Sherry Chandler

James Baldwin

Here are the first three paragraphs of James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” from American Short Story Masterpieces, ed Raymond Carver and Tom Jenks, (Laurel/Dell, 1987)

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 the 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.

“Sonny’s Blues” dates from 1948 according to the copyright information in the anthology, though internet sources say it was first published in 1957. This is Baldwin’s take on Harlem youth at risk and it is a much darker picture than Evan Hunter’s in The Blackboard Jungle.

The image of the ever-melting ever-renewing block of ice captures the way it is with a parent (in this case an older brother) when a child is at risk. It’s this kind of thing makes me think you can have your (moving) pictures. I’ll take the 1,000 words.

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