This Woman in Me

THIS WOMAN IN ME

Lorenzo Buford

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Michael Black Male, 20’s - poet

Ba White Female, 20’s - poetess

Time: Present Day

Place: Dream state

SYNOPSIS
While meditating Michael experience a past life when he was a woman and a secret is revealed

ACT ONE

SCENE ONE – DREAM SEQUENCE

Light comes up on BA sitting in a chair holding a box visibly disturbed. As she is attempting to hold in her anger, she hears MICHAEL arguing offstage.

MICHAEL (Offstage)
Poetry is not a woman’s madness! You’ll see, you’re not the only tragedy in my life.

MICHAEL enters.

You act like you got a leash tied around my neck. You’ll see I don’t sit up and beg for tricks. You’re not the only game in town. (Pause) Why does every man think he owns me body and soul? I’m so tired of you setting up housekeeping in my mind. (Pause) My lover never touched my heart the way Robert....Lincoln freed the slave. Still you find other chains for me to wear. Has your whiteness become my final addiction? We’re supposed to be lovers. It doesn’t mean you are God, the father. Lovers. Not parent to child. Lovers. Maybe I will take a lover. Maybe Robert should be my lover. But Robert is no where. (Pause) Okay, can’t let him work my last good nerve. Maybe I’ll need it to strangle him with. So breathe. (Goes and sits in chair that is near BA. He doesn’t see her. Each chair should be in its own spotlight.) Okay. (Starts meditating) Breathe deep. Center. Find a place inside myself where I can be alone...think...know myself. Breathe. In and out. In and out.

BA
Michael.

MICHAEL
I hear nothing. No voices. No more madness.

BA
Father says I could cause a world shortage of paper. I'm running up the price of oil because I burn my passion so late at night. Night is my solace from day. I don’t have to see the prison where I am sentenced to. By father’s standard I'm an old maid, weak willed and barely can make a decent cup of tea. His two sisters, the visiting warden's reinforce his terms of endearment. (Beat) Michael, hear me.

MICHAEL
There is just silence.

BA
It's chilly in here. It's like a thousand heartless kisses descending on me. I feel like a house condemned, winter is banging on the door with an eviction notice. I'm like a seed sleeping so far down from a sun’s kiss to awaken. Still I sit in my room writing my mind
BA (Continued)
out on pages hoping there is life in sentences. But I am screaming I am here, I am here between the words but someone will pause in the wrong place to find me, punctuating me when I’m free flowing. My legs feel staked to the ground. My heart gasps for air. These two windows are eyes looking in . I can’t look outside myself I’ll catch a winter cold. It’s chilly in my legs.

Father says I have mother’s legs. The weight of bearing my brother and me was a strain. The weight of bearing Father and David leaves my legs speechless of expression. So I stand matronly as little as possible and seek to express life from the upper portion of my being. I see what you’re looking at, I mean higher, I’m a woman with an aspiring mind.

But if I look into my inner landscapes, I hear the music playing. There is a handsome gentleman vying for my affection. Though his face is hidden, his touch is real and it is a warm rippling wave melting snowflakes falling from my eyes. And my hand in his, is like a delicate feather tracing my life across his lifeline. And he holds me close. “Sir, I am still a lady even in my inner landscape.” He takes a half step back. “Much better.” The dance is life, the life hidden in the silence of a poem. (Dances through the room, falls breathless in the chair and fans her self with a handkerchief.) He always leaves me breathless. Now my Robert is no where. (Beat) Michael, please hear me.

MICHAEL
There is just silence. Silence. I am alone. I’ve always been alone. Except my lover requires his daily feeding from my fountain of youth. You want to drink me into madness with your vampire kisses.

BA
Michael. I’m here. (He opens his eyes and sees BA) You are safe here. He can’t find us.

MICHAEL
This isn’t happening. Where am I?

BA
This is a safe place. A place inside your mind where madness is divine.

MICHAEL
This is crazy.

BA
When he touches you...he is touching me.

MICHAEL
Who are you?

BA
Have I grown so distant to your eyes? Has your heart gone into exile?

