Sara houghteling books

Excerpt from Music for the Left Hand Alone

Our first teacher, our “civilizing influence,” as Dad called it, was frail, birdlike Miss Bethune, New Orleans-born, who lived downstairs from our apartment and owned the building and needed help with her grocery shopping, the trash and snow, and the occasional light bulb. She wore a gingery wig styled in a Marcel wave, and arches of blue powder on her eyelids that gave her a perpetually surprised expression. She was of an unknowable very old age—during our lessons, I marveled at how her skin had wrinkles within wrinkles, like ripples in water. She once told us that the woman who cared for her as a child had been born a slave. She required that we bow to her at the beginnings and ends of our lessons and she half-curtsied in response from beneath her afghan on her chair. Henry's playing often lulled Miss Bethune to sleep, but as a rule she awoke when I took the piano bench. With each wrong note, she poked me in the back with her cane.

Fo Sara houghteling biography images!