Savage Conversations
Page 3
September 1875
Bellevue Place Sanitarium, 333 S. Jefferson Street,
Batavia, Illinois
11:00 a.m. Lincoln’s catafalque floats into Mary’s rooms on a pocket of air. Savage Indian lies inside a coffin on the same platform President Abraham Lincoln did on April 19, 1865.
SAVAGE INDIAN
Behold. I am what I was,
Dakhóta.
I am what I will be,
Dakhóta.
My words this night vibrate from the past to
Future constellations.
Ten million Natives in the New World in 1492.
Nine million Natives dead by 1860.
Thirty-eight Dakhóta hanged December 26, 1862.
Two hundred thousand Natives surviving in 1890.
Five million Natives alive in the New World in 2010.
Our seven council fires burn undaunted.
We live.
We live.
We live.
We live.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Peers inside the coffin.
You are all Mr. Lincoln to me.
THE ROPE SEETHES
Another noose hangs from the rafters in Mary Todd Lincoln’s suite.
Then another.
Another.
Another.
And another.
THE ROPE
We’re making progress here.
MARY TODD LINCOLN, SUMMER MANIC LIGHT
September 1875
Bellevue Place Sanitarium, 333 S. Jefferson Street,
Batavia, Illinois
4:00 p.m. The light is golden. Mary sits at her desk writing letter after letter, pleading for her release.
SAVAGE INDIAN
Reads aloud from the Chicago Tribune. Laughs.
Warning, Cigar Thief Indian Stalks Supply Wagons.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Moves her arm slowly across her paper.
At some point in your life, you realize that no one will ever touch you again
Or hold you in that special way your finest lover once held you—fingering the
Swollen flower between your legs, gently forcing it open; and you respond to the
Gesture so willingly wet, squeezing the third finger again and again; your breath
Entering a hungry, unrefined mouth; when his stamen finally pierces,
You cry out unexpectedly, even weep, knowing this touching to be the false
Promise of matrimony.
Did you know he once saved the strands of my hair, the ones that fell from my
Brush, saying they gave him a certain kind of pleasure?
The longest hairs, he saved in his desk drawer.
SAVAGE INDIAN
Puts the newspaper aside.
It’s the same for us when we take a head of hair from an enemy.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
He never kept the strands of Matilda’s hair as he did mine.
He never loved her!
Pauses.
But at some point in your life, you realize that no one will ever touch you again.
That way.
She pulls a loose blue thread from her dress sleeve.
Later, of course, he was shot.
And so you choose relief, a cup of special tea, a dose or two of laudanum. Tiptoeing on squeaky floors can be costly, though. Once, I fell on my backside and laughed so hard I woke the corners of every room. A servant finally came running …
SAVAGE INDIAN
Yawns.
Bad medicine.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Best medicine, fool! With laudanum I could rest easy.
Oh how I tried to make life
The same for those bestowed on me. Laudanum, I used for the children’s weak
Lungs—and mine. It suppresses coughs.
The Todds are renowned for having weak lungs.
SAVAGE INDIAN
The Todd men are renowned for their drunken brawls and brutality.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
My dear sons, all succumbed now, save Robert Todd Lincoln.
SAVAGE INDIAN
The clever one.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
The same.
SAVAGE INDIAN
An indifferent moon rises tonight. Good for memories, good for telling stories.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Perhaps the new one will not live. I said that to my dear Mr. Lincoln shortly
Before Robert was born. “Molly, Molly,” he said with his head in his hands.
Then he left my bed.
SAVAGE INDIAN
Folds the newspaper.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Did you know when I left the White House after Mr.
Lincoln was buried, not a
Single soul clasped my hands to bid me farewell or express sorrow for my fate.
It was as if I were dead and buried with the president.
Will no one ever touch me again?
SAVAGE INDIAN
I will.
He offers his hand to her, and together they twirl around the room to a waltz that is playing on the piano, sans pianist. A Dakota drum can be heard over the waltz.
SAVAGE INDIAN
In this dream I live.
Artwork of Mary’s room with the piano at Bellevue Place Sanitarium
MARY TODD LINCOLN LOVE SONG
September 1875
Bellevue Place Sanitarium, 333 S. Jefferson Street,
Batavia, Illinois
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Sits at the piano.
“And since you leave me
And thus deceive me
No scene can give me
Relief from pain
My only lover
Has prov’d a rover.
All joy is over.
My tears are vain.”
Stops playing.
My husband’s spirit tells me that in the future,
Metropolitan police of the district
Will shoot black men
And black children on
The streets of Washington like moving targets.
A homeless beggar with a dog is shot dead.
A black man named Gurley will be shot dead
In a dark stairwell of New York City public housing.8
Who says Northern abolitionists accept Negros?
SAVAGE INDIAN
Another séance, Mary? What news of the Dakhóta?