MICHAEL
I’m having an out-of-body experience.

BA
You are in a safe place.

MICHAEL
My lover has a long reach.

BA
Father has told me often (Imitates Father) “Haven’t I compensated for your unexplained illness Ba.

MICHAEL
My lover found Robert’s kisses lingering on my lips. He says that everytime he ventures to show his affections, I stand defiant as if some sea goddess calming the rages of the sea. I will not be shipwrecked in my lover’s affections. But he pays, I lay. We have the perfect apartment. The perfect Sunday brunch group. His friends are like him, older men parading their lastest acquisition of youth. My lover attends me in a designated places ? two steps behind where I must be in intelligence.

BA
Father forgets his color is his freedom. Mother knew what had been denied me. Father has given me the comforts of home, protects me from the ravishing hunger of the world. No child ever knew the safety of the garden he had constructed for me. My mother was part black. Two drops of black blood tainted her whiteness. She was scarred from the touches of a gentlemen. Father paid for her secrecy by fufilling his passions as if she was a servant.

MICHAEL
Seems like you need a safe place to. My lover will find me. No matter where my mind wanders, he manages to pull me back.

BA
Don’t give in.

MICHAEL
He gives me a life that I couldn’t get on my own.

BA
Only his words hold you prisoner.

MICHAEL
There is no key. He’s coming for me.

BA
Only in my dreams do I feel safe from him. Stay here with me.

MICHAEL
My lover says my ass is like a vacant room. So, I offer strangers my room for rent.

BA
(Recites)
Sculptured is my life. Four walls have replaced the womb. But there is no exit, no safety, no scream will I utter as my voice paints the wall with the colors of my feelings that will not know the world, four walls hold me like guards watching each step my eyes take in seeking freedom.

Father, you might as well treat me as a painting in your art collection. I shall be dusted once a week, admired by dinner guest, fade in color with the years and increase in value because of my antiquity, yet, no one will be able to drink the emotions hidden in my demeanor trapped in a moment. (To Michael) My lips are my mother’s. My heart is my own. Michael, hear me. I do not like being a prisoner in this chair. Wish it was a seat in a vehicle that would drive me from the madness of four walls, and not be the broken doll that I have become.

MICHAEL
My lover measures my worth by the length of my genitals. My lover says my writing is useless, a waste of time. He says I’m bar trade that got lucky. As long I sing to him on bended knees, I got a roof over my head. My words have not brought me only pennies from heaven.

BA
Father’s thoughts are not to be interrupted when serving him.

MICHAEL
I lay under my lover as a war torn city. My thoughts are homeless. In my madness, a woman laments in my head. Poetry is a woman´s madness he says.

Michael walks around the stage in confusion as BA is reaching out to him. He pulls at his hair, reaches down and unzips his pants and pulls out pieces of paper from his pants while reciting the poem.

MICHAEL
Should I bring them into this world of darkness, my passion, my bastard offsprings, my misshaped thoughts, the children of my water; these blacksheep in a family closet called man with designer skeletons? Who shall love them, hold them ever so close to their
MICHAEL (Continued)
Heart, recite into ears filled with their own words holding 'the noise of the world? Will they exist in cluttered black and white prints, some whore’s rain soaked tissue paper or a camouflaged covering for frustrated freaks jacking off in a straight scene? Should I bring my bastard children, my thoughts, my fractured mirror pieces, my sound, my light, my poems into these worlds of demons of the mind? Will man love them, cultive their existence, and call them Me?

Michael walks over and takes the pieces of paper and rubs them across his body.

Every part of me belongs to me, as it was then and (Looks at BA) as it shall be now. There was an innocence that he wanted to possess, to own, to have as his power that the world will never be able to partake in but me. He said, (Imitates Lover) “I would never wither and die in his embrace because the world will not hold me in it’s death embrace. Here in the world I created for you, you will always be innocent. I will be your protector, your lover. No harsh seasons will ever touch a hair on your head. I will bar the world from entry into our world. Our world. All you are will be in me Michael.” He takes my name every time he kisses me.

