The Complete Works of Pat Parker

by Pat Parker

  Uhuru: I’m sorry to hear that. Tell her not to worry anymore. Her son is dead. I’m just borrowing his body. I am Uhuru. She shouldn’t worry about me. I am strong. I am from the earth.

  Frank: What the hell’s wrong with you? Are you nuts? You’re no goddamn guru. You’re Frank Simpson, Junior and I’m your father not some earth or blood. Are you ashamed of us, of me? People respect me; they…

  Uhuru: Shit.

  Frank: Wha…

  Uhuru: Shit. That’s what I said. Shit. Horse shit. Bullshit. Plain old crap. Respect! You don’t know what the word means. Who respects you? Who? Your people don’t respect you. You kill them, beat them, lock them in jails. And for what? For some rich ass white motherfucker that won’t even give you the time of day. Respect shit, old man. You ain’t worth a…

  Frank: You don’t know what you’re talking about. People respect me. You think every prisoner in jail gets to visit their fathers in here? Naw, they make them sit apart from each other and talk on telephones. The decent people in this town respect me. The criminals and the malcontents don’t respect the law, but…

  Uhuru: What law! Are you the law? Yeah, you are the law. You with your gun and your club are the law. You’re the law to your wife. You were the law to me and every other poor bastard who didn’t have a goddamn thing or money to buy their way out. But what about your fellow pigs? Do you think they respect you? Do you? These ofay sons of bitches think you’re a fool. A chump. A turkey. And you are. You’ve been on this force for years and what have you got? You should have been a detective years ago. And you had to fight your ass off just to get those jive sergeants’ stripes. And the only reason you got those is cause brothers was blowing up stations and the white desk sergeants were getting killed and these bastards needed some Black cannon fodder. Respect! You’re a fool. You’ve been killing your own blood and for what? Damn you, for what?

  Frank: You’re mixed up. I haven’t been killing people. I’ve killed two men and they didn’t give me a choice. They were breaking the law. They were stealing people’s property. We need policemen. Somebody’s got to do this job or we’d have chaos. Criminals would take over. The streets aren’t safe, son. Somebody’s got to protect…

  Uhuru: Protect what? Protect the mayor from poor people demanding a right to live. Protect the governors and president from people wanting jobs and mothers not wanting their sons to die in fucked wars. Who the hell are you protecting? Are you protecting me? Yeah, you’re protecting me. You’ve protected me from everything I ever wanted to do. The time you saw me holding Jimmy Fenner’s hand, you protected me. You had that poor devil locked up and sent to prison as a sex offender; a child molester. You had that man sent to jail, and he never touched me. You made me lie. Great protector of right, you made me lie, and send a man to prison. And he never touched me. And you know what’s so goddamn funny, dad. I wanted him to. I wanted him to love me. I needed for somebody to care for me, just as I was. And you made me betray him.

  Frank: Son, you didn’t understand. You were too young. That man was a homosexual. Maybe you hadn’t been molested, but he was going to. He would have made you like him. Made you into a pervert hanging around restrooms and hiding out in bars. Feeling up little boys. That’s not what I wanted my son to be.

  Uhuru: What you wanted. That’s what’s wrong! It’s always been what you wanted. Never what I wanted. Never what mother wanted. I never wanted to be what you wanted. I wanted to be me.

  Frank: You’re not being fair. We had some good times. Fishing, picnics, and what about the summer I coached little league. You were a hell of a ballplayer. I was so proud…

  Uhuru: I hated it. Every damn minute of it. I never wanted to be a baseball player. I never liked fishing, but you couldn’t understand that. No, not Frank Simpson’s son. He had to be a man. A big, strong, virile man. A jock. You didn’t care about me. Just what I looked like to the neighbors. You never gave a damn about my feelings. You’re a man. Men don’t cry. Men have to be strong. Have to stand up for their rights. Men have to take care of things; protect their families. Make a damn world.

  Frank: But men do have to do those things. I know it’s not easy. Many was the time when I wanted to do other things that I liked better. But I couldn’t. I had you and your mother to think of.

