SHERI REYNOLDS  |  Orabelle’s Wheelbarrow

Act Two

(LIGHTS COME UP shadowy blue and ghostly on the wheelbarrow at center stage. The PROMISES can be offstage, or they can be onstage moving around the wheelbarrow, but they should be unidentifiable.)

PROMISE 1
Promises aren’t solitary. Promises come in batches. They come in families, they get passed along—

PROMISE 2
Like old silver.

PROMISE 3
They’re in the attic and in the cellar, in trunks with broken latches, tied up with ribbon, smeared and faded. Their wax seals crumble away to leave oily stains.

PROMISE 2
Promises at the courthouse and promises at the jailhouse. Promises framed and hung on the wall.

PROMISE 3
Like art.

PROMISE 1
A promise doesn’t only exist between consenting parties. Oh no! It has an energy, a presence that disperses. A blown dandelion, fluff flying everywhere—

PROMISE 2 (sneezing)
A-choo.

PROMISE 3
A promise is polite. A promise says “god-bless-you.”

PROMISE 1
Sometimes.

(Pause.)

Sometimes a promise is rude.

PROMISE 2
A promise doesn’t only dress in black and white. Or if it does, it wears a lime-green slip beneath.

PROMISE 1
A promise is imaginative. Theatrical. Fond of tightropes.

PROMISE 2
A promise will blow up on you. Ka-pow. Ka-pow.

PROMISE 3
Promises pass through prison bars. Promises pass along barrels of guns.

PROMISE 2
Promises push up through your throat like new flowers.

PROMISE 1
Promises cower beneath your tongue.

PROMISE 3
There are promises that break in one way or another. If you don’t break them, your daughter might have to.

PROMISE 2
Your mother, your cousin, your lover.

PROMISE 1
There are promises to be kept another day, another lifetime. Promises that crawl back from the grave, a skeletal inheritance—

PROMISE 3
Remember me?

(Promises exit. ORABELLE enters, approaches her wheelbarrow, and LIGHTS COME UP. Orabelle wears a chicken-wire hat. Her wheelbarrow is full of objects made of chicken-wire.)

ORABELLE
There’s a lot you can make out of chicken-wire besides a barrier.

(She tips her hat at the audience.)

Who needs a fence when you can have a sombrero?

(She sets the hat on the ground and does a little dance around it, then laughs and puts it back on her head. LEONA and RUBIE enter. Leona has pom-poms. Rubie holds a basketball. Orabelle hands them a figure she pulls out of the wheelbarrow and they take it across the stage and begin sticking orange crepe paper into the holes.)

When the children were in school, they used to make floats for the Homecoming Parade, and they always started with chicken-wire.

(Leona and Rubie continue to work. LITTLE PUG enters, sucking the back of his hand. He has a vacuum cleaner hose around his neck like a noose. He approaches Orabelle, reaches to tap her shoulder, but she doesn’t notice.)

People can be so thick-headed . . . thinking chicken-wire’s only good for building pens.

(Little Pug tugs at Orabelle’s skirt. She turns to him.)

Well, hello there, Pug.

(Little Pug pops his hand out of his mouth, making a loud sucking sound.)

LITTLE PUG
Miss Orabelle, you reckon you could spare me some of that wire?

ORABELLE
Why certainly, Son. It’s yours for the asking.

(She gives him a rolled up section of wire. Little Pug shuffles away to another part of the stage and begins unrolling it.)

ORABELLE
Poor feller. Shaping something with his own hands might do him good. Always does me good. . . . Not that there’s anything wrong with chicken-wire being used to make a chicken coop. I’ve had chickens all my life, and a coop protects ‘em from wild dogs and foxes. Sometimes it’s hard to know which side of the fence is better.

(Little Pug sits on the ground with the chicken-wire completely surrounding him. He fiddles half-heartedly with the vacuum cleaner hose.)

But chicken-wire can’t keep out a snake! A snake’ll crawl right in and run off a hen and eat her eggs one at a time till I get out there with my hoe to chop its old head off!

(Orabelle grabs a hoe out of her wheelbarrow and runs over to Little Pug.)

LITTLE PUG (flatly)
Go ahead. Chop me to pieces. I’d appreciate it if you would.

ORABELLE
Well, Lord have mercy, Pug! What are you doing locked up here in this coop?

LITTLE PUG
My dog died. I buried him in here. Just wanted to be near him. He was the sweetest old dog.

ORABELLE
That’s terrible news, Son. And I’m sorry I just about whacked you. I can’t see good as I used to.

LITTLE PUG
You can whack me.

ORABELLE
No, Baby. I thought that vacuum hose was a snake, and from way back there, you looked like you might be a chicken.

LITTLE PUG
Oh—well, you’re welcome to chop my old head off. Put me out of my misery.

ORABELLE
You poor thing. Don’t you understand that some miseries you just gotta go through?

(LIGHTS SHIFT to Leona and Rubie and their chicken-wire mascot.)

LEONA (as cheerleader)
Rah-rah, Ree! Kick ‘em in the knee!

(She laughs.)

I tried out for cheerleading three times in high school and never made the team. Can’t recall now why I even wanted to be a cheerleader—or if I wanted to. Just thought it was something you were supposed to do when you got to high school. Did you ever try out?

