OGUN SIZE:

So she tells Oya she pregnant with Shango’s baby. Just walked up to Oya with them hips you know and was like my name Shun, I got his baby so you ain’t shit to him. And see Oya can’t have no kids. Everybody know that. Now she scared she gone lose Shango. Which would be good if she left the nigga… But she can’t see that, nah she got to show him how much she willing to do for Shango. How far she willing to go for Shango. So she can’t give him no child, she cut off her ear.

OSHOOSI SIZE:

What!

OGUN SIZE:

Put it in a bowl and walked it to him while he was watching TV at her house. She ain’ scream or nothing… Cut off her ear and gave it to him. Say, I don’t want nobody but you. Say this mark me as yours…

OSHOOSI SIZE:

            I know I am still on probation!

            I know Og.

            Damn!

            I know I was once in prison.

            I am out and I am on probation.

            Damnit man.

            I ain’t trying to drive to Fort Knox?

            I ain’t about to scale the capital…

            I want a ride.

            I want to drive out to the bayou…

            Maybe take a lady down there…

            And relax…

            Shit what if I just wanted to go by myself?

            What if I wanted to be there alone?

            What difference it make?

OGUN SIZE:

            What you come to tell my brother?

ELEGBA:

            Ask him.

OGUN SIZE:

            How he know if you ain’t told him yet?

ELEGBA:

            He just ain’t told you yet.

OGUN SIZE:

            So you got riddles for me this day

            ‘Legba.

ELEGBA:

            You shouldn’t be out here this early.

            You should be sleeping or something…

            It’s still night it’s so early.

OGUN SIZE:

            You got something to say to me say it.

ELEGBA:

            I told you who I come for.

OGUN SIZE:

            Well he in my house and I say he sleep.

ELGBA:

            Keep him in there… Locked up in your spot

            Size Number One.

            ‘Cause if the law catch him…

BLIND LOUIE: Lissen I’m a be straight up with you, Diane, I need money, as much as you can spare - now – see, I’m puttin’ my shit out heah – ‘cause I’m sick, man, real sick – I gotta go cop – I’m sorry to be like this but I can lie and say I need it for somethin’ else y’know stand here, and try and cop a plea and perpetrate a fraud. I’m not doin’ that, Diane. I’m a junkie.

DIANE: People can’t be trusted. (Beat) Only Mary, Mary’s the only one. The rest of the human race is a mess of parasites. This fucking collective mass of parasites who see the guilt to put each other down, use each other and call it love when all it is is desperation. Because they’re afraid of being alone. All that shit is bogus. (Pause) So I don’t want it at all man.

ALEXIS: I read about a girl / a fat girl who lives in a dirty house / then wakes up thin in a clean house / and Jimmy says, “that girl, that’s you right? / Alexis / that girl is you right / I can tell that’s you” / but I say, “it’s my friend it’s not me. I know someone it’s not me” / Jimmy looks long / hard / deep / “no not no friend it’s you, Alexis / it’s you.”

VERA: Have I told you about the lesbian who tried to seduce / me?

EMMA: Yes.

VERA: She showed up at the house, saying she has suck a big, whaddayacallit.

EMMA: Clitoris.

VERA: Clitoris, right, and she said it would be terrific, and all that. And I said no thank you, and she went away. Nice woman. Very pretty, actually.

BEN: Now who are the people speaking up on behalf of the destitute? The American Communist Party. Who is talking about racial equality, twenty-five years before the Civil Rights movement? Same answer. Who is calling attention to the fact that Russians are dying by the millions fighting fascism so that American hands can stay clean? Same answer, Emma. So who is my dad’s allegiance to? Is it to J. Edgar Fucking Hoover? Is it to a president who fully intends to sell out the Soviets once Hitler is out of the way? No, it’s to his party, it’s to the honest working-class Russians who are dying so that he can be free. So that his kids, and their kids, that’s you, could be free.

MORTY: Mostly we’re talking about nothing, we’re talking about, I don’t know, a good recipe for soap. You have a good recipe for soap, you mention it to somebody else in the Party, next thing you know you’re meeting a guy named Nikolai on a bench, handing over your soap recipe so some Russian kids can have a nice bath. This is the kind of thing that would later be called “spying,” and for these people life would become hell.

BABA YAGA

Baba Yaga did not want to be disturbed,

so she found a hut far away from the tourist center.

Anything you have ever seen in a picture—

Red Square? Or the Kremlin?—

is located far away from the realm of Baba Yaga

in the land of the Truly Dead.

Baba Yaga did not want to be surprised,

so she set that hut atop tall chicken legs

that run in wild circles if a stranger ever approaches.

The hut also lets out blood-curdling screams,

so that no one may ever sneak up on Baba Yaga,

especially little girls (those sneaky little bitches).

Baba Yaga did not want to be bothered,

so she surrounded the hut with a fence made of bones.

Each bone post is topped by a skull with eye sockets that glow like coals in the dark.

