What was claytons mother’s childhood like

While Clayton adores Cool Papa, Ms. Byrd still feels hurt from how her father treated her and her mother. Cool Papa was a navy man, and as a child Juanita rarely saw him. When he retired she and her mother assumed he would be at home full time, but instead he went back on the road with a musical group - the Bluesmen - playing the guitar. When she grew up she refused her father’s attention, too hurt from his absences and told people he was “lost at sea” (16). Even as an adult when seeing her father read to her son, she feels “a pinch of envy . . . He had never read to her” (14). Because of her father’s absences as a child, Juanita has a negative association with the blues. Despite her father naming his favorite guitar for her - Wah-Wah Nita - she dislikes the blues and calls it a “low down sound” (66).