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Sings.
“Then go forever
Yet though we sever
Alas I never
Can wish you ill
While life is dearest
And joy is nearest
Thou Pinkie dearest
I love thee still.
My tears are vain.”
Stops playing.
Hear me, Pinkie,
You’re not the only man
Violated for his race.
SAVAGE INDIAN
Walks toward her.
I am not Pinkie.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Sings between fits of crying.
“My tears are vain.
In a thousand years,
A breath in the future,
A distant dream.”
Oh, Pinkie, what will we keep?
What will we lose?
SAVAGE INDIAN
Pinkie was a little Indian maid you conjured
During a séance with
Your husband and friends.
I AM NOT PINKIE!9
He grabs her, binds her legs and arms.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Coos with pleasure.
Such pageantry I’ve missed since Mr. Lincoln’s demise.
8. Sarah Maslin Nir, “Officer Peter Liang Convicted in Fatal Shooting of Akai Gurley in Brooklyn,” New York Times, February 11, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/nyregion/officer-peter-liang-convicted-in-fatal-shooting-of-akai-gurley-in-brooklyn.html.
9. Mark E. Neely Jr. and R. Ger
ald McMurtry, The Insanity File: The Case of Mary Todd Lincoln (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986), 81.
MARY TODD LINCOLN IMAGINES SERENITY
September 1875
Bellevue Place Sanitarium, 333 S. Jefferson Street,
Batavia, Illinois
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Looks kindly at Savage Indian as he sleeps in his chair.
One breath fills the teapot,
One breath pours.
Tonight, your flint knife stumbles and draws conclusions.
Here, we languish in a room filled with betrayal,
And the strangeness of being alone with you, and yet,
still alone.
THE ROPE SEETHES
THE ROPE
Three cat fits, and one duck fit to come.
MARY TODD LINCOLN, MEET THE RELATIVES
September 1875
Bellevue Place Sanitarium, 333 S. Jefferson Street,
Batavia, Illinois
11:00 a.m. Outside on the grounds of the sanitarium. Mary hasn’t slept in days. Regularly she puts her hands over her ears to block the noise in her head. Savage Indian watches her from a dark corner of the room.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Betwixt rage and sorrow, I to and fro.
She gathers stems and white flowers of the snakeroot.
Robert Todd Lincoln, you monstrous man!
My boy-you, what has happened to the babe I nourished?
You’ve grown secretive, cruel as Janus.
Lookie what I found growing on the estate grounds
As if a flower, a pretty bloom, Ageratina altissima.
Its poison remains active even after the plant dries.
White snakeroot induces milk sickness and so much more.
Did you know, my boy-you,
Ageratina altissima killed Nancy Hanks Lincoln?
Your father’s mother. Your grandmother.
Country woman, poor thing. Obtuse.
Most likely illegitimate. Didn’t know a thing about plants.
Tell me, Robert, is there a God that can stop me from
killing—
My boy-you?
I would like to skin you like a fetid fish,
Feed your conscience to worms,
Poor creatures, they would starve on so thin a meal.
I remember all, how you looked suckling at my breast,
Cross-eyed.
God bent one eye in, the other out.
“A warning,” said Emilie, my dearest younger sister.
“Cast of the eye,” said Lizzie, my older sister,
A bad sign.
I would have none of it. I coddled, cooed, and persuaded
with kisses
Your sweet eyes to focus.
As they once only beheld the image of me.
Betrayer. I will not be lulled, silenced, nor survived by my boy-you.
MARY TODD LINCOLN PLANS AN ESCAPE
September 1875
Bellevue Place Sanitarium, 333 S. Jefferson Street,
Batavia, Illinois
A nurse forces Mary Todd Lincoln back into her bedroom. She pours a glass of water for Mary and places it on the bedside table and then leaves. Mary retrieves a bowl of plant matter from beneath her bed. She stirs the water into the mixture. Covers it with a dry cloth. Slips it under the bed next to a chamber pot filled with human wreckage.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Now it must steep.
Soon, Robert dear, we will take tea together.
When breath shortens to choking fits,
Hardening at last my will,
Burning my lungs,
And goes on burning,
Breaking bone from sinew,
Shattering the connection between us,
You will see at last
Our world indeed is a bitter gasp.
In this dream we die.
SAVAGE INDIAN CLEANS HOUSE
September 1875
Bellevue Place Sanitarium, 333 S. Jefferson Street,
Batavia, Illinois
Savage Indian enters the room and retrieves the bowl of plant mixture from beneath her bed.
SAVAGE INDIAN
She’s found the laudanum again.
He tosses the plant mixture out the window,
Accidentally killing Nightjars,
A wandering skunk,
Two field mice.
Even the grass wilts in sorrow.
