Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light || A Ceremony
Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light by Joy Harjo (Mvskoke) || Development and Production History
DECEMBER 2007
Public Theater Native
Theater Festival
New York, New York
Workshop and Staged Reading
JUNE 2008
Native Voices at the
Autry Playwrights Retreat
and Festival of New Plays
San Diego and
Los Angeles, California
Workshop and Staged Reading
MARCH 2009
Native Voices at the Autry
Los Angeles, California
Equity World Premiere
JANUARY 2010
Alaska Native Heritage Center
Anchorage, Alaska
Tour
MARCH 2010
Merrimack College
North Andover, Massachusetts
Tour
MAY 2010
Outpost Performance Space
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Tour
JUNE 2010
Native Voices at the Autry Festival
of New Plays
La Jolla, California
Tour
SEPTEMBER 2010
Oklahoma Center for Poets and
Writers, Tulsa Library Trust,
American Indian Resource Center,
and Readers’ Library
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Tour
DECEMBER 2010
Native Voices at the Autry with the
Public Theater
New York, New York
Workshop
OCTOBER 2011
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, Massachusetts
Reading
February 2012
First Nations House of Learning
University of British Columbia,
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Performance
REDBIRD, who may also be the SPIRIT HELPER: a Native woman, Mvskoke, somewhere in her later twenties, thirties, forties, or fifties
GUARDIAN MUSICIAN: a guitar player who accompanies Redbird on her journey
GUARDIAN MUSICIAN comes onstage about five minutes before the curtain speech to set up gear and tune as needed. He sits extreme stage right.
OPENING
GUARDIAN MUSICIAN plays funky music. Music accompanies the story throughout.
The kitchen table, stage left center, is the gut around which all action flows. It is a heart, a bed, a bier, a car, a counter at the bar, an altar, and a hiding place.
Lights up on the table.
REDBIRD enters upstage left, lands down center stage. She wears jeans, red shirt, and cowboy boots.
Light bright sunlight.
REDBIRD: I welcome you on behalf of the family, and thank you so much for coming out to help with our ceremony. Important information: The bathrooms are down the hall, and there’s water and coffee in the kitchen. Don’t forget to turn off your cell phones, iPads, cameras … no taping, or texting.
REDBIRD, as REDBIRD’S relative, picks up rattle and shakes it.
REDBIRD: Please keep in mind that the patient Redbird Monahwee is in a delicate and vulnerable state. There is imbalance between dark and light. We need your good thoughts to help see us through.
And here to assist us in our ceremony is Redbird’s protector guardian.
GUARDIAN MUSICIAN plays a flourish on guitar as a way of introduction. He never speaks in the play.
REDBIRD: I’ve been asked to open with a traditional family story and song, so that our minds come together as one.
Mvto, mvto, thank you: for ancestral and all spiritual help.
REDBIRD shakes a rattle to signal the beginning of the story.
SONG: RABBIT IS UP TO TRICKS
In a world long before this one, there was enough for everyone
until somebody got out of line.
We heard it was Rabbit, fooling around with clay and the wind.
Everybody was tired of his tricks and no one would play with him;
he was lonely in this world.
So Rabbit thought to make a person.
And when he blew into the mouth of that crude figure
to see what would happen, the clay man stood up.
Rabbit showed the clay man how to steal a chicken.
The clay man obeyed.
Then Rabbit showed him how to steal corn.
The clay man obeyed.
Then he showed him how to steal someone else’s wife.
The clay man obeyed.
Rabbit felt important and powerful.
The clay man felt important and powerful.
And once that clay man started he could not stop.
Once he took that chicken he wanted all the chickens.
And once he took that corn he wanted all the corn.
And once he took that wife, he wanted all the wives.
He was insatiable.
Then he had a taste of gold and he wanted all the gold.
Then it was land and anything else he saw.
His wanting only made him want more.
Soon it was countries, and then it was trade.
The wanting infected the earth.
We lost track of the purpose and reason for life.
We began to forget our songs, our stories;
we could no longer see or hear our ancestors,
or talk with each other across the kitchen table.
Forests were being mowed down all over the world to make more.
And Rabbit had no place to play.
Rabbit’s trick had backfired.
Rabbit tried to call the clay man back,
But when the clay man wouldn’t listen
Rabbit realized he’d made a clay man with no ears.
SONG: WINDING THROUGH THE MILKY WAY
CEHOTOSAKVTES
CHENAORAKVTES MOMIS KOMET
AWATCHKEN OHAPEYAKARES HVLWEN
REDBIRD: Two beloved women sang this song on the trail of tears. One walked near the front of the people, one near the back. When either began to falter, they would sing the song to hold each other up.
DO NOT GET TIRED.
DON’T BE DISCOURAGED. BE DETERMINED,
TO ALL COME IN. WE WILL GO TO THE HIGHEST PLACE.
WE WILL GO TOGETHER.
Rattle ends the song.
REDBIRD: Now, our ceremony begins.