Oh, did Baba Yaga mention? There is one empty bone post.

In case a pretty little skull should happen her way.

To do her bidding and keep her company, Baba Yaga has enchanted three flying hands.

But do not ask about them.

In fact, do not ask about anything.

For every time Baba Yaga is asked a question…

She ages one year!

This is one of the reasons she despises little girls.

They always ask questions:

Why do you look so old, Baba Yaga?

Why do you have such bony legs, Baba Yaga?

Why are you so mean, do you hate me,

Why do you hate me, Baba Yaga?

And just like that, little girl, in five seconds, Baba Yaga has aged five years.

HAUNT JOHNNY

What's your name?

                  HAUNT JOHNNY inspects her hand,

                  holding it out, stroking her fingers, pulling her

                  thumb and pinky apart.

                  JEAN closes her eyes.

JEAN
Uh.

HAUNT JOHNNY
Or you don’t like to say.

JEAN
Jean.

HAUNT JOHNNY
Jean, you have hard hands.

                  JEAN opens her eyes.

JEAN
They didn’t used to be.

                  He looks closer.

HAUNT JOHNNY
Hands get harder with the times.

                  He measures his own outspread hand against hers.

JEAN
What’s your name?
 

HAUNT JOHNNY
Johnny.

But they call me Haunt Johnny ever since I was small over there.

JEAN
Haunt Johnny?

                  He nods.

Because you are like to be a ghost.

I will blink.

And you will never have been here.

                Dusk in a muddy, rat-infested country Inn-yard.

                NIM DULLYN knocks on a door. His wrist bleeds.

                No response.

                He knocks louder.

NIM

Oy!

Ope the Door.

                More knocking.

NIM

Oy!

I got ear of him.

                From Within:

MARGARET

Who’s there?

NIM

A Friend.

                The Door is opened a sliver.

MARGARET

What is a Friend?

NIM

Nim Dullyn who looks for the Player Killingworth.

                The Door is shut up.

MARGARET

O, fuck off.

Our REVELS now are ended.

No Players no more.

NIM

But night last!

I heard Killingworth play Caliban in the Droll.

VOICE

Ho, that’s a good laugh.

NIM

It WAS.

I laughed.

I laughed til I cried.

And my Year Long Curse of Silence of Grieff

was killed.

                The Door is opened.

                MARGARET KILLINGWORTH looks NIM over.

                He hides his bleeding wrist.

MARGARET
You ain’t laughed in a year?

BEDER: (fuming) Independence Day fireworks. How can the Israelis call it Independence Day and not choke on the words? They celebrate forcibly removing people from their homes? Killing men, women, children? This is cause for a party?

ADHAM: Let’s not get political.

BEDER: Who’s getting political?

GEORGE: Our friend Adham is in a perfect position to understand.

ADHAM: I am?

THEO: Ha.

ADHAM: I don’t know how.

GEORGE: As Palestinian, a, a, refugee.

ADHAM: Sorry, I don’t understand.

GEORGE: Your world. Where you live. I mean, what’s going on now. The sublime mixed with the horrific. The Egyptian army building up in the Sinai…

THEO: Some of that is overblown.

GEORGE: Not at all. And the Israeli generals panicking, taking the reins from the Prime Minister. We have been hearing about how dire it is, all over the Middle East.

ADHAM: I’ve never known things not to be dire.

DIANA: You should stay longer.

ADHAM: For more parties?

DIANA: To see London. Didn’t you just get here? Why are we sending him off so quickly?

THEO: That’s how the university works these thing out. They rush you in, pat you on the back, and rush you out.

DIANA: Well, it’s silly. There’s so much to see.

THEO: I agree.

GEORGE: Seriously, Adham. You can’t want to go back home now?

ADHAM: After meeting all of you?

GEORGE: After hearing the news.

ADHAM: What news?

GEORGE: The war is on. You didn’t hear? Evening Standard said the Israelis destroyed the entire Egyptian air force this morning.

ALEX: I get panic attacks over nothing. Absolutely nothing. I’ll be at work, or at home, or at school, and suddenly I’ll start shaking and I won’t be able to breathe.

          (pause)

School counselor says that it might be a chemical imbalance. Or, she says, it might have something to do with my past. I think it has something to do with my past, so if you’re my father, it’s probably your fault.

ALEX: My best friend and I used to write music together, all the time. But then he started going to one of those evangelical churches. He said he didn’t need music anymore, he said he was happier than music could ever make him. And I’d ask him to tell me about his church, but he said he couldn’t talk to me anymore because I was ruining his relationship with God. He doesn’t even look at me now. We’re in English together, first period, and every fucking morning he looks so happy.

PAULINE: (nearly frantic) Is it too much to ask that we have a normal fucking workday around here?! Here’s a news flash for all of you. What people believe doesn’t fucking matter. What matters are real things. Real things like money, the economy, and a country so beautiful that it can support a chain of big box retail stores that makes all its money off of selling people quilting supplies and construction paper. This is what matters.