SONNY'S BLUES
345
But the worry, the thoughtfulness, played on it still, the way shadows
play on a face which is staring into the fire.
But I thought I'd never hear the end of that piano. At first,
Isabel would write me, saying how nice it was that Sonny was so
serious about his music and how, as soon as he came in from school,
or wherever he had been when he was supposed to be at school, he
went straight to that piano and stayed there until suppertime. And,
after supper, he went back to that piano and stayed there until
everybody went to bed. He was at that piano all day Saturday and
all day Sunday. Then he bought a record player and started playing
records. He'd play one record over and over again, all day long
sometimes, and he'd improvise along with it on the piano. Or he'd
play one section of the record, one chord, one change, one
pr~
gression, then he'd do it on the piano. Then back to the record.
Then back to the piano.
Well, I really don't know how they stood it. Isabel finally con–
fessed that it wasn't like living with a person at all, it was like living
with sound. And the sound didn't make any sense to her, didn't
make any sense to any of them-naturally. They began, in a way, to
be afflicted by this presence that was living in their home.
It
was
as though Sonny were some sort of god, or monster. He moved in
an atmosphere which wasn't like theirs at all. They fed him and
he ate, he washed himself, he walked in and out of their door; he
certainly wasn't nasty or unpleasant or rude, Sonny isn't any of
those things; but it was as though he were all wrapped up in some
cloud, some fire, some vision .all his own; and there wasn't any
way to reach him.
At the same time, he wasn't really a man yet, he was still a
child, and they had to watch out for him in all kinds of ways. They
certainly couldn't throw him out. Neither did they dare to make a
great scene about that piano because even they dimly sensed, as
I sensed, from so many thousands of miles away, that Sonny was
at that piano playing for his life.
But he hadn't been going to school. One day a letter came from
the school board and Isabel's mother got it-there had, apparently,
been other letters but Sonny had tom them up. This day, when Sonny