SCENE 1
Light bright day.
Light up on kitchen table.
REDBIRD: It was at this kitchen table I was forbidden to sing when I was fourteen. I wasn’t the best singer. It wasn’t about that at all.
The man who had made himself keeper of our house stood there with my stack of albums in his hands.
I had bought and paid for them with money from my dishwashing job. The music was my comfort, my joy.
REDBIRD dances and sings. Sings first, then plays horn.
I sang, and when I sang I felt all sorrow, all sadness fall away. I could fly far away with my singing wings.
REDBIRD ends with sax riff.
This is what I think about your singing, he shouted, as he broke my albums:
There will be no more singing in this house.
When I come back from a day’s work, I need peace and quiet. And if you tell your mother,
I will break the both of you as easily as I have broken your silly music.
Some of my light was put out then.
I walked away and left part of myself behind.
“This is where it begins,” I told Spirit Helper as we sat at her kitchen table.
She asked me, “Redbird, why are you here?”
My father is wandering drunk about the earth, and
my mother was stolen by a heartless keeper.
“Why are you here?”
My son is lost in a cloud of drink.
My daughter is in the streets of the city.
“Why are you here?”
I’m here, because I have lost my way.
“Okay, then I think I can help you,” she said.
“If we make the right tracks, we will find the lost pieces of your soul.”
Then Spirit Helper called in the guardians to open the door.
REDBIRD as SPIRIT HELPER. She chants.
We call in the guardians of the night sky.
We call in the guardians of morning light.
We call in the guardians of falling apart.
We call in the guardians of making right.
We call in the memory keepers, those who have kept the songs of the earthly soul.
We call in the keepers of peace, though they be heavy with the witness of war.
We stand here respectfully at the edge of our small world and ask for help from the shining ones who have gone before.
REDBIRD: (to the audience) After she called in the guardians, Spirit Helper told me, “Redbird, we have to return to the beginning of the story if we are to find all the pieces.”
SCENE 2
Light bright day.
REDBIRD: When my spirit crossed worlds to join my father and mother, there were no songs to assist the birth.
There was no cedar or tobacco … but—my mother had drugs!
My body was a wet, ripe, bloody seed
And it was about to be spit onto the red earth of Oklahoma.
That’s when I changed my mind.
My mother’s body pushed. I pushed back.
We struggled. I panicked.
It was then that Spirit Helper lifted me to see my laboring mother-to-be. She was just a girl, a beautiful Cherokee waitress who was so in love with my father-to-be, a good-looking Creek man who was puffing away on a Lucky Strike outside the waiting room.
But, but I heard myself stutter: I don’t want this world at all.
It was then I heard the voice of the Spirit Helper: “You will forget everything.”
“But I won’t forget,” I argued.
BABY cries.
And then, I did.
Light night.
REDBIRD: They partied every Friday night after payday.
My father brought home his buddies and their supplies from the bootlegger next door.
My mother cooked fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy.
She partied with them, I heard her tell her best friends, from my perch under the kitchen table:
If you can’t fight them, join them.
It was fun. We kids ate, ran around in the yard in our pajamas.
My father would smile as his work fell away from him.
He pulled my mother to his lap.
I can still hear her laugh as she slid away to set the table with her girlfriends.
Later they’d turn the lights down and we’d all jitterbug and twist together.
REDBIRD dances.
My father would tell old stories. I liked the one best about his great-great-grandfather Monahwee and his favorite horse. He and his fast black horse could beat anyone in a race.
My great-great-grandfather always had the best horse, said my father. He was a sharp horse trader, and could even speak with horses in their own language.
And not only that, old Monahwee knew how to bend time.
What do you mean, bend time? I always asked.
Time is a being, like you and me.
No one pays much attention, until they’re sad, then time stops.
Or when they’re having fun running around in their pajamas and it is time to go to bed, there isn’t enough time.
His eyes would shine for me.
Monahwee made friends with time, shared tobacco with time. So when he got on his horse to race his beloved warrior friends, he had a little talk with time. Time said, “Get on my back and we’ll fly free.”
So, no matter how fast all the others raced, Monahwee and his horse arrived long before it was possible, little Redbird.
Those were the best times, said my father.
Those were the best times. And when my father and his friends were drinking, they were always followed by the worst times.
My truck is my horse, he laughed.
The only race I have is outrunning the Whiteman.
His friends laughed. My mother flinched. She knew he was winding up.
What happened to Monahwee, I asked?
My father told me to “open me another beer, honey.”
I liked thinking about the person of time.
I liked thinking about my father on the back of a horse, carried by the wings of time.
Don’t ever forget the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, said my father. Andrew Jackson’s forces killed almost everyone as we stood to protect our lands. Your grandfather Monahwee was shot seven times and still survived. And little Redbird, don’t forget. It was your mother’s people who sided against us at Horseshoe Bend!
My mother snatched me from my father’s lap to take me to bed.
I sneaked back through the dark hallway because my mother was beginning to sing.
