PASSING FOR AN AMERICAN:
A Poem with Movement Intended for Dreamers
By Sandra Lindberg
© 2007 by Sandra Lindberg
CHARACTERS
WOMAN PASSING FOR
AN AMERICAN (WPFAA) A white woman in her late 40’s or early 50’s. She appears in the theatre scenes and is the female voice in the filmed scene the audience sees at the top of the play.
SM LADY The production stage manager who appears
in several scenes in the play.
JESTER The voice of a young man, as heard in the
filmed scene.
WOMAN BEHIND GLASS The woman in her late 60’s or early 70’s who appears in the filmed scene. This role is also played by the actress who plays WPFAA.
The stage: Black curtains or black walls frame the sides and back of the stage space. The floor is black. The lighting grid is in full view above the stage.
On stage, center left is a sturdy, armless chair. In front of its downstage legs lies a yoga bolster. There is a wool blanket draped over the chair’s seat. The chair is set up for Sarvangasana with Chair.
Down right are two large bowls. Beside them is a mound of red potatoes. A paring knife sits on top of the potatoes. The second bowl is empty. Neatly folded into a pile beside the bowls is a kitchen apron and coarse kerchief. A pair of cork-soled clogs sits next to the clothing.
Down left is another pile of clothes: Over here is also a ridiculously large and tall pile of lemons, as you would see them piled at a neighborhood produce store. There is a table with a knife, lemon reamer, pitcher of water, and a very large, stainless steel bowl with a typed recipe beside it. Also on the table are bags and bags of white sugar.
Up right is a screen used to show the video and to create shadow images as the play progresses.
It is important that the four areas described above and the larger center area can be lit with tight pools of light that leave the rest of the stage in virtual darkness.
With the stage in a pre-set low light cue, I wander onto it, wearing a very large, man's white oxford shirt, black skirt, no hose and simple shoes. I carry a flowered knitting bag. I look like a clean but dithering, older lady.
In apparent confusion, I wander off the stage and fumble my way to a seat in the second row next to other audience members. I pull out my knitting and say to the person next to me, “ I wonder when the show’s going to start?” Then I start knitting. That goes on for some time.
Perhaps another knitter in the audience begins to talk with me about my project. Perhaps, I say something else to the person sitting next to me like, “I’ve heard this show is pretty good. Have you heard anything?” Hopefully, some sort of conversation picks up between people sitting in the house and me. That goes on for a while. If we could come to a point that some of us forget we’re waiting for a show, that would be ideal.
The SM Lady walks onto the stage. She is looking for me but I am completely oblivious to that. At last she sees me among the other audience members. She quietly comes to where I’m sitting and gently takes me by the arm. She leads me onto the stage, saying, “We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“Me?” I respond. “Why?”
“Because you start the show!” she whispers, though loud enough for the audience to hear.
“I do?” I respond at full voice.
“Shhhhh,” the stage manager says. “I’ll show you where to go.”
She leads me backstage, takes me through a back-stage crossover to the other side of the stage. The audience can hear our confused, whispered conversation as the stage manager tries to get me to walk onto the stage. At last she shoves me into the playing space, where I stand looking with utter confusion at the audience.
The stage manager realizes I still have my knitting bag, which she yanks out of my hands as she ducks backstage once more.
Almost immediately, the stage manager realizes I have entered without putting on my apron. She shoves the apron into my hands and disappears back stage once more. I unfurl the apron in front of me, clearly unsure what it is or what I’m supposed to do with it.
Sudden BLACKOUT.
The audience hears the sounds of a video recorder being turned on. The screen hanging center stage begins to play the scene described below.
(‘I’ am inside an earthen catacomb. Its shape on the outside is a huge beehive. Inside there are earthen tunnels that run from one nest of rooms to another. The rooms themselves are quite conventional, corporate spaces, replete with computers, formica, hard-edged chairs, industrial carpet, and even windows that look out on a beautiful, but corporate landscaped front yard. But the tunnels are of rammed earth. They’re big enough that little golf carts could travel down them.
