OR
| GOOD LUCK GOD |
CHARACTERS:
MRS. SHAPIRO, a patient in a nursing home
BERNICE, her daughter
SAUL, her son
LUCRETIA, a white female patient
RALSTON, a white male patient
FIRST BLACK MAN, a patient
SECOND BLACK MAN, a patient
MATRON, Mrs. Whitney, a Westchester Colonsial Dame
HER CHAUFFEUR, Thomas
SUPERVISOR, of the nursing home
A STRANGE VOICE, heard but not seen
ASSORTED PATIENTS, black and white, male and female
A TV CREW
POLICEMEN
JOURNALISTS
This Is the Peaceable Kingdom was presented by the Target Margin Theater Company in Brooklyn, New York from March 11 – 27, 2010. The director was William Burke; the scenic design was by Jason Simms; the lighting design was by Christina Watanabe; the stage manager was Shani Colleen Murfin; and the production managers were Shannon Case and Neal Wilkinson. The cast was as follows:
MRS. SHAPIRO: Lisa Reynolds
BERNICE: Dana Berger
SAUL: Ian Merrigan
LUCRETIA: Elizabeth Wallace
RALSTON: E. C. “Gene” Kelly
ENSEMBLE: Anthony Willis, Jr.
The play occurs in a nursing home in one of the drearier sections of Queens during the “nursing home strike” in New York City in the spring of 1978.
A male and a female patient, middle-eighties, confined to wheelchairs because of geriatric infirmities, are staring grimly out at us as the curtain rises. Among various bits of more offensive graffiti, smudged but not entirely erased from the chalk-white wall against which the two wheelchairs are pushed, is an apparently fresher and more vivid inscription which says “Good Luck God,” in a script resembling that which often decorates subway cars in the city.
For the first half minute no word is spoken. During this half minute of (verbal) silence, we can observe without distraction a pantomimic performance that should provoke the two tragic elements of pity and terror. An ancient woman, entirely helpless, is being spoon-fed by a daughter in her mid-sixties, under the scrutiny of her son, somewhat younger. His name is Saul. The daughter’s is Bernice. Mrs. Shapiro, the helplessly senile woman being spoon-fed, is identified only as “Mama” and will occasionally be addressed in Yiddish terms of endearment.
While there are moments of bizarre humor, the kind known as gallow’s humor, in the speech and behavior of this trio, the play should be staged in a manner to avoid giving any ethnic offense.
The verbal silence is then broken by Bernice, addressing her brother with the impatience that an intolerable degree of pity can provoke in us all.
BERNICE: Saul! You might at least hold my bag!
SAUL: I can’t bear to watch it!
[This is literally true. He is staring straight forward, muscles twitching in his face as though he might cry out in horror and protest.]
BERNICE: Don’t watch it, just hold it! My bag!
[She thrusts the bag into his hands. He emits a Yiddish expletive.]
BERNICE: Ha?
SAUL: What all have you got in this bag?
BERNICE: Essentials only.
SAUL: Essentials for what?
BERNICE: For Mama.
SAUL: What essentials for Mama weigh this much?
BERNICE: Saul, you know how often she’s got to be changed now like a baby. You know she’s incontinent, don’t you?
SAUL: Be careful what you say.
BERNICE: Did I say something wrong?
SAUL: Incontinent.
LUCRETIA [from her wheelchair left of the corridor door]: In-con-tin-ent.
BERNICE: I said it in English. Mama would not understand it except in Yiddish.
SAUL [pointing to the day room]: A woman inside there repeated it in English.
BERNICE: MAMA! YOU HEAR ME, MAMA?
[Mrs. Shapiro (Mama) turns her tremulous head slightly toward Bernice.]
MRS. SHAPIRO: Anh?
BERNICE: Where’s your teeth, Mama, what’s become of your teeth?
SAUL: She does not understand and couldn’t answer if she did. Why don’t you ask Miss Goldfein, the nurse I pay extra to give Mama special attention, what’s become of her teeth?
BERNICE: It is not you that pays extra, it is us that pays extra, and Miss Goldfein is out on strike with the others.
LUCRETIA: In-con-tin-ent! That’s when it begins and when it should end.
RALSTON: What begins? What ends?
LUCRETIA: You know what it means, don’t you? Don’t you know what it means? The control of the bladder and bowels, when you lose that control, Mr. Ralston, that is the point where decent existence is ended and indecent existence begins.
RALSTON: I get out of bed and into my chair several times every night to go into the toilet.
LUCRETIA: You forget, Mr. Ralston. You complained to me you soiled your bed last week and had to stay in the soiled bed till after daybreak.
RALSTON: Awful, awful, chair not left by the bed. Pushed away from the bed by that mean nigger nurse that stole the silver badge from me and my—
LUCRETIA: Some of the patients have chairs with toilets built in them. You got to apply for these chairs. Why don’t you apply for one of them?