She wanted to be a singer before she had all of us. Before she got married. Before she worked in the fields picking cotton and green beans.
When she sang, time stopped and held me close.
REDBIRD sings as MOTHER.
SONG: A LONG TIME AGO
IT WAS A LONG TIME AGO ON THE DANCE FLOOR
YOU HELD ME IN YOUR ARMS
THE WHOLE NIGHT LONG
HA YA YA YA YA HA YA YA YA YA
HA YA YA YA YA HA YA YA YA YA
YOU TOLD ME HOW MUCH YOU LOVED ME
MORE THAN THE SUN AND THE STARS
IN THE LONG TIME AGO
I LOVE YOU, BABY, NO MATTER WHERE TIME GOES.
Light night.
After my mother sang, she and my father fought.
Their friends scattered.
I tried to pull him off her, and he went crazy.
He threw me across the room into the wall.
What happened to the storytelling father? Where did the man go who made my mother laugh?
He kept swinging. I got away.
I hid under the table.
REDBIRD sings.
IT WAS A LONG TIME AGO
I’LL ALWAYS LOVE YOU
IT WAS A LONG TIME AGO
SCENE 4
REDBIRD: In my family’s blue-sky memory, we loved my father without question. We loved his laugh, his stories, his swinging us through the sky. We struggled with his fight, his jab, and his fear.
When I looked through my dreaming eyes, he was still a boy of four standing by his mother’s casket. She was Monahwee’s great-great-granddaughter. She liked to paint, blew saxophone in Indian territory and traveled about on Indian oil money. Still, grief from history grew in her lungs. She was dead of tuberculosis by her twenties. The grief had to go somewhere. We had no one left in our family who knew how to bury it. So it climbed onto her little boy’s back.
JA-GAY-YOU, JAH-GAY-YOU, AHHNEE, TSA-LA-GI
SCENE 5
Light bright day.
REDBIRD: “What should I do, Little Redbird?” my mother asked me when I was seven, as I watched her put on her makeup and uniform to get ready for work.
“He’s out with other women, chasing down their love medicine. The only time he comes home is to eat and put on clean clothes. Don’t ever fall in love, baby.”
The next Sunday morning I sat on my father’s lap in the back seat of the car, after we picked him up from jail. He smelled of old soap, whiskey, and sour perfume; he smelled of guilt.
“What should I do, Daddy?”
“I’m sorry, baby. And tell that beautiful mother of yours I’m sorry, too.”
He winked at my mother in the rearview mirror. She twisted the mirror so she couldn’t see him spy and plead.
“Sorry doesn’t get it this time, Daddy. I’m over you.”
I twisted in the raw pain between them. I tried to reason out the story: they are members of enemy tribes, one came from rich and one came from poor. One is dark; one is light. There is wrong, there is right. But there was no way through it.
SCENE 6
Light night.
REDBIRD: One night when my father was still out late, my spirit stepped out to look for him. At first I couldn’t see anything for the fog of alcohol across his path. I followed him to the bootlegger’s, the store, and to the bar.
Then I saw him driving off alone. Come back!
Then he was gone, through the forgetting holes.
“Spirit Helper, what’s the use in remembering all that? See all that dark out there? It’s dangerous. It’s raw stuff for black holes. They suck up everything: little girls, sad wives, men who promise you the moon and the stars.”
I can’t do this.
Spirit Helper reminded me, “This is your ceremony. If you stop now, you will give in to the evil.”
She sang me a song, to help me make it through.
SONG: SPIRIT HELPER LULLABYE
HO-GO-SUE-GEE IS-TA-GEE, HEATH-LA-SEE, IS-TA-GEE
BEAUTIFUL BABY, BEAUTIFUL CHILD.
THE SKY IS YOUR BLANKET, THE EARTH IS YOUR CRADLE.
YOUR MOTHER ROCKS YOU CLOSE TO HER HEART.
YOUR FATHER HOLDS UP THE SKY.
HO-GO-SUE-GEE IS-TA-GEE, HEATH-LA-SEE, IS-TA-GEE
SCENE 7
REDBIRD: After our father left we didn’t have time for grieving. Our mother worked more jobs.
I had to take care of the babies.
Then a flurry of suitors called on our mother.
We liked the Indian bull rider missing two fingers best.
He taught us how to loop a rope, to throw a lasso.
His heart shined with kindness whenever he walked in with hope.
And when he brought out his country guitar, we all danced silly around the kitchen table.
Marry him, we begged. Please!
No, our mother said. He’s nice but what kind of job is that?
A preacher dressed in black planned to save us with a lash. He had God on his side. Get down on your knees and pray for the sins of your divorced Indian mother, your Indian father, he hissed behind her back.
We helped our mother push him and his angry God out the door.
Three times a charm, she said, when a pretty-eyed man came to call. He was clean. He was overly kind.
He bribed us with sweets and skates.
The yard filled up with poisonous snakes.