A jester-like companion and I are en route from one set of rooms to another. I believe that I have bought this ‘building’ and I’m now getting the complete tour. I am amazed by this place and a little afraid of it.
The part of the dream that is important for this play comes as I travel down one of the tunnels. There, set into the earthen wall, is a rectangular window, coffin shaped. It seems to be a glass coffin set into an earthen wall. The camera starts with a wide shot of the coffin, then zooms closer. The camera stays focused on the woman in the coffin for the whole scene, sometimes taking all of her in, sometimes zooming in for an intensely grotesque close-up. The audience never sees the people who are speaking.
Inside the coffin is a middle-aged woman in a pink chiffon cocktail dress. Like a horribly aged socialite from the 1950’s, she wears satin high-heels that are dirty and whose heels are chipped and worn. Her hose is torn. She has a dyed blond, curly bob with bangs. She wears too much make-up and her lipstick is smudged. Her face is haggard and she sleeps fitfully.
Our footsteps wake her. She’s groggy and her eyes look unfocused. She stirs in a floppy way. She tries to sit up and remembers that she can’t. When she tries to sit up, her head and shoulders hit the lid of her box.
When she sees us, she smiles and waves feebly. She pretends to laugh and gestures grandly, asking us to come closer. Her gestures become more frantic and demanding.
When we do not approach, she presses and kicks and scratches at the glass as if she would break through it.
I stop just past her coffin and turn to watch, unable to take my eyes off her.
As we watch her, the jester and I talk quietly together as if she is a troubled exhibit at the zoo. )
Me: Who is that?
Jester: You mean Tragically Hip in the Box? (He laughs.)
Me: No, wait. Who is she? What’s she doing in there?
(She calls out to us, but we cannot hear anything she says. She is crying and screaming and still we can’t hear her. )
Jester: Forget her.
Me: How am I supposed to do that?
Jester: Well, I guess I have to tell you don’t I? Since this is your place now. She’s the wife of the guy who used to own all of this.
(Her attempts to get out and to reach us with her voice become more desperate.)
Me: The what?
Jester: You know, the guy who sold you this place? She was married to him.
Me: What’s she doing in that . . .
Jester: Coffin? I’ve been told she tried to run away from her husband—in spite of all he’d given her. I’ve heard she had five or six walk-in closets. And the jewelry . . .! They say he couldn’t bring himself to kill her, so he walled her up in there.
Me: But that’s . . .
Jester: Illegal? (He laughs again.) Who was going to stop him?
(It seems she is exhausting the air in her coffin. As she begins to gasp for breath, she tries to continue her efforts to escape even as lack of air is robbing her of consciousness.)
Me: How long has she been in there?
Jester: Since 1960—something. (He starts walking down the tunnel.)
Me: Forty years! (He starts to walk further down the tunnel.) Hey! Why is she still here?
Jester: He didn’t want her with him, I guess.
Me: But she can’t stay in there!
Jester: (As he continues down the tunnel.) Then you let her out. (He laughs again. She collapses with her face and mouth pressed grotesquely against the glass. Her dress is a rumpled mess, sweaty and torn from her efforts. I stare at her in horror.) You own the place now. (He whistles a haunting tune as he continues down the tunnel.)
Jester: You let her out! I shouldn’t have to do that!
Jester: (Calling from further down the tunnel.) I don’t know how.
Me: Damn it. (I stare at the woman as she lies inside her prison.)
Jester: (From even further away.) Come on. I’ll show you the next set of rooms. There’s lots more to see.
(I hurriedly follow after him.)
The video projector switches off. The stage returns to total darkness for a moment, then the lighting pre-set returns and cross-fades into the first cue—light that reveals the entire playing area as described below.