RUBIE
Are you kidding? Do you remember any black cheerleaders?

(Leona shrugs.)

Wasn’t a black girl on the cheerleading squad the whole time. Might not even be one now.

LEONA
Yes, there is. Last year Mama thought she was supposed to be crowned homecoming queen, so we went to the football jamboree. You should’ve seen me trying to keep her off the field at half-time. We sat right in front of the cheerleaders, and I saw a colored girl cheering. I know I did.

RUBIE
One outta how many?

LEONA
I don’t know. Why are you making such a big deal out of it?

RUBIE
Cause I want you to see that white people are treated different from black people. If you’d been good enough, you could’ve been a cheerleader. But no matter how high I jumped or how loud I hollered, I wouldn’t have made the team. That’s why I couldn’t stay around here and open a flower shop with you.

LEONA
You didn’t even want to be a cheerleader.

RUBIE
That’s beside the point.

LEONA
Why are you making me into the enemy? I’ve always been on your side.

RUBIE
But you won’t acknowledge the differences, Leona.

LEONA
I’m not a racist! You know that! And white girls don’t get to do everything colored girls do. A lot more colored girls are on the track team.

(Rubie dribbles her ball.)

RUBIE
And don’t forget about basketball. Or the band—cause we can sure play our horns!

LEONA
That’s not what I meant!

RUBIE
There were places where I wasn’t welcome. Or places where I was the token black.

LEONA
I don’t see that at all. Plenty of people welcomed you.

RUBIE
We didn’t have the same opportunities. There were things I couldn’t have done if I’d stayed.

LEONA
You could’ve opened a flower shop with me, like you promised. You think a daisy discriminates?

RUBIE
Don’t start that again—

LEONA
You had the same opportunities as me.

(She takes the tiger-mascot and holds it up.)

You were Tiger-born and Tiger-bred, same as me.

RUBIE
Wrong again. The Tiger was the mascot at the white school. Before the schools were integrated, we had a mascot, too. We were the Bears.

LEONA
Don’t you even say that I think a tiger is better than a bear, cause I don’t. We could’ve been the Bears for all I cared.

RUBIE
But we weren’t.

(Pause.)

The Bears went extinct, just like that. The Tigers didn’t. Not to mention that everybody was mad at us for being a Tiger. I had to get out of here. I had to go somewhere else, where people didn’t have the assumptions—

LEONA
You think a rose-bud has assumptions?

RUBIE
You never listen. The whole time I talk, you just plan what you’re gonna say back.

(Leona is stunned.)

You’re just like Gwendolyn! Manipulate the shit out of a person.

LEONA
That’s the meanest thing anybody’s ever said to me. I thought you cared about me!

RUBIE
There you go again. Poor little victim, always hurt by the world. Let me tell you something, Leona. You put yourself in the victim-role. Then you blame everybody else around you.

(Leona inhales sharply. As they stomp off in different directions, LIGHTS SHIFT to Little Pug in his self-made coop. He rocks from side to side, humming himself into a trance. Orabelle stands on the outside trying to get his attention, but he doesn’t acknowledge her.)

LITTLE PUG (sing-song, quietly)
I’m sor-ry, I’m sor-ry—

ORABELLE
Hey, Pug! You quit that! You gotta pull yourself together.

LITTLE PUG
I’m sor-ry, I’m sor-ry.

(Orabelle searches in her wheelbarrow.)

ORABELLE
I need a volunteer. Somebody’s gotta distract him! Where’s that politician? He’ll say anything!

LITTLE PUG
I’m sor-ry, I’m sor-ry—

(PROMISE #4 enter, sticks a finger through the chicken-wire, and Pug shakes it.)

PROMISE #4
How do you do there, sir? Are you a registered voter? Do you attend your local town council meetings? Give feedback to your county supervisors?

(He waits for Pug to respond, but Pug just resumes his rocking, humming.)

Yes, well, some years back, you elected me to be your mayor, and I vowed at that time to put the needs of the people of this community first. I believe government should have a friendly face.

(He gives a big grin to the audience, a big grin to Little Pug. Little Pug doesn’t acknowledge him.)

I believe the way to lead the people is to listen to the people, and so on and so forth.

LITTLE PUG (loudly)
I’m sor-ry, I’m sor-ry—

ORABELLE
Come on, now! This ain’t a campaign speech.

PROMISE #4
When I was elected, I promised the people that I would lead through my example. I took a salary cut because the people of my constituency were paying higher taxes, and I wanted to demonstrate that we all must make sacrifices for the higher good. Then I came into hard times, had some “business associates” breathing down my neck, and so I gave myself a loan out of the town budget. I had every intention of paying it back, and—

LITTLE PUG (almost shouting his song)
I’m sor-ry, I’m sor-ry-

(Promise #4 hurries off as LIGHTS SHIFT to Gwendolyn in a rocking chair, rocking maniacally. There’s an empty rocker beside her. Leona enters.)

GWENDOLYN (hysterical)
Where you been? One of the worst traumas of my life, and you missed it!

LEONA
What happened?