Watch out, we tried but couldn’t tell our mother. Our tongues were stuck with taffy in our mouths.
We kids hid beneath the kitchen table.
And watched him unwrap our mother with a charming courting song.
Song: Flute Courting Song
He stung her with a rash of sucker darts.
Then gently wiped away her tears.
The children’s room was barricaded shut from us.
It was there he kept his stacks of coins, his guns, and the piano he would never let us touch.
Our mother went to sleep for several years.
And that’s how she was lost to us.
SCENE 8
Moonlight.
REDBIRD: When everyone else was sleeping, my spirit would leave my body and I’d fly free. One night I flew to the moon.
Spirit Helper met me there.
We didn’t need words to talk.
Together we watched the story unwind through time and space, unraveling like my mother’s spools of threads when I accidentally dropped them.
We saw Monahwee far away on a horse. My grandmother rode behind him with a baby on her back.
We saw a circle of spirit dancers around a starry fire.
A water monster whirled and whirled, punched air with its snout, then dove back down again.
We saw a tribal attorney leaving a meeting with oil companies. Under his arm was a briefcase of money.
We saw my father in his truck by the lake with a case of beer.
My mother dozed on the couch at the television with the baby on her shoulder. The keeper yanked her by the hair and dragged her to the kitchen table. He forced her to hold a gun loaded with one bullet, to her head. He forced her to squeeze the trigger.
Spirit Helper talked quietly to me with her mind:
“Act carefully,” she told me. “You will be tested.”
SCENE 9
REDBIRD: Today he beat the baby with a belt. I can’t sleep for my anger. I want to free us. I go to the kitchen. Moonlight is full and shines a clear path to the drawer of knives. I pick one up, me the one who is afraid to touch knives. It’s the knife our mother uses to cut chicken, to peel apples.
I stand at the door of my mother’s room. She and her keeper are sleeping. Do I pretend I am a breeze as I take his life before he sees me? Or do I wait until the knife is at his heart, his throat, then wake him so my face is the last he sees?
The moon flickers and I feel the answer in my gut.
SCENE 10
I have a fever. My mother prepares a pan of alcohol and water, takes off my shirt. “I’ll take over,” says her keeper. My mother goes to bed. She leaves me there.
“Lay down,” he demands.
Every place he touches I turn rotten. When I am back in the room with my brothers and sisters who are still sleeping, I pull out the killing knife and I begin to cut away the broken.
Light day.
REDBIRD: I don’t remember anything after that … I lost the ability to fly. I disappeared.
Next thing … my mother and I were embracing at the bus station. Before I boarded the bus for the two-day trip to Indian school with my footlocker of everything I owned, my mother pulled out a stash of coins in a sock, that she had saved from her waitress job. And she also gave me this:
“Inside,” she said, “are tobacco and a song.
There is power in this song.
But, you have to sing to wake the power up.”
REDBIRD sings in response to her mother.
SONG: MOTHER’S PROTECTION SONG
YAY YAY EE YAY, YAY YAY EE YAY YAY.
YAY YAY EE YAY, YAY YAY EE YAY YAY.
I tried to give it back.
“Save yourself.”
“No, baby, it doesn’t work that way.”
She shook her head painfully.
She walked away.
She left me there.
REDBIRD sings.
SONG: NOTHING I CAN SAY HERE
NO EARTH NO SKY
NO WINGS NO WIND
NO MOTHER NO FATHER
NO EVER AFTER OR FOREVER
NOTHING I CAN DO
BUT WALK AWAY
BE EARTH, BE SKY
SINGS MY SPIRIT
BE WINGS, BE WIND
SINGS MY SOUL
NOTHING I CAN SAY
NOTHING I CAN DO,
I’LL BE EARTH, BE SKY
BE WINGS, BE WIND
SCENE 12
Light day.
REDBIRD drunk.
REDBIRD: I call to order the meeting of girls on restriction at Indian school. We broke the rules. Now we’re locked up in the dorm on Saturday night.
“Where’s the dorm matron? Break out the stash. Let’s dance. Give me a ticket for an airplane. Ain’t got time to take a fast train.”
We all admire Marlene; she’s one of the best. She’s Jackson Pollack in a dress. She only leaves the painting studio for sleep or work, and on Sunday she sneaks out to the Indian hospital on the other side of campus. She took me once. The children clapped and laughed when she came in. She brought them gifts: crayons, paper, tiny fans, all her desserts saved up for a week. When the staff came in, we hid. They eventually threw her out. The hospital carried no insurance to cover the harm she might do. Here’s to you, Marlene!
And Venus Ramierez, now that’s a name, and a history: one parent from the north on the back of a horse, the other from the south over the back of a river.
Venus is a singer, a real singer. Each singer has a particular gift. Some grow plants, some call helpers. Some heal the sick, some make the dead rise up and dance. When Venus sings we enter into a trance. We no longer hurt from freak chance. You’re going to make it to Broadway,
Either New York, or Albuquerque!