RALSTON: It happened just once. I got somebody’s laxative by mistake.
LUCRETIA: I have applied for one of them. Applied last month, first time I wet my dressing gown in the day room.
BERNICE: EAT, MAMA.
SAUL: If she don’t want to, don’t force her.
BERNICE: Hasn’t she got her mouth open?
SAUL: I can’t look at her mouth with the teeth gone again.
BERNICE: Miss Goldfein phoned me about them. She said they went down the toilet same as the ones did before.
SAUL: Then why did you ask Mama if you already knew?
BERNICE: I wanted to check on the story.
SAUL: Would Miss Goldfein make it up?
BERNICE: Miss Goldfein makes up a list of expenses for Mama and several times it is padded.
SAUL: Pockets the difference, does she?
BERNICE: What do you think she does with it? Why, once she told me that Mama wanted TV. Can you imagine? Somebody blind as Mama could want to look at TV? With eyesight zero-zero?
SAUL: Did you point this out to Miss Goldfein?
BERNICE: No. I figured for what. Until we get a replacement, it’s better just to ignore. MAMA, SWALLOW, THEN SPEAK.
LUCRETIA: DON’T SHOUT!
BERNICE: YOU ARE SHOUTING IN THERE!
SAUL: Bernice, be careful.
BERNICE: I’VE GOT TO SHOUT TO MY MAMA OR SHE DON’T HEAR!
[Lucretia groans. Ralston touches her hand.]
Goyim.
SAUL: Careful. Antagonizing won’t help. I wouldn’t feed Mama much more.
BERNICE: I got to keep her strength up.
SAUL: What strength up for what?
MRS. SHAPIRO [attempting speech]: Tee. Gaw. Tawl.
BERNICE: She said it, she said it. The teeth went into the toilet, vomited into the toilet.
SAUL: It’s better that Mama should go.
BERNICE: Don’t say it.
SAUL: I got to say it, I pray it!
[He blows his nose. We hear, as if from outer space, an announcement by a deep, solemn voice, which we will call Strange Voice.]
STRANGE VOICE: This is the Peaceable Kingdom; this is the Peaceable Kingdom.
[The rattle of dice and warm black laughter is heard off right. The spoon falls from Bernice’s hand; she picks it up with difficulty, due to her arthritis. Lucretia groans softly but audibly. Ralston touches Lucretia’s hand and at the same time a delicate ray of light strikes his face with a glimmer of benignity. Bernice wipes the spoon on the paper bib around her mother’s throat. The ray of benignity touches her face, too. The Strange Voice continues in a whisper.]
This is the Peaceable Kingdom . . .
BERNICE: Never mind, Mama.
MRS. SHAPIRO: Anh?
BERNICE: With such a diet of baby foods and liquids, it don’t matter much, Mama.
MRS. SHAPIRO: Shick [or the Yiddish equivalent].
BERNICE: Sick?
[Mrs. Shapiro indicates a dolorous affirmation.]
Mama, nobody is well. Did I tell you Saul’s got prostate trouble?
MRS. SHAPIRO: Shawl? Got?
SAUL: Don’t tell her.
MRS. SHAPIRO: Shawl got?
BERNICE: Nothing, Mama. Here’s some more mashed carrot. Mama? When there isn’t this strike on, do you get fed kosher?
MRS. SHAPIRO: Anh?
BERNICE: Just, just— hold your head still so I can get the spoon in your mouth. That’s right, that’s good, Mama. With so much publicity about this nursing home strike, it can’t go on a day longer; it’s too inhuman to last. TV, papers full of it. If Mayor Beame was in office—
SAUL: Not so loud. Be careful what you say.
LUCRETIA: Mr. Ralston, can you see the clock?
RALSTON: I can see where it is but not what it says, can’t make out the hands of it. — You know I had glaw— something.
LUCRETIA: Glau-coma?
RALSTON: Coma? No, not coma.
LUCRETIA: Glau-coma, same as me.
RALSTON: — Aw yeh— I entered the home with two full bottles of drops, a drop for each eye nightly. Well, they run out, and I ast for refill of prescription. “Aw, yais, aw, yais, right away!” — But right away was a helluva long time ago, can’t even remember how long, and things’re getting terrible cloudy to me.
LUCRETIA: Me, too, sight fading out. And I don’t think we’re likely to get much assistance of any kind here.
RALSTON: Not without relations. You’ve got no surviving relations?
LUCRETIA: I survived all relations. They put me in here eight years ago. I seen one or two of them for the first month or so and then they stopped appearin’. I figured they’d put me here to forget me and they’d forgot me. Then found out— all gone, dead, all . . .
[Ralston touches her hand.]
Why am I left here, surviving?
RALSTON: Maybe for me. — I need you.
LUCRETIA: The time will come when we won’t recognize each other or one of us will be taken and the other remain here, alone.
