TicTacsAreGoodForYou
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- Posted: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 01:30:35 +0000
I have a few (lengthy) monologues from the play I'm working on now at school.
And They Dance Real Slow In Jackson
By Jim Leonard Jr.
Beth Willow: She was born in October. In May, she took sick with a flue. It was two in the morning when I finally phoned Doctor Harris and got the poor man out of bed . I told him my baby had a temperature of a hundred and one. He told me to calm down. He told me to give her an aspirin and then take an aspirin or two myself and go back to sleep. What he said is that babies get sick. All babies get sooner or later take ill with a flu or the measles and I shouldn't worry so much. In the first week of August the sun was so hot and the air was so muggy you could cut through the sky with a knife. Elizabeth took sick again, in the first week of August again; and this time I stayed off the phone and I held her and fanned her and I tried not to worry so much. Because I knew that she was my first, and all mothers worry too much with their first, but that child's temperature -- my baby's temperature went up to a hundred and six. I went to bed at a hundred and two and I woke at a hundred and six. Well, I rushed her to the doctor's of course and I knew and I know now I should have done something, but I don;t know what else I could do. We were all so afraid of the hospital then. Everyone said the surest insurance of giving a child polio was to take her into a hospital ward where everyone else had the disease. So I held her and nursed her and I took her home. And after the fever was gone...after the fever receded she couldn't move, didn't move, never will move...I don't know what else I could do. What could you do? I'm a good mother. I'm a good mother. I know that.
_____
Ben Willow: (Ben Willow enters as the catechism finishes. It's night. He's been drinking. He's not rolling drunk, but he's drunk enough. He enters on the stage floor level and sits on a step early in the speech and stays there...like he's on his porch step. Ben might have a small whiskey bottle. He talks right to the audience for the most part.)
Well, I'll be good and goddamned is what I'll be...good and goddamned...Coming in all hours of the night; nothing but the truth to tell her, she goes asking where I've been. Have my tail's what she'll do. Sit me down and start talking sassy about near thirty years of marriage and me drunk out on the porch one of the few times in all of em. Well, a man's got a right. A man's got a goddamn good right to tip a few back when he wants without getting sassed by his wife, I'll tell her...talking sassy...that's how they do it around here, sir. Nobody's got the spine in em to come up to you on the street and tell you what they're thinking to your face. All talking real strong on how they remember back a few years. Back when all they remember was worrying about where to get the money up for bill paying and house renting and where are they gonna get the money to take the whole goddamn family down to Florida come spring!?...Well how goddamn long do you think I been working? How many years years do you figure I been loading those trucks and unloading em again? Every damn day, sir. Everyday, all day, all of my life at the same goddamn job till I feel like I'm caught on some sort of crazy ferris wheel full of boxes needing to be lifted up and down and over here, over there!...(Quietly) Like to make me sick to my guts is what it's like to do...why don't you ask me where those years are? My little girl, she is twenty four now and she's never taken a step. Can't work her to walking; can't pray her to walking. No sir, no ma'am, no thank you, never. That's where your years are, you want to sass me...sleeping happy and warm with a coupla broke legs in that room...
_____
During this monologue, Elizabeth is about 16/17 years old.