SAVAGE INDIAN AT PRAY
September 1875
Bellevue Place Sanitarium, 333 S. Jefferson Street,
Batavia, Illinois
Midnight. Savage Indian builds a fire on the grounds of Bellevue Place Sanitarium. He smokes his pipe and prays for the dead Nightjars, prays for the dead skunk, prays for the two dead field mice and the wilted grass.
SAVAGE INDIAN DREAMS OF GOATS
September 1875
Bellevue Place Sanitarium, 333 S. Jefferson Street,
Batavia, Illinois
SAVAGE INDIAN
Opens Mary Todd Lincoln’s trunks, searching for laudanum.
Collecting and hoarding,
Traits of the federal Indian agents.
He reads aloud from a faded sheet of paper.
October 1, 1872. Bill of lading. Mary Todd Lincoln. Three watches, $450.00; jewelry, $700.00; soaps and perfumes, $200.00; seventeen pairs of gloves, $60.00; three dozen handkerchiefs, ribbons, curtains, and sashes, $300.00.
He finds a new dress in a trunk. Puts it on over his clothes.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Watches him from her chair.
Our last child is thoroughly slicked dead, I know.
I combed Tad’s coffin locks with my own hairbrush,
Cleaned immigrant fibers from his head,
Removed any tangles, oiling his sweet scalp,
A final act of love from a mother to her son.
SAVAGE INDIAN
Holds up a lace bodice. Fastens it over the dress, backward.
What of Tad’s goats?
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Nanny and Nanko?
Oh, dead long ago. Eaten most likely.
She walks over to Savage Indian and unfastens the bodice and puts it away.
SAVAGE INDIAN
Picks up Mary Todd Lincoln’s Bible and reads.
In the name of the Lord thy God, amen.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Once, Nanny ate all the red rose bushes at the Old
Soldiers’ Home, the asylum for
Disabled veterans. My Mr. L. spent one-quarter of his presidency there.
He no longer slept in my bed, allowing that it was too dangerous for me
And the children.
She takes a small 9-mm revolver from the pocket of her dress.
Examines it. Stands and aims at her bed.
SAVAGE INDIAN
Thou shalt not kill.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Just Mr. Lincoln and the goats
And his soldiers sleeping together in their cozy sanctuary
Away from the heat of Washington,
Away from me, where he could dream of Matilda.
Did you know he once called her name in my bed?
SAVAGE INDIAN
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Pauses.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Nanko chewed the bulbs planted by John Watt,
Our White House gardener.
Mr. Watt and his wife were such good friends.
They helped me earn a little extra money, too.
Wistfully.
Dr. Patterson came by this morning to examine me?
He said I must forgive Robert Todd Lincoln
For condemning me to the nuthouse.
For stealing my fortune.
My oldest son and only survivor.
There is a bitter hollow left in my heart by what
Robert’s motivations provide me,
In this asylum,
In this house of foulest deeds.
She points the revolver at Savage Indian.
Peculiar that our children must outsurvive us,
Like thieves in the house, they take all,
Even a body’s milk. Bone. And blood.
SAVAGE INDIAN
Abstain from all appearance of evil.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
So my actions astound you?
SAVAGE INDIAN
You’ve killed before.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Quotes Shakespeare.
“What are these,
So wither’d and so wild in their attire,
That look not like the inhabitants o’ the earth,
And yet are on’t? Live you? Or are you aught
That man may question?…
By each at once her choppy finger laying
Upon her skinny lips. You should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so.”10
SAVAGE INDIAN
Quotes Shakespeare.
“Prithee, Kate, let’s stand aside and see the end of
This controversy.”11
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Holds her head as she paces around the room.
Quiet, Savage!
I intend to shoot Robert Todd Lincoln with Tad’s revolver.
Mr. Lincoln and I gave Tad the gun. Mine now.
Call this escapism if you like. Or you can think of it as revenge.
SAVAGE INDIAN
Reads from the Bible.
Thou shalt not kill.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Grabbing her ears screaming.
Stop speaking! You cannot read the Bible or quote Shakespeare.
SAVAGE INDIAN
If the doctor is adroit, convenable,
And says “I am all in your head,”
Then, dear lady, regrettably,
I know what you know.
But the truth is I read because a white man at Fort Snelling
Taught me to read the Bible.
He also quoted long passages of Shakespeare’s plays,
Marvelous stories.
Some Dakhótas took a sensible course and began to live like white men.
There was good reason for this,
But look what happened. My hair was clipped by the
Indian agent in 1859.
And I was still hanged with my short hair in 1862.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
You were hanged because you are a killer.
And take off my clothes, fiend. They’re mine.
Everything here belongs to me.
SAVAGE INDIAN
In the name of the Lord thy God, amen.
MARY TODD LINCOLN
Do not pray for me, Savage!
I have suffered for my convictions,
Suffered the poor,
Suffered the slaves,
Suffered my children,