I wander the stage for a bit, not saying anything, crossing and re-crossing the stage, circling the set pieces. As I walk the general lighting on the stage changes until the space feels like it’s now the light found in a dream world. My walking becomes more energized and purposeful. I kick off my shoes and feel the floor with my feet as I continue walking. Then words begin to come:
Under my feet is vinyl tile. Below that is masonite, Underneath that is concrete with steel reinforcing rods, and pipes shooting through it. Under that layer is gravel and beneath that, finally, is earth.
I move to the ground, spreading myself on top of it, rolling, scooting and crawling across the floor.
In the earth beneath this building are seeds that have never had a chance to sprout, all manner of living things that don’t miss the sun, old bones and the artifacts of generations of life on this part of our planet. The bits go way back in time.
As I speak the next ‘chunk,’ I squat, stand, come into Mountain Pose, finishing in Surya Namaskar.
But right now—and for over two hundred years—this bit of earth has been part of what’s called the United States of America. Before that, this place was known by other names. Before Europeans settled here, there were Kickapoo. Before them came the Hopewell settlements, and before them came the mound builders of the Adena people. If you go back far enough, this land had no name at all. 13,000 years ago there may have been no humans here at all. No humans, no language, no names.
I rise on my toes, fall forward into a step and resume walking.
By a trick of fate I was born here. I could have been born on a piece of earth that had a different name. No really. I came very close to being born on a part of the planet that doesn’t call itself the USA. But I was born here. And because I was, certain experiences were given to me. Certain rules were imposed on me. But it all might have been very different.
I’m still walking, very fast and heavy now. And I’m growing more and more agitated.
BLACKOUT
Tight spot of light comes up stage right. In it stands a woman dressed as a Swede would be in 1950. A farm girl Swede. She wears tofflor, a longish skirt and full-cut blouse and head scarf. Her clothes are hand-me-downs from her sisters. They are worn and too small. She squats next to two bowls and a pile of red potatoes. With a paring knife, she peels the potatoes, dropping peels into one bowl and peeled potatoes into the other.
Swedish girl: Min mor och far, my mom and dad, emigrated to America in 1954. Mom grew up on a farm on an island off the southern coast of Sweden. Her parents shipped her to Chicago because she mourned without stopping when her mother died. They thought seeing America would get her past her sorrow. She was 27 when she got off the boat at Ellis Island and took a train to her relatives in Chicago. She never meant to stay.
My dad came to Chicago because his sister lived there. He was thirty-one when he arrived and had spent fifteen years as a sailor in the Swedish Merchant Marine before he ever thought about staying in America.
Mom and Dad met on a blind date arranged for them by their Swedish friends. Three months later they were married.
När dom komar til Amerika, pratar dom alltid Svenska. Ingen Engelske. But Mom went to night classes at Lane Tech High School and soon learned English enough to get by. Dad slowly added to his store of English phrases learned from other sailors on voyages to South America and the Mediterranean. He got his U.S. citizen papers as soon as he could. Mom wasn’t so sure. She kept her Swedish citizenship. During the Viet Nam war, some American men didn’t want to be soldiers. They ran away to Sweden . . . and Sweden took them in. Gave them a place to live. Swedes believed that there were American politicians who did not like this. A rumor—a story—went out among Swedes living in Chicago that the U.S. government might ship Swedes home—while keeping their American-born children here. By this time Mom had three daughters, Sandra, Christina and Ingrid. The rumor scared her. She did what she thought she had to do to keep her kids.
Lights snap off on this spot. Swedish music plays. ‘Sarah’ strips out of the Swedish garb to reveal a 1960’s outfit: little dress with peter pan collar, hose, low pumps, and hair neatly combed into a set little ‘do.’ These clothes also do not seem to fit her right though the problems with them are less obvious than with her first set of clothes. She crosses to stage left and dresses in the dark. As she arrives there, a new and equally tight area of light comes up on her.
Swedish girl: (Slicing lemons in half and squeezing their juice into the bowl.) Chicago in the ‘60’s was a confusing place. Mom and Dad did what others were doing: they bought a house. She stayed at home with the daughters while Dad worked for his brother-in-law in a restaurant. Soon they sold the Chicago building and bought a house on a lake in northern Illinois. Every weekend they had some pretty crazy parties for all their Swedish friends who wanted a trip to the country and some of Dad’s beer. But weekdays were lonely, especially for my mother, stuck in the country with no car and no friends. No job. Just us girls. She missed Sweden.
