Imagine the Philadelphia Female Anti-‐Slavery Society in its Quaker meeting… WE HEAR AMPLIFIED SOUNDS OF AN AUDIENCE ASSEMBLING. WE SEE 3 ROWS OF BENCHES AGAINST AN U.S. PALE GRAY WALL. EXTENDING OUT FROM THE BENCHES IS A GRAY RECTANGULAR PAYING AREA -‐ITS 3 REMAINING SIDES ARE BORDERED BY AUDIENCE SEATING. THE HOUSE OPENS. PROJECTED ON THE WALL ABOVE THE BENCHES AND ON THE FLOOR FACING EACH AUDIENCE BANK IS ONE WORD…
SLIDE: welcome AS AUDIENCE ENTERS SO DOES SARAH PUGH: SHE IS A CAUCASIAN WOMAN IN HER 40’S IN AUSTERE MID-‐19TH CENTURY DRESS. SHE CROSSES TO FRONT & CENTER BENCH. SHE SITS AS THE SLIDE CHANGES….
SLIDE: waiting SOON, A SIMILIARLY AGED AND DRESSED AFRICAN-‐AMERICAN WOMAN ENTERS; SARAH MAPPS. SHE SITS ON S. L. FRONT BENCH AS THE SLIDE CHANGES…
SLIDE: fidgeting
A CAUCASIAN WOMAN IN HER 50’S ENTERS; SARAH GRIMKE. MORE SEVERELY DRESSED, SHE CLUTCHES APPLE & HANKIE & TAKES A SECOND ROW SEAT AS...
SLIDE: settling ANGELINA WELD GRIMKE, A YOUNGER AFRICAN-‐AMERICAN WOMAN IN 1900’S DRESS, ENTERS TO SIT ON S.R. FRONT ROW BENCH AS… ALL TEXT SLIDES FADE TO ONE LARGE WORD CENTERED ACROSS STAGE FLOOR…
SLIDE: meeting
MAPPS: (STANDS) I am thinking -‐ now -‐ that I would more like – not
-‐ to stand -‐ here. This, that you see me doing. (HESITATION)
No, I am not exact -‐ enough. I prefer not – to -‐ need to stand. Yet. To still sit there, not talking to any of you. That, I would possibly like.
(TURN TO BENCH – TURN BACK) Yes, fine, yes, we should do it together. I do see that. All, silent, sit, and be.
(2ND THOUGHT) Oh, “please” be.
(SITS…LOOKS UP) That is not it.
No. You should not use this moment. “Please.” Not fill it. (STANDS)
More exact, do not abandon the daunting emptiness here to wonder now “oh, these shoes, they do hurt, why do I wear them?” No, or, or, “dinner, just now -‐ not good. And that waiter.” No, we must not cut short this moment’s promise by immediately turning it over to such familiar old purpose. This must only be time -‐ to – unleash -‐ our inside collected rags of all what’s buried in our chest, your thumb, wherever we all have it this moment. Mine is…
(FIND IT UNDER HER RIB) there. So, wait....
(TURNS – TURNS BACK) Sorry, we wait for we do not know what – our correct task.
My inside ragged collection does first show me…ambition. Ha! First. Stifled ambition, more exact. Doubt grows from there. Built to cover that: pride. Shame, then, to see my prideful armor. Rage, now, defend against my shame. Layers to self-‐protect that so do wound me. All this stews in some muffled inertia born of, oh, familiar disappointment and… AGE. There it is – I have not unlimited time to do -‐ I – am -‐ hungry.
(TURNS TO GRIMKE WHO OFFERS APPLE) So excellent, she is. Excuse me.
(TURNS HER BACK FOR A FEW “PRIVATE” BITES… FNISHES)
So, I want us to have sat here doing what I just said. Awful though it feels! to me. Do it.
More exact; risk it. Our inside rags of thought/feeling, unguided, slowly now self-‐knit to some, we hope, communing force asking that you now, slowly, stand.
(STEPS FORWARD) No, assembled people, not yet. First, this communing force must bubble pushing out into steam, driving you to stand.
(ANOTHER STEP) No. No, this rising steam must first dispel to reveal… Ah, our gathered question: what does need revealing here? Why we stand? So, this -‐ our moral stance? So, then, our cause? So then, really, motive? So, really, then, really, need. Personal need – in our public act. That truth behind this driving spirit. More exact if not at all more clear. But sit with this confusion and be. Yes, and be and be and be till you cannot stand not to stand!