Elizabeth Willow: Zelda? Listen to me...Zelda. Last night I was in bed, see? And I could hear them talking -- my parents in their room, whispering to each other; and the kids outside my window; and the kids outside my window; girls talking to boys and the boys with them and trying to touch them and tease them under my window...Zelda, I could hear them and I tried: I tried not to listen, wanting my hearing to go away. I said, if my hearing is gone then my thought is gone; and if my thought is gone then my mind is no longer hurting....and I dreamed it would make it be me, Zelda...I dreamed I could make it be me that was gone and not you at all. I dreamt a dream of your dying. (She begins to grow more passionate, more lost...) Your muscles are melting away and you cant stop them from turning to nothing inside you. And you have to eat, and you have to breathe, and you have to think: you can't stop the thinking inside yourself even while your body grows useless underneath you. You think, I'm dying now...I'm really dying now...and you can almost tell how many weeks there'll be before your lungs become too weak to hold the air you want; and when they begin to collapse, then you know that too. Your muscles are turning to water. You know that you're suffocating inside your own body, and still while you're dying you think of it. (She lifts her U. foot off of the footrest and places it on the ground -- she must lift her legs with her hands and arms, treating them as perfectly motionless.) Because the dystrophy separates the muscle from the bone -- (And as she takes her other foot off the footrest she speaks the next line.) The mind from the body... (She swings the empty footrest into the side of the chair, crashing metal against metal, and lowers herself out of the chair; she wants to be closer to the grave, to be near it. Elizabeth should be far enough away from the flowers to allow her the room to prone on the floor, the room to pull herself to them just a foot or two. She uses her upper body, so her face is up, her eyes in the light. A bit like the Andrew Wyeth painting "Christina's World"...) And last year you came to my room and my father had to carry you, Zelda. He sets you beside me like an infant to hold, and you cannot even talk then -- you're sixteen and then seventeen and you cannot force the muscles to move enough to say even a word. (Soft, remembering.) But it is all right still. We can sit still. We can sit and tough and hold and the words don't matter anymore, Zelda....nothing matters... (Incredibly intense now, all rage and anguish.) Zelda, it isn't right for this to happen to you! I wish it was me who was gone now and not you at all! Nothing changes for me -- nothing changes in me, Zelda -- Nothing! (Slowly) Nothing, nothing ever changes...
_____
During this monologue, Elizabeth is 24 and insane.
Elizabeth Willow: SHUT UP--! (There is a tableau, the Chorus simply looks at her. She continues in anger.) You are always listing things! Lining things up in rows as if putting them in rows is suddenly going to make my mind make sense of it -- but there is no sense in it! You put things in lists that are backwards and wrong and turning inside my mind until I don't know where I started anymore! (Quieter, sifting through the thoughts.) And I want to remember: and then you make me remember and I look at the remembering and I feel the remembering and my stomach turns to knots because of it. I was a very nervous child, you know...high strung, my mother says...and this is not the best thing fore a person, do you see that? Do you see what I'm telling you? (The Chorus turns away from her as she goes to each one of them, until all four backs are turned forming a sort of half-circle behind her.) Talk to me...please, I have no one to talk to but you now..please, please talk...please speak...please (Their backs are turned, giving her no response. She lowers deep into herself; the lights focusing brighter, tighter on her. Almost a whisper, imagining...) I'd like...I'd like to be someplace...(She grows more sure of her fantasy, her voice picking up strength and quality the deeper she grows into her dream.) ...someplace where there's grasses and trees and voices in the wind... (The flute might begin to play behind her. The Chorus, their backs still turned, should vocally intensify and echo her fantasy, drawing her deeper and deeper into it...they giggle, they whisper her name; they become the fantasy -- without moving their voices become the dream.)...someplace where it's never silent. For the wind...it's the wind that carries the laughter and the speaking of the children there. And they are good children there...children who aren't afraid of me. And as I wheel through the fields they come up running to me, Elizabeth! Elizabeth, come talk with us -- come be with us...and they smile and they touch me so gently. Because they aren't afraid there. They, they admire the chair there! Because of the flatness...yes, because of the flatness there. And the wind blows over the grasses, all alive to its touching, and it carries the voices of laughter as far as the ends of the ends of the earth there. Over the grasses and the people and the chairs there...because there are no hills or steps or cliffs there -- nothing but the flat flat land. And I can roll! I can roll and roll! In circles, in loops, in huge and swelling arcs across the fields, because there is nothing to stop me there, because of the flatness...and as I roll by them, the people reach out their arms and touch me so gently, so gentle...(The Chorus turns around, they reach towards her.)...as if they're saying Feel it! Can;t you feel the breeze here? Can't you feel the wind up over the land and it blows and blows and blows with nothing to stop it or block it from reaching the ocean! Feel it, Elizabeth! (She reaches out, touching each person in the Chorus with a phrase, a hand, with her eyes.) And we look. And we touch. And we speak. And we love. And we grow together together like the grasses rooted in the earth of the flat land...(A moment of tableau...all swaying and together.) We are the grasses of the flat land..
