piano lesson paper paragraph

Berniece is keeping the history of the piano from Maretha in order to keep her from becoming burdened by the past. Maretha has nothing to do with the piano, or with any of her family’s history. This innocence Maretha carries is good and bad. “I got Maretha playing on it. She don’t know nothing about it. Let her go on and be a schoolteacher 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”. Berniece thinks she is helping Maretha by not telling her the history about her ancestors, but Maretha has no sense of where she comes from. Maretha’s innocence can be a burden just like the piano because she doesn’t know where she comes from or the past of her relatives and how her family came into the possession of the piano.