GWENDOLYN
I was just sitting here minding my business when the mobile homes started rolling in, one behind the other, and not even new ones! Used ones! Not even double-wides. They came right down the driveway, hooked to big old trucks with hairy men inside them, and you weren’t even here!

LEONA
Sorry.

(Leona sits down.)

GWENDOLYN
I went out there and asked the the first driver what he was doing, and you know what he said to me? He said, “I’m parking my load. Who the hell are you?” Well, I told him to mind his language, cause I’m the daughter of the late Arthur Langford Harris, and he said, “You better get that house packed up ‘cause they gone demolish it next week.”

(Leona gasps.)

Naturally, I started crying. And you were nowhere in sight! I called up Jack Flanagan, and then I beeped him on his beeper. I beeped him forty-leven-dozen times, but he didn’t come.

LEONA
He mighta changed his beeper number.

GWENDOLYN
I’ll wring his neck if he changed it!

(Gwendolyn looks at Leona closely.)

Well, my god, you’ve been crying, too, haven’t you? Your face is so swoll, it looks like you’ve spent the afternoon drowning.

(Leona looks away. Gwendolyn chuckles.)

What’s the matter?

LEONA
My feelings are just so tender—Sometimes I miss Mama so bad.

(Leona buries her face into her hands.)

GWENDOLYN
I do, too, honey. I do, too.

(Gwendolyn breaks down and cries loudly. Leona lifts her face and looks over at Gwendolyn, who suddenly stops crying, sniffs hard.)

Nothing wrong with a good cry. A good cry is balm for your soul. Let me get us a cucumber before our eyes swell shut. Looks like you needed a cucumber a while back.

(Gwendolyn picks up a cucumber, slices four slabs, gives two to Leona and puts two over her own eyes. The rest of this exchange is done with their heads tilted back and cucumbers over their eyes.)

They’re setting up them trailers right in Sadie’s garden. Right on top of her squash. I don’t even like squash, but it breaks my heart to think of Sadie’s squash rotting underneath them trailers.

LEONA
I wish I had a chance to talk to her one last time. There’s so much I want to ask her.

GWENDOLYN
If Sadie could talk to me now, she’d give me a tongue-lashing—and one that I probably deserve. I’ve sold the family land out of my passion for Jack Flanagan. I never told nobody that before, Leona. I wouldn’t tell you if you didn’t have your eyes closed.

(Gwendolyn lifts the cucumber slices from her eyes and peeks to be sure Leona’s eyes are shut.)

And I’ll never admit it if you repeat it.

LEONA
Nobody for me to tell.

GWENDOLYN
You were right. Jack Flanagan ain’t moving into this house with his family. We gonna have trash for neighbors. They gonna rent these trailers out to migrant workers.

(They rock in silence, with cucumber slices over their eyes. Gwendolyn peeks again.)

Well, don’t you have anything to say? What are we gonna do with seventy-five migrant families in the yard?

LEONA
We’ll get trick-or-treaters. Ain’t never had trick-or-treaters.

GWENDOLYN
When did you start looking on the sunny side? Ain’t you worried about the tomato pickers and their snotty little children running around here and blathering in some language that ought not even be allowed in these our United States?

LEONA
I don’t know. I used to feel like the world didn’t give me what I deserved. But maybe it does. Maybe we need some migrant workers in the yard.

GWENDOLYN
Well, I swear. That beats all—You wouldn’t court a wet-back, would you, Leona? I don’t think that’s a very Christian thing to do.

(Pause.)

Jack could put our new trailer anywhere on this land. Anywhere he pleases. You don’t reckon he’ll put us in the swamp, do you?

LEONA
I got no idea.

GWENDOLYN
See there, it’s starting to thunder. Weatherman said it’s gonna rain all week. I hope the mud swallows up all Jack Flanagan’s used trailers. Maybe lightning’ll strike him.

LEONA
Reckon I ought to take Little Pug a raincoat? He won’t come in from the coop.

GWENDOLYN
Hell no. Don’t indulge him. Sooner he gets wet and cold, sooner he’ll come inside.

(They exit. LIGHTS SHIFT to Orabelle and PROMISE #5 at the chicken coop with Little Pug. They huddle beneath umbrellas.)

ORABELLE
See here, Pug. I’ve brought somebody to see you.

(As Promise #5 begins to speak, Leona joins them, but stands back.)

PROMISE #5
I’ve felt just as sad as you do, Mister Little Pug. I can look at your face and tell that you’re suffering, too. All my life I promised myself that I wouldn’t work at the grocery store. Seems like people who work at the grocery store just get stuck there forever, scanning pickles and beets, stocking pantyhose and bacon. I want more from my life. So I promised myself I’d get a higher class job—even making xeroxes for a lawyer or answering the phone. But this summer, I had to go to work, and the grocery store was the only place hiring. I can’t hardly stand myself! And when I put on that pink shirt with the Pork City logo, it makes me wanna hide my face!

LEONA
That was a stupid promise for you to make.

(Little Pug perks up. Everybody’s surprised.)

ORABELLE
Why, Leona! What’s got into you?

LEONA
It’d be different if she was forty and still working in the grocery store, but how old are you?

PROMISE #5
Sixteen.