None of us are coping well with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. We’ve read the reports:
“Doesn’t play well with others,” “Won’t speak or look us in the eyes … talks to ghosts.”
We hear what they are really saying: “We have the guns and money, and we have your children.”
Where’s Kit? We can’t find Kit anywhere.
She’s not in the laundry room, practicing powwow in her underwear. She’s not out on the roof where she sneaks her smokes. She’s not in the tent she made of government-issued bedspreads, where she sketches high fashion of Indians in Paris.
Here comes Kit with a knife.
And there she goes. No top or bottom, only fury whirling in a spiritual nudity.
She’s headed out into the snow.
She’s what happens when someone hurts the baby.
My escape to Indian school was a success.
I present Redbird Monahwee case in point. She can corner her sheets so a quarter spins, and knows the drill for shots, debugging, and towels. And because she’s forgotten the Indian language she learned in the cradle, she has a chance. If we suck out her soul and put it in the closet with her ancestors’ bones—she’ll make it, if she doesn’t blow it.
REDBIRD blows one note wildly on her sax. Sings.
WITHI-TAI-TO, GIMEE RAH
WHOA RAH NEEKO, WHOA RAH NEEKO
HEY NEY, HEY NEY, NO WAY
HEY NEY, HEY NEY, NO WAY
WITHI-TAI-TO, GIMEE RAH
WHOA RAH NEEKO, WHOA RAH NEEKO
HEY NEY, HEY NEY, NO WAY
HEY NEY, HEY NEY, NO WAY
I’M GOING BACK HOME TO CLAIM MY SOUL
TAKE IT BACK FROM THE SUGAR MAN
TAKE IT BACK FROM THE MONEY MAN
TAKE IT BACK FROM THE KEEPER MAN
WITHI-TAI-TO, GIMEE RAH
WHOA RAH NEEKO, WHOA RAH NEEKO
HEY NEY, HEY NEY, NO WAY
Sax solo, improvised.
Stomp breakdown.
SCENE 13
Light day.
REDBIRD: I went to see my mother. I saw her car in the drive. Her keeper was supposed to be at work.
I knocked quietly first, then with sweat.
The keeper answered. “She’s not here.” And slammed the door.
I knocked again. I kicked the door and pounded it with my high school diploma.
“Thief! I want my mom!”
Then I saw the baby at the window looking scared.
I wanted to hold her and take her out of there.
We were all trapped, even the keeper.
He could never stray far from his lair.
I turned away and found my way out of there.
SCENE 14
Party bar light.
REDBIRD dances.
REDBIRD: The first official Howling Contest took place one Saturday night out on the west mesa after the Powwow Club had closed. That night the bar didn’t just close, it gave out from exhaustion. Finally, all the stuck weight of unanswered prayers, the struggle to put food on the table and buy shoes for the babies, in a city built over sacred grounds, and it all collapsed.
The howling contest was Wind’s idea. She always joked: she was raised by wolves, so howling came natural. The truth was, she was raised far away from Indian country by adoptive parents who didn’t know what to do when the irresistibly cute Indian baby girl grew into a troubled young woman. Wind ratted her hair out into a loose halo and she fit tight into black leather pants and jacket. She was no Pocahontas. She warmed up on forty-nine songs and Everclear. Then when she was ready she took a sip and let it rip.
A-ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
That tight little circle of Navajo drag queens I loved to party with was just then digging through the sand, searching for the heel of Marty’s broken sateen pump. Marty always dressed the best for any occasion, and tonight in the bushes he pulled on his outfit of silk, buckskin and organdy flowers to celebrate Cher’s birthday.
He was really she, except for the particulars.
Manny, Marty’s companion-in-crime-against-masculinity, considered himself to be Loretta Lynn’s reincarnation, even though she wasn’t dead yet. Manny was the calm rudder for Marty’s roller-coaster rages. Manny loved to sing. He found Marty’s heel and beat out time on the car hood.
REDBIRD as MARTY sings.
I DON’T LIKE YOUR GIRLFRIEND AND HER HIGH-HEELED SHOES WHEN YOU DANCE RIGHT PAST WITH HER IT GIVES ME THE BLUES. YOU HAVE THE SWEETEST STEP IN DOUBLE TIME. HOW CAN I TELL YOU THAT I LOVE YOU WHEN YOU DON’T EVEN CARE? YOU DON’T EVEN TALK TO ME? YOU MAKE ME Sooooo—
Aooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo—oooooo—
ooooo—ooooo
REDBIRD: “Now, finally, some competition,” Wind shouted. “Okay Oklahoma girl, show us what you got there in your rooty-tooty boots. Let’s hear the poetry of howl.”
“C’mon!!!” yelled Marty. “You’re stalling!”
The howling contest was temporarily suspended by a hulk of a man from up North, who, rumor had it, had just gotten out of prison.
He and his friends strutted up to the fire.
And as their eyes adjusted to the dark, what did they see but an Indian man in a dress.
