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V Efua Prince


RHOBERT

 

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Cast of Characters

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                                             SELF 1: a version of herself; dressed in a white slip dress

                                             SELF 2: a version of herself; dressed in a black slip dress

                                             SELF 3: a version of herself; dressed in a pink slip dress

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Scene

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                                             A spotlight on a middle aged African American woman fragmented

                                             by her love for men whose trauma has turned outward. The woman

                                             might be cast as three African Americans or 1 Black woman, 1

                                             Chinese woman, and 1 Irish woman. The play conveys the tones,

                                             attitude, and rhythms of go go music.

 

Time

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Anytime

 

ACT 1

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                                             SETTING: The audience serves as witness to a deconstructed

                                             monologue of a woman who might be dancing at the edge of a cliff.

 

                                             AT RISE: The three selves are in spotlight at center stage, appearing

                                             as fragments of a single woman. Their backs are together and holding

                                             hands, forming a triangle union. When they speak, they speak as if

                                             with one voice. They turn slowly as they speak in order for the

                                             one speaking to face the audience.

                                             

SELF 1:

                                                                    (The number 1 appears in light)

                                                           And this motherfucka.

 

SELF 2:

                                                           I cannot tell it.

 

SELF 3:

                                                           I know because we are family, living among each other

                                                           creates intimacies.

 

SELF 2:

                                                           Family makes its own law.

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SELF 3:

                                                           I am bound by blood and law to keep the family, but its

                                                           jagged edges slice the synapses in my mind.

 

SELF 1:

                                                           I chase them through the fog in my brain.

 

SELF 3:

                                                           When I had finally gathered the pieces together, what I

                                                           saw broke my heart and blew my mind.

 

SELF 2:

                                                           These numbered pieces scattered like dried rose petals

                                                           as I collapsed, my head hitting hard against the floor.

 

SELF 1:

                                                           I have not been the same since I arose.

 

SELF 2:

                                                           But family is still blood and law.

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SELF 3:

                                                                    (The “you” is a particular spot in the

                                                                    audience. The same you will be addressed

                                                                    throughout regardless of the speaker.)

                                                           Even now. I am not telling you.

​

SELF 1:

                                                           Who is you

                                                           for me to tell

 

SELF 2:

                                                           I am picking up these pieces.

 

SELF 1:

                                                                    (The number 2 appears in light. The

                                                                    transition is underscored by the

                                                                    percussive rhythms of go go music.)

                                                           Rhobert never crawled, his mama always tells the story. He

                                                           walked without crawling first and the effort bent his legs.

 

SELF 3:

                                                           He is the most bow-legged motherfucka I ever saw.

 

SELF 2:

                                                           It dont help that he wears a house, like a monstrous ol

                                                           school diver’s helmet, on his head. At first I thought it

                                                           gave him air to breathe while diving.

 

SELF 1:

 

                                                           Then you called, yelling into the receiver:

                                                           Your husband is a monster!

 

SELF 2:

                                                           Well, now that’s a bad metaphor, I thought. A man might

                                                           do monstrous things, but a man is not a monster. It’s

                                                           reductive and eliminates the complexities of his very

                                                           human existence. Besides which, it assumes your

                                                           righteous superiority.

 

SELF 1:

                                                           Our house is a dead thing that weights him down. He is

                                                           sinking as a diver would sink if the water be drawn off. He

                                                           bought the house soon after I became pregnant with our

                                                           first baby. It had a snatch-waist of a yard with mice

                                                           running through it most of the year. The week after we

                                                           moved in, Rhobert set the first trap. He had opened the

                                                           linen closet to get a bath towel and a mouse leapt upon his

                                                           head. He dropped the towel, grabbed his car keys, and

                                                           headed straight to the hardware store.

 

SELF 3:

                                                           Rhobert is an upright man, despite the fact that his legs

                                                           are bowed because as a child he walked too soon.

 

SELF 1:

                                                           If things were as clear as you suggest, you would not be

                                                           screaming Your husband is a monster! at me like that. You

                                                           would have known that he was a motherfucka and you

                                                           would not feel so betrayed.

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SELF 3: 

                                                           Rhobert’s attractive. Well groomed. Talented and smart.

                                                           He’s got the wife and kids. House with a snatch-waist yard.

                                                           Look n like E. Franklin Fraizer mighta been his great granddaddy.

                                                           He made you feel we were together in a special  club.  

 

SELF 2: 

                                                           But he is a bow-legged motherfucka because as a child he 

                                                           walked too soon with a house like a ol school diver’s helmet

                                                           on his head. 

SELF 3:

                                                           Rhobert does not care. Like most men who wear monstrous 

                                                           helmets, the pressure it exerts is enough to convince him of

                                                           its practical infinity. And he cares not two cents as to whether

                                                           or not he will ever see me and our children again.  Many times

                                                           he has seen us drown in his dreams and has  kicked about

                                                           joyously in the park for days after. Here you  go telling me that

                                                           I married a monster like your judgment  substitutes for justice.  