RALSTON [touching her hand again]: Lucretia, you seem a little depressed today.
MRS. SHAPIRO [with a retching sound]: Anh!
SAUL: Stop pushing food in her. I think she’s about to vomit.
LUCRETIA [raising her voice]: Has anyone here got the time?
FIRST BLACK MAN [from offstage]: I got th’ time, but who’ll hold the hawses. Haw haw, that’s an ole one, that one’s older’n me.
SECOND BLACK MAN [from offstage]: What’s it mean by hawses, what hawses?
FIRST BLACK MAN: Hawses used to draw the ice wagon down the alleys. This honkey bitch wants to git laid ev’ry day by the iceman when he come by so she wait on the back step and she always holler out to him, “You got the time?” meanin’ time for a lay, and after a while he’d had enough of that business so this time he hollers, “Yeh, I got the time but who’s gonna hole the hawses?”— Haw, haw, haw . . .
SECOND BLACK MAN: Aw. [He gives a perfunctory laugh.]
LUCRETIA: Ain’t that awful, them Blacks talkin’ so dirty?
RALSTON: Best not to hear ’em.
LUCRETIA: How’m I not gonna hear him loud as they talk. Dirty talk, dirty talk, all th’ time dirty talk. Why don’t you wheel your chair over there toward ’em and tell ’em it’s bad enough to go hungry without this constant dirty talkin’ makin’ me want to puke with nothin’ in me to, to— puke . . .
RALSTON: — I reckon you’re right. They’s got to be some limit. [He slowly wheels his chair stage right and calls out in a loud quaver.] You black fellers ought notta talk so much dirty talk with ladies round here to hearya!
FIRST BLACK MAN [from offstage]: What lady you tawkin’ about?
RALSTON: I’m with a white lady here, Mrs. Lucretia Dempsey.
FIRST BLACK MAN: She think she the Queen of Sheba?
SECOND BLACK MAN [from off stage]: Is she Jew? To be the Queen of Sheba she gotta be Jew.
LUCRETIA: I’m not a Jew or a nigger; I am a white Christian woman!
RALSTON: Be careful what you say.
LUCRETIA: At my age in my circumstances, I am not going to start being careful of what I say when I know it’s the truth.
SAUL: A pair of anti-Semites, shouting in there!
BERNICE: Be careful what you say.
RALSTON [leaning toward Lucretia]: You hear that remark? Anti-Semites? That’s the key word to look out for.
LUCRETIA: Why?
RALSTON: Influence. Power.
[Bernice whispers to Saul, gesturing toward the recreation room.]
SAUL: You are the one to be careful what you say.
BERNICE: Remember your dignity, Saul. And Mama’s complete dependence on the attitudes here.
LUCRETIA: Do they outnumber?
RALSTON: Lucretia, will you be careful what you say? It’s not the number.
LUCRETIA: Money. Influence. Huh?
RALSTON: Lucretia, you’ve got a powerful voice for your age and your circumstances.
LUCRETIA: And so I’ve got to be careful what I say? I think that you’d better set an example for that.
[Saul looks around the door, then returns to Bernice.]
SAUL: Senile couple. Senility and anti-Semitism are—
LUCRETIA: I HEARD THAT REMARK!
BERNICE: For God’s sake, remember Mama and don’t agitate them against us. This is not a classroom at N.Y.U.
LUCRETIA: It’s plain to me that they are back in the saddle.
SAUL: The secret of Jewish survival over the ages—
LUCRETIA: All right, Mr. Ralston, say nothing? ’Sthat what you mean by be careful what you say?
BERNICE: I am not a student of yours in your classes at N.Y.U.
SAUL: No. I’d have you expelled.
BERNICE: Be careful what you say in front of Mama. I feel her shaking.
SAUL: Mama’s gone past understanding and I am grateful for that. The time of the closed cattle cars with human excrement on the floors for two and three nights and days to Auschwitz and—
BERNICE: Be careful what you say. You know perfectly well that this place is goyim, goyim.
LUCRETIA: This place is Christian, Christian!
RALSTON: Lucretia, Lucretia, be careful what you say in that powerful voice of yours with them at the door, taking notes.
LUCRETIA: I repeat it is CHRISTIAN! Hail, Mary, full of Grace, blessed art Thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus.
BERNICE: It’s not too late for Mama to be transferred to the B’Nai Brith Home for the Aged.
SAUL: Look at Mama, drooling, no teeth in her mouth, deaf, blind, reduced to a vegetable and then you tell me transfer her. She will not be transferred.
BERNICE: Saul, you had better be careful what you say, we are surrounded by goyim.
LUCRETIA: CHRISTIAN!
BERNICE: GOYIM!
LUCRETIA: Country admitted them freely for what? To be robbed and insulted! Christ, I wish I was— [She bangs her head violently against the wall back of the chairs.]
