A monologue from the play by August Wilson
BERNIECE (thirty-five)
I done told you I don’t play on that piano. Ain’t no need in you to keep talking this choir stuff. When my Mama died I shut the top on that piano
and I ain’t never opened it since. 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 it . . .
had Miss Eula come in and teach me . . . 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.
I got Maretha playing on it. She don’t know nothing about it. Let her go on and be a school teacher or something.
She don’t have to carry all that with her. She got a chance I didn’t have. I ain’t gonna burden her with that piano.