(SUDDEN TEMPER FLARE AT THE APPLE CORE IN HER HAND) I have nowhere to put this! (GRIMKE OFFERS HANDKERCHIEF FOR CORE – IMMEDIATE RELIEF)
So, now, in our communing silence this unclear spirit announces some deafening intent rippling into awful confusion which is good people -‐ because this is how finally some worthy thing begins to begin. Yes! Now, this thing is, oh please, something we have not ever done -‐ not sure even how to, what to call it?
(POINTING TO BENCH) We must sit long enough to be present enough to, yes, sense every rising detail, yes, savor all that rippling confusion, but not rush to name it – please not wrestle it down to some known tangibility before it can self-‐define – please, not fill up our silence by re-‐forging any chance of the new down to the old familiar. We sit to have the courage to stand forever in revolution.
(NODDING – CHUCKLE) Yes, well, that would have been good.
A thing I might manage to, finally, like. But, I did not feel you could stand my sitting that long -‐-‐ so I stood.
SLIDE: PAINTING OF A FLOWER BY MAPPS FILLS FLOOR SLIDE: she made this. More exact, I did compromise.
(MAPPS TURNS TO SIT AS PUGH RISES TO STRIDE DC)
PUGH: I am thinking now we may dim the lights. (HOUSE LIGHTS/SLIDES BUMP OUT)
Yes, that was it. (TURNS – TURNS BACK)
That is a convention that happens in the “theater.” I am told. (BEMUSED)
I do not go to theater. No… This convention, taking away that light, is done, I am told, to claim you. Lights out, you forget -‐ all out there – gone now into the dark. You are intent here. Does that work? Work -‐ still? Convention, I think now, is done even when it long has ceased to work its intended effect. Well, no one questions, it is convention. So, all do it. Because all do do it you do what you should -‐ back to it. Always. Or, here, I do now think this; you appear to do what you should; give full attention as lights go, but do you really. Really? Do not you know too well by now what is assumed of you by this convention to be really moved by it?
(LAUGHING) And theater people know this! I think.
But they do seem to act as if you really act the way this convention demands.
Everyone perpetuating this hollow thing on and on because no one musters the added energy to just look at it, stand and say….
(GRIMKE CLEARS HER THROAT -‐ PUGH UNDERSTANDS THE PROMPT) Indeed, my running thoughts do go on. Pardon. I meant only to say we are in this theater because no other place would have us. No. Well, because we women are thought by some to be an outrage. “Unsexing ourselves,” they say, because we try to think what we think might matter. More…
(ACKNOWLEDGING MAPPS) …exact. We train our thoughts to claw out from every fetid convention society will insist is natural law! So, yes, that can be dangerous. Mm. So, a mob of men did burn our own edifice to the ground, we had it built, Pennsylvania Hall, there…
SLIDE: MASSIVE IMAGE OF THE HALL BURNING
We then tried every other room in the city, all said no. But this theater said yes knowing our poor reputation cannot lower their moral standing. Because who knows where theater stands – morally? Well, many find theater already so false. It peddles illusion. Though, I was just thinking this aloud, that illusion is often offered cloaked in a convention we all know so well so how real is the illusion? I do question knowing what you should feel before you know what you do feel and so no real feeling can be uncovered in this elusive illusionary environment…
(GRIMKE AGAIN CLEARS THROAT – PUGH UNDERSTANDS) Indeed, my thoughts do run. Pardon more.
I meant only to say our being here in this theater may raise expectations. Or lower them. Either way, they will not be met. I do not think we have an interest in “meeting” your expectations – that is, I am thinking, simply more convention. Where this is simply -‐ our meeting.
SLIDE: the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society meets (PUGH SITS -‐ ALL SLIDES OUT – GRIMKE STANDS) GRIMKE: This.
Who first did this? (GRIMKE RAISES HER HANDS, SEEING THE WRAPPED APPLECORE)
Mm. (RETURNS OFFENDING CORE TO THE BENCH – BACK TO ASSEMBLY)
Look at me – but see her.
SLIDE: 7 ARCHIVAL PORTRAITS OF WOMEN REFORMERS FILL THE FLOOR
That is what I ask, please, now. See that first woman who stood – for any cause, to somehow right some wrong.