LEONA
That’s what I thought.

(Pause.)

See here, Miss Orabelle, I heard you when you said not to judge the weight of another’s promise, but don’t you think there are some promises that shouldn’t have been made in the first place?

ORABELLE
Well, now . . . all kinds of broke promises are welcome in my wheelbarrow. I try not to discriminate.

LEONA
Sometimes you need to discriminate! It’s not always bad to discriminate! She’s a teenager. Why should a shift at the grocery store be beneath her?

PROMISE #5
I was just trying to help Mister Little Pug.

LEONA
Breaking that promise is probably the best thing you ever done.

(Promise #5 exits as LIGHTS SHIFT to Gwendolyn in her rocker, talking on the phone.)

GWENDOLYN
Jack Flanagan, you pick up that phone! Your big-trucks have tore up the grass all over the yard, and there’s mudpuddles in all the tire-tracks. If somebody slips and falls, I’ll sue the socks off you. And my poor baby brother is so stricken with grief that he won’t even come out of the chicken-coop. He’s gonna catch pneumonia, and when he does, I’m sending you the hospital bill. Do you hear me, Jack Flanagan?

(LIGHTS SHIFT to Leona and Orabelle, now wearing raincoats, standing with Little Pug. Leona has a small folded tarp beneath her arm.)

LEONA
Talk to me, Little Pug. Please talk to me.

(Leona shakes the chicken-wire, but Pug just rocks himself and doesn’t seem to notice.)

Oh, Miss Orabelle, he’s spent three days in the pouring rain. I think he’s lost his mind.

(She gives Orabelle one corner of the tarp. They open it up and shake it out.)

ORABELLE
Just cause his mind don’t work like yours don’t mean he’s lost it.

LEONA
He won’t acknowledge me, won’t come in. And I know he’s gotta be chafed from sitting in the mud like that. He’s gonna get a ringworm!

(They stretch the tarp over the coop, adjust it.)

ORABELLE
There’s remedies for ringworm when the time comes.

(Orabelle pulls a bungee cord out of her pocket and hooks the tarp to the wire.)

LEONA
We gotta move, and I’m too distressed to pack. Gwendolyn just sits around and sobs, and with Little Pug out here . . . I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I wish I was more like Rubie and could just leave when things get tough!

ORABELLE
You think it’s easier to go than to stay?

LEONA
Absolutely.

ORABELLE
Well, tell me this. Where would you go—if you could go anywhere on God’s green earth?

LEONA
I don’t know.

ORABELLE
Hawaii? Alabama? Timbuktu?

(Leona shrugs.)

Just make a decision, dear. What did you want when you were younger? Did you want to join the military like Rubie did? Did you want to see the Grand Canyon?

LEONA
I just wanted to stay here and open my flower-shop.

ORABELLE
What stopped you?

LEONA
You know what stopped me!

ORABELLE
I’m forgetful. Tell me again.

LEONA
Well, first, Rubie left. And then I had to take care of Mama—and now Gwendolyn and Little Pug. You can’t put your dreams before your responsibilities, Miss Orabelle!

ORABELLE
Sounds to me like you’ve used your responsibilities as excuses for not doing anything else with your life. Ain’t you ever heard of a home-health nurse? And they got a senior center not ten miles up the road.

LEONA
I can’t take Gwendolyn to the senior center. She might get mad and beat up a veteran!

ORABELLE
You’ve been an old lazy-butt, Leona. That’s the only reason in the world you don’t have that flower shop.

(Little Pug giggles, then resumes his rocking.)

Your Mama would’ve agreed with me. She wouldn’t want you living the same life she did.

LEONA
How can you say that? Calling me a lazy-butt! That pisses me off, Miss Orabelle!

ORABELLE
Being pissed off is better than feeling sorry for yourself, Sugar.

(LIGHTS SHIFT to Gwendolyn, who is stuffing clothes into a bag as she talks on the phone.)

GWENDOLYN
Quit a’lying to me. I know he’s there somewhere. Put Jack on the phone!

(Pause.)

I ain’t living in a migrant camp. I’m a Harris. My family name means something.

(Pause.)

How many bedrooms does it have? Cause he promised me a three bedroom trailer, with a jacuzzi tub. I got it in writing, so don’t think you can scam me.

(Gwendolyn exits, taking chairs and props with her as LIGHTS SHIFT to Leona, Orabelle and PROMISE #6—all dressed in rain-gear. Little Pug remains in his chicken-wire enclosure.)

PROMISE #6
I never actually made a promise at all. I never took a vow or signed an oath, or anything of that sort. Just tried to be a good neighbor. My neighbor was an elderly lady who spent most of her time on her porch. I lived across the street from her for seven years, and I helped her get her groceries in, rolled her trash can to the curb, fixed the hose on her washing machine when it blew out. The truth was, she drove me crazy. Meddled in my business and called me on the phone three times a day. I couldn’t even sit on my own porch without having to get into a conversation. Sometimes I’d go over and speak to her first, then settle in to read a paperback, and before I could get through a chapter, she’d be calling, “Billy, can you come take a look at the filter on my fishpond?” She aggravated the stuffing out of me—but she was my friend. She tried to microwave me little frozen barbeque sandwiches every time I stopped by

When she found out I was putting my house on the market, she broke right down and cried. Tried to run off the realtor when he put the sign in the yard. So of course, I told her I’d stop by regularly and we could visit just like old times. I’ve been moved from that house three years next month. Haven’t even driven down the street since—cause I know if she’s sitting on the porch, she’ll wave me down and give me hell. But part of me’s scared if I drive by, her rocking chair will be empty. I couldn’t stand that.