  Uhuru: But you could have done it, dad. You never asked us. You never once asked us how we felt about it. Mother would have done anything to… I guess she did. She sold her soul to you. And me. Did you ever even think about what she felt, her dreams, her fantasies? I never did. Now it’s too late for me. But maybe it can be changed. Maybe some poor bastard won’t have to live it like I did. Or you. Maybe some woman will stand up and scream; walk out. Maybe some kid will pick up that damn bat and hit his old man with it. In any case, it doesn’t matter now. I’ve become what I wanted. I’ve become what I wanted. I’m strong now. I’ve protected my family.

  Frank: I don’t understand. What are you saying?

  Uhuru: I’m a man now. I’ve protected my family from the criminals that would harm them. That’s why I killed that pig. He’s the criminal. You’re the criminal. All the police and the mayors and governors that give them the orders, the right to do what they do. All the rich bastards that deny people their lives. The Rockefellers, and DuPonts, and Kennedys, and Carnegies. They’re the criminals. Not the people you have locked up in this jail. They’re free. And you and all the badges and guns and laws in the world will never be able to change that. I have nothing else to say to you. I’m ready to go back now and join my brothers.

  Frank: Junior, wait. We haven’t talked about the doctors or getting you a good lawyer. We got to make plans. A defense.

  Uhuru: I am Uhuru. I come from the earth to cleanse the earth. I am the seed of the blood of my people. To the earth, I must return.

  Frank: What about your mother? Me?

  Uhuru: I am Uhuru. I come from the earth.

  The young man knocks on the door. He leaves with the policeman and returns to his cell. The old man remains seated. He looks at the empty chair. Lights down.

  Pinochle

  A One-Act Play

  Cast:

  Ann-Marie: a Black woman mid-thirties, casually dressed.

  Lucille: a Black woman mid thirties, casually dressed.

  Tish: a Black woman (thirties, casually dressed).

  Setting: The home of Lucille. Moderately furnished apartment. The scene takes place in her living room. It contains a couch, end table, and a stereo system, which rests on a shelf set. There are numerous books and stuffed animals. The radio is playing a local jazz station. In the center of her living room is a card table with four chairs. Two decks of cards, a pad, and a pencil are on the card table. A large bowl of potato chips and a small bowl containing dip sits on her coffee table.

  Scene: Lucille is walking around her living room. She walks to the table and straightens the pad and pencil. She hums along to the music of the radio. The doorbell rings and she goes to the right of the stage to answer it. Off stage: voices.

  Lucille: Hey girl, come on in. What’d you do? Buy out the store?

  (Tish enters carrying two large shopping bags containing beer and soda, cigarettes. She places the bag on the coffee table.)

  Tish: Naw, I just wanted to make sure that I’m comfortable while I whups on you turkeys tonight. (She rummages through one of the bags and takes out two decks of cards) And I even got two new decks of cards. I’m tired of your old tired cards with talcum flying all over the place.

  Lucille: Well I thank you to know that I bought new cards for tonight. Just so you jive niggers ain’t got nothing to bitch about tonight. And this morning on Starwise, John Wisser said that this is my night so you folks best getting ready for me. I intends to take all your money. Judy’s is having their annual sale next month and I intend to get a whole new wardrobe at yall’s expense.

  Tish: Well, you just better slow down, cause if you’re counting on my money for your clothes then you better see if Salvation A
rmy is having a give-away. No way out of hell am I gonna let you take my hard earned bucks. Not today, no way.

  Lucille: How’s it going at the center anyway?

  Tish: Girl, please. I don’t even want to think about that place tonight. I tell you, if I wasn’t a feminist, I’d kill some of those simple minded bitches that come through that place. I had some simple minded sucker cuss me out today, and I was trying to help her. Oh! I had to give this number to the service. I’m on call tonight.

  Lucille: Why did the woman want to cuss you out, Tish? What you do to the child?