That did it. They spit and slid up to our party with their fists.
Marty threw the first punch, with his repaired pump.
He put a nasty spin on it.
Marty’s finery fooled others, but she didn’t fool us. We knew she was rough.
She hit the man perfectly between the eyes, and the guy went down. Manny backed him up with a slap to one of the guy’s stunned friends. This set the gnarl into a fury.
Being downed by a queen was a hundred times worse than being downed by a girl.
Everyone went wild.
Soon the whole party was punching and rolling, and those who weren’t fighting were grabbing and running away with each other.
And now here came the Cavalry exactly on cue.
They flooded us with light from their circle of police cars. They had been watching in the dark all that time.
Marty was the first one dragged in and locked up. Her Cher party dress was in shreds.
I hid out behind a bush next to a man who turned out to be one of the guy-just-out-of-prison’s friends.
Hey, my name’s Sonny; Sonny’s short for a name that’s too difficult for English. And you?”
His smile sprung dimples from their nest. That’s all it took.
“I’m the friend of the guy in the dress.” We couldn’t stop laughing at our ridiculous predicament.
After we drove over to bail out our friends, we all went for breakfast over at the all-night diner. It was packed with the pimps, prostitutes, musicians, and the rest of the hungry rough trade. Sonny turned out to be Manny’s brother-in-law’s cousin. We’re all eventually related.
“Before we can vote on the howling contest,” I announced, “I have to enter my howl.” And then in that jamming restaurant, under florescent lights that made us look like we’d been up for years, I howled.
AoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooAooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooAoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooo.
“Okay. You win! Now stop before we get kicked out,” laughed Sonny, who was tight by my side, my friends, and the whole rest of the mess.
Dreamily.
When Sonny took my hand I just went. I didn’t ask where or why or how. I couldn’t save my mother from her keeper, or keep my father from his party. “This is my time,” I said. And Time lifted up its glorious beaded head and I latched on, and I began to fly.
SONG: THIS IS MY HEART
Sax riff.
THIS IS MY HEART. IT IS A GOOD HEART.
WEAVES A MEMBRANE OF MIST AND FIRE
WHEN WE SPEAK LOVE IN THE FLOWER WORLD
MY HEART IS CLOSE ENOUGH TO SING TO YOU IN A LANGUAGE TOO
CLUMSY FOR HUMAN WORDS.
Sax riff.
THIS IS MY HEAD. IT IS A GOOD HEAD.
IT WHIRRS, INSIDE WITH A SWARM OF WORRIES.
WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF THIS MYSTERY?
WHY CAN’T I SEE IT RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW AS REAL AS THESE
HANDS HAMMERING THE WORLD TOGETHER?
Sax riff.
THIS IS MY SOUL. IT IS A GOOD SOUL.
IT TELLS ME, “COME HERE FORGETFUL ONE.”
AND WE SIT TOGETHER.
WE COOK A LITTLE SOMETHING TO EAT, THEN A SIP
OF SOMETHING SWEET, FOR MEMORY.
Sax solo.
SCENE 15
Light bright.
REDBIRD: As I flew with Sonny to the stars, my grandmother’s stories returned to me.
Light bright night.
“One night at the last stomp dance at the end of the season, when the leaves were beginning to fall, I remember seeing him,” said my grandmother.
“I was only ten. A good-looking man, from somewhere we’d never heard of before, showed up and brightened up the place. We welcomed him, fed him, and invited him to sit with us, to dance. It is our way to take good care of visitors.
“Still the people are not fools. We were warned to stay within the circle. I was awakened at dawn from my doze on the pile of quilts by the terrible cries. Despite the precautions, we were missing one. She was the beloved daughter of the chief.
“She was wearing only a red dress and loafers. “She would never leave on her own,” my grandmother said. We never saw her again. Though the next night, a tiny red star appeared on the horizon.”
SCENE 16
Light bright day.
REDBIRD: I was happy as I made a home around the kitchen table in Sonny’s world, up here in the stars.
We had our first baby. She was beautiful like him, with a soft light from her dark, amber skin. Sonny loved her as my father had loved me.
I was happy except for one problem. Sonny and I quarreled. It was over his tree. This wasn’t any ordinary tree. Sonny’s tree was shimmering with delicate flowers the color somewhere between sunrise and a hickory fire flame. Her scent was sweeter than falling-in-love sweat. When she sang her sad refrain, Sonny forgot about me.
I was immediately jealous of that tree. And I had the sense she was jealous of me.
“If you touch my tree,” Sonny warned me, “you will never get to go home again.”
But his fury didn’t change the way I felt about his tree.
Then I got pregnant with a son.
The birthing was hard. He pushed. My body pulled. We went back and forth between sky and earth. I began dying. My grandmother found me in the after-death realm, as I stood at the entrance to my family’s encampment. “Go back, Redbird. It’s not your time. Your babies need you.” She pushed and after she pushed, our stolid boy found his way into the world with us.