LITTLE PUG (quietly)
That’s just like me.

LEONA
Hey, he said something. What’d you say, Little Pug?

LITTLE PUG
Me and that feller there have something in common.

(He pops his hand back into his mouth, begins sucking hard.)

ORABELLE
How’s he like you, Son?

LITTLE PUG
I didn’t never tell Boy-dog I wouldn’t shoot him. Weren’t no reason to say such a thing.

PROMISE #6
No, you were like me and my neighbor. You’d made yourself into somebody your dog could depend on.

LITTLE PUG
I didn’t take no oath, but that don’t matter.

PROMISE #6
Cause you still got a responsibility once you make yourself into somebody a friend can count on. My poor old neighbor would’ve been better off if I’d never took her trash out a single time. Then she wouldn’t have expected me to be reliable.

LEONA
Wait a minute, now. Just hold on. You still helped your neighbor out. That doesn’t change. And before Little Pug killed Boy-dog, he let him drink the milk outta his cereal bowl every morning!

LITTLE PUG
I shouldn’ta done it. The little feller was wagging his tail when I shot ’im.

ORABELLE
That’s heartbreaking, Pug.

LITTLE PUG
But Gwendolyn was allergic.

LEONA
She was not. She just said that to get her way.

LITTLE PUG
I never made an oath to Gwendolyn neither, but she’s family. She depended on me. I owed her too.

LEONA
You didn’t owe her your dog’s life!

ORABELLE
Implied promises break just as surely as sworn vows. Sometime the implied ones hurt the worst.

(Little Pug nods, cries.)

LITTLE PUG
I had two-ply promises. I broke one, and I kept one.

ORABELLE
Sometimes if your promises contradict one another, you gotta break one to keep the other.

LEONA
But what if he broke the wrong promise? What if he shoulda broke the promise to Gwendolyn and kept the promise to Boy-Dog?

LITTLE PUG
You think I broke ‘em backwards, Leona?

LEONA
I don’t know. But Mama broke the wrong one, didn’t she, Miss Orabelle? She broke the one to herself and kept the one to the family. And look where that got her!

LITTLE PUG
Where’d it get her? You think I broke the wrong one?

(Leona opens the coop up and gets into the pen with Pug. She hugs him. Leona exits as LIGHTS SHIFT to Rubie who is looking out into the audience, straining to see.)

RUBIE
Granny! Hey, Granny. Look what’s coming down the road yonder.

(Orabelle runs up. Peers out into the audience.)

ORABELLE
Who is that? I don’t know nobody drives a little orange pickup with flashing lights. Do you?

RUBIE
That’s a wide-load coming behind it. See? I knew you wouldn’t wanna miss it.

ORABELLE (to audience)
And I didn’t, neither! I got my wheelbarrow and set off to the edge of the yard. None of the promises had seen anything like it. That trailer was cut slick in two, just like somebody’d took the scissors to it. They’d covered the openings with plastic, but you could still see in. The kitchen sink was in one half, and the stove was in the other! And them fellers drove the two trailer halves right out into the middle of the next field, over on the Junior Baskins property.

(JACK FLANAGAN enters, wearing a hard hat, and a whistle around his neck. He blows his whistle two quick times.)

JACK FLANAGAN
Right over there, boys. Steady. Steady. Whoa!

ORABELLE
They put it square in the middle of that old red clay field.

RUBIE (to Jack)
Why don’t you back it on up the hill so they’ll have some shade? Might help ‘em with their electric bill.

JACK
What business is it of yours, I’d like to know?

RUBIE
Ain’t none of my business, but it seems like you’d try to make ‘em comfortable. You got ten acres to choose from, and you gonna stick ‘em out in the middle of the field?

JACK
Can’t grow nothing on it, no way.

RUBIE
If you move it back a little, they’ll be up on the hill instead of in this mud-puddle. Why in the world would you set their trailer down where the drainage is this bad? No way they’ll be able to grow shrubs here, or azaleas.

JACK
I ain’t worried about their bushes! Gwendolyn didn’t want to be near the Mexicans, so I’m putting her here. You don’t have no Mexican in you, do you?

RUBIE
Before you seal and underpin that thing, why don’t you at least see if it suits them?

JACK
I’m gonna have a talk with your landlord, Miss. Who’s your landlord?

(They exit as LIGHTS SHIFT to Little Pug, Gwendolyn, and Leona. Little Pug remains inside his chicken coop. Gwendolyn has suitcases in her hands.)

GWENDOLYN
Get out of there right now! You gotta pack up your stuff. Jack’s setting up our double-wide right this minute, and if you don’t pack it up, all your stuff’s gonna get left behind.

LITTLE PUG
None of it don’t matter to me no more.