BA
Michael, I’m over here. Here.

MICHAEL
Met this street poet. Robert. Wild haired youth. His mouth was like an untamed river. My first time whitewater rafting.

BA
Father tells me he is not letting me go. As his sickly daughter, he is responsible for me. You are mine BA. (Pause) My mother knew her place. Accepted her fortune.

MICHAEL
(Snapping out of his daydreaming) Your 'male' business fractures the woman in me. He designs my life so I will never leave him. (Imitiates Lover) “We have a party tonight Michael. Wear that green vest I bought you. I also prefer if you keep your conversations limited in subjects that you know. Sometimes you say things without thinking.” His friends find me sexually appealing when he’s not looking. (Imitiates Lover) “Besides Michael, you’ll only embarass yourself when you speak. Just smile, look pretty. Let them admire you from a distance. When you speak, you destroy the illusion, the fantasy. I want them to hunger for what they cannot have, for what I have. You know daddy has a fever for the flavor.”

BA atempts to stand but stumbles for a moment. Her legs gives out. Michael helps her to a chair.

BA
My legs are weak again. He’s coming. I can feel it.

MICHAEL
I can’t walk away.

BA
Only dreams and imaginations sustain me.

MICHAEL
Beer works for me.

BA
My voice limps across the room to sit.

MICHAEL
My lover’s skin is still my passport.

BA
(To Michael) Why are we so much alike?

MICHAEL
I thought you were an echoe of a dream.

BA
This place is between dreams.

MICHAEL
I keep losing my mind to feel a man’s embrace. I think I wanted them to be the father I never had? The Atlas to hold my world grows heavy with my fears, my passions that are still in the layaway. Men are like dark lords over my kingdoms. They are the demons that haunt my bed at night, my head in daylight. They are the beginning and end of inhaling and exhaling.

BA
This space is safe. He can’t touch us here.

MICHAEL
Is my lover a prayer some god picked up from a computer printout? (Pause) I know you. But I can’t remember.

BA
The face is different. The stage has more shadows. But the performance is the same. We are still in our nightmare.

MICHAEL
I can feel him touching me. Apologizing. Telling me he loves me. And he understands my artistic bent but he prefers if I bend like a willow to his desires. The wrinkles in his mind scratches my skin.

BA
Stay here. Stay with me. I’m tired of the shadows.

MICHAEL
I’m afraid of the dark.

BA
Forgive my manners. I am called Ba. Father calls me Liz when he is upset. Father always instructs me, (Imitates Father) “Treat guest in my home with charity, humility and love. Not all are as fortunate as you.” Father thinks of me as his servant and expects privileges being he is master of the house. He prefer I bring him tea and not the servants. It’s the only time I really leave my room. He wants his tea promptly at 3:30 p.m. His thoughts are not to be interrupted when serving him. I’m proud to say, I’ve never spilled a drop.

MICHAEL
We both pay for what we want. My lover expects sex every night.

(Recites)
was i touching you / when i was touching you / or reacting to the art / i had created.

BA
No more than two and a half minutes or it bruises the tea. A slice of lemon without the seeds. One spoon of honey. The handle must face him.

MICHAEL
My lover was pissed when he found out about Robert. (Imitates Lover) “Robert was not part of our agreement.” (Defending himself) I haven’t fucked anyone. Ask your guard dog friends. They are standing behind you with their legs raised.

BA
I always backed out the room gracefully when I could walk ? gracefully.

MICHAEL
Robert was just a passing friend. – (Defensively to Lover) Don’t worry, I am still picking your cotton. – (To Ba) Why do my true affections make me a villain?

(Recites)
Robert is no where / no where / robert is an alley whore who strings out his mind on needle webs / old men with wallets for penises invade his mind /
MICHAEL (Continued)
and he drinks their milk they offered though it’s a poor substitute for a breast. / Robert lives under a cardboard roof, / and this little boy whispers to his mother’s grave for salvation. / Robert has no where to lay, no where to play / so when Hill he come inside from strangers’ rain? / (BA starts reciting her poem underneath Michael’s recitation) but the shades are pulled / as piss runs down the sides of his lips. / Robert is drowning in stranger’s rain / as he hangs on crystal webs asking / ‘why has man forsaken me’ / and roaches bid for the flesh falling / like pieces of silver off his body. (Michael repeats the line "Robert is no where" building it until they both end simultaneously.)

