The Piano Lesson Quotes

BOY WILLIE: Lymon bought that truck so he have him a place to sleep. He down there wasn’t doing no work or nothing. Sheriff looking for him. He bought that truck to keep away from the sheriff. Got Stovall looking for him too. He down there sleeping in that truck ducking and dodging both of them. I told him come on let’s go up and see my sister.

BOY WILLIE: Sutter’s brother selling the land. He say he gonna sell it to me. That’s why I come up here. I got one part of it. Sell them watermelons and get me another part. Get Berniece to sell that piano and I’ll have the third part.

DOAKER: Berniece ain’t gonna sell that piano.

BOY WILLIE: I’m gonna talk to her. When she see I got a chance to get Sutter’s land she’ll come around.

DOAKER: You can put that thought out your mind. Berniece ain’t gonna sell that piano.

DOAKER: You know she won’t touch that piano. I ain’t never known her to touch it since Mama Ola died. That’s over seven years now. She say it got blood on it. She got Maretha playing on it though. Say Maretha can go on and do everything she can’t do. Got her in an extra school down at the Irene Kaufman Settlement House. She want Maretha to grow up and be a schoolteacher. Say she good enough she can teach on the piano.

That’s why I come up here. Sell them watermelons. Get Berniece to sell that piano. Put them two parts with the part I done saved. Walk in there. Tip my hat. Lay my money down on the table. Get my deed and walk on out. This time I get to keep all the cotton. Hire me some men to work it for me. Gin my cotton. Get my seed. And I’ll see you again next year. Might even plant some tobacco or some oats.

They got so many trains out there they have a hard time keeping them from running into each other. Got trains going every whichaway. Got people on all of them. Somebody going where somebody just left. If everybody stay in one place I believe this would be a better world. Now what I done learned after twenty-seven years of railroading is this…if the train stays on the track…it’s going to get where it’s going. It might not be where you going. If it ain’t, then all you got to do is sit and wait cause the train’s coming back to get you. The train don’t never stop. It’ll come back every time.

WINING BOY: A lot of things you got to find out on your own. I can’t say how they talked to nobody else. But to me it just filled me up in a strange sort of way to be standing there on that spot. I didn’t want to leave. […] I walked away from there feeling like a king. Went on and had a stroke of luck that run on for three years. So I don’t care if Berniece believe or not. Berniece ain’t got to believe. I know cause I been there. Now Doaker’ll tell you about the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog.

BOY WILLIE: They looking for Lymon down there now. They rounded him up and put him in jail for not working.

LYMON: Fined me a hundred dollars. Mr. Stovall come and paid my hundred dollars and the judge say I got to work for him to pay him back his hundred dollars. I told them I’d rather take my thirty days but they wouldn’t let me do that.

WINING BOY: Alright. Now Mr. So and So, he sell the land to you. And he come to you and say, “John, you own the land. It’s all yours now. But them is my berries. And come time to pick them I’m gonna send my boys over. You got the land . . . but them berries, I’m gonna keep them. They mine.” And he go and fix it with the law that them is his berries. Now that’s the difference between the colored man and the white man. The colored man can’t fix nothing with the law.

Boy Charles used to talk about that piano all the time. He never could get it off his mind. […] He be talking about taking it out of Sutter’s house. Say it was the story of our whole family and as long as Sutter had it…he had us. Say we was still in slavery. Me and Wining Boy tried to talk him out of it but it wouldn’t do any good. Soon as he quiet down about it he’d start up again. We seen where he wasn’t gonna get it off his mind…so, on the Fourth of July, 1911…when Sutter was at the picnic what the county give every year…me and Wining Boy went on down there with him and took that piano out of Sutter’s house.

BOY WILLIE: All that’s in the past. If my daddy had seen where he could have traded that piano in for some land of his own, it wouldn’t be sitting up here now. He spent his whole life farming on somebody else’s land. I ain’t gonna do that. See, he couldn’t do no better. When he come along he ain’t had nothing he could build on. His daddy ain’t had nothing to give him. The only thing my daddy had to give me was that piano. And he died over giving me that. I ain’t gonna let it sit up there and rot without trying to do something with it.

Mama Ola polished this piano with her tears for seventeen years. For seventeen years she rubbed on it till her hands bled. Then she rubbed the blood in…mixed it up with the rest of the blood on it. Every day that God breathed life into her body she rubbed and cleaned and polished and prayed over it. “Play something for me, Berniece. Play something for me, Berniece.” […] You always talking about your daddy but you ain’t never stopped to look at what his foolishness cost your mama. Seventeen years’ worth of cold nights and an empty bed. For what?

That’s how the whole thing come about between me and Lymon’s mama. She knew me and his daddy used to run together and he got in jail and she went down there and took the sheriff a hundred dollars. […] The sheriff looked at that hundred dollars and turned his nose up. Told her, say, “That ain’t gonna do him no good. You got to put another hundred on top of that.” She come up there and got me where I was playing at this saloon…said she had all but fifty dollars and asked me if I could help. […] I will give anybody fifty dollars to keep them out of jail for three years.

BERNIECE: You trying to tell me a woman can’t be nothing without a man. But you alright, huh? You can just walk out of here without me—without a woman—and still be a man. That’s alright. Ain’t nobody gonna ask you, “Avery, who you got to love you?’’ That’s alright for you. But everybody gonna be worried about Berniece.

I was only playing it for her. When my daddy died seem like all her life went into that piano. She used to have me playing on it […] say when I played it she could hear my daddy talking to her. I used to think them pictures came alive and walked through the house. Sometime late at night I could hear my mama talking to them. I said that wasn’t gonna happen to me. I don’t play that piano cause I don’t want to wake them spirits. They never be walking around in this house.

AVERY: You got to put all of that behind you, Berniece. That’s the same thing like Crawley. Everybody got stones in their passway. You got to step over them or walk around them. You picking them up and carrying them with you. All you got to do is set them down by the side of the road. You ain’t got to carry them with you. You can walk over there right now and play that piano. You can walk over there right now and God will walk over there with you. […] You can walk over here right now and make it into a celebration.

That’s when I discovered the power of death. […] [The white man] can’t hold that power over you. That’s what I learned when I killed that cat. I got the power of death too. I can command him. I can call him up. The white man don’t like to see that. He don’t like for you to stand up and look him square in the eye and say, “I got it too.’’ Then he got to deal with you square up.

You ought to mark down on the calendar the day that Papa Boy Charles brought that piano into the house. You ought to mark that day down and draw a circle around it . . . and every year when it come up throw a party. Have a celebration. If you did that she wouldn’t have no problem in life. She could walk around here with her head held high. […] You got her going out here thinking she wrong in the world. Like there ain’t no part of it belong to her.

AVERY: Berniece, I can’t do it.

(There are more sounds heard from upstairs. DOAKER and WINING BOY stare at one another in stunned disbelief. It is in this moment, from somewhere old, that BERNIECE realizes what she must do. She crosses to the piano. She begins to play. The song is found piece by piece. It is an old urge to song that is both a commandment and a plea. With each repetition it gains in strength. It is intended as an exorcism and a dressing for battle[.])