SLIDE: abolition
You find her, if you are able, someplace in these sometimes United States. Forest, then, really, unmapped, embattled territory; she is first to stand as I do. Oh, yes, it looks not like anything. I know.
(RE HERSELF) Only this.
(STEPS FORWARD) Or, is she here?
SLIDE: women’s rights
But give time to see this that would not claim your attention had we not…
Still to look at – nothing – but what happens in her -‐ this – first – woman to raise her body? Let my visual insignificance, please, not stop you from seeing how she was significant. Look closer.
(RETURNS TO BENCH AS….)
SLIDE: racial equality
Like this. (STANDS AGAIN)
Add now, please, no woman ever has stood in a room where others sat, except to serve. But she does. Look again.
(SITS – STANDS AS…)
SLIDE: economic equality More now -‐ her voice.
(HANDS TO MOUTH) Like this. First time she puts the sound in her body out into a room – and does have it heard! First time any woman acts as if it may be her right to claim her audience. Who was she?
SLIDE: all causes of the 19th century
No one knows. No exaggeration because we are, yes, in a theater, no one anywhere knows who that woman was. At all.
No shred of her remains. Well, I have been here thinking that. Thank you.
(TURNS FOR BENCH – BUT -‐ MAPPS URGES HER ON… TURNS BACK TO ASSEMBLY – ALL SLIDES OUT.)
See invisibility – is what I find I do ask. It is how this first woman was able to stand, what forced her to rise, what erased her stance. Mm.
(DROPS HER HEAD) I do bundle my thoughts -‐ till they overstep my whole meaning.
(HEAD UP – TRY AGAIN) I mean, no one saw this first woman coming because no one saw her. Able, then, to invent her bravery – invisibly. But this same invisibility unknowingly giving that permission then turned on her, to become her enforced epitaph.
Mm. (STAMPS FOOT)
Had that, “permission – epitaph,” when I arrived. Did like my words too much. Trying what will work rather than discover what might.
(STEPS FURTHER INTO THE SPACE) Remember this woman no one can remember, let me ask you that. Feel her through this ground, here, rumbling up into me and then you. We -‐ give her back one moment of her robbed historic due.
(HANDS TO HER CHEST) What do we get from her first? A rustle of cloth, hear that? She fidgets in her seat not knowing will she do this thing she feels she must but is sure she cannot. Pluck herself out from what has been this comforting mass of people -‐ suddenly now she wants to overturn them. Or stay thankfully one of them – then forced to suffer in seated safety? Torn at this precipice moment.
(STEPS FURTHER INTO THE SPACE) Do not we all have some version, no matter how tiny, of this precipice moment? Then, please, transplant yours here. A moment in which you could not not - move. Forced to end your anonymity for responsibility with no sight of reward. I would think only the price loomed. Now, in your mind, stand here, conjuring your precipice to feel hers. You feel the sweat beading in her cinched corset, one trickle forging a path from her nape down her bound spine to her sweltering petticoat. Taste the dust coagulating in her throat. What can she call this thing happening in her? It has no precedent. No name to call it, no words yet known, no place to point and say I need that for me!
Oh, we have cluttered our hearts now with so much history, such piled fact, it becomes near impossible to strip that all away to imagine this unimaginable moment. But do it – yes, I ask you that. You feel the balls of her feet, her shoes too tight, her soles twitch then cramp. Feel their ache to run and take all her standing weight. Feel her rise, as if jumping from the roof. See through her eyes the gathered faces reflect the godless outrage of this mere woman daring to stand.
And she has not even yet spoken. (MAPPS JOINS HER IN STANDING) MAPPS: Now, I ask you to go a step further, imagine, now, this first
woman is, as I am, Negro. See me as her -‐ consumed with the driving terror that what I think must be said. Increase that danger to imagine I now stand before an assembly of, well, both genders mixed -‐ and a mixing of the races. What now we call a “promiscuous amalgamated audience.” We are still near enough to feel her risk -‐ if we try.
GRIMKE: But the time will come when this stance will be accepted, grudgingly. Then pass to mostly unnoticed practice.
PUGH: Folded, then, into yes, well, unquestioned convention.
MAPPS: While those who never liked it – wait.
GRIMKE: Is that good? Is that process good? I have been here thinking that question. I ask if our complacent acceptance of what was once our hard fought acceptance must always lead back to the loss of that crucial gain.
I am thinking about fatigue, about battle, about “rights.”
MAPPS: And “whose? And “when?