 

SELF 2: 

                                                           Did you even tell him that?  

 

SELF 3: 

                                                           Did you call him up and yell that at him too? 

 

SELF 1: 

                                                           Or just me?  

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SELF 2: 

                                                           Tell him.  

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SELF 3: 

                                                                    (The number 3 appears in light. The  

                                                                    transition is underscored by the  

                                                                    percussive rhythms of go go music.) 

                                                           I won’t tell you what it did to our family when he started

                                                           fucking our daughter’s best friend. It began after he made 

                                                           her into a nude model for a figure drawing class he 

                                                           invented—for our kids to develop their skills he said. 

                                                           Saturday mornings. Free to any and all who desired attend. 

                                                           Our kids did not wish to attend. She was his best model, 

                                                           his favorite. She, a midnight-skinned, round-faced beauty,

                                                           held a pose so well. Naturally. He put her on a pedestal 

                                                           and showed others how to render her features with charcoal

                                                           on paper.  

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SELF 1: 

                                                           Telling me she was like our daughter. 

 

SELF 3:

                                                           She was troubled, like others among our daughter’s friends

                                                           who grow up fatherless in the city. Drinking. Drugs. A

                                                           student who had been raped on campus, a fact I learned

                                                           later from you, but one that she confided in him. An

                                                           intimacy that you, speaking matter-of-factly, revealed to

                                                           me because you thought I already knew.

 

SELF 2:

                                                                    (The number 4 appears in light. The

                                                                    transition is underscored by the

                                                                    percussive rhythms of go go music.)

                                                           Rhobert is an upright man whosa bow-legged motherfucka

                                                           because as a child he walked too soon.

 

SELF 1:

                                                           Used to hang with this other motherfucka, a school teacher

                                                           who was looking out for this girl.

 

SELF 2:

                                                           Helped her with her schoolwork.

 

SELF 3:

                                                           Took her under his wing.

 

SELF 1:

                                                           Took her to the amusement park to ride roller coasters.

 

SELF 2:

                                                           He liked the way she smiled when the sunshine fell directly

                                                           on her face, making her close her eyes tightly. He brought

                                                           her flavored ice and hot dogs and funnel cake. She was a

                                                           positive influence on his son. The boy had a crush on her,

                                                           so much less trouble when the girl was around. Although

                                                           just a couple of years separated her from his son, she

                                                           seemed so much older. She had the opposite effect on him.

                                                           Her fawning admiration made his heart leap.

 

SELF 1:

                                                           He felt himself a kid again—not a kid who fumbled for words

                                                           like he did when he was in school. Not clumsy like his son,

                                                           tripping over too large feet and lapping at her heels. Not

                                                           a man-in-waiting whom the girls looked past. He was

                                                           finally, after long years, a cool kid. His wife never made

                                                           him feel that way. When they met, she had told him that he

                                                           was too young. She treated him like that—like he was too

                                                           young—even after they had that child together and had

                                                           married.

 

SELF 3:

                                                           He never meant to hurt anyone. His parents in their

                                                           twilight years having to endure the trial. He would not be

                                                           able to teach his son how to tie a tie. How to shave. How

                                                           to cut hair. He would not be in the passenger seat when his

                                                           son took his first spin around the block. He would not be

                                                           able to buy his son his first condom and give him the talk

                                                           about how sweet pussy felt and how treacherous. It was too

                                                           late for him to give his son the talk about cops—move

                                                           slowly and keep your hands in view—because they had already

                                                           snatched him out of bed and had the boy face down at gun

                                                           point when they came to arrest him.

​

SELF 2:

                                                           He hurts. Old, deep wounds drive him to the brink, but only

                                                           in his mind; like his feet pressing the pedals of a stationary

                                                           bicycle, whirling but never moving on. There he was,

                                                           moving back into that room in his parent’s house after

                                                           his wife filed for divorce. Back in the place where, when

                                                           he closed his eyes, sometimes he still smelled his own ass

                                                           opening. He had tried to close his mind but minds don’t

                                                           close as easily as eyelids.

​

SELF 3:

                                                           He was not like that. He was always gentle, even when it

                                                           was in her ass. She had such a nice ass. Her titties too,

                                                           melons like those of a woman twice her age. That is the way

                                                           his lawyer described them after seeing the pictures the

                                                           police recovered from his phone. See, his lawyer knew.

 

SELF 1:

                                                                    (The number 5 appears in light. The

                                                                    transition is underscored by the

                                                                    percussive rhythms of go go music.)

                                                           Rhobert’s house is a dead thing that weights him down. He

                                                           is sinking as a diver would should the water be drawn off.