BA
What independence sings through my heart / it soars on a rainbow / a dove is crowning my head / with a circle of flames / conjured from the Earth’s touch / but it slips from me / when I sit on a throne of hands / parts of me gather like flowers / where is the voice / to sing me to a higher plane / as i look through myself / i am that i am / a collection of experiences / in a pearl box with carved butterflies. / open me so i can heal Pandora´s cries

MICHAEL
(Imagines he is talking to his Lover) So great God lover of mine, since there is no other love before you, am I expected to hold up the four corners of your life? (Beat) He said I was occupying my barstool like it was a throne without out a kingdom. He said I looked like I needed a father to show me the way. I call it child abuse when he leaves our bed. (To Ba) Am I attracted to what’s not acceptable?

BA
Father straddles my mind with wifely things. Elizabeth, a woman doesn’t think, she responds.

MICHAEL
Robert said I was a child waiting to be born.

BA
My thoughts are mine Father. I cannot seal them in a box.

MICHAEL
Another gift of an STD from my Lover. Another bandage alter he hits me. I’m still bleeding goddammit! (Pleading to Lover) Do you smell another man on me?

BA
Am I a wound that never heals?

MICHAEL
Robert is the one that makes deposits in my heart.

BA
I hide inside myself when his words become like hands. Stay in this space with me Michael. I can walk. I can dance. I am everything I imagine a woman can be. Father says my marrige must be a business contract. He thinks no man can handle my illness. What he wants to say, is no man can handle a woman with a mind of her own. This chair is a throne without a country. My thoughts are subjects in revolt. Father tried to make life bearable since mother passed away. She was afraid her passion would betray her skin. Am I as black as my mother or as white as my father?

MICHAEL
My lover says I am as white as I need to be. Why must we be crippled to our affections?

BA
My father’s boundaries have impropiety. I don’t use my health as an issue to not write. Though walking is very difficult and I have sat in this chair for years, I will walk. If it is only with my mind through my poetry, I will walk. (To Father) I will love Father. I will live my life like any other woman. He thinks the stress of rejection will affect my progress. I, too, have a Robert. But father breaks my heart strings, controls my purse strings. My eyes must stay on my father. (To Michael) Why am I such an intoxication in my father’s head?

MICHAEL
(To Lover) Stop being black through me! The stress of rejection affects my progress.

BA
I published a small volume of my poetry. It was successful. The stress of success might make me walk again. Father in his voice that moves like the hand of God, says I must accept my fate. It is our responsibility. Our duty to God.

MICHAEL
Robert was a dancer without a dance. I gave him music, my body. My lover gave me a leash. (To Lover) I’m not your dancing monkey. (Beat) My poems remind my soul about the prison of this flesh.

BA
Mrs. Simpson, a devouted patron of the arts and a professional spinster, showed me a world outside my window. Father had a distaste for her and prunes. (Imagines a note in her hand and reads it aloud) “Your attenton is requested at the theatre this evening to view a new work by that distinguished poet, Robert Blackwell. This is his first theatrical venture. Being a man of importance in letters and poetry, I would deem this an evening worthy of your artistic attention. May I venture to suggest to Robert a late supper.”

What she meant is how I would get to know him...Needless to say; his theatre was just a piece, incomplete in thought and presentation. But his charisma came full circle in the arms of a woman; a lady could not know him.
BA (Continued)
I oftened watched life while sitting quietly within myself contemplating what part of me would venture out for expression. Female companion have been delicate in nurturing natures when competing with men. But our eyes are like sirens. Robert was a dream shaping me into independence. Father’s iron hand could not unbind him from my mind’s embrace. So I come to my room to be with him...experience him.

