BOY WILLIE: You ain’t got to worry about me. I’m gonna be here just as long as it takes Lymon to get back here with that truck. You ought to be talking to Berniece. Sitting up there telling Maretha she wished she was a boy. What kind of thing is that to tell a child? If you want to tell her something tell her about that piano. You ain’t even told her about that piano. Like that’s something to be ashamed of. Like she supposed to go off and hide somewhere about that piano. 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. I’m talking about a big party!

Invite everybody! Mark that day down with a special meaning. That way she know where she at in the world. You got her going out here thinking she wrong in the world. Like there ain’t no part of it belong to her.

BERNIECE: Let me take care of my child. When you get one of your own then you can teach it what you want to teach it.

(DOAKER exits into his room.)

BOY WILLIE: What I want to bring a child into this world for? Why I wanna bring somebody else into all this for? I’ll tell you this . . . If I was Rockefeller I’d have forty or fifty. I’d make one every day. Cause they gonna start out in life with all the advantages. I ain’t got no advantages to offer nobody. Many is the time I looked at my daddy and seen him staring off at his hands. I got a little older I know what he was thinking. He sitting there saying, “I got these big old hands but what I’m gonna do with them? Best I can do is make a fifty-acre crop for Mr. Stovall. Got these big old hands capable of doing anything. I can take and build something with these hands. But where’s the tools? All I got is these hands. Unless I go out here and kill me somebody and take what they got . . . it’s a long row to hoe for me to get something of my own. So what I’m gonna do with these big old hands? What would you do?”

See now . . . if he had his own land he wouldn’t have felt that way. If he had something under his feet that belonged to him he could stand up taller. That’s what I’m talking about. Hell, the land is there for everybody. All you got to do is figure out how to get you a piece. Ain’t no mystery to life. You just got to go out and meet it square on. If you got a piece of land you’ll find everything else fall right into place. You can stand right up next to the white man and talk about the price of cotton . . . the weather, and anything else you want to talk about. If you teach that girl that she living at the bottom of life, she’s gonna grow up and hate you.