                                                           I dreamed Rhobert was on a bike, racing away from me, the

                                                           woman he had married. He didn’t get far before he fell. A

                                                           bad fall. He bandaged himself hastily before climbing back

                                                           on the bike and riding off. He fell again. He rewrapped the

                                                           blood-soaked bandaging and got on his bike, pedaling as

                                                           fast as he could. He fell. Up again. I caught him this time

                                                           before he sped away. Stop, I pleaded. You’re hurting

                                                           yourself. He looked at me. I have to get away, he explained

                                                           as if I were confused. I woke. Feeling pain. And love.

 

SELF 3:

                                                                    (The number 6 appears in light. The

                                                                    transition is underscored by the

                                                                    percussive rhythms of go go music.)

                                                           Then too, there was this other mutherfucka I grew up with.

 

SELF 2:

                                                           A scroll of unutterable mysteries written in invisible ink

                                                           wrapped his home like a shroud, while we waited on Jesus

                                                           to fix it.

 

SELF 1:

                                                           What happened to him?

 

                                                                    (They shrug their shoulders.)

 

SELF 3:

                                                           We do not talk about that.

​

SELF 2:

                                                           I don’t know if Jesus fixed it but he did not die. There

                                                           were years when he did not appear at family gatherings. And

                                                           times when he appeared looking like the walking dead. And

                                                           times when he gathered as if he had not ever gone missing.

                                                           The shadow of his addictions darkened his youth and

                                                           tainted his college years. His parents watched and waited

                                                           to see if any of the others of us headed after him down

                                                           that wayward path. They were not carefree times. He had

                                                           gone off to an elite liberal arts college and come home

                                                           with two big cornbread fed huskers in tow, black nail

                                                           polish on his toes, and habits he could not break. He

                                                           decried the injustice of penalizing people for victimless

                                                           crimes.

 

SELF 3:

                                                           Victimless says the one who borrowed my car to drive a mile

                                                           down the road to the 7-11 and couldnt make it home by two

                                                           days later when it was time for me to return to school.

                                                           That was many years ago, but that shit hangs on like a

                                                           bitch bearing pups in the crawlspace of my house.

 

SELF 2:

                                                                    (The number 7 appears in light. The

                                                                    transition is underscored by the

                                                                    percussive rhythms of go go music.)

                                                           There’s no such thing as a self-made man.

 

SELF 1:

                                                           That’s a lie America tells young men before they send them

                                                           off to war. Fight, they say, for democracy. Rhobert was

                                                           young and could not know it was a lie. He had not lived

                                                           enough to sort through all the bullshit. It seemed true

                                                           enough once they taught him to make a proper bed and to

                                                           spit shine his shoes and fed him well every day that hard

                                                           work and stamina is all that is required.

 

SELF 2:

                                                           On his grandfather’s farm, though, yield produced by hard

                                                           work and stamina were tempered by rainfall and late frosts

                                                           and white folks who could be mean as snakes.

 

SELF 3:

                                                           They would fix the scales, cook the books, and burn your

                                                           barn.

 

SELF 1:

                                                           But Uncle Sam was a different kind of white man,

                                                           particularly when there was a frontline and bombs to be

                                                           dropped. If Rhobert made it out alive and not addicted to

                                                           heroin, then he could build a home for himself.

 

SELF 2:

                                                           Have a wife and kids. Maybe a woman on the side, too, for

                                                           when shit got too hot at the crib.

​

SELF 1:

                                                           Soon people will be looking at him and calling him a strong

                                                           man.

 

SELF 3:

                                                           No doubt he is for one who has been walking for too long.

​

                                                                    (The selves move slowly back to center,

                                                                    with their backs together, holding hands,

                                                                    and rotating as they speak to face the

                                                                    audience. The remainder is underscored

                                                                    by the percussive rhythms of go go music.)

 

SELF 2:

                                                           Lets give it to him.

 

SELF 1:

                                                           Lets call him great when the water shall have been all

                                                           drawn off.

 

SELF 2:

                                                           Lets build a monument and set it in the ooze where he goes

                                                           down.

 

SELF 1:

                                                           A monument of hewn oak, carved in motherfuckas’s faces.

 

SELF 3:

                                                           Lets open our throats, good people, and sing “Deep River”

                                                           when he goes down.

 

SELF 2:

                                                           Brother, Rhobert is sinking.

 

SELF 1:

                                                           Lets open our throats, good people,

 

SELF 3:

                                                           Lets sing Deep River when he goes down.

 

(Black Out)

(End of Play)

V Efua Prince explores critical aspects of African American women’s historical relationship to home, family, work, and the dynamics of black family life. Crazy As Hell: The Best Little Guide to Black History, co-authored with Bro. Yao (Hoke S. Glover, III), is forthcoming from W. W. Norton in partnership with Freedom Reads, Juneteenth 2024.

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