Baby Doll & Tiger Tail

by Tennessee Williams

  ARCHIE: Will you turn that thing down!

  BABY DOLL: Aw, shut-tup!

  ARCHIE: I said turn that thing down!

  [She turns it up and joins in singing.]

  Git outta my way, Aunt Rose!

  [He moves to the mirror over the sink to finish his early morning dressing—talcum, aftershave. Aunt Rose scuttles out of his way at his bark; she busies herself with repetitive table wiping, etc. Archie then creeps upstairs to peek through the door to Baby Doll’s room; he slips in and eventually announces his arrival by turning down the radio.]

  BABY DOLL: Archie Lee, you’re a mess in them glasses that make your eyes big as a hoot-owl’s, always peekin’ an’ peerin’.

  ARCHIE: Without ’em I couldn’t see you to admire you.

  BABY DOLL: Too had they don’t improve your appearance as much as your sight, you fat ole thing. No, Siree, you’re not exactly a young girl’s dream come true! less she was havin’ a nightmare—OWWWWWW!

  [Archie Lee has quickly come up behind her and whacks her bottom.]

  Cut that out. . .

  ARCHIE: You better quit sayin “fat ole thing” about me!!!

  BABY DOLL: Well, you get young and thin and I’ll quit calling you a fat old thing—

  ARCHIE: You goin’ around like that today? For a woman of your modest nature that squawks like a hen if her husband dast to put his hand on her, you sure do seem to be advertising your—

  BABY DOLL [drowning him out]: My figure has filt out a little since I bought my trousseau AND paid for it with m’daddy’s insurance money. I got two choices, wear clo’se skintight or go naked, now which do you want me t’—

  ARCHIE: Aw, now hell—

  [The phone rings downstairs. This sound is instantly followed by an outcry even higher and shriller.]

  BABY DOLL: Aunt Rose Comfort screams ever time the phone rings.

  ARCHIE: What does she do a damn fool thing like that for?

  [The phone rings again. Aunt Rose Comfort screams again. The scream is followed by high breathless laughter.]

  BABY DOLL: She says a phone ringing scares her.

  ARCHIE [shouting]: Aunt Rose Comfort, why don’t you answer the phone?

  AUNT ROSE [coming out of the kitchen and walking toward the hall telephone, withered hand to her breast]: I cain’t catch m’ breath, Archie Lee. Phone give me such a fright.

  ARCHIE: Answer it!

  AUNT ROSE [has recovered some now and gingerly lifts the receiver]: Hello? This is Miss Rose Comfort McCorkle speaking, but the lady of the house is Mrs. Archie Lee Meighan, who is the daughter of my brother that passed away. . .

  ARCHIE: They don’t wanta know that! Who in hell is it talking and what do they want?

  AUNT ROSE: I’m hard of hearing. Could you speak louder please?

  ARCHIE [storming over]: Gi’me that damn phone.

  AUNT ROSE: Archie Lee, honey. . .

  [Baby Doll’s radio is blaring by this time.]

  ARCHIE: . . .and turn off that goddamn radio music.

  [Baby Doll slops over to the radio, pouting all the while and turns it off.]

  AUNT ROSE: Archie Lee, honey. . .

  ARCHIE: Will you shut up and git back in the kitchen and don’t speak a word. And don’t holler no more in this house, and don’t cackle no more in it either, or by God I’ll pack you up and haul you off to th’ county home at Sunset.

  AUNT ROSE: What did you say, Archie Lee, did you say something to me?

  ARCHIE: Yeah, I said shoot. [Into receiver.] Hello? HELLO! [He slams down the receiver.] Damn fools’ve hung up!

  [Aunt Rose cackles uneasily and enters the kitchen. Suddenly, we hear another scream from her. Lights come up in the kitchen to reveal Old Fussy, the hen, slipping into the kitchen.

  [Silva Vacarro and his partner Rock enter the yard, talking quietly to each other. Silva’s a handsome, cocky young Italian. He has a way of darting glances right and left which indicates a certain watchfulness, a certain reserve. He wears whipcord breeches, laced boots, and a white undershirt. He has a Roman Catholic medallion on a chain about his neck. In his belt he carries a whip, a small riding crop.]