(Gwendolyn kicks at the chicken-wire.)

GWENDOLYN
Move it!

LEONA
What about your vacuum cleaners? Don’t they matter? And what about your hair balls? It’d be a shame to lose your collection.

LITTLE PUG
You can have my vacuum cleaners. And Gwendolyn can have my hair balls.

(Gwendolyn throws a valise.)

LEONA (to Gwendolyn)
Quit that!

(to Pug)

Don’t you want to pick out your bedroom in the new trailer?

LITTLE PUG
I ain’t particular.

(Gwendolyn kicks the chicken-wire from all sides. Little Pug winces.)

LEONA
Stop it! You’re hurting him.

GWENDOLYN
I ain’t hurting him. He’s hurting me. He’s trying to keep me from getting the only thing in the world I want. I got a new double-wide waiting for me, and Pug just wants to interfere with my happiness, like he’s always done.

LITTLE PUG
I ain’t interfering with your nothing.

GWENDOLYN
If Daddy was here, you know what he’d say, Pug?

LITTLE PUG
Shut up.

GWENDOLYN
You know what he’d call you? If he could see you right now, sitting here in your filth, crying over a dead dog?

LITTLE PUG
Naw, now, Gwendolyn. Shut up.

GWENDOLYN
He’d call you a little shit-ass. You always been a disappointment. That’s the only thing we’ve ever been able to count on you for.

LEONA
That’s enough, Gwendolyn.

(Little Pug convulses, rocks himself.)

LITTLE PUG
I’m sor-ry, I’m sor-ry—

GWENDOLYN
It’s the truth. When he was a little boy, Daddy gave Pug a rifle, and Pug was scared to shoot it. Daddy wanted to make him a man. Told him to go out hunting and not to come back till he’d shot the heart out of a deer.

LITTLE PUG
I didn’t want to kill no deer. I sat out in the woods a long time, and the woods is full of deer-hearts. There’s deer-hearts under the huckleberry bushes, still a’beatin’.

(Little Pug trembles and sucks his hand.)

GWENDOLYN
When Pug come back, he told Daddy the deers had all run off to Canada, and Daddy beat him until he messed his britches. You remember that, Pug?

(Little Pug rocks himself, sucks his hand.)

GWENDOLYN
And you cried. Remember how you cried? You musta knew back then you wouldn’t never be no man. And you still just as sissy and weak now as you were back then.

(to Leona)

Daddy finally let Pug come back in the house when he brought home some birds he’d killed with that gun. Course everybody knew that Sadie’d killed ‘em for him. I think that damned dog is the first thing in the world Pug’s ever shot. Maybe you gonna be a man after all, in your old age, Pug. Why don’t you act like a man and come out of that chicken coop?

LITTLE PUG
I ain’t ready to be a man yet.

LEONA
It’s okay, Little Pug.

GWENDOLYN
I can’t stand neither one of you. You’re both pathetic. The sorry little shit-ass and the sorry little bastard. You make quite a team.

(Little Pug rocks and hums.)

LEONA
You’re not helping things. Go on back to the house.

LITTLE PUG
I’m sor-ry, I’m sor-ry—

GWENDOLYN
Y’all are just dead-set on ruining my life in one place or the other. Here or there. Don’t really matter. I wish I was up in heaven with Daddy and Mama and Sadie. I wish I didn’t have to deal with no more shit-asses and no more bastards. This life is too full of shit-asses and bastards. That’s what I think!

(They exit as LIGHTS SHIFT to Rubie and Orabelle, planting flowers around the new trailer. Orabelle’s wheelbarrow is full of flowers.)

RUBIE
They might ever one die, but they’ll be pretty for a day or two.

ORABELLE
I know where you can get some real nice plastic flowers, and I hear that plastic flowers thrive just fine in old red clay soil.

(She cackles. Leona enters. When she sees them, she puts her hands over her heart.)

ORABELLE
Well, hey there, Sweetie. I thought you liked yellow flowers. But if you want us to go back and get the purple ones, we’ll do it.

LEONA
Yellow’s fine. Or purple . . .

RUBIE
So I hear we gonna be neighbors.

LEONA
For a time, I reckon. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you better, Rubie. I’m sorry for guilt-tripping you all your life. I sure don’t want to do to you what Gwendolyn does—

RUBIE
It’s all right.

(Pause.)

I’m sorry too. Not cause I didn’t open the flower shop—cause I don’t love flowers the way you do. But I’m sorry you were so sad about it.

LEONA
I missed you all them years!

(Rubie nods.)

You could’ve called me. Or sent a card.

RUBIE
I wish I had. I’ll try to be a better friend from now on—

ORABELLE
Now that you’re next-door neighbors, you can make up for lost time.

(Leona shakes her head.)

LEONA
I don’t think I can stand to live here—

ORABELLE
Ain’t that bad, now. We try not to play the music too loud after eleven.

LEONA
Oh, Miss Orabelle, it’s not about you. It’s just that—

ORABELLE
Well, I’ll bedogged. You’ve finally brought that promise.

LEONA
I can’t keep on living with Gwendolyn and Little Pug.

ORABELLE
Let me make some room in this wheelbarrow.