After our son’s birth, Sonny left us nights to stay with his lover, his tree. I couldn’t sleep; I couldn’t cry tears. Sonny’s tree lushly bloomed, exuding her maddening musk. I began looking for a hole in the sky, for a way to leave. Tree began singing and calling out to me. I was lonely. Her voice was sweet.
REDBIRD sings as tree.
I WANT TO SEE THE CHILDREN PLAY.
REDBIRD: We became like sisters; we became friends.
One morning I was uneasy, strange.
The baby was teething and cranky as I gathered him up to take him out to the tree. I dressed up my daughter in her favorite dress, made with ribbons all the colors I was missing from earth. She danced and played as we walked out to the tree. Sonny’s tree was sad. She was singing.
REDBIRD singing and playing flute as tree.
I FOLLOWED STARLIGHT JUST LIKE YOU,
AND THEN HE CHANGED, OR MAYBE IT WAS ME.
I WAS AN EARTH GIRL, IN A STAR WORLD
IT WASN’T WORKING, HE TURNED ME INTO A TREE.
HE’LL PLANT AND BURY YOU AS HE DID ME,
TO MAKE YOU STAY.
I’LL HELP YOU LEAVE.
PULL ME UP. BENEATH MY ROOTS YOU WILL FIND THE WAY HOME.
SAVE YOURSELF AND YOUR CHILDREN.
TO KNOW YOU’RE FREE WILL MAKE ME HAPPY.
REDBIRD: It was the hardest thing I’d ever done, but I pulled her up.
Sonny heard her cries and came running. I tucked the babies under my arms and stood at the edge where her roots now dangled. He grabbed us and I tried to pull free. It was then I heard my mother’s voice at the bus station. “Sing to wake up the power! Sing!”
REDBIRD sings.
SONG: MOTHER’S PROTECTION SONG
YAY YAY EE YAY, YAY YAY EE YAY YAY.
YAY YAY EE YAY, YAY YAY EE YAY YAY.
REDBIRD: My mother’s song flew out and wrapped us in its arms. Sonny slipped his grasp and we fell free. We fell and fell and fell, flying through the hole in the sky. We flew through time like Monahwee on his black horse. My two babies were soon grown. They branched out on their own. And though we made it through difficult years, something was wrong.
I was still falling.
SONG: FALLING, FALLING
ONE PART OF ME SPEAKS THE SACRED LANGUAGE OF FIRE.
THE OTHER PART UNDERSTANDS IN BROKEN HEART.
MY MIND CAN’T MAKE UP ITS CRAZY MIND,
WHEN I’M BURDENED BY RAINCLOUDS OF DESIRE.
FALLING, FALLING.
FALLING, FALLING.
I DIDN’T WANT TO MAKE THE SAME MISTAKES,
I HAD TO FIND MY OWN BRIGHT STAR.
TOUCH MY SKIN AND I WANT BACK IN AGAIN.
DON’T LEAVE ME HERE INSIDE, ALONE.
FALLING, FALLING.
FALLING, FALLING.
I LOST EVERYTHING FOR LOVE.
I HAD NO PLACE ELSE TO GO, BUT HOME.
SCENE 17
Light bright day.
REDBIRD: I went to find my mother. I went to her door. No one answered. The keeper still had his hold. The danger with evil is it becomes habit.
“What can I do?” I asked Spirit Helper.
She answered, “If you can’t talk to your mother in person, you can talk to her spirit.”
I invited my mother’s spirit to come and speak with me.
Then before I knew it, there sat the spirit of my mother, my mother! My mother!
She smelled of tenderness. She smelled of love without question. I wanted this feeling, forever.
My mother’s spirit moved to go.
“But why?” I asked her.
“Why can’t I come home?”
“Why?” I begged without a rag of pride, “Did you keep him
and not me when I told you what happened?”
“You need to know this,” her spirit said.
“I dreamed a daughter who wanted to be born. I had been up writing songs all night at the kitchen table, when you appeared to me. I saw you first as a baby with fat cheeks, and then there you were, a grown woman, just like you are now. And I asked you then, ‘Why come into this kind of world? This is not a good time.’
But your intent made a fine unwavering line that connected your heart to mine.”
My mother’s spirit stood up to leave. I called after her:
“You’re going back to him! Do you love him more than me, more than all of us?”
Then she was gone.
Spirit Helper said, “There are some things that take an eternity to understand.”
Then Spirit Helper sang a healing song.
SONG: SHINING PERSONS ARRIVE HERE HEALING SONG
SHINING PERSONS ARRIVE HERE
HYVTKE LANI
OPEN YOUR BEING
HYVTKE JADE
WITH EVERY SMALL THOUGHT OF WHAT TO FIX
WITH EVERY IMMENSE THOUGHT OF DANCERS WINDING
THROUGH THE MILKY WAY
HYVTKE LVSTE
WHAT OBSCURES, FALLS AWAY
HYVTKE HVTKE
Midnight.