GRIMKE: And when will we forget so we have to fight it all – again? (GRIMKE AND MAPPS SIT LEAVING PUGH) PUGH: Yes, I am four women. I think now I should have said that to start.
Four women, in me, they stand when I do. (GRIMKE READYING TO CLEAR HER THROAT…)
Pardon, yes, my thoughts run then not complete. (BACK TO ASSEMBLY)
Now you hear why. SLIDE: specific personal history Four women, so different, all here.
(ACKNOWLEDGING MAPPS) Exact…
(BACK TO ASSEMBLY) Part, only, of each. They are so little known by you; we gather their shreds in this skin to muster on that bench even one self. You say, “this is metaphor.” If I am this impossibility, you dismiss me as not possible. Do not! Pardon. Our body asks the opposite. Let my fragmenting innards, my body-‐container, and the cause of this make me more probable, more human to you. Oh, that is a lot to ask.
Would it help to say how does it work? Where do they go? (POINTS TO USL CORNER) Here. (CROSSING TO IT)
One woman is here, this shoulder – is hers. This bosom, really hers, up what you may call “my” neck. It is her makes me cough. She does like really to sit here. Her name is Sarah Pugh.
SLIDE: FRAGEMENTARY ARCHIVAL IMAGE OF PUGH
She says… (NOW POSESSED BY PUGH)
Oh, the shreds that remain of Sarah, me, yes. But I was trying to come late. No wish to speak first. Yes, a founding member of this Society. I am. A reformer – that beautiful title.
ADD SLIDE: reformer
Reform -‐ to re-‐make. Proudly I wore that word. Now, though, you think, puritan spinsters march against all fun. That caricature of women, who do you think made that? Men, also, would say I never wed. I reject that pull to convention. Could not be a wife and become a woman. But refusing that cut me from the usual preserving of a woman’s life. And that does cause me to end here.
(HAND TO SHOULDER) Here.
(POINTING TO DSL CORNER) Second woman.
(CROSSING TO IT AS….)
ADD SLIDE: FRAGMENTARY ARCHIVAL IMAGE: HETTY BURR Hip, pelvic -‐ expanse, this hip. This woman, she gives birth. She puts herself always, always here. Hetty. Or Hester Burr. She will tell you.
Not like this body housing me, I am a Negro woman. Not like Sarah in that shoulder up there, I do marry. Not consider not. She can worry that -‐ deeper fears take me. Nine children to preserve my life I give life to. Join our Anti-‐Slavery Society to ensure the fact of their freedom not the idea -‐ know in my flesh what some here know only in their conscience. But then my people do fight so hard for their present they have scant time to preserve their past. The cause that does end me here.
(HER PELVIS – NOW POINTING TO DSR CORNER) Here.
(CROSSING TO IT AS…)
ADD SLIDE: FRAGMENTARY ARCHIVAL IMAGE: MARY GREW
Forearm. Third woman. This hand. Then, well, this foot. I know! Why would she not wish to be all connected?
(GRIMKE CLEARS HER THROAT) Yes, pardon again. (SCURRIES BACK TO HER ORIGINAL SPOT WIPING ALL SLIDES AWAY)
I meant to say it is not I who says where these women go. My bodily territory is theirs to exert their last power!
(HAND ON SHOULDER AS SHE WALKS TO PUGH’S USL CORNER) SLIDE: PUGH’S FRAGMENT
Sarah Pugh here. (HANDS TO PELVIS AS SHE WALKS TO BURR’S SPOT) ADD SLIDE: BURR’S FRAGMENT
Hetty or Hester – or Elizabeth – Burr, here. (HAND ON LEFT ARM AS SHE WALKS TO DSR CORNER) ADD SLIDE: FRAGMENTARY ARCHIVAL IMAGE: MARY GREW
Then here: Mary Grew. Forearm, hand, and separated foot, our third woman.
I am the tiniest shred here – so stretch as far in this body as I can. Always, that want to see myself. Make sure I really am.
(HER SHOULDER) Sarah and I went to the World Anti-‐Slavery Convention, London. Dreamed, I’d make my name. Admit that. Well, reform work -‐ the one work we women could try. I had to climb that one offered ladder. But, we could not speak in London. Convened on freedom, yes, but restricted women to the bench. Not present in full -‐ only in part – cause to now have only my parts – here.