MICHAEL
he hears me not / he sees me less / he wants my sound echoing through male forms / there is only man in all he found / except he hears my femininity dancing / he wants her dance / he hears me not wanting / he sees me not sitting in puddles of my tears / i am a porcelain doll on the edge of a fence / about to fall for his touch as a breeze / thinking it was my unknown Father / remembering me so long gone from home / he wants only to know / the woman in me

BA
(Imitates Father) “I can’t believe Liz you have allowed appointments with this man in this house without considerations of my feelings. I will not stand for this insubordination. What kind of man is this Robert Blackwell. From my understanding, he doesn’t hold employment. Another poet. He is probably after your inheritance. Also, Liz, you are not knowledgable about men.”

MICHAEL
(To Ba) A Robert could put us in a precarious predicament.

BA
(To Father) Father, my inheritance is not an issue. We exchange thoughts and commentaries on each other’s work.

MICHAEL
All my strangers become Roberts promising me they will be gentle.

BA
(Imitates Father) “This is intolerable Elizabeth. Your behavior these last few weeks have brought great displeasure. A woman should not compete with a man’s intellect. Yet, I yielded to this frivolous whim. Then you bring a stranger into this house without my consent.”

MICHAEL
My lover has that jungla fever again. I can feel him, wanting me to cool him.

BA
(To Father) Love me as your daughter Father.

MICHAEL
Not as a wife!

Ba and Michael look at each other shocked at their mutual situation.

BA
Wife?

MICHAEL
Daughter? He haunts me as he haunts you. My lover touches me as my father.

BA
Still, he dares to possess me as you.

MICHAEL takes BA’s box of poetry off of his writing table and hands them to her as she holds them close to her.

MICHAEL
I am you.

BA
As I am you.

MICHAEL
I don’t understand.

BA
He has pursued me through many lifetimes.

MICHAEL
I am you.

BA
Don’t go back to him. End the drama.

MICHAEL
I am you.

BA
Michael.

MICHAEL
Then I am madness personified.

BA
Stay here with me. The shadows outside of here are cold, empty.

MICHAEL
I’m afraid of the dark.

BA
It is your darkness you are afraid of not his.

MICHAEL
He is my darkness.

BA
He reflects what you deny. Find your story. Your story is your key and your freedom.

MICHAEL
And you? What of your story?

BA
We have the same story but you forgotten our story.

MICHAEL
Tell me.
BA
I cannot exist now without your remembering. I will live outside of shadows once you remember our story.

MICHAEL
My grandmother use to tell me in the old days it was believed stories carried a person’s power. But I gave my voice to those who offered me a drink, a smile...

BA
He will harvest our passions again.

MICHAEL
So when does this end?

BA
I haven’t found an exit.

MICHAEL
leaves dancing across a wilting skirt / arms wrinkling from moonlight dances / thoughts left me bare upon a rock / singing to sea nymphs to take me back to life. / i loved so long among the ruins of a woman / i still sing from cracked pedestals. / some day my womb

BA (Continued)
shall sing again / when I weave fragments from hands / that have desecrated the androgyny I am / for now, my heart has no home.

leaves dancing across a wilted skirt. / like memories of a young summer / when i was raised to his heaven / through a kiss forsaking mine / to relish in the memory / the kingdom of the power / and no glory in a world of men / without a womankind behind their eyes / leaves dancing fall like memories / fall again like snowflakes.

MICHAEL
Anytime I make a move to have a life, to speak with my heart, he imprisons me again in his touch. My white lover is like the God they preached to me in church. Is salvation a door marked “For coloreds only.” My spirit is the wind. What color is the wind? Every time my heart ventures from the dungeons in his mind, I hear him, “Michael, come to bed. Poetry is a woman’s divine madness!”

BA
My father.

MICHAEL
My lover.

BA
Our father who is not in heaven.

MICHAEL
Don’t let your Robert walk away Ba. I let my Robert go. I was afraid as he reached for me across the abyss. I was afraid I’d fall. He didn’t hear the noise of the world.

My lovers always smile and say, “I will be gentle.”