  Tish: Me! Shit I did everything I could to help that dumb fool. I called hospitals all over hell and back to try and make things easy for her and she was too damn lazy or stupid to get off her butt and get to them. Girl, I had Labs in hospitals calling me up to find out why she hadn’t showed. And this is after explaining to her, her mama and half her damn family why it was so important for her to go. Lucille, I tell the woman made me so mad. I mean ectopic pregnancy ain’t something you just play around with like a damn cold or something. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about that idiot or anybody like her. Where the hell is Ann-Marie and Theo at anyhow? This pinochle game ain’t on CP time is it?

  Lucille: Who knows. Ann-Marie has found herself a cute new number and it´s hard for the child to get out of bed these days. And you know Theo ain’t never been on time for anything in her life.

  Tish: Who’s Ann-Marie seeing? I didn’t hear anything about this.

  Lucille: Well, I wouldn’t expect so. It just happened Thursday night.

  Tish: Thursday! Two days ago Thursday. Where? Wait let me get a beer and sit down. This sounds like this is gonna be a tale to hear.

  Lucille: Oh! Let me get this stuff in the fridge. I got some cold beer. I’ll bring you one back. You hungry? You want something to eat, a sandwich or something?

  Tish: Naw. Beer’s just fine. I hit Flints after work today. They getting right funky with their ribs though. They must be killing some fat ass pigs these days.

  Lucille: (Lucille leaves the room, off stage from the kitchen) You want a glass, Tish?

  Tish: No thanks. I think I’ll butch it up tonight. (Chuckles)

  Lucille: (Returns to the living room carrying two cans of beer and a glass) Here. (Pours her beer into a glass) Yeah, Anne-Marie stopped by here Thursday and said she was tired of sleeping alone. Tried to talk me into going down to Ollies with her, but I was too tired to go off into a bar and especially that bar. Those ippy-dippy white girls get on my last nerve.

  Tish: Come on now, Cille, you not gonna go into your Black nationalist bag are you?

  Lucille: Not now. I’m not trying to put anybody down, but those folks in that bar bother me. I mean if you ain’t a vegetarian, and have your whole horoscope memorized you can’t have a conversation. I mean you can only talk about Plankton for so long. Unless of course, you’re one of those Pacman freaks and I can’t get into putting my money into a pinball machine so Ollie can get rich.

  Tish: Yeah, but they got some sane people there. I’ve met some real interesting women there with some real consciousness.

  Lucille: Yeah cause you fall off into your political bag. Feminist and communist and classism number. You can find a got damn flea to challenge to talk to. I ain’t got time or interest in that.

  Tish: Well, you better start taking time. Shit is gonna hit the fan soon.

  Lucille: Yeah, yeah I know, but we not here to discuss politics. This is pinochle night remember? You plan on allowing pinochle after the revolution or is that going to be outlawed too?

  Tish: Yeah, we going to have pinochle, but we not gonna let some no playing sucker like you play. Maybe we’ll let you deal the damn cards.

  Lucille: Hey, you getting pissed off at me?

  Tish: Now I ain’t pissed, but sometime I worry about you. You act like things are always gonna be the same. You’ll always go to your job, and teach English and maybe in ten years you’ll become principal and you’ll always come home and listen to music and go out to a club once a month and fall in and out of love and it just ain’t gonna be like that. These capitalist motherfuckers are getting ready for war and our asses is gonna be in a sling. It’s not going to stay the same.

  Lucille: Look Tish, I know that. I’m just not sure I buy your revolution theory. I can’t see these people in this country revolutioning about nothing. Bloods want the latest rags and disco skates or some shit, and the white folks want to keep the bloods out of their life, and the Chicanos talking about getting land and I don’t see all these people getting together around nothing but bitching.

  Tish: But that all theory is a myth. It only took ten percent of the population to have the so-called American Revolution. It doesn’t take all to do it.

  Lucille: Yeah, but you can’t even get women’s groups together. How you figure to get women and men and Blacks and whites and Gays and Old folks and the working class and all those folks together. Shit. You can’t even get the dyke’s at Ollie’s to get together around the music for the frigging juke box. I mean shit. I am not trying to stop you from doing what you think you got to do, but I just see a long ass road to hoe and a lot of pain and frustration. Who knows, maybe you’re right; but I just don’t know. And I’m not ready to take that shit on.

