James Baldwin
SONNY'S BLUES
I read about it
in
the paper, in the subway, on my way to
work. I read it, and I couldn't believe it, and I read it again. Then
perhaps I just stared at it, at the newsprint spelling out
his
name,
spelling out the story. I stared at
it
in the swinging lights of the
subway car, and
in
the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own
face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside.
It was not to be believed and I kept telling myself that as I
walked from the subway station to the high school. And at the same
time I couldn't doubt it. I was scared, scared for Sonny. He became
real to me again. A great block of ice got settled in my belly and kept
melting there slowly all day long, while I taught my classes algebra.
It was a special kind of ice. It kept melting, sending trickles of ice
water all up and down my veins, but
it
never got less. Sometimes it
hardened and seemed to expand until I felt my guts were going to
come spilling out or that I was going to choke or scream. This would
always be at a moment when I was remembering some specific thing
Sonny had once Said or done.
When he was about as old as the boys in my classes his face had
been bright and open, there was a lot of copper in it; and he'd had
wonderfully direct brown eyes, and great gentleness and privacy. I
wondered what he looked like now. He had been picked up, the
evening before, in a raid on an apartment downtown, for peddling
and using heroin.
I couldn't believe it: but what I mean by that is that I couldn't
find any room for it anywhere inside me. I had kept it outside me
for a long time. I hadn't wanted to know. I had had suspicions, but
I didn't name them, I kept putting them away. I told myself tha:t
Sonny was wild, but he wasn't crazy And he'd always been a .gooc;l