In times when the night life was beyond my reach, I sat in a closet. The closet was like an absent womb where I often sat humming an nursery rhyme. My mother once found me there. I told her I was a the Light in a manger. She gave me a hug and sent me to my room. Some man I didn’t know, gave me a quarter, a pat on the head and told me the light doesn’t cry, sit in dark closets and have empty pockets. I didn’t want to believe in. In my room, I drew a circle and called it daddy. And at night, I’d lay there and think about my circle, momma and me and the men with the quarters as my nights were often disturbed by momma laying in the next room crying, “be gentle.” I wanted to cry out. I wanted momma to know she had a circle too. But strangers became my Roberts who caressed me...I sighed as expected...and a world of Roberts told me, “I will be gentle.” Find your Robert. Find him Ba. He is the Beloved.

Michael takes a piece of paper out from his shirt where his heart is.

MICHAEL
Here.

BA
You heard me.

MICHAEL
How many lifetimes did it take?

BA looks at the paper; reads and recites it aloud.

BA
Once upon a time, the Androgyny wanted to understand why the Father wept about Creation. It had been eons since its brothers had ventured out and not returned in their wholeness. Leaving the Father a letter to one day to send as a reminder of who it was; what it is and what it will become, the Androgyny ventured out into the world of darkness to find its brothers. It became intoxicated on the fumes of being in material form. As it walked through the various worlds experiencing form, a mist of forgetfulness fell upon it. The Androgyny’s light became dense. Eventually, when it walked upon the Earth, it was heavy in form and walked as a female, and experienced duality. Through the emotional and physical abuses, she endured in this form. One day she accidentally cracked and a little light shined through from the abyss in her mind where her light slept.

MICHAEL
Because of this crack in her consciousness, the message she left with her Father descended upon her and she took the form of a male to hide her light from the appetite of the outer darkness. She realized she was the Male Mother, a divine androgyny. To return to the Unbegotten Father, she must release herself from the noise of the world. As her light started shining again, man looked upon the Light that was hiding in a male form for physical pleasure. It was their intention to rape the Light, take it to their own and feed their desires. Thus, she wanders homeless without comfort. There is no room at the Inn as the Androgyny wanders to take back the Light.

BA
Must I always walk inside of a man to hide from the diseased feelings that perpetuate itself as good and evil so I stay confused in duality, in separation of my mind as it seeks expression. Must I always walk inside of a man being crippled to that that I am.

MICHAEL
There is no us, Ba, there is only we. I must leave. My lover calls to me.

BA
Remember poetry is...divine madness.

MICHAEL
Will I see you again?

BA smiles, Michael returns her smile and leaves. BA looks at the audience for a moment and goes and gets her box of poetry, sits and looks out at the audience.

BA
My dearest love, Father doesn’t know how my heart sings of thee and the messages I send when a breeze is near to carry my words of love to you. Today father scolded me for sitting to long in my dreams. But I am with thee. I cannot say what is real or a dream. I cannot find the seams. My room does not speak to me like a tomb. Today a bird sat on a windowsill and sung a love song. My unrest was stilled. My brother David said he saw a rainbow in my eyes. I dance now in my light since you first touched me through a letter. My love grows stronger and I soon shall steal away from this room and be at your side.

I am eternally yours, Ba.

In this box is the end of a life, through that door is the beginning of my life. Father thinks I’m in here sweetening my tea with tears, writing until the moon pulls the shawl of day around her. He’ll expect a few verbal stones, poetry being thrown through the air in a fit of rage while I’m sitting in my room rocking my youth to sleep in loneliness. Father has always had his way with me until...I’m even afraid to speak his name. The sound fades into a time frame where it whispers to spirit’s ears. I’m afraid he might fade if I speak his name. It may shatter an illusion his letters have painted. I’ve heard whispering ‘I love you’ in the late of the night before my eyes painted him into an inner landscape. There we dance as eternal lovers wrapped in a rainbow.

The time is now. I am here ? soon a memory that you may regress to or progress from. I am a Victorian woman sitting in the spirit of a man, another landscape for me to venture into as I await my beloved.

BLACKOUT