(Orabelle puts the plants on the ground.)

LEONA
My life’s not mine. It’s never been mine.

RUBIE
Only thing that makes living next door to Gwendolyn tolerable is knowing you’ll be here too. But it don’t sound like you gonna be staying long.

LEONA
No longer than I have to. I got that job driving a school-bus, but it won’t start for a while. If I find something better before—

ORABELLE
Well congratulations! Let’s have a party!

LEONA
Don’t feel much like celebrating. We gotta be out of the house tomorrow. Jack Flanagan’s sending some workers with a ton-truck to move our boxes, and I can’t even get my stuff together. Seems like I’m in some kind of stupor or something.

ORABELLE
Oh no, Honey. You coming outta your stupor!

RUBIE
You don’t have to figure everything out at one time. Just take it piece by piece.

(Leona nods.)

Think of it like walking in the fog. Just cause you can’t see where you’re heading don’t mean the ground’s not there.

LEONA
I feel like such a failure—

RUBIE
Seems to me you oughta be proud.

ORABELLE
Everybody breaks promises, Baby.

LEONA
Even you?

ORABELLE
Specially me! How you think I became caretaker of all these promises in the first place? I’ve broke as many as the next feller, but there’s one in particular that haunts me. Many years ago, we were under the barn shed, stringing tobacco, when out of the blue, your granddaddy asked me if I really believed a colored woman’s vote ought to count the same as a white man’s. I reached right down, grabbed up another armload of leaves and laid them on that stringer like nothing had happened. And I said, “No Sir, Mister Arthur. Hard to believe they let a colored woman vote at all.” Never missed a beat.

(Pause.)

But all that afternoon my answer curdled in my heart. And all that night, I tossed and turned, thinking over what I’d said.

LEONA
I guess you broke a promise to yourself?

ORABELLE
Not just to myself, Sweetheart. To my children and their children.

(Pause.)

That promise hurt your granddaddy, believe it or not. Cause then he didn’t have any reason to doubt his old backwards beliefs. So it hurt you—cause you grew up with a granddaddy who thought a colored woman’s vote ought not count. It hurt Rubie—cause I didn’t do my part to change the world she grew up in either. You see how this works?

LEONA
I think so. But Lord, that’s a lot of pressure. If every choice is a kind of promise, how do you stand it?

ORABELLE
You try to think about how things will play out down the road. Then sometimes you mess up anyway. The mistakes just grow you into the person you’re meant to become.

LEONA
I hope the person I’m meant to become has more nerve than I do—and maybe more money.

(They laugh.)

Seems like I oughta put something in that wheelbarrow now, don’t it?

(She kicks off her flip-flops and throws them in the wheelbarrow.)

There!

RUBIE
Why don’t me and Granny come help you pack?

LEONA
I’d sure appreciate it.

(They begin crossing the stage towards Pug’s coop.)

Whenever I try to pack, I get so hot-headed! I keep picturing myself cutting all the sleeves off Little Pug’s shirts and tying them to the branches of a tree, just to watch ‘em fly. Now why you reckon I want to tear up his shirts and not Gwendolyn’s?

RUBIE
You can’t help getting mad at people who need you to defend ‘em all the time. We’ll help you with Little Pug’s stuff.

LEONA
They gonna bulldoze his chicken coop. Might be already done it. I hope he gets out the way.

ORABELLE
We got a real nice coop he can use—course he’ll have to share it with the chickens.

(LIGHTS SHIFT to Little Pug’s abandoned chicken-coop. Leona, Orabelle, and Rubie arrive.)

LEONA
He’s gone. Do you see him anywhere?

RUBIE
Old Pug’s done flew the coop! That’s a good sign, Leona. Maybe he’s packing his own shirts.

ORABELLE
What’s that there?

(Orabelle points to the ground inside the coop.)

LEONA
That’s where he buried Boy-dog. That’s—You don’t reckon he dug him up?

(They peer into the hole. Offstage, a gunshot rings out, then another.)

RUBIE
What’s that?

(Offstage there’s another gunshot.)

LEONA
Was that coming from the house?

(Pause.)

Little Pug? Gwendolyn?

(Little Pug enters, dragging his feet, carrying a shotgun and a box.)

LITTLE PUG
Two times I missed, but then I didn’t.

(Leona approaches Pug, takes the gun.)

LEONA
What have you done?

LITTLE PUG
She was just so tired of the shit-asses and bastards. She wanted to be up in heaven with Daddy and Mama and Sadie.

(Pause.)

And she was allergic to Boy-dog.

(He opens up the box to show them. Rubie backs away, waving her hand in front of her nose.)

I started packing, Leona.

(Orabelle takes the box from Little Pug and walks it over to her wheelbarrow, placing it inside. Rubie and Leona take up the chicken-wire, put it around Little Pug, and lead him offstage.)

ORABELLE
They buried Gwendolyn in the family plot right next to Sadie. Leona went ahead and ordered a double-wide tombstone, put Gwendolyn’s name on one side and Pug’s name on the other, so that when he dies, won’t be nothing left to do but fill in the date. Jack Flanagan thought he could reclaim that mobile home and sell it for new, but Gwendolyn and Pug both owned that trailer, and Leona didn’t let him forget it

(LIGHTS SHIFT to Leona and Jack. Leona is showing him out of her house.)