  ROCK [in a hoarse whisper]: Maybe it figures. But it sure puzzles me why you want to bring cotton to the guy that burned down your gin. . .

  SILVA: You don’t know the Christian proverb about how you turn the other cheek when one has been slapped. . .

  ROCK: When both cheeks has been kicked, what are you gonna turn then?

  SILVA: You just got to turn and keep turning. Go on back and stop the wagons. Lemme go up to his house.

  [Rock turns to go, spots the gas can in the rubble, picks it up, with a sly grin turns to Silva.]

  ROCK: Hey, his initials are stamped right here on the can.

  SILVA: S. R.?

  ROCK: Yeah. Sears and Roebuck!

  [Rock pitches the can which makes a loud noise. Both laugh heartily, especially Rock.

  [Silva walks toward the house with a disgusted look on his face at the garbage in the yard. He whistles.

  [The sound of the laughter and the can hanging to the ground, Silva’s whistling and walking through the rubble has Archie bounding out of the house and onto the porch.]

  ARCHIE: Don’t say a word. A little bird already told me that you’d be bringing those twenty-seven wagons full of cotton straight to my door, and I want you to know that you’re a very lucky fellow.

  SILVA [dryly]: How come?

  ARCHIE: I mean that I am in a position to hold back other orders and give you a priority. Well, come on in and have some coffee.

  SILVA: What’s your price?

  ARCHIE: You remember my price. It hasn’t changed.

  [Silence. There is the sense that Silva is inspecting him.]

  Hey, now looka here. Like you take shirts to a laundry. You take them Friday and you want them Saturday. That’s special. You got to pay special.

  SILVA: How about your equipment? Hasn’t changed either?

  ARCHIE: A-1 shape! Always was! You ought to remember.

  SILVA: I remember you needed a new saw cylinder. You got one?

  ARCHIE: Can’t find one on the market to equal the old one yet. Come on and have a cup of coffee. We’re all ready for you.

  SILVA: I guess when you saw my gin burning down last night you must’ve suspected that you might get a good deal of business thrown your way in the morning.

  ARCHIE: You want to know something?

  SILVA: I’m always glad to know something when there’s something to know.

  [Rock laughs wildly.]

  Go on back to the wagons. Wait for me there.

  ARCHIE: I never seen that fire of yours last night! Now come on in and have some coffee. No, sir, I never seen that fire of yours last night. We hit the sack right after supper and didn’t know till breakfast time this morning that your cotton gin had burned down.

  [They go up onto the porch.]

  Yes, sir, it’s providential. That’s the only word for it. Hey, Baby Doll!! It’s downright providential. Baby Doll!! Come out here, Baby Doll!!

  [Baby Doll enters.]

  BABY DOLL: Whu-ut?

  ARCHIE: You come right over here and meet Mr. Vacarro from the Syndicate Plantation.

  BABY DOLL: Oh, hello. Has something gone wrong, Archie Lee?

  ARCHIE: What do you mean, Baby Doll?

  BABY DOLL: I just thought that maybe something went—

  ARCHIE: What is your first name, Vacarro?

  SILVA: Silva.

  ARCHIE: How do you spell that?

  [Silva spells it “Capital S-I-L-V-A. ” Meanwhile, his eyes are on Baby Doll.]

  Oh, like every cloud has a silver lining.

  BABY DOLL: What’s that from? The Bible?

  SILVA: No, the Mother Goose book.

  BABY DOLL: Sounds foreign.

  SILVA: It is, Mrs. Meighan. I’m known as the wop that runs the Syndicate Plantation.

  ARCHIE: Don’t call yourself names. Let other folks call you names! I
’ll tell you! Gold, silver, or nickel-plated, you’re a mighty lucky little fellow that I can take a job of this size right now. Of course it means cancellations. Fitting you in ahead of Baugh and Pollitt, yep, and the Sheltons, but when misfortune hits your closest neighbor, you got to accommodate him first, that’s the good neighbor policy, boy! I believe in the good neighbor policy, Mr. Vacarro. You do me a good turn and I’ll do you a good turn. Tit for tat. Tat for tit is the policy we live on. AUNT ROSE COMFORT! Baby Doll, git your daddy’s sister to break out a fresh pot of coffee for Mr. Vacarro.

  BABY DOLL: You get her.