(She adds water.) By this time, Dad was no longer a cook. Instead he was a meat-cutter at a suburban grocery store. The job made him cold all the time. He was always sick.
(She begins to add sugar.) They had a pretty lake to look at, but they weren’t happy.
And then political chaos began to unfold. (She checks the recipe, hurriedly adds more water. Tastes.)
(Squeezing more lemons.) When John F. Kennedy died, my mom cried. Mom and Dad began to talk and talk about going home to Sweden. “This country is barbaric,” my Mom said. “They kill the best of their people.”
(Still squeezing lemons.) So they sold everything they had and went home, returning to the town of a hundred people on Sweden’s west coast where my Dad grew up.
(Forgets her task.) That’s where I went to first grade. That’s where I grew up across the street from a deep forest on a hill and a clean, clear stream at the bottom of our yard. That’s where I watched our neighbor dig for potatoes in his garden. That’s where I learned to speak my parents’ language. My language for a time. Minna Svenska Ordbok was one of my teachers. I still remember the drawing for the letter “o”, a sweet, green little snake stretched in a circle with its tail in its mouth. I felt complete there.
(Squeezing more lemons.) But it was not to be. Sweden in the ‘60’s was a struggle. To get housing, you put yourself on a list. To get a job, you went on another list. I loved my school and my new friends, but Dad couldn’t find a job that paid enough to support all of us. When savings ran out after a year and a half, we came back to Chicago in 1967, a very hot summer.
(She adds even more sugar. Finds her pitcher is empty. Tries to stir what she has made but it is a thick, stiff past.) American cities were burning, including Chicago. In 1967 we could smell the smoke from the fires as desperate and dispossessed people burned down the slums where they’d been forced to live for years. Months after we got back, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Then Robert Kennedy was gunned down. Mom’s disapproval for this new country of hers never eased up. “Primitive” and “backward” were the words she use describe this place. She grew angry inside in a way she would never get over.
For a year and a half Swedish had been my language. The first week of School in Chicago, when the teacher let us out of a different door, I got lost trying to get back to our apartment. The shaky grasp I had on English disappeared, and I found myself begging in Swedish for help. What I remember from that day were the many American adults who hurried past an 8-year old girl. Hur ni inte? I remember saying. “Can’t you hear me?”
Light snaps off on spot down left. Sandra strips out of 1960’s clothes, down to a harlequin-like costume: one side of her is red, white and blue while the other is royal blue and bright yellow. She crosses to center stage in the dark and takes a position on a chair there with her right leg resting on the back of the chair, her left leg crossed with her left ankle resting above her right knee, her sacrum resting on the chair’s seat and her back curving down toward the floor. Her shoulders rest on a bolster positioned at the foot of the chair’s front legs. Her arms grasp the legs of the chair. The lights fade up on her as she hums and then ooh’s and ah’s a haunting Swedish folk song melody. She is upside-down and seemingly content to be so as the lights reach their fullest level She has become the
Hanged Woman:
My legs are very long. I can stand with one foot on Swedish soil and one on the U.S. This puts my heart perpetually suspended somewhere over the Atlantic. Seems appropriate somehow, my Dad having sailed that ocean for thirteen years. But standing like that does make me tired. I wish I could live with both feet on the same piece of land.
One minute I’m pretending to exercise my right to free speech. I write a letter to my senator. Half an hour later I’m making food my American friends would never eat: syl salad, maybe, with pickled beets, salt herring and mustard. Two hours later I’m correcting the English grammar in my students’ papers. And I end the day reading Swedish poetry.
(She falls silent for some time.) It’s nice like this. Takes a load off my feet. I still feel that ocean just underneath my head, but somehow I don’t mind as much.