JACK
I gotta tell you, I’m surprised at you, wanting to hold onto this double-wide. Must be a constant reminder of the pain.

(Jack tries to put his arm around Leona. She slaps it away.)

LEONA
Pug’s not dead, Jack. He still has rights. And when he dies, the trailer belongs to me. The land belongs to you, but the trailer belongs to me.

JACK
Come on, now, Dollbaby. Wouldn’t you rather have a little condo by the beach, somewhere you can sit in the sun and read romances? Start life anew?

LEONA
You’ve overstayed your welcome.

JACK
What happened to you, Leona? You used to be so sweet and nice. Now you’ve turned into an old bitch.

(Leona shrugs. Jack exits. LIGHTS SHIFT to Orabelle.)

ORABELLE
Little Pug may yet get out of the state hospital. When it came out in court how Jack Flanagan swindled the Harrises, how Gwendolyn talked Little Pug into signing over his part of the property, and how Little Pug mourned it, spending night after night in the chicken coop, the judge was lenient.

LITTLE PUG (offstage, high-pitched and laughing)
Being pissed off is better than feeling sorry for yourself, Sugar!

ORABELLE
Experts testified that Pug was feeble-minded, and when it came right down to it, everybody on the jury thought Gwendolyn needed killing anyway.

(Leona steps out front.)

LEONA
But I don’t think that. I might have wished it a time or two, but I’d take it back if I could.

ORABELLE
On the surface, you might even think that Leona got her wish. With Gwendolyn and Little Pug both gone, she didn’t have nobody left to take care of, except herself.

LEONA
It’s harder than I thought. I’m not sure yet how to do it. But I’m gonna learn.

ORABELLE
She inherited some money when Gwendolyn died. Forty-thousand buckaroonies. So if she ever gets tired of driving her school bus and decides to open a flower shop, she’s got the means.

(Orabelle gets a card-table from offstage, sets it up at center.)

LEONA
I always thought I couldn’t afford a flower shop. And I sure didn’t have the time to run one! Now I’ve got money and time both, but I see that there’s something else you gotta have—

(Rubie enters with an armload of flowers and a vase. She puts them down on the table.)

RUBIE
Imagination. You gotta be able to picture yourself—in a little brick building, with a courtyard out the side, ivy stretching along the walls and flowers of every kind. Can you see it?

(Orabelle gets a fold-up chair from offstage, positions it behind the table.)

LEONA
Not yet.

(Leona steps closer and looks at the flowers as Rubie gestures.)

RUBIE
And inside, a refrigerated case spans the whole wall long—just full of fresh cut roses and daisies and gladiolas in their tubs. And you’re in there, Leona, making an arrangement.

(Rubie pulls out the chair and Leona sits.)

You’re adding in some greenery, and now a tiger-lily right in the middle. Can you see it?

LEONA
Not yet. Can you?

RUBIE
Well, sure. Just close your eyes and imagine.

(Leona closes her eyes. Rubie puts flowers into her hands, guides her in arranging them. As Leona gets the hang of it, Rubie exits. Orabelle pushes her wheelbarrow up front as Leona continues to shape the arrangement.)

ORABELLE
A promise is kinda like a flower arrangement, you know? When you first put the flowers together, they look and smell like heaven! But you can’t foresee that the tiger-lily’s gonna drop all its petals before the rosebud even opens. You might have to pull that lily out in a day or two.

LEONA
But I like the lily.

ORABELLE
And it’s fine for today. Tomorrow—check it again.

(Leona nods.)

LEONA
The more I think about it, the more it seems like you can justify anything at all.

(She removes the central flower from the arrangement.)

You can keep a promise, or you can break one, and you can make yourself believe you did the right thing—or the wrong thing. The more I learn about the nature of promises, the more confused I get.

(Orabelle nods.)

Why do we even bother making promises, Miss Orabelle?

(Leona rises. She pops the stem from the flower and sticks it behind her ear.)

ORABELLE
You want me to give you an answer, but there’s no one answer. And no one to decide in the end whether what you do is wrong or right. There’s just the tiger-lily and the rosebud and this day—

(A school bell rings, startling them both.)

LEONA
I reckon it’s time for me to get moving.

(She goes over to Orabelle’s wheelbarrow and takes out her shoes and puts them on.)

That school bus won’t drive itself.

(Orabelle picks up the flower arrangement from the table.)

ORABELLE
Don’t forget your flowers.

(She hands them to Leona.)

LEONA
Wonder if this vase will fit on the dashboard of my bus?

ORABELLE
If you drive slow, you can use it as a hood ornament. Wouldn’t that tickle the bees and the birds!

(As Leona heads offstage, PROMISE #7 enters, in a hurry. They both stop. Leona pulls out a flower and gives it to Promise #7. Promise #7 accepts it, then runs to Orabelle’s wheelbarrow and collapses dramatically into it.)

ORABELLE
Well, hey there, Baby. Make yourself at home.

(LIGHTS OUT)  

Act I

   Contributor’s notes
   Act One

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