And They Dance Real Slow In Jackson
By Jim Leonard Jr.
Beth Willow: She was born in October. In May, she took sick with a flue. It was two in the morning when I finally phoned Doctor Harris and got the poor man out of bed . I told him my baby had a temperature of a hundred and one. He told me to calm down. He told me to give her an aspirin and then take an aspirin or two myself and go back to sleep. What he said is that babies get sick. All babies get sooner or later take ill with a flu or the measles and I shouldn't worry so much. In the first week of August the sun was so hot and the air was so muggy you could cut through the sky with a knife. Elizabeth took sick again, in the first week of August again; and this time I stayed off the phone and I held her and fanned her and I tried not to worry so much. Because I knew that she was my first, and all mothers worry too much with their first, but that child's temperature -- my baby's temperature went up to a hundred and six. I went to bed at a hundred and two and I woke at a hundred and six. Well, I rushed her to the doctor's of course and I knew and I know now I should have done something, but I don;t know what else I could do. We were all so afraid of the hospital then. Everyone said the surest insurance of giving a child polio was to take her into a hospital ward where everyone else had the disease. So I held her and nursed her and I took her home. And after the fever was gone...after the fever receded she couldn't move, didn't move, never will move...I don't know what else I could do. What could you do? I'm a good mother. I'm a good mother. I know that.
_____
Ben Willow: (Ben Willow enters as the catechism finishes. It's night. He's been drinking. He's not rolling drunk, but he's drunk enough. He enters on the stage floor level and sits on a step early in the speech and stays there...like he's on his porch step. Ben might have a small whiskey bottle. He talks right to the audience for the most part.)
Well, I'll be good and goddamned is what I'll be...good and goddamned...Coming in all hours of the night; nothing but the truth to tell her, she goes asking where I've been. Have my tail's what she'll do. Sit me down and start talking sassy about near thirty years of marriage and me drunk out on the porch one of the few times in all of em. Well, a man's got a right. A man's got a goddamn good right to tip a few back when he wants without getting sassed by his wife, I'll tell her...talking sassy...that's how they do it around here, sir. Nobody's got the spine in em to come up to you on the street and tell you what they're thinking to your face. All talking real strong on how they remember back a few years. Back when all they remember was worrying about where to get the money up for bill paying and house renting and where are they gonna get the money to take the whole goddamn family down to Florida come spring!?...Well how goddamn long do you think I been working? How many years years do you figure I been loading those trucks and unloading em again? Every damn day, sir. Everyday, all day, all of my life at the same goddamn job till I feel like I'm caught on some sort of crazy ferris wheel full of boxes needing to be lifted up and down and over here, over there!...(Quietly) Like to make me sick to my guts is what it's like to do...why don't you ask me where those years are? My little girl, she is twenty four now and she's never taken a step. Can't work her to walking; can't pray her to walking. No sir, no ma'am, no thank you, never. That's where your years are, you want to sass me...sleeping happy and warm with a coupla broke legs in that room...
_____
During this monologue, Elizabeth is about 16/17 years old.