(HAND TO LEFT FOREARM) Here. (POINTS TO USR CORNER AND CROSSING)
Left, right, both eyes: fourth woman. (HANDS TO HER EYES)
A watcher -‐ from this corner. ADD SLIDE: FRAGMENT ARCHIVAL IMAGE: HETTY RECKLESS
Another Hester. Or Hetty. Or sometimes Amy. Last name; Reckless.
(NOW POSESSED BY RECKLESS) No. Contrary blood here, your demand to speak has me want not to. Not like one other woman here, I am born enslaved -‐ as our nation revolts for freedom. Too easy, that contrary. Negro, not like this casing from which I speak – contrary. Surnamed Reckless, yes, take that instruct to be slow deliberate. Live a century, I do, long. Too long. Force me to see much that is terrible reversed -‐ but much of that reversed again. This contrary place rejects half itself every day.
(HER RIGHT FOOT JERKS FORWARD) So, yes, I take this foot. Sometimes. This one. Get the other from Mary if I want. Like to feel I can go, but do not care for full responsibility of this limb.
(JERKS HEAD TO OTHERS) All them telling you why these limbs hold just our shreds?
I will not agree. No, I say, because any great cause, in time, will eat its army. Hear? Never enough room in your memory for every soldier. That cause that forces me – here.
(HANDS TO EYES… HANDS TO MOUTH) Here.
(BACK TO ORIGINAL SPOT) All four women speak then leave this mouth for the next. So who then maintains these lips between their voice? This host human talking to you facilitating this meeting within me within this meeting within this thea…
(GRIMKE CLEARS THROAT) Indeed. Pardon again, again. I meant only to say to you, yes, this could be metaphor. I do literalize women’s historic fate through my body, or do I believe? You could ask that. But I ask, why do you want to know? Why crave that release of certainty? Here, in a theater? What does certainty bring except much strife to modify that absolute? I am all these women. I am not. I am the sum of them. So, let me BE them.
(PUGH SITS AS…. ALL SLIDES BUMP OUT AS… LIGHTS BUMP FROM CENTRAL AREA TO BENCHES) GRIMKE: Here! (HANDS SLAM DOWN ON HER BENCH)
This. (RE MAPPS)
If she stood, she tells us what made her. I asked, who first stood? (RE PUGH) She shows how many stand here we do not see.
Standing -‐ all. Such unity. No. (TO OTHERS RE 2ND ROW)
Now, from here, all feel what is it to be in this second row. Here, a woman, some woman, not me only, you, are blocked by that first row. Obscured here. I do not speak only of me.
(HEAD DOWN) Mm. (HEAD UP) I do speak only of me. Sarah.
SLIDE: SARAH GRIMKE SIGNATURE
My given name. No thing given. Sarah Grimke.
I should stand. (DOES)
I came here, not here. (RE 2ND ROW)
Here; Philadelphia,1819. If that specific helps you see me. Traveled here with father, who never speaking so made me his right hand. My place: to read all want that flickered on his silent face. Our trip here was long, father sickened, none found its root, he took what time he could – then died. In our boarding house, second floor room, alone I sat with that body. I was abrupt-‐made there, this adult. Un-‐fathered. Un-‐married. Unacceptable. Women like me should return then to family to do sewing. Age: be the brunt of whispered humor. I am not ever funny, you can see that, so how could I go – to – my -‐ family…Mm.
(DROPS HEAD) Words used lightly do weigh on me.
(HEAD UP) I cannot possess those brains in blood in skin: “my” family. In South Carolina -‐ all were slaveholders. I had slaves. I had them – as mine. I could no longer put my hands in that crime. My “precipice moment, there?” That would make this a better story. But I will not make this more easy to hear than it was to do. What makes us not what we come from?
What blood in skin newly arrange to birth a sudden rebel? Or monster? Yes, depends who you ask. What then toughens a rebel, monster, to endure this? To invent herself where no self is? I could not be those -‐ in South Carolina. So here I returned demanding my new place where my old one had died. Here I tore open my such imperfect, yet willful, body. This corpus force-‐bred to be femininely shut, to smother self-‐drive. I did pull out my viscera, force out from my flesh – not just outrage, too easy, that whispered behind some lady’s fan. No, force out invented will to fight some thing! Slavery. Race prejudice. Woman’s place. Fight for other’s freedom to find mine. Selfish? Yes! Could be. But the price, I did orphan my soul inventing what few could stomach. And still I could not find my right place. Not find my way from the wrongness of the world that made me to the world I hoped to make. Locked at that juncture -‐ here. Mm.
