the rehearsals for Sunny of Sunnyside
shouldn’t take me out of school
more than twice next week.
When I told Ma she got angry about
my missing school to play piano for some show.
Me and Daddy,
we’re trying our best to please Ma,
for fear of what it might do to the baby if we don’t.
I don’t know why she’s
so against my playing.
She says that school is important,
but I do all right in school.
I know she doesn’t like the kind
of music I play,
but sometimes I think she’s
just plain jealous
when I’m at the piano
and she’s not.
And maybe she’s a little afraid
of me going somewhere with the music
she can’t follow.
Or of the music taking me
so far away one day
Whatever the reason, she said I couldn’t do it.
Arley had to get somebody to take my place.
I do as she says. I go to school,
and in the afternoons I come home,
run through my chores,
do my reading and my math work at the
kitchen table
and all the while I glare at Ma’s back with a scowl
foul as maggoty stew.
March 1934