  SILVA: You sound like your business is holding up pretty good.

  ARCHIE: Holding up, hell, it’s expanding, it’s booming, almost too much to handle! You see, when you’ve built up a reputation over the years as the most honest, dependable type you can deal with in a particular line, why, then, it’s not a question of how much trade you can git but how much you can take care of!

  SILVA: That is surprisingly good news.

  ARCHIE: Surprising how?

  SILVA: I didn’t think I’d noticed much activity at the Meighan gin lately.

  ARCHIE: I reckon you been absorbed too much in affairs of your own to notice mine.

  SILVA: Well, now I’ll have more chance to notice, won’t I?

  [He is looking at Baby Doll who fans herself a bit self-consciously with a movie mag. She emits an enormous yawn.]

  BABY DOLL: Excuse my yawn. We went to bed kinda late last night.

  [Silva and Archie both notice the discrepancy.]

  ARCHIE: AUNT ROSE COMFORT!

  [Archie snaps his fingers in Baby Doll’s face.]

  I said git your ole maid aunt to break out some coffee! You hear!?

  BABY DOLL: Don’t snap your fingers at me like I was a house-nigger here.

  ARCHIE: Ha, ha, shoot! AUNT ROSE!

  [The volume of his call makes her scream. Archie envelops Baby Doll in an unwelcome embrace then exits into the house, calling “Aunt Rose.”]

  BABY DOLL [if she were talking of a title of great distinction]: So. You’re a wop?

  SILVA: I’m a Sicilian, Mrs. Meighan. A very ancient people. . .

  BABY DOLL: Sish! Sish!

  SILVA: No ma’am. Siss! Sicilian.

  BABY DOLL: Oh, how unusual.

  [Archie bursts back out on the porch.]

  ARCHIE: Sometimes my baby feels neglected because I got to give so much time to my work. But this baby is my own little girl, every precious ounce of her is mine, all mine. [Uncontrollable laughter.] Now, Baby Doll, you entertain this young fella here while I’m ginnin’ out his cotton. At noon, at noon? You take him in town to the Kotton King Hotel and buy him a chicken dinner and sign my name on the check. Yeh, I’m tellin’ you—

  SILVA: What?

  ARCHIE: All right. Let’s get GOING! Baby, knock me a kiss!

  BABY DOLL: What’s the matter with you? Have you got drunk before breakfast?

  ARCHIE: Hahaha.

  BABY DOLL: Somebody say something funny?

  ARCHIE: Offer this young fellow here to a cup of coffee. I got to get busy ginning that cotton.

  [He extends his great sweaty hand to Vacarro.]

  Glad to be able to help you out of this bad situation. It’s the good neighbor policy.

  SILVA: What is?

  ARCHIE: You do me a great turn and I’ll do you a good turn sometime in the future.

  SILVA: I see.

  ARCHIE: Tit for tat, tat for tit, as they say. Hahaha. Well, make yourself at home here. Baby Doll, I want you to make this gentleman comfortable in the house.

  BABY DOLL: You can’t make anyone comfortable in this house. Lucky if you can find a chair to sit in.

  ARCHIE [offstage]: Alright! Let’s move those wagons. We got us some cotton to gin today.

  BABY DOLL [after a slight pause]: Want some coffee?

  SILVA : No, just a cool drink of water, thank you ma’am.

  BABY DOLL: The kitchen water runs warm, but if you got the energy to handle an old-fashioned pump, you can get you a real cool drink from that cistern over there. . .

  SILVA: I got energy to burn.

  [Silva strides through the tall seeding grass to an old cistern with a hand pump. He looks about contemptuously as he crouches to the cistern.]

  Dump their garbage in the yard, phew! IGNORANCE and INDULGENCE and STINK!

  AUNT ROSE: Sometimes water comes and sometimes it don’t.

  [The water comes pouring from the rusty spout.]

  SILVA: This time it did. . .

  BABY DOLL: Bring me a dipper of that nice cool well water, please.

  AUNT ROSE: I don’t have the strength anymore in my arm that I used to, to draw water out of that pump.

  [She approaches, smoothing her ancient apron. Vacarro is touched by her aged grace.]

  SILVA: Would you care for a drink?