STRANGE VOICE [resonant, all pervading]: This is the Peaceable Kingdom, the kingdom of love without fear. The Peaceable Kingdom is without—
BERNICE: All right, I teach high school math, you teach Hebrew at N.Y.U. However—
SAUL: I teach ancient tongues, yes, but humanities also, as you know, Bernice, if you know your faith is Judaic.
BERNICE: All I know is be careful what you say here.
SAUL: Limit of your knowledge? You admit it?
BERNICE: Imperative to face it! Be careful what you say.
LUCRETIA: SUFFERING! BE QUIET! DYING PEOPLE DON’T CARE ABOUT RELIGIONS OR DIFFERENT RACES OR NOTHING BUT DARK FALLING!
RALSTON: Oh, Lucretia! You refused to be careful of what you say . . .
STRANGE VOICE [audibly but faintly]: Peaceable Kingdom, kingdom of love without fear.
BERNICE: I am the real breadwinner as well as the oldest.
SAUL: Inheritance of money does not mean winning of bread. However oldest I grant you. You are becoming nearly as senile as THEY are in THERE. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if you turned anti-Semitic.
BERNICE: Saul, will you be careful of what you say?
MRS. SHAPIRO: Anh? ANH?
SAUL: You stopped feeding her.
BERNICE: The food don’t stay in her mouth, she can’t swallow it down. She goes tomorrow out to the B’Nai Brith home on the Concourse in the Bronx.
SAUL: You’ve got the location wrong, even. When Mama became too senile for home care, they had no vacancies out there, just a long waiting list, and then, at that time—
BERNICE: Careful what you say here!
STRANGE VOICE: Kingdom of love without fear.
SAUL: She would still be on that long, long, waiting list out there and it was not on the Concourse in the Bronx, it was way out in Spanish Harlem, a neighborhood even cabdrivers are afraid to drive into and which I wouldn’t drive into without an escort of police. Remember last summer, the power failure? Hell, all hell, broke loose in Spanish Harlem, rioting, looting, burning, mostly of little business places of small Jewish merchants out there, is that where you want to put Mama?
BERNICE: Saul, we’ve had this discussion, this argument between us again and again. I mean the place where Aunt Sophie received such excellent care, never a word of complaint, no teeth flushed down the toilet by regular staff nurses, and not among the patients, senile or not, and not in the kitchen, strictly a kosher diet, and, why, in the final week of Aunt Sophie’s agony at that place, old Rabbi Samuel Epstein visited Aunt Sophie more regularly than we did.
SAUL: He was on the staff there.
BERNICE: Now just be careful of what you say in this place where you preferred to put Mama against all family protest. There, our people! Here, the opposite of it but here you insisted she go.
SAUL: When Mama entered this home the top staff people were Jews.
BERNICE: All right, but now long replaced. This home has fallen under anti-Semitic control, secretly if not openly, otherwise how could a nurse that we paid off to give Mama special attention, twice, twice, two times flush her teeth down the toilet when she threw up?
MRS. SHAPIRO: Annh?
SAUL: Feed her!
BERNICE: How can I force her to swallow? Or force her to survive surrounded by anti-Semites. Ayeh, ayeh, is this her right way to go?
SAUL: There is no right way to go, never was, but a full investigation will be made and if there’s discrimination, influence will be used.
RALSTON [leaning close to Lucretia]: Influence, discrimination, we’ve got to remember those words and you have got to be careful of what you say. [He raises his quavering voice.] These people are misunderstood and misrepresented due to ancient prejudice associating them with the crucifixion of God’s only begotton Son who was actually a victim of Roman oppressors such as Herod and also of Pilate who delivered Our Savior unto— [He gasps and claps a hand over his mouth.]
LUCRETIA: That’s right, unto the Jews.
RALSTON: His own people.
LUCRETIA: Not mine.
RALSTON: Now, Lucretia, you’re talking anti-Semitic and that ain’t worthy of you.
LUCRETIA: I don’t deny that in many ways they are wonderful people, specially in the family. They don’t forget their old ones they put in homes, you notice nobody but Jews are gettin’ fed here today, I do just wish and I wish this desperately, Ralston, they made less NOISE about it!
STRANGE VOICE: This is the Peaceable Kingdom.
BERNICE: Where there is anti-Semitic talk going on, no Jew should be exposed to it.
LUCRETIA [shouting]: Nobody was talking anti-Semitic in here; we was praisin’ the care you take of your people, but since you brought up the subjeck, what d’ya care about Christians? Hah? Hah?
RALSTON: Hush! Not wise to provocate them. [He leans toward her.] Influence! Strong!
BERNICE: Saul, go in there and give ’em these knish. Mama refused ’em, shook her head when I put one in her mouth.
SAUL [entering the recreation room again]: My sister Bernice and me would like to offer you some knish.