As she tells the following story, she slides off the chair and rolls onto her belly. She places her hands a little in front of her shoulders and pushes up into Seal pose, her torso lifted above the floor, spine long and arched. From this she lowers herself back to the ground, grabs each ankle with a hand, and arches up into the Bow position, almost forming a circle with her arching body. These physical actions happen very slowly and each pose is held for some time. She will not complete these actions until the end of her story about the garbage cans.
Maybe if my parents had arrived in Chicago as refugees, or as illegal aliens, my first generation experience would have been more like I Remember Mama. When I read that play I remember thinking that the Swedes in the story seemed so stupid. I didn’t understand why they idolized America. That’s not how Swedes I knew talked about this place. Maybe if they had believed the land where they were born offered them no future they would have been more grateful for what they found here. But my parents began their lives in America believing they’d simply been unlucky at home.
They loved to tell the story about the Democratic precinct captain who knocked on the door shortly after they moved into their new house. He’d noticed, he said, that their garbage cans were really dented and rusty. He’d also noticed that the streetlight in the alley behind their house was burnt out. He could, he said, take care of those things for them, if they would just tell him one thing: what political party did they belong to? We’re Democrats, my dad said—which was true, sort of, as Illinois did not offer a Social Democratic party for my dad to embrace. Good, the precinct captain said with obvious pleasure. And the next day there were shiny, new garbage cans next to the garage and a light blazing in the alley. (She lets go of her ankles and curls herself into a little ball, lying on her side.)
BLACKOUT.
The lights come up on a tight area down right. I cross into the light and begin to speak.
One day when I was working in a pizza restaurant, it was really slow. I tried to start a conversation with this guy putting pizzas together in the kitchen. Normally, he was very quiet. Never said much even when the other cooks were flirting with all the waitresses and yelling at each other. But on this day he was the only one back there. Are you from South America? I asked him. He sounded different than the guys from Mexico. He said he was from Peru. How’d you end up here? I asked him. He hesitated and then said, “I don’t know.” His eyes looked away from mine as he said that. I thought I’d been too prying and was about to check my tables when he spoke up again. “I had a business in Peru,” he said. “My own business.” Yeah? I said. “Yes, I had my own truck and sold vegetables in the neighborhoods.” Your own business? Why would you come here?—“To make pizza?” He laughed. “Big family,” he said. “Not enough business to take care of everyone. And in America I thought I could make lots of money and send it home. That’s what I do now. Send almost all my money home. But there’s not as much as I thought there would be.” Yeah, lots of people find that out after they get here, I said. I heard customers in the dining room and picked up my order pad. Before I could turn away he said, “But someday I will have business again. Here. My own restaurant. Then I send for my family. That is what I--”
BLACKOUT. Lights snap up on an area down left. Confused by the blackout, thinking it's a missed cue, I hurriedly cross to stand in the light.
--Work for. That’s what he was working—
BLACKOUT. Lights snap up on an area up center left. Now I'm beginning to think the unplanned light changes are designed to shut me up. I quickly walk into the light.
Okay. . . (I look up at the lights and the booth, then choose to continue, focusing on the audience rather than on the strange light changes.) I never knew until 2007 that there were radical Swedes living in Chicago in the 20’s and 30’s. They were Socialists and lived on the north side, near Belmont and Clark. This was big news to me because all the Swedes I grew up with were pretty conservative. I’ve got a favorite story about these guys. German Communists used to meet in a storefront right across the street from the Swedish coffee shop where the Swedish Socialists hung out. One day the Chicago cops decided they were going to hassle the Communists. A couple of the Swedes looked out the coffee shop window to see the cops dragging some of Communist guys out of their meeting hall. “Are ve going to let this happen?” one Swedish guy asked another. “No, py golly!” the other guy said. And off they went to lend the Communists a hand. Apparently, one of the Swedes landed a lucky punch that knocked a cop on his ass—
BLACKOUT. Lights up on an area up center right. Without hesitation, I cross into the light, determined to share a story that I really want the audience to hear.