(STAMPS FOOT) To speak of me, must admit I speak of my sister. Angelina Grimke.
ADD SLIDE: ANGELINA GRIMKE SIGNATURE
Still in South Carolina, Angelina, my baby sister, accepted my moral guiding in letters. Followed me here. Took up every cause I labored to invent but in her they grew as nature. How? Our family sin not in her – to her. How? Free to invent her self without my burden? I stay the woman of my birth, my time here
(RE 2ND ROW) she escapes both there
(1ST ROW) my crumbs of invention here
(2ND ROW) taken by her there.
(1ST ROW) because I did this here -‐ she can do more there.
Or I hid – back from that first row. Because this second row is my natural place. But my raging ego rejects the fit. I need from our cause while Angelina gives to it. Or I fight everything while my sister takes with such ease it does not show. Angelina who is published, lauded. Famous. Married. That ease with which she moves. That is the new American. Good. Good! I fought for her. But must her rise bury the crucial steps back here? See us. Preserve us. So no one ever will take all they’re told as all there was. I warn you, if we do let ourselves fold all the many steps toward true change under one name and summary banners, will we not be fooled by that summary? Will we not then forget the depth of passion and strife summarized? Will we not then be shocked when it is still so hard here to make any thing happen! Or is it only me?
(GRIMKE SITS AS… PROJECTED SIGNATURES FADE AS…
MAPPS HESITANTLY SINGS IN HALF VOICE) MAPPS: If I Had A voice If I… had…a voice,
If I had a voice -‐ a persuasive voice
That could travel the wide world through,
I would fly on the beams of the morning light
And speak to men with a gentle might,
And tell them to be true.
(GRIMKE QUIETLY BEGINS TO SING ALONG)
I would fly – I would fly -‐ I would fly -‐ o’er land and sea,
(MAPPS RISES TO JOIN HER COMPATRIOTS CLAPPING OUT THE BEAT)
I would fly, I would fly, on the thunder crash,
And into their blinded bosoms flash
That ray of home that cheers the mind,
And leaves all trace of grief behind,
(ALL STOP SUDDENLY AS…. FLOOR FULL OF PROJECTED SONG PAGES BUMP OUT
THE WOMEN SPLINTER BACK TO SOLO’S AND SIT)
GRIMKE: If I had a voice
SLIDE: age PUGH: If I had a voice
SLIDE: ambition ANGELINA: If I had a voice
SLIDE: possibility GRIMKE: If I had a voice
SLIDE: actuality MAPPS: If I had a voice
SLIDE: compromise A voice…
SLIDE: MAPPS PAINTED FLOWER AGAIN FILLS THE FLOOR
Tonight I want not to give my name – Sarah Mapps Douglass.
ADD SLIDE: compromise
When we began, I did not want to stand here – now I want to stand here.
(HOISTS HERSELF TO THE CENTER OF THE CENTER BENCH) Us, first, us. We want this thing others call freedom, for us all. My mother Grace told in silent words to sit on that last bench at Quaker meeting, her father Cyrus; Negro, enslaved, and Indian; us.
Then, for me – my truth now – then arrive white people. They, join our struggle. They will speak to those who will not hear my voice. Yes, I choose that. What instead? Need. Compromise.
ADD SLIDE: compromise
Women, now. Men, yes, some, believe women have a weak brain. But, oh, strong morality. We are forced to be their saints. I do not choose that. But that lets them let us speak against this American sin. Yes, that I need. Let men think it, then. No choice required, really, just let them. Compromise.
ADD SLIDE: compromise
White women, yes, can speak in more rooms than I can. But remember they speak what needs to be heard to those who will not hear me. So now I do not go to some rooms. Just that. I let myself let them go. Compromise.
ADD SLIDE: compromise
Whatever rooms whichever women can speak in we find there personal use where none had been allowed. Some women now demand more. Few men want that. So women then too are indentured? No, not with likenes to slavery. Exactly. Most admit. I will not let them equate women’s little choice with slavery’s none. But that equation, its drama, makes some stand who might not.
ADD SLIDE: compromise
Two versions, now, of abolition, Negro and white, two versions of womanhood, saintly and self-‐demanding, all in one movement. I cannot be so arrogant to stop it – I see torture you cannot pull up into your heart’s eye because your brain cannot conceive. I cannot block the road to change – if finally this will be one.