LUCRETIA: Some what?
SAUL: Knishes are like potatoes breaded.
LUCRETIA: Thought I heard you say or your sister say you stuck one in your mother’s mouth out there.
BERNICE [shouting]: Saul! You’re just inviting insults to Mama from them!
RALSTON: She didn’t mean no insult.
SAUL [drawing himself up]: We wouldn’t offer a knish to you that we had offered to Mama.
[Ralston extends a shaking hand.]
RALSTON: We know, we know. Thank you for ’em and thank your sister for ’em. [He accepts the knishes and presents one to Lucretia.]
MRS. SHAPIRO: Shaw-shaw-shawl?
BERNICE: Mama wants you, Saul.
SAUL: Coming, coming. We’d like you to meet our mother. I’ll bring her in here.
LUCRETIA: Wouldn’t be able to see her.
RALSTON: No, don’t disturb her, just give our sympathies to her.
LUCRETIA: —Is he gone?
SAUL: Excuse me, didn’t mean to disturb her. But in the end which the Jew and Gentile both come to, it’s time for more understanding, necessary to keep the peace of the world.
[He goes slowly out, shaking his head. Bernice has buried her face in her hands, sobbing, and the ancient mother makes greedy sounds, mouth open.]
Now what?
BERNICE: Somebody called out, “Throw her in the dump heap!” It is starting again.
SAUL: On television last night they showed a meeting of the Knesset and Prime Minister Begin is holding firm on all points, and frankly, I feel he ought to give them a little.
BERNICE: For what do you mean give what, more terror, more, more hate and destruction! Attack by night just south of Tel Aviv! You heard that, too? Or didn’t you want to hear it?
SAUL: She’s got her mouth open?
BERNICE: With her eyes shut!
SAUL: You know she is blind.
MRS. SHAPIRO: Anh!
SAUL: Nothing left but an open mouth at the end.
BERNICE: With no teeth in it. I want you to order a new set for her.
SAUL: What is the use?
BERNICE: You want our mother to go without teeth in her mouth?
SAUL: Tell her what it cost me, them two sets of teeth that she vomited into the toilet.
BERNICE: Never, you must be crazy. She wouldn’t understand, not a word.
[Saul has a sort of seizure, a touch of petit mal. Bernice cries out. Mrs. Shapiro smacks her mouth repeatedly open and shut for more food.]
BERNICE: CHAIR, CHAIR FOR MY BROTHER!
[Saul makes a prolonged wordless cry and gesture of negation as he stumbles onto a bench against the upstage wall which is visible through the door.]
BERNICE: I’m going to call Rabbi!
SAUL [gasping]: Ta-tab-let— anti-con-vulsant . . .
[He recovers somewhat, attended by his sister.]
First— attack in— six years . . .
BERNICE: Stay there, don’t move, say nothing! I’m going to call Rabbi Ben Abram!
SAUL: In Temple! Don’t you know day?
BERNICE: I know that he is in Temple. I am going to call his home and speak to his sister. She will call B’Nai Brith.
SAUL: Harlem, Spanish?
BERNICE [from down the corridor]: No, the Center! If no vacancy, a vacancy must be made! For exceptional cases!
[Saul staggers to his feet and clutches the back of Mrs. Shapiro’s chair, nearly overturning it. His mother is still opening and shutting her mouth, her head lolling this way and that.]
SAUL: Mama you want teeth?
[Mama attempts to speak in Yiddish. Saul continues, beside himself.]
Mama, you let your special hired nurse flush one hundred and thirty-six dollars down the toilet, you understand, Mama, two sets of teeth in one month, the teeth is no use for you, Mama!
[His mother makes gulping sounds to indicate hunger. Saul continues to himself.]
Oh, God, Mama, you have gotten so-ugly! It is killing us, Mama.
[Then he speaks aloud again.]
You flushed, you let the nurse flush, two sets of teeth down the toilet!
[He repeats the above statement in Yiddish. Mrs. Shapiro slowly closes her mouth and extends a withered, trembling hand toward her son. She moans in pain and sorrow.]
SUPERVISOR [bustling in]: Patience, patience! Negotiations! Attention, please, everybody, visitors, patients! Negotiations progressing!
[A black inmate, the First Black Man heard offstage earlier, wheels himself rapidly into view.]
FIRST BLACK MAN: Fuckya negotiations, we want food!
[This demand is taken up by other black voices offstage.]
BERNICE [rushing back]: Turning into a riot, we’ve got to get Mama out!
[A TV crew tries to enter; the Supervisor makes vehement protests. Other Black people chant the word, “Food!” The First Black Man, onstage, wheels his chair with amazing force into the Supervisor’s back, knocking him over. The TV crew swarms into the recreation room. There is a great intermingling of shouts and activity.]
SAUL: OUT? HOW!
