An Excerpt from "Nothin’ Nice"

By Linda Parris-Bailey

CAST:

LONEWOLF: An Americorps worker. Twenty-one years of age. He has one daughter, Kesha who lives with her mother.

VICTOR: Lonewolf’s uncle. He is a Vietnam Vet, community organizer and wise man. He is in his mid-’50s.

LIL: Wolfee's mother. She is in her mid to late forties. hard working and honest about her feelings. She and Wolfee are very close.

NICOLE: Kesha's mother. Nineteen years of age. A beginning poet. Nicole works and goes to school.

KESHA: Daughter of Wolfee and Nicole, a toddler.

TYRA: Nicole's best friend.

MAYLENE: A musician (bass) Retired army nurse. Maylene served in Vietnam, came back a healer.

ACT I, SCENE l

Lil:

Sylvia Ruppert and Carlton "Starr" Releford in "Nothin' Nice" [image gallery]

I wasn't born here. I was born in Alcoa. Most people who know the name Alcoa don’t even know its in Tennessee, but that's were I grew up. My father's people came from Alabama back when Alcoa was recruiting in the deep south for men to do the work in the pot rooms, stoking the fires and doing whatever else they couldn't get white folks to do. My mother's people were straight out of the mountains. Been there since the days of the Underground Railroad. Her family came out of the mountains when the Tennessee Valley authority took their land to build dams. They never really were the same off the land, my mother says. They weren't forgiving people. They were some no-nonsense people who did things their way. My mother stopped talkin' to me when Jerry and I decided to get married. That hurt doesn't have anything to do with racism. If you knew how I was raised you'd think I was a lot older than I am. I lived part of my life in the country. I'm only 47, but I grew up with an outhouse and cooked on a wood stove at my grandmother’s. I grew up in a place where everything that happened, happened ten years after everywhere else. Then I moved here. And everything happens with the rest of the country, but then it happens again ten years later.

(Lil's music plays after her opening monologue)

Will you miss me

Will you miss me, miss me when I'm gone

Will you miss me

Will you miss me when I'm gone

(repeat)

(Victor's music begins. It is a funky, up-tempo, sampled rhythm that leads Victor to respond with a statement about sampling.)

Victor:

Maylene!! Hey, Maylene!! How come you gotta share everything you do with the whole neighborhood? Ain't no use in you tryin’ to play that HIP HOP shit! IT ain't part a nothin' we understand. Them kids know you too damn old to play with them!

Maylene:

You don't understand nothin’ after 1975!! I'm samplin’ fool.

Victor:

Why'n’t you sample something that means something and stop messing up my environment. You better start samplin' some old school, Curtis Mayfield, Donny Hathaway, Sly, War. (He starts to sing.) War WHOO, what is it good for, absolutely Nothin'! You better put somethin' on these kids. Out here on the streets no job, no money, trashin’ everything in sight... Hey whyn't you sample this We bring more than a paycheck to our loved ones and families, We bring more than a paycheck to our loved ones and families (continues to sing as the bass picks up the melody and plays under his opening dialogue) When I was young back before the war started takin' things from me, back before the first freedom songs, I fished the Bayous. Walked out my back door and down the road whenever I got ready. Free, open sace. Then they brought storage tanks and put them between us and the water. Then they went from house to house buying us out block by block. Finally all of our neighbors were gone and we were left there with the tanks. I couldn't even see the water. So I left. When I came home, I didn't recognize that water. Water would shimmer blue metallic like in a Dali painting. My dog drank that water one afternoon ... he died.

Lonewolf:

First you gotta know who's environment you talkin’ about. My environment is my kitchen, cause that's where I spend my time. I eat there, I listen to music and my mamma there. My baby gets fed there. Now Kesha, that's my heart right there. She's the only thing that I worry about when it comes to my environment. She's the only thing I see when I look into the future. She wasn't what I'd call the product of family planning, but she came just at the right time to get my head together. I don't know what I was doin' out there. My moms was like, "Get a job! You ain't in school and you ain't doin' nothin' 'round here!" Yeah right, Mom. Hey, I'm young, I got time. I had six months! to get ready for Kesha. Her mamma was sixteen. I was only eighteen! I was thinkin' about sex, like the survey says 27 times or more a day. My mamma was shocked when she heard that. You know that men think about sex somewhere on average of about 27 times a day! Frankly I thought that was a low estimate. She said that she understood the term "dick head" after that.

Lil:

And every Dick Head should be blessed with a daughter so he can think about the "Dog in me"!

Lonewolf:

That's a low blow, Moms.

Lil:

That's the truth, Wolfee. I swear, I don't know how ya'll get anything done at all! If it wasn't for birth control..