The father’s body is in state.
REDBIRD: I followed your tracks and finally found you, Daddy.
I wrapped your body in your favorite ceremonial blanket.
I used to follow you everywhere.
Remember that time you brought home a deer?
I followed you as you unloaded it from the truck. I helped as you strung the deer up in the tree. I squatted down with you as the red sun kissed the red earth. You tamped out some tobacco into our hands. You said, “We pray with tobacco to acknowledge the spirit of the deer. We give thanks, Mvto, mvto.
There is much suffering on this earth. Even plants suffer. Tobacco is a medicine, a gift from the Creator.”
And remember I said: “But Daddy, you smoke three packs of Lucky Strikes a day!”
I was such a little plant, drinking in your words. “And what about whiskey, Dad?” I asked you.
“I’m sorry, Hokte. It’s killing me,” you said. “Pray for me, girl.”
Time turned its back on you and me, Daddy.
REDBIRD places some tobacco on her father’s blanket.
Devastated.
This is for you, for your journey. Go! Find the way home. Pray for me.
SCENE 19
After light night.
REDBIRD is driving drunk.
REDBIRD: I feel crazy, like Grandfather Monahwee in the middle of the slaughter.
I never was a warrior for justice; I left my brothers and sisters … Where are Kit and Venus from Indian school? Marty or Manny was shot in front of a gay bar just for being himself.
“I can’t leave him now,” said my mother about the keeper. Why didn’t my father come back and save all of us?
I’m getting out of here. I’ll find my daughter. We’ll take my son to rehab. Let’s see what this horse can do.
Squealing tires. Car crash: terrible clatter of flying metal.
Blackout.
SCENE 20
Light; GUARDIAN MUSICIAN in shadow.
Voice-over in REDBIRD’s voice.
I curled up in the dark with a terrible silence in my heart. Then I heard my grandmother singing.
REDBIRD as grandmother sings a refrain from the Trail of Tears song.
REDBIRD: And I felt myself lifted up.
“Once the world was perfect, Granddaughter, and we were happy in that world. Then we took it for granted. Discontent began a small rumble in the earthly mind.
Then Doubt pushed through with its spiked head, and all manner of demon thoughts jumped through.
We destroyed the world we had been given. Each stone of jealousy, each stone of fear, greed, and envy put out the light.
No one was without a stone in his or her hand.
There we were, right back where we had started.
We were bumping into each other in the dark.
Then, one of the stumbling ones took pity on another and shared their blanket.
A spark of kindness made a light.”
REDBIRD appears onstage carrying a basket of food and goods.
REDBIRD: Spirit Helper brought me home again to this table. Everything you need for your healing is here, she told me.
“The table is within you; it has always been within you. You must remember to acknowledge the gifts. You must remember to share,” she said. Then she gave me her shawl.
This giveaway is in honor of our ceremony tonight, in honor of all the gifts of struggle of every one of us here.
Gifts are shared with the audience in this traditional giveaway.
CLOSING
SONG: GOIN’ HOME
LAST DANCE AND THE NIGHT IS ALMOST OVER.
ONE LAST ROUND UNDER THE STARRY SKY.
WE’RE ALL GOING HOME SOMEWAY, SOMEHOW WHEN IT’S OVER.
HEY E YAH, HEY E YAY, AYE E YAH AYE E YAY
Sax riff.
IF YOU’VE FOUND LOVE IN THE CIRCLE, THEN HOLD ONTO IT,
NOT TOO TIGHT.
IF YOU HAVE TO LET LOVE GO, THEN LET IT GO. KEEP ON DANCING.
I DON’T CARE IF YOU’RE MARRIED SIXTEEN TIMES
I’LL GET YOU YET.
GOIN’ HOME GOIN’ HOME
Sax solo leading into silence.
I’M FROM OKLAHOMA GOT NO ONE TO CALL MINE
A LOVE SUPREME, A LOVE SUPREME
A LOVE SUPREME, A LOVE SUPREME
In the break.
EVERYBODY WANTS THAT SWEET SWEET LOVE SUPREME
Sax riff.
WHEN THE DANCE IS OVER, SWEETHEART, TAKE ME HOME
IN YOUR ONE-EYED FORD.
(Speaks) BUT WE GOTTA STOP AND PICK UP GRANDMA,
ALL OF MY AUNTS, MY CHILDREN …
GOIN’ HOME GOIN’ HOME
IT’S TIME TO GO HOME NOW. BE KIND TO ALL YOU MEET
ALONG THE WAY. MYTO MVTO. HOLD ONTO SOMEBODY’S HAND
THROUGH THE DARK.
KUL-KU-CE CV-NA-KE, HV-YA-YI-CA-RES,
KUL-KU-CE CV-NA-KE, HV-YA-YI-CA-RES,
KUL-KU-CE CV-NA-KE, HV-YA-YI-CA-RES,
KUL-KE-KVS, KUL-KE-KVS, KUL-KE-KVS
END OF PLAY