BERNICE: Explained condition of Mama to Rachel, Rachel is calling Joachim to come right out and send ambulance ahead!
SAUL: Bernice, you are not insane, but you are completely hysterical.
BERNICE: Never mind that! Hysteria is the condition of this place, this city, the world!
SAUL: Too late, no good, she is dying, she’s saying good-bye.
BERNICE: A shot, a shot? Injection!
SAUL: How? Who? Where?
LUCRETIA: Them out there, ask ’em what time it is.
RALSTON: Wait, honey, a minute. A lady’s come in with things. I think maybe it’s FOOD.
[A middle-aged Westchester County-type matron, attended by her young uniformed chauffeur, enters the recreation hall. The chauffeur is pushing a metal shopping cart on wheels, containing a pile of identical cellophane packages of fruit, raisins, nuts, etc. The lady marches with an authoritative air to stage center and claps her gloved hands to get attention.]
MATRON [escaping travesty, barely]: Lay-dees and Gentlemen, the Governor Dinwiddie Chapter of the Colonial Dames of America . . . — Oh, dear. [Aside to the chauffeur:] They’re paying no attention.
CHAUFFEUR: Mrs. Whitney, you want me to tell them?
MATRON: They’re not very alert, I’m afraid, oh, and I clapped with my gloves on. No, no, I’ll remove my gloves and raise my voice.
[She removes her gloves and repeats the clapping. Lucretia and Ralston are crouching over in their chairs in an attempt to see her in focus.]
Lay-dees and gentle-men! Unfortunately I cannot—
[Ribald remarks are heard from the Black people offstage.]
— May I have your attention, meaning all your attention for this brief announcement? I cannot, unfortunately, introduce myself to each of you individually. But I am here on behalf of the Governor Dinwiddie Chapter of the Colonial Dames of America. Naturally to most of you, if not all, our society is, at best, no more than a name. I wish only to say that the Colonial Dames of America are ladies descended directly from the earliest settlers of this nation before it became a nation, before it achieved independence from its rather presumptuously proprietary rulers, the empire of Great Britain and, at that time, preceding the Louisiana Purchase, the decadent domination by the Bourbon monarchs of eighteenth-century France.
RALSTON: Who’s she? What’s she up to?
LUCRETIA: No good.
RALSTON: Excuse me, honey. I’m gonna move up closer. She’s got a cart full of something.
[He wheels himself close to the matron who draws back with a look of annoyance, if not lèse majesté. He croaks out loudly as he peers at the contents of the cart.]
RALSTON: — Aw! She’s got a cart full of little packages of—
MATRON: Would you please return to your position over there while I complete my—
[Ralston ignores this request and snatches two of the cellophane packages from the cart.]
I SAID, YOU OUTRAGEOUS OLD— [She swallows to gain control of herself.] Return those packages to the cart at once or I’ll be obliged to abandon our project of providing you with—
[Ralston, intimidated, complies with her order. Now an aged but powerful Black man moves his wheelchair rapidly onstage and is followed by two others. The Colonial Dame cries out in terror.]
Thomas, Thomas, get them away from me, Thomas, Thomas, these nigras are looting, they’re completely out of—
CHAUFFEUR: Mrs. Whitney, you’d better get back to the car!
[A senile hoodlum gooses the Matron. She screams wildly and rushes for the door. Another fast-wheeling Black man intercepts her with amazing agility. Not only are the entire contents of the cart snatched, but it is also overturned.]
MATRON [screaming out]: Thomas, Thomas, this old black lunatic will not let me— [She falls to her knees.] Oh, my God, my God, Thomas, Thomas, HEEEELLP! MEEEE!
[Pandemonium increases as Thomas is likewise assaulted by phenomenally revitalized inmates, black and white. The chauffeur’s uniform is stripped off him. The packages have been torn open. The contents are such as one might expect of the rich with their “touching faith in the efficacy of small sums.”]
VOICE: Brung us rotten bananas!
ANOTHER VOICE: Gotta slice of, two slices of braunschweiger sausage, here!
VOICES: Shit, fuck ’em, they’re back of—
VOICE: Whole fuckin’ gig!
ANOTHER VOICE: RICH, RICH, GIVE US SHIT!
[Lucretia wheels forward.]
LUCRETIA [extending her hand blindly]: PLE-EA-SE!
[Bernice wheels her mother into the room. Mrs. Shapiro goes into a spasm.]
BERNICE: Mama, Mama!
[Mrs. Shapiro utters an expiring cry. Bernice dominates the riotous recreation room with the power of her lament.]
MAMA IS DAID, DAID, DAID, YOU KILLED HER, GODDAM NAZIS!
[A slow, prolonged gutteral laugh from one of the Black people almost tops Bernice’s lament and indictment.]
LUCRETIA [in a little pocket of silence]: Better off . . . condition . . .