  AUNT ROSE: How do you do? I’m Aunt Rose Comfort McCorkle. My brother was Baby Doll’s daddy, Mr. T. C. McCorkle. I’ve been visiting her since. . . since. . .

  [She knits her brow, unable to recall precisely when the long visit started.]

  SILVA: I hope you don’t mind drinking out of a. . .

  AUNT ROSE: SCUSE ME PLEASE! That ole hen, Fussy, has just gone back in my kitchen!

  [She runs crazily to the house. Baby Doll has wandered back to the cistern as if unconsciously drawn by the magnetism of the young Italian male.]

  BABY DOLL: They’s such a difference in water! You wouldn’t think so, but there certainly is.

  [Silva brings up more water, then strips off his shirt and empties the brimming dipper over his head.]

  I wouldn’t dare to expose myself like that. I take such a terrible sunburn.

  SILVA: I like the feel of a hot sun on my body.

  BABY DOLL: Yes, well, it looks to me like you are natcherally dark.

  SILVA: Yep, like you are naturally white, as white as cotton.

  BABY DOLL: I’m certainly not colored, nobody could accuse me of havin’ colored blood in me.

  SILVA: Have I been accused of that?

  BABY DOLL: I reckon with such dark skin some folks that don’t like foreigners might suspicion you of havin’ some colored blood in you.

  SILVA : You know any folks that have expressed this opinion?

  BABY DOLL: Well, if I did, I wouldn’t repeat it, I’m not a person that tattles. Anyhow you got greenish eyes and, well, I heard you tell a nigger best by the color his gums and the roots of his finger-nails.

  SILVA: Would you like to examine my gums and the roots of my finger-nails?

  BABY DOLL: The subject doesn’t in’trest me a-tall.

  SILVA: What does interest you? Particularly, Mrs. Meighan?

  BABY DOLL: Oh, I like a good movie, and I like movie magazines and I—

  SILVA: Does that exhaust the number of your interests?

  BABY DOLL: I’m not gonna stand out here in this hot yard and give a complete list of all my interests in life.

  [She crosses to a shade tree.]

  SILVA: But if you stood in the shade and made out a complete list of those interests in your life, I suppose that Mr. Meighan would be head of the list?

  BABY DOLL: That man would be at the opposite end of the list.

  SILVA: I don’t want to ask embarrassing questions but I don’t understand why you have married this man at the opposite end of the list.

  BABY DOLL: There was—special circumstances.

  SILVA: Such as? —If I may ask?

  BABY DOLL: My daddy was a sick man for a long time and everything but his insurance money had gone on doctor an’ hospital expenses and, well, he and Archie Lee was Lodge Brothers. You know. Masons.

  SILVA: Engaged together in the mason’s trade?

  BABY DOLL: In what?

  SILVA: Masonry, a form of construction?

  BABY DOLL: No, no, Masons is a club, it’s not—constructive or nothin’.

  SILVA: Oh. A social club. I see. Tennis, golfing, all that. />
  BABY DOLL: Drinkin’ mostly, I’d say. You could never get in it, bein’ foreign an’ probably—Cath’lic?

  SILVA: Not sure I’d want to be in it. Prejudices like that seem—narrow-minded these days.

  [He moves closer with a slightly sensual smile.]

  BABY DOLL [flustered]: What was I—Oh, yes, how I got married, the circumstances. Well. Archie Lee’s cotton gin was doin’ good business, then, befo’ you built yours and put his outa business practickly.

  SILVA: I hope you don’t blame me for that circumstance contributing to your—disappointment in marriage.

  BABY DOLL: No, no, but life has—

  SILVA: Reversals of fortune in it.

  BABY DOLL: That’s fo’ sure.

  SILVA: Now he’s got a gin doing business, and I’ve got what?

  BABY DOLL: You’re young and—you got your health anyhow. —My daddy, he wasn’t real old but his health give out. Got sicker an’ sicker. He only had one liver left.

  SILVA: That’s the usual number of livers, Mrs. Meighan.

  BABY DOLL: Kidney! I meant one kidney which was also affected! So, well, Archie Lee told Daddy he knew of this New York doctor that could take a kidney out of some kind of an ape and put this ape kidney—you shouldn’t of brought up this subject. I don’t want to go on with it. [Sniffles.] Such a—awful— heat spell. . .