  Tish: Cille, you ain’t never heard me say a damn thing about easy. We’re in the belly of the monster and he ain’t dumb, but we got to try; otherwise we just lay back and let these bastards do us in. And remember, more and more countries are getting hip to the madness this country be doing. I mean look at Iran and Nicaragua and Chile.

  Lucille: Yeah, look at them. Iran got some mad men over there and folks offing each other and Nicaragua is scared to death that Reagan is gonna kick they ass and I just don’t know. Seems like you move two steps forward and three back. Well, we’ll see. If anybody gonna make folks upset and revolt, Ronnie-baby will for sure.

  Tish: Yeah, well he’s definitely putting out some sturdy shit for people to smell. Anyway, tell me about Annie-May, excuse me, Ann-Marie.

  Lucille: Girl, you better be careful. If she ever heard you call her that you would be in fist city.

  Tish: Hell that’s what her mama named her.

  Lucille: Yeah, but you ain’t her mama and she will get highly upset with your black ass for even daring to remind her of that. Miss thing would just as assume that East Monroe Louisiana never existed.

  Tish: Well that’s for damn sure. She’s almost as bad as this sister I met in L.A. who told me her name was Aynn Jo Nes and come to find out, her name was Ann Jones. I mean can you believe it. It pisses me off so much to think that those bastards got us so confused and fucked up that we don’t even want to be who we really are. Damn what a crock of shit.

  Lucille: There you go again. Let me tell you about Ann-Marie. She goes down to Ollie’s and plants herself on one of the bar stools. Now girl, you know Miss Thang was desperate. She probably ain’t been on a stool in ten years, but it’s harder to cruise from a table. So, anyway, she meets some strange white child. I mean this woman was a real space cadet. She starts telling Ann-Marie that she’s from another planet, and we have to get in tune with the cosmic love of the universe. She says that she’s not really a human, but a cosmic clone sent her to radiate tranquility among earthlings.

  Tish: Hold it Lucille! You got to be putting me on. No way in hell am I gonna believe this shit even in Ollie’s. Cosmic my ass.

  Lucille: Naw, naw. I am not jiving. I swear on a whole stack of bibles. Ann-Marie said that she couldn’t believe it was happening. She claims that she kept looking at the woman to see if she was stoned or something, but her eyes were clear and all she was drinking was that Crystal Geyser crap. Child, she had me in stitches. She said the woman claims that we have to release our souls and bodies to the universe. That we are throwing off the cosmic flow, because we deal in humanistic needs; things like love and jealousy are against the natural order of the universe. Animals were never meant to love; a bull doesn�
��t love a cow. So sex is the end, the ultimate and we only serve to confuse and distort the universal flow by expecting anything but sex from our relationships.

  Tish: Jesus H. Christ. Here the whole damn world is going to hell on a jet liner and this fool’s talking cosmic. I can’t believe that Ann-Marie sat up and let some turkey bend her ear like that and didn’t say anything. I mean horny is one thing, but nobody is that damn desperate.

  Lucille: No, she didn’t go home with her. That was her first conversation. She claims that she finally told the woman that she was a demonic force set to destroy the world. That she ate the leavings of animals, heart, liver, lungs, that she practiced rituals every full moon to alter the course of the rides. Said she freaked the child out so much that she got up and left her crystal water and left the bar.

  Tish: Well, when this new love of her life show up? And how did she have the stomach to talk to anybody after that first fool.

  Lucille: Now, I hear that. She says she drank double shots for the next hour trying to get over that child. Anyway, she says she sitting there and getting more depressed by the minute. Some jive talking nerd slides in next to her and starts trying to make a play. Well Miss Thang ain’t hardly ready for this. Says she’s just about ready to cuss out this turkey, insult his mama and generally get quite colored and this fine looking young butch slides up and tells the dude, she doesn’t appreciate him trying to hit on her old lady. Well, the dude apparently has had the ground rules laid out so he hats up and gets on down the bar apologizing the whole way.