Elizabeth Willow: Zelda? Listen to me...Zelda. Last night I was in bed, see? And I could hear them talking -- my parents in their room, whispering to each other; and the kids outside my window; and the kids outside my window; girls talking to boys and the boys with them and trying to touch them and tease them under my window...Zelda, I could hear them and I tried: I tried not to listen, wanting my hearing to go away. I said, if my hearing is gone then my thought is gone; and if my thought is gone then my mind is no longer hurting....and I dreamed it would make it be me, Zelda...I dreamed I could make it be me that was gone and not you at all. I dreamt a dream of your dying. (She begins to grow more passionate, more lost...) Your muscles are melting away and you cant stop them from turning to nothing inside you. And you have to eat, and you have to breathe, and you have to think: you can't stop the thinking inside yourself even while your body grows useless underneath you. You think, I'm dying now...I'm really dying now...and you can almost tell how many weeks there'll be before your lungs become too weak to hold the air you want; and when they begin to collapse, then you know that too. Your muscles are turning to water. You know that you're suffocating inside your own body, and still while you're dying you think of it. (She lifts her U. foot off of the footrest and places it on the ground -- she must lift her legs with her hands and arms, treating them as perfectly motionless.) Because the dystrophy separates the muscle from the bone -- (And as she takes her other foot off the footrest she speaks the next line.) The mind from the body... (She swings the empty footrest into the side of the chair, crashing metal against metal, and lowers herself out of the chair; she wants to be closer to the grave, to be near it. Elizabeth should be far enough away from the flowers to allow her the room to prone on the floor, the room to pull herself to them just a foot or two. She uses her upper body, so her face is up, her eyes in the light. A bit like the Andrew Wyeth painting "Christina's World"...) And last year you came to my room and my father had to carry you, Zelda. He sets you beside me like an infant to hold, and you cannot even talk then -- you're sixteen and then seventeen and you cannot force the muscles to move enough to say even a word. (Soft, remembering.) But it is all right still. We can sit still. We can sit and tough and hold and the words don't matter anymore, Zelda....nothing matters... (Incredibly intense now, all rage and anguish.) Zelda, it isn't right for this to happen to you! I wish it was me who was gone now and not you at all! Nothing changes for me -- nothing changes in me, Zelda -- Nothing! (Slowly) Nothing, nothing ever changes...
_____
During this monologue, Elizabeth is 24 and insane.
Elizabeth Willow: SHUT UP--! (There is a tableau, the Chorus simply looks at her. She continues in anger.) You are always listing things! Lining things up in rows as if putting them in rows is suddenly going to make my mind make sense of it -- but there is no sense in it! You put things in lists that are backwards and wrong and turning inside my mind until I don't know where I started anymore! (Quieter, sifting through the thoughts.) And I want to remember: and then you make me remember and I look at the remembering and I feel the remembering and my stomach turns to knots because of it. I was a very nervous child, you know...high strung, my mother says...and this is not the best thing fore a person, do you see that? Do you see what I'm telling you? (The Chorus turns away from her as she goes to each one of them, until all four backs are turned forming a sort of half-circle behind her.) Talk to me...please, I have no one to talk to but you now..please, please talk...please speak...please (Their backs are turned, giving her no response. She lowers deep into herself; the lights focusing brighter, tighter on her. Almost a whisper, imagining...) I'd like...I'd like to be someplace...(She grows more sure of her fantasy, her voice picking up strength and quality the deeper she grows into her dream.) ...someplace where there's grasses and trees and voices in the wind... (The flute might begin to play behind her. The Chorus, their backs still turned, should vocally intensify and echo her fantasy, drawing her deeper and deeper into it...they giggle, they whisper her name; they become the fantasy -- without moving their voices become the dream.)...someplace where it's never silent. For the wind...it's the wind that carries the laughter and the speaking of the children there. And they are good children there...children who aren't afraid of me. And as I wheel through the fields they come up running to me, Elizabeth! Elizabeth, come talk with us -- come be with us...and they smile and they touch me so gently. Because they aren't afraid there. They, they admire the chair there! Because of the flatness...yes, because of the flatness there. And the wind blows over the grasses, all alive to its touching, and it carries the voices of laughter as far as the ends of the ends of the earth there. Over the grasses and the people and the chairs there...because there are no hills or steps or cliffs there -- nothing but the flat flat land. And I can roll! I can roll and roll! In circles, in loops, in huge and swelling arcs across the fields, because there is nothing to stop me there, because of the flatness...and as I roll by them, the people reach out their arms and touch me so gently, so gentle...(The Chorus turns around, they reach towards her.)...as if they're saying Feel it! Can;t you feel the breeze here? Can't you feel the wind up over the land and it blows and blows and blows with nothing to stop it or block it from reaching the ocean! Feel it, Elizabeth! (She reaches out, touching each person in the Chorus with a phrase, a hand, with her eyes.) And we look. And we touch. And we speak. And we love. And we grow together together like the grasses rooted in the earth of the flat land...(A moment of tableau...all swaying and together.) We are the grasses of the flat land..