Lonewolf:

Awright, Moms. Point made, point taken. There ain't nothin' toxic about my kitchen. No, only thing toxic in my kitchen is my mamma's chittlins on new years. When I walk out my door goin' to work in the morning, I see my environment. Neighbor didn't pick up his trash, wino left his calling card right under my bike tire, and I got to tread thru five inches of damn water before I can get to the curb to take the damn bus.

Lil:

I love Joycelyn Elders. I heard her the other day and she said that the biggest problem in the country today is the three "P’s" Poverty, population and pollution. That’s my girl! She was at this luncheon and the moderator was talkin' about how "she resigned her position." She stood up in front a all those suits and thanked the moderator for her kindness, but she said that she didn't resign her position, she was FIRED! Because she spoke her mind. Boy, read the paper sometime. Turn off the soap opera and Ricky Lake and Jerry Springer and listen to some folks who got some sense.

Lonewolf:

I listen to Uncle Victor. The man's read every book in the library! He knows something about everything.

Lil:

Now that is education gone to seed! The big weed spreadin' spores and makin' folks sick like rag weed!

Lonewolf:

Why he gotta be all that?

Lil:

That man is a walkin’ contradiction. Who ever heard of a hippy, Vietnam Vet, alcoholic, gardener vegetarian, who smokes, and wears leather clothes? The man spends half his life recycling his own beer cans! Yah know he's the one that talked your father into naming you Lonewolf. Everybody in the neighborhood thought it was a nickname until you went to school. Principle thought I didn't know the difference. Kept saying, "Yes, but what's his real name?

Lonewolf:

Moms, Uncle Victor taught me to be a man.

Lil:

What kind a man, Mr. Twenty-seven times a day? What did he teach you to have on your mind? What you doin' for Kesha?

Lonewolf:

What's her mamma doin' for her?

Lil:

Goin' to school!

Lonewolf:

And workin' at Mick-e-dee's for minimum wage while I take care of Kesha. I'm doin' my part, Mom.

Lil:

Right up to the time you take her home to her exhausted mamma at the end of a 12-hour day!

Lonewolf:

Why you always on her side? You women always be gangin' up on us. When we try and do good you just dog us anyway! You think takin' care of a baby by yourself all day is so easy? It ain't like I'm not workin’.

Lil:

That little piece a job at Saint Luke's ain't nothin'. What its goin' ta do for you next year? You got benefits? You got enough money to put clothes on that baby’s back?

Lonewolf:

When I leave there I'll have some carpentry skills. I can rehab a house or paint. I got more skills now than I ever had.

Lil:

But what you gonna do with those skills? Only thing a man can do with a little bit a carpentry skills is go to one a those job places where they send you out for day labor. What they call that place that opened up down the street?

Lonewolf:

Labor World is down the street, Labor Ready is down on Biscayne.

Lil:

It’s just like bein' a day worker in white folks’ houses. Like your grandmother talks about when she was in Harlem. Waitin' on the corner for somebody to pick you out for a day job.

Lonewolf:

Mom, I won't be sittin' at no Labor World lookin' for work. I know people now who will hire me after the program.

Lil:

We'll see, baby. You better check on Kesha. She probably needs another diaper change.

Lonewolf:

I sure will be glad when she's toilet trained.

Lil:

I told ya’ll she was too young for toilet training. Everybody's always in such a hurry ta get they kids grown and out the way.

Lonewolf:

Well, I'm grown, but I ain't out your way yet!

Lil:

Brother, how I know that!

Lonewolf:

I gotta go, Mom.

Lil:

Where you goin’?

Lonewolf:

I got ta catch up with Victor.

Lil:

Did you forget something?

Lonewolf:

What?

Lil:

Kesha!

Lonewolf:

I thought you could watch her while I was gone.

Lil:

Then I guess you should’a asked me! I got a hair appointment in 15 minutes.

Lonewolf:

Can’t you take her with you?

Lil:

Wait a minute, I’m going to the hair dresser where some sister’s gonna have my head under water, then a dryer, then the curling iron, and you’re going to TALK to your Uncle Victor but she should go with me?

Lonewolf:

You’re her grandmother.

Lil:

And you’re her father. Like LL Cool J says "all I ever wanted was a father." That man said a father, not a grandmother. That’s what Kesha needs, a father. Or you think that only applies to boys? As my mamma told me "I raised mine!" I’ll see yah when I get back.

Lonewolf:

Thanks, Mom. Come on Kesha you goin’ with daddy.

(Lonewolf and Kesha exit)

PERFORMING COMMUNITIES
Carpetbag | Cornerstone | Dell'Arte | Jump-Start
LAPD | Pregones | Roadside | WagonBurner
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