(NOW compromise IS ADDED OVER AND OVER AGAIN AS SHE DETAILS EACH – HER FLOWER GROWING OBSCURED BY EACH compromise)
Now, come with me into our future. Thirty, forty years. A meeting. Not like this. Desks. Chairs. A meeting. The opposition, now they are called that, will meet us. So the movement, we now call us that, must choose someone to go, we cannot all go, all going is a march. You see how…?
So, one person for all personalities. Already not been me, I agreed to that, yes? So I do not think it will be me so I do not feel it when it is not. Or pretend that. That what I refuse to let myself think is what needs be is what I intend. I am not sure now if it is even I who… Now, that person sent to the meeting is our face. All he, finally, yes, a he, all he does not bring physically with him, in his body, his personal history, all else becomes small type in our manifesto. Yes, sorry, right, got a manifesto -‐ to hand people -‐ if no one can be there. Opposition is busy, one public face, he cannot be everywhere. Now, finally, finally, the opposition does turn its slow, aggressive modifying negotiation to this manifesto’s large type. Easier to read. Issues close to our one public face, he wrote it! All in language the opposition understands. Yes, sorry, he can use their words. Their gestures. He sits in their chairs. Becomes a little bit them, he does. Has to or would they agree ever to meet? But still this is some change – some? One step at a time. One step at a time. Be realistic. I hate realism. Impossibility is the only thing I love. I want that to be possible. But then it fails as impossibility. I could insist. Refuse my movement moving on from me. But will my loud dissenting voice be heard for use or sew only discord? Unity is visibility then productivity.
I could wait. I know how. Wait, for the big war to be won then pull away for my righteous detail of battle.
Or I could grow bitter? That too I know. Try each thing, never quite give all myself to any, never succeed because I cannot reconcile. Bitter. Older. Inconvenient to the new…. I could so, so easily be her.
(CLIMBING DOWN FROM BENCH INTO PROJECTED SEA OF compromise)
You know who she is, people dread her lurking at gatherings of political… you know, she remains in her cloak, her coat, eats all the food. Hovering at that table. As speeches start she then sits right in the front row. She will not let you not see her. Sour face. Crumbs here. Eats all the way through. But says one brilliant, piercing thing – but not truly in context to what we now…. So, young people in the back, snicker. You know her, she about whom the few with any decent memory whisper, “what happened?”
What happened, fifty years from now, this will happen, first, some men, some, will not like what any women demand. Walk away.
Then, I am sorry, but then some white women will realize they will get the rights they demand for themselves faster by themselves.
Then, sorry more, some Negro men will realize they will get their freedom and the vote before any woman gets hers. This will happen. One step at a time will become one step instead of another.
I will be the last of the last.
(ALL SLIDES OUT/MAPPS SITS/ANGELINA STANDS) ANGELINA: No. (BUMP BACK TO OPENING GRAY BOX LOOK AS… PROJECTED ON BACK WALL GIANT TIMER SPEEDS FROM 1850 to 1900)
She is my great aunt; Sarah Grimke, there in the second row. She is my father’s father’s sister. Her sister’s name is also mine, I am Angelina, also Grimke. Yes. Henry, their brother in South Carolina had a wife, then two boys. I never have seen them. Henry, their brother, my grandfather, also had slaves. With one called Nancy he formed -‐ what? What word delivers to us their complexity? He did use his property, her. He seemed to find love, it had force, only on his side. His heart opened from relaxing his constant option to force? We do not know. So, Nancy? No choice there at all but it appears, also, she chose. Her rebellion is owning her heart when she is owned? Or she is only victim? Or both? I speak to you of my grandmother, I know nothing. Nancy bore to Henry also two sons.
Henry’s wife, the white one, legal one -‐ what word can summarize that? Did she see Nancy was more than her slave? Could she permit herself to know it? If she did, we cannot know. She dies.
Henry then moves his Negro non-‐wife-‐wife Nancy to the country, joined her there, living their visible secret. This, what this was, lasted. Decades. Then Henry, her brother, my white grandfather, flesh I never touched, he dies. What final provisions he made for this his non-‐wife-‐wife and brown sons who replicated his white ones were thwarted by those white sons and so the pale brown boys came here, here, Philadelphia where my aunts discovered this blood relation so offered their hand.