About twelve years ago, my husband-to-be, my father, my sister and I went swimming up in northern Illinois. After we’d been there about half an hour, two young girls swimming near us insisted a boy had sunk underwater and hadn't come up. They begged us to look for him. We did, diving below the surface, but the water was murky and about chest deep. We kept looking toward shore to see if anyone was missing someone. Then my husband brushed against him with his foot. We brought him to the surface and carried him to shore. He wasn’t breathing.
He was very tall and very beautiful, Like Adonis I remember thinking.
Paramedics at the lake were never able to revive him. I still remember his eyes. They were wide open and stars sparkled in the pupils.
The next day’s paper reported that the young man was Italian. Sixteen. A recent immigrant. People had been looking for him on shore. His people. But they didn’t speak English. And even though the beach was packed with swimmers and even though his people were obviously distraught, no one could understand what they were saying so they just ignored them. Crazy foreigners, you know?—
BLACKOUT. Lights up on an area center stage. I stride to it.
My Mom used to talk to us in Swedish when we rode the Chicago buses. It made us feel safe, and special.
BLACKOUT. Lights up down left. I hurry over to it.
When I taught English Lit in California, there were ROTC students in my classes. Most of them were Asian or Latino. They would wear uniforms to class once a month. Being the pacifist I am, it bothered me at first. Until I got to know one of the guys. Why are you in ROTC? I asked him. “Because it’s the only way I can pay for college in this country”—
BLACKOUT. Lights up on center stage. I sprint to it.
When I worked in San Diego, I lived in a garage that had been converted into an efficiency apartment. One day I was surprised to see a young Hispanic man in my backyard. What are you doing here, I asked him. I live here, he said. Here? I said. Yes, he said and pointed to the other garage that stood behind my little efficiency. He told me there were twelve young Hispanics living in there. It had no toilet. No running water. It was lit by a single light bulb hanging from the center—
BLACKOUT. Lights up on an area down left. I leap for it.
When I was called for jury duty in McLean County, Illinois, all two hundred and fifty potential jurors were white. All the defendants in the trials that week were black. I sat in a courtroom and listened as a white judge joked in the friendliest way with the potential jurors he knew from town, in between questions from the white defense attorney. He saved his cold, professional demeanor for the black defendant. A week later I tried to donate some books to the county jail. When I described the books I wanted to donate, the clerk at the jail said to me, “Oh, they don’t want to read that. All they want are crime stories.” She refused—
BLACKOUT. A single-bulb work-light suspended on a rope flicks on and lights center stage. I perch on the back of the chair with my feet on its seat, center stage, trying to remain visible in the weak light.
In Chicago in 1919 there were race riots between African-American tradesmen and the European immigrants who did the same kind of work. Since the 1870’s the Scandinavian Socialist Club of Lake View had been supporting the labor union movement in Chicago and their efforts were starting to bring results for working men. Bosses didn’t like this. They brought in large numbers of African-American tradesmen and the city experienced the old story: workingmen fighting each other instead of organizing against company owners. Blacks and whites slugged it out in 1919 and thirty-eight people died, five hundred were injured—
Someone off-stage begins to pull on the worklight’s rope. The light swings wildly over the stage, casting strange lights and shadows.
In my father’s nursing home, Asians and African-Americans, Hispanics and Russians care for him. I wonder what their lives are like. I wonder how much they get paid—
BLACKOUT. In the darkness, the SM Lady comes to me. There is an audible but often unintelligible, whispered discussion about my frustration at having the lights turned out and her attempt to get me to say nicer things. “You promised you wouldn’t tell that one!” and “You want to keep going? Here’s your light!” are followed by a whispered “Fine!” She hands me a flashlight and stalks backstage by the light of a penlight.
BLACKOUT. A brief pause, then a light appears above my head. I am standing on the chair at center stage, holding a flashlight above my head.
In the 1920’s Mauritz Enander wrote about his new country:
"We are building a castle by the Lake of Longing
Building with a thousand hands
And the sounds echo from bay and isle
Around meadows of reeds in the strands.