[The following actions, among others, occur: an inmate strikes the crawling Colonial Dame over the head with a crutch; bells and sirens are ringing and wailing; there is considerable shrieking; the police enter; one of the policemen panics and hurls a tear gas canister to the floor with various results— some inmates choke and expire quickly; Ralston presses a hand over Lucretia’s gasping mouth: she thrusts it away with astonishing force.]
STRANGE VOICE [loudly]: This is the Peaceable Kingdom, this is the Peaceable Kingdom, this is the kingdom of love without fear.
[The voice drops to a barely audible level but should continue till curtain time. The Colonial Dame is now stripped of all but her pantyhose and her gloves. A policeman supports her out of the recreation room. Now all the little food packets are hurled about with obscenities. Then, suddenly, comes silence, not broken till Lucretia, who has backed her chair to the dirty plaster wall, starts knocking her head as hard as she can against it. Ralston reverses his chair rapidly to her side.]
RALSTON: HONEY, HONEY, STOP THAT! THAT’S NO WAY!
[The light focus narrows to Ralston and Lucretia and the continuing riot becomes barely audible. Directly over Lucretia’s head the sign that says “Good Luck God” is more distinct. As Ralston clasps Lucretia’s drooping head to his chest, he squints up at the sign.]
LUCRETIA: Want to die, priest, priest, confession and last rites of—
[She starts banging her ahead against the wall again. Ralston pushes her chair downstage, but she continues the motions and the despairing outcries.]
SUPERVISOR: Riot squad! Control impossible now!
STRANGE VOICE [rising to great resonance and power]: This is the Peaceable Kingdom, the kingdom of love without fear.
[The scene dims out.]
INTERVAL OF FIVE MINUTES
[When the lights come up again, there is a relative quiet through which quiet voices are heard.
Saul and Bernice are facing front, one on either side of their dead mother.]
RALSTON: Supervisor announced negotiations in progress. — Hear me, dear? Do you hear me? It can’t continue, it will be set straight in a couple of hours. TV come in and took shots of the horrors. Can’t go on. Tonight we’ll get medications. No let’s just think about love, this love that we found here together at the end. And be encouraged to live.
LUCRETIA: Love is a natural thing but not a thing to believe in.
RALSTON: Lucretia, that is not true. [In a cracked voice, he sings.]
God gave us love, God gave us love,
God came down from heaven
To give us here on earth
L-o-v-e, love . . . l-o-v-e— love!
LUCRETIA: What fool could believe that, Ralston.
RALSTON: WE— can believe that, Daughter . . .
LUCRETIA: — I wanted to knock my brains out, wanted to knock out my brains on that wall but don’t have the strength to . . .
RALSTON: — Didn’t you tell me once that you was a Believer? A religious Believer?
LUCRETIA: — I was many things once that I quit being here. — I was a Believer, yes, Christian Believer, prayed when I went to bed and when I woke up— that’s finished, I quit that. Never got no answer. Why’m I hungry? Why’m I thirsty an’ hungry an’ I’ve— wet myself in this chair.
[She jerks her head back against the wall once more.]
RALSTON: Stop that, you stop that, honey. Lissen to me.
[Pause. His face is slowly transformed to one of grave beneficence as though he truly believed what he will say to the woman.]
LUCRETIA: — All right. — I’m ready. — To listen to what? To nothin’?
RALSTON: I’ve got to whisper to you. [He leans toward her; his whisper is heard distinctly.] I— AM— GOD. HERE. TO WATCH OVER. YOU! — MY DAUGHTER, LUCRETIA! [Pause.] Did you hear me, Daughter?
LUCRETIA: I did, but I wish I didn’t. Your mind is gone on you. Should be the last thing to go.
RALSTON: Daughter, you got to believe me.
LUCRETIA: —Too late. If you were God, would I be hungry and thirsty and’ve— wet myself in the chair?
RALSTON: You don’t understand my ways, the ways of God, Daughter.
LUCRETIA: Tha’s— blasphemy, Ralston.
RALSTON: I said “Believe me,” and you got to believe me.
LUCRETIA: — Funny . . .
RALSTON: What’s funny?
LUCRETIA: That I— can still feel love . . .
RALSTON: Love of God still in you.
LUCRETIA: You’re just an old man in a nursin’ home in a wheelchair.
RALSTON: That is just a disguise. I am God, disguised to protect yuh.
LUCRETIA: My haid aches.
RALSTON: You should not have slammed it on that wall, Daughter.
LUCRETIA: All right, God. Some Jews was spoon-feeding an ole relation out there in the hall. Practically a corpse she was but they seen she suffered no hunger.
RALSTON: I don’t think they’re still at it— since the disturbance.
LUCRETIA: And food was distributed in here. You got none of that, Mr. God?
RALSTON: Got two packages but she made me return ’em.
LUCRETIA: Hmmm. God don’t seem to be all-powerful here.
