwhelm her. When she has a recital coming up, instead of practicing more, she slacks off. The culmination is the recital itself, when June has to acknowledge how great is the disjunct between fantasy and reality. Even though June knows she is unprepared, part of her imagines that it's going to go great. Of course that doesn't happen.
Afterward her mother is furious, but in her roundabout way June has gotten her point across. She has become her own person.
For the narrator, the turning point occurs when her mother arranges for her to have daily piano tuition for two hours. As we see from the narrator's reaction, she is no longer excited about being a prodigy:
When my mother told me this, I felt as though I had been sent to hell.
From this point on, the narrator feels that her mother does not accept her for who she is. Instead, she wants to mold her into a piano prodigy, even though the narrator does not possess a natural talent in this subject. This conflict between mother and daughter causes an angry confrontation. The mother feels that her daughter is neither grateful nor ambitious, while the narrator feels that her mother is being selfish and not considering her feelings.
As a result of the mother's obsession with the piano, their relationship continues to deteriorate. Even after an unsuccessful talent show appearance, the mother does not give up on her dream for the narrator. In fact, it takes another explosion of anger before she finally accepts that her daughter will never be a piano prodigy.
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