The foundations were laid block by block
By our skilled persevering fathers
Now the walls we are raising log by log
And the art of bricks and mortar.
We hammer in our most wondrous dreams
Of future hopes and happiness
And all that is noble and good and dear
And all that we wish for and all we feel.
I switch off the flashlight.
BLACKOUT. Swedish music plays. Darkness remains for some seconds. Then slowly, almost grudgingly, some light is restored on the yoga chair area. I am again upside-down on the chair.
I release the leg of the chair with one hand and reach up to my pocket, extracting a handful of coins. These I fling gently to the ground downstage of my head. Re-grasping the chair with the hand, I let go of it with the second, digging into the other pocket. From it comes a fistful of paper money, which I fling to the floor, too. I allow that arm and hand to come to rest on the floor without again taking hold of the chair leg in a supported armless shoulder stand.
.
Silence. And then:
American Dream as layer cake. As pyramid scam. As a struggle to rise that ever brings disquiet. All of it built on the backs of the most recently arrived, who sweat and toil to build shining palaces for the ones they carry on their shoulders.
What to dream about now . . .
What happens to that dream deferred?
I hear in my mind the words of Langston Hughes' poem: [Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun
Or fester like a sore
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over
Like a syrupy sweet? ]
Out loud, I say: Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
I hear but do not say: [Or does it explode?]
Our land. . .
What have we become? But then what else could we be?
Here (I stick my hand into another pocket and pull out a handful of glass beads, flinging them to the floor.) Would you give me your purse for these? (I reach beneath my shirt and draw out a small, tin skillet, then a bag of white sugar, then a small flask of whiskey, then a gun, then some dirty bandages. These I drop to the ground as I speak.) Here, take this. Just give me your shoes. How about both of these for your house? Hey, take it all and just give me a seat at your table. Wanna’ trade?
(Slowly I slip down from the chair, lie curled on my side for a moment, then sit in a cross-legged position. I sing a Swedish song, no words, with long and mournful tones.
Stories never really end, but here is an update on one family tale.
Almost three years ago my mother died of a massive heart attack. She imploded, I think. My father, now suffering from congestive heart failure and dementia, lingers on. He’s eighty-three. The miracles of modern medicine and all that, though I think my sister in Alaska has it right: when I know I’m really sick, better to find a bear in the wilderness. Choose your exit.
The dreams they had were stomped out of them. (A series of standing poses flow through this section: Trikonasana, Warrior II, Side-Angle Pose, Warrior I, then are repeated in a flowing pattern for the other side of the body.) My Dad saw it coming decades ago. As he labored beside African American men, all of them carpenters’ apprentices just like him. He arrived home bewildered one day to announce he had been given his carpenter’s union card. It was the late ’60’s. That card was his ticket to employment. We cheered, but he looked sad and puzzled. “I don’t understand,” he whispered. “The other men had been there longer than me. They worked like tigers. But they didn’t get their cards. I thought this country was supposed to watch out for everyone.” Our smiles faded. He turned toward the kitchen, calling out to my mother as he went, “Har du öl?” “In the refrigerator,” Mom said, turning to follow him. “Don’t worry about it, Calle,” she said, “You didn’t make this country. What can you do?”
“What can you do?” What can we do. . .
Jag tallar sjit om grannan. My Mom used to say that: to talk shit about the landlord. That’s what I’m doing. Oh, I can pass for a white, middle-class American female, but that’s my outside. Inside I’m first-generation. My parents came from Sweden. And I see differently.
This piece of earth that was once a garden wears a straitjacket of asphalt and concrete. So many of us are like little plants trying to grow in the cracks.
So I’m slinging the shit around. Composting. Building soil for seeds that have been forgotten. The dreams of this place have been pruned back too hard. Look close. Our land’s harvest is fruit, and flowers, yes. But we're harvesting thorns, too.
(She stands looking at the audience as the lights snap off.)