RALSTON: God is just sittin’ tight and bidin’ his time, Daughter.
LUCRETIA: Time, yes, ask ’em the time, if they got it. They might give you the time.
RALSTON: You stay right there. — Time, yes, I’ll . . .
[He propels his chair slowly and cautiously into the corridor where Bernice is tying her dead mother’s jaws together with a gaily flowered crêpe scarf.]
Time, please, what’s the time?
BERNICE [weeping]: Time, did he ask us the time when we just lost our mother? That’s their attitude toward us!
RALSTON: You’re lookin’ for your mother? Maybe she’s gone to—
SAUL: Our mother is dead, do you understand dead, sitting here dead in this chair, victim of—
BERNICE: Careful what you say, Saul.
RALSTON: That her? — She does look weak.
SAUL: How dare you ridicule our—
BERNICE: Dead mother!
SAUL: I’ll go call Jacob’s Funeral Home to make arrangements. Something simple. Wait here. [He crosses off the stage, lighting a cigar as he goes.]
RALSTON [confused]: What time, time of day did you say?
[Bernice, outraged, bends over to shout in his face.]
BERNICE: YOU! — ARE A FILTHY, INHUMAN OLD MAN TO ASK ME THE TIME OF DAY WHEN I JUST LOST MY MOTHER, IN THERE, IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES!
RALSTON: — I don’t see good.
BERNICE [calling after her brother]: Mama should be removed out of here at once, at once, tell Jacob’s.
RALSTON [increasingly confused]: It ain’t necessary to shout at me like that.
BERNICE: Stay back, don’t you approach me! Inhuman lunatic, you!
[A crazed but mobile patient rushes along the corridor, brandishing his cane, and shouting furiously in a Slavic tongue. He strikes a glancing blow at Ralston. Bernice screams and crouches over her mother’s body.]
SUPERVISOR [reappearing, disheveled]: All patients, all patients, return to your beds, visitors, all visitors, assist patients to beds and kindly vacate the building. Sorry but this time of crisis is— [He notices Ralston.] That means you, did you hear me?!
[Ralston rapidly propels his chair back to Lucretia.]
RALSTON: Some goddam crazy man hit me with a stick.
LUCRETIA: God don’t say “Goddam.”
RALSTON: Daughter, in this time of crisis, God says damn.
LUCRETIA: That isn’t the same as saying God damn.
RALSTON: Anyhow this crisis cannot continue much longer.
LUCRETIA: God, you won’t permit it to go on and on and on like you and like me?
RALSTON [tremulously grasping hold of her hand]: Trust in God, I would not.
[He sits up straighter and stronger in his chair as if he had almost sold himself on the role-playing. Saul returns, panting, along the section of corridor visible through the door. Bernice has unconsciously arranged the scarf with a rather coquettish bow on top of her mother’s head.]
SAUL: Jacob said this was no time to speak of price.
BERNICE: Considering our investment in his business, still not paid off, I should think the time to discuss price with us is never.
SAUL [noticing the bow on his mother’s head]: My God, that scarf, you got a Baby Snook’s bow on her head?!
BERNICE [weeping louder]: Mama’s jaws were open, her mouth was hanging wide open with no teeth!
SAUL: Untie it! A low comic’s bow tie!
[A journalist’s camera flashes in the corridor. Saul shouts furiously and starts a pace or two toward the journalist. He then turns and shields his dead mother’s chair from a second camera flash, reaching behind him to snatch off the scarf.]
— Angina . . .
BERNICE: Tablets?
[Saul gasps, clutching his chest.]
One?
SAUL: Two
BERNICE: Lift tongue. [She deposits the sublingual tablets in his mouth.] Saul, breathe deep and just think it was time for Mama to go.
SAUL: Her eyes are open. Put the scarf over— [He gasps.] — her face! Cameras are still flashing!
BERNICE: Hold onto the chair and stand straight. Let them see human grief, ancient grief of our people, with some dignity, Saul.
[She covers their mother’s face with the scarf and stands rigidly on one side of the chair, Saul on the other, as they intone a Hebrew prayer. A moment of solemnity is achieved as the light fades on them.]
RALSTON: Now let me wheel you back to your ward, Lucretia.
LUCRETIA: How could you wheel me back there?
RALSTON: Daughter, you got to have faith. Just lie back in your chair.
[Slowly, laboriously, he propels Lucretia’s chair toward the door.]
LUCRETIA: Feel it movin’, the chair . . .
RALSTON: It’s gonna move you back to your bed, Daughter.
LUCRETIA [in a loud wheezing voice]: — God, then you are— Mr. God . . .
STRANGE VOICE [rising again with a background of mockingly sentimental, though perhaps dissonant, music]: This is the Peaceable Kingdom, this is the Peaceable Kingdom, this is the Peaceable Kingdom of love without fear.
BLACKOUT OR CURTAIN