(TURNS TO BEHOLD HER GREAT AUNT -‐ TURNS BACK) Archibald, Henry’s son, my father, married then a white woman. So, to re-‐create? Redress? Get what had been taken? Or mother, did she crave -‐ what? Or hope to destroy? What did she think would come marrying across this racial ocean? Did she think? She gave me birth. She ran away. She went mad. Her real inside place I cannot feel from here; so my forgiveness does not earn relevance.
(STEPS FORWARD)
So I stand here, part Negro -‐ part white, part white -‐ part Negro. My-‐self from our nation’s public denial of private passion. Think on that; what you see, how it was made, what it hides. For more is here in me to un-‐hide.
My father…like his aunts, orated across this nation, and like she in the second row, I became his right hand. My place. Father took on the future of our race. Suffrage. Even sometimes the question of women’s rights. I learned to make every speech he made. Standing for every cause, every cause, every but one. Hiding.
SLIDE: A GIANT PROJECTION OF HER FATHER’S EYES FADES INTO VIEW, FILLING THE FLOOR
I first saw it, I was 14. Was evening. I was reading. A novel; a time waster, father said. Father stiff at desk. Disliked comfort. The ease it brought frightened him, I feel. This novel told of a heroine who seemed to me…dear. I looked up from my book wanting to tell of her -‐ though I knew father did not like novels or interruption. I wanted to say my feeling because…it had put lightness in me. So, take that out and show him. That should have been warning. No, and yes, it was but the simple way of this pleasure crushed caution. So I spoke of her. He said, “Angelina, what do you think you mean?”
Yes, his harsh tone but I will not give him to your judgment. From birth, his every act put under a magnifying glass by those who would prove him sinful, fodder for their hate-‐mongering rebuke. Why he rejected all ease even in private. I did grow in this field of his cross-‐examination. “Angelina, what do you think you mean to say to me?” I tried then to lessen the import not knowing why I would want that and knowing he never did, I said oh, this girl on this page…has a gentle and embracing tone, father. “And what does that offer you that is worthy, Angelina?” Again, there my warning. Instead, instead I said if she would stand before me, father, I might walk with her. Then his silence grew hard. To, to debate, father, matters of civil…. Then I saw in the move of his hands on that desk, loathing. From his loathing my rush to share my felt companionship turned round to show me what I was – no word for it yet but I saw. I began then to call that part of me “she.” Every room I entered, before anyone saw, she was dragged and shoved to a corner. I schooled myself to see at such distance all instinct, bodily tic, emotion that would betray her existence. I never said what I saw or felt or craved till it was inspected for any hint that could rouse my father’s loathing by making him know she was here. After some years, on a speaking tour, on the avenue, we did pass a woman. Her appearance. Something. Dress and bonnet, yes, but something. Crisp. Gleaming in dark blue. Night ocean blue. I did not, first, understand the code of her cloth but it yelled to me. Beat out a rhythm that pulsed into me. Crashing in with danger as new safety. I gagged. My insides, it felt, pouring up as my whole self now let go. Not “let.” A pull. At a corner she stood.
I knew by then how to look without looking knowing how quick my father read even the slight incline of my neck toward that which must be silent. But she caught me. And then he caught me, and he took my hand so firmly. It hurt. Now I knew; she in blue told me who she in the corner was and therefore what I am.
She calls, but I have never given her freedom. Because I can not find it. I will not say to you exactly what I am saying to you because no words have been made for what I am that I can utter without self-‐contempt. Not yet. But I think you know.
I tell you this all – not to speak only of myself, though I have permitted myself that -‐ a release I know not how to take. But, as runs in the blood of my family, I tell you this for greater purpose than me -‐ to say this simple thing; it is never “done.” It is never done. Always there is one more piece. Do not grow tired. One more piece. Simple. It is never done. Never done. It is never done. Not ever. Never – done. Never done. Never…
(TURNS TO GRIMKE WHO EXTENDS HER HAND, ANGELINA GRASPS IT) GRIMKE: Good evening (THEY SHAKE HANDS AS PUGH TURNS TO MAPPS, THEY SHAKE) BOTH: Good evening. (THE WOMEN MOVE TO THE AUDIENCE OFFERING THEIR HANDS – REPEATING THIS TRADITIONAL CLOSING GESTURE, MURMERING…) ALL: Good evening. (THE WOMEN GRADUALLY MAKE THEIR WAY BACK TO CENTER…) MAPPS: Thank you and good night. (PROJECTED AT THEIR FEET…)
