SCENE: A
dark, empty stage. A young woman walks
slowly but deliberately to center front stage.
Spot goes up focusing on woman’s head and torso. She wears ragged, dirty jeans, dirty T-shirt,
sandals. Her ears display multiple
rings, and too-many bracelets jangle at her wrists. Her hair is short, uncombed and dyed blond. She has various, small tattoos on her
arms. She looks as though she has been
on the streets for about a week. Without
a smile, she scans the audience without saying a word. After a few moments, she begins. At first, she keeps her arms limp at her
sides, moving very little. As her monologue continues, she will become more
animated by gesticulating as she tells her story. Throughout, she will keep her eyes alert,
focusing on various members of the audience, and remain unsmiling except as
indicated:
My name is Amna. [Pronounced with soft initial “A”]
Not Anna. [Pronounced as American
name with soft, initial “A”] Not
Ana. [Pronounced as Hispanic name:
“Awna”] But Amna. Like amnesia.
Grandma was named Amna. She was
white, from Nevada. Married my Grandpa
who was from Jalisco, Mexico. They met
when Grandma moved to L.A. just before the Depression. Grandma wanted to get away from her
father. Don’t know why. She was only sixteen. Saw a picture of her when she was about that
age. Beautiful white skin that looked as
smooth as my favorite doll’s satin dress.
Tiny. She weighed no more than
ninety. [Holds fingers of right hand in front of face and slowly moves them] Delicate long fingers that are too long for
her little body. [Slowly puts hand down]
Grandma stands leaning against a wooden chair. No smile.
Just this stare. Like she sees me
even before I’m born and even before she meets Grandpa and they have
Momee. Light-colored eyes that look dark
and glisten from a shadow and you know that her thoughts and memories are too
big for her little body. And her dress
is like a flapper’s dress but not so daring.
White ink on the picture says SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA, SEPTEMBER 4,
1927. On the back in faded blue ink says
AMNA HALL. Different writing than what’s
on front.
Momee
told me a hundred times how Grandma met Grandpa. Grandma got a job washing clothes for the
wife of the Mayor of L.A. Just lucky,
sort of. She washed along with another
woman, a Mexican. Isabel. Isabel spoke good English otherwise she
couldn’t have gotten the job. And
beautiful like my Grandma but dark skin. There’s a funny picture. [Breaks
into a small smile] Grandma and
Isabel. Sitting in a Model T. They’re hamming it up. Holding the back of their heads with one hand
and the other hand on their hips like they’re trying to seduce a man. Smiling big smiles. Probably breaking into uncontrolled laughter
after the picture is taken. Don’t know
who took it. And Momee doesn’t know
whose car it is, either. Maybe the
Mayor’s. Who knows. Little mysteries. This Isabel has thick eyebrows like caterpillars
and full lips and flat nose. High cheekbones and long black hair braided like
thick yarn. Very Indian looking. About
Grandma’s age. Beautiful. [Smile
disappears] Momee says Isabel was
killed the next year. In 1928. Killed in the street at night with a knife. No one was arrested. But in that picture, they show nothing but
the pure silly happiness of young women with a good future waiting patiently,
like a friendly dog, out there just a few years away.
Anyway,
Isabel introduced Grandma to a club that mostly Mexicans went to. It was called Play Time. At Second and Main Streets in downtown. Not there anymore. Now there’s the State Building. The Ronald Reagan State Building. State attorneys work there. And the CHP has an office there, too. Building is modern and new and looks like the
Titanic. It has these big porthole-like
windows way up top. Built in early
1990s. So, anyway, Grandma goes to this
club with Isabel. They’re too young but
they dress older. And they’re pretty so
they get in. Momee says that everyone
stared at Grandma because she’s the only white woman there. But it’s okay. No trouble, Momee tells me. Just curiosity about this beautiful young
woman with the very white skin. Guys
come up and ask Grandma to dance. Most
of them can’t speak English very well.
And Isabel shoos them away.
Grandma wants them all to stay.
All so handsome. Isabel says, El que todo lo quiere todo lo pierde. The greedy person ends up with nothing. Choose wisely Isabel says. After she says this, a man walks up. He speaks pretty good English. Thin.
Black wavy hair combed back.
Widow’s peak. Handsome in
high-waisted pleated pants and gleaming white shirt. Pencil thin mustache. Grandma can’t speak. Just stares at this beautiful man. Francisco. A baker.
Has his own little pan dulce
store at Normandie and Venice Boulevards.
Not there anymore. He’s
twenty-two years old. And they
dance. Romantic ballad. Wish I knew what it was so I could buy
it. They move like they’ve been dancing
together to the same song all their lives.
They married the next year at St. Vibiana’s in downtown. Before Isabel was killed. Momee told this story many times. But I like hearing it.
So
Grandma and Grandpa get a little apartment near the pan dulce shop. On Normandie. That apartment is still there. A fourplex with two smooth wooden columns and
a double cement porch for the two apartments at the bottom. Wooden steps in the back that go straight up
and then divide like a river to two different doors of the other
apartments. It was newly built back
then. It looks majestic in the
pictures. But now it’s beaten down and
sits drooping in the hot L.A. sun.
Cracked gray paint. Artificial
grass glued to the cement porch and steps.
Tacky. But back then, it must have
been a mansion to my grandparents.
Though other people live there now, I walk by sometimes. And I squint at it trying to make it look
like the pictures Momee showed me. What
if I could go up and they’d be there, young and newly married. And I’d say, Grandma and Grandpa, it’s
me. Amna. Your grandbaby. Seventeen and almost a woman. But they wouldn’t know me. Because they never even knew that I was
born. They died in 1979. Within a month of each other. First, Grandma died. Breast cancer. And then, a few weeks after her funeral,
Grandpa’s heart just stopped. All that
happened three years before I was born.
So, you see, they wouldn’t know me.
I’d just be some skinny little brown kid with blue-green eyes, like my
Grandma’s, with short dyed blond hair and a zillion piercings and tattoos. They’d say that I had the wrong home. Maybe go down the street and find the right
place.
When
they died, they left behind four grown children and eleven grandchildren. That’s before I was born, like I said. But even with me now there are still eleven
grandchildren because my older brother, Humberto, died a few years ago. Died isn’t exactly it. Took his life. Hung himself with his underwear in jail. It’s funny because they took his shoelaces
but he still figured a way to do it.
During summer, after Popee left us and moved to Florida, Humberto used
to watch me when Momee went to work. The
first summer he had to watch me, he used to ignore me a lot. I’d play by myself in the backyard making
Creepy Crawlers. I set it up by
myself. Plug the orange plastic Creepy
Crawler oven into the big metal socket at the side of the house. [Closes
eyes, puts head back, breaks into a small smile while remembering] And I’d design these really cool snakes and
bugs and monster faces using all kinds of colored goo. And then they’d cook in exactly nine
minutes. I watch the egg timer that’s
shaped like a tomato until it rings and wakes me from my trance. Impatient, I pull the metal molds out with
little plastic tongs before I really should and I cool them down with the hose
with a hissing sound as the cool water hits the hot metal. The hot cooked rubber smell shoots up my
nostrils and my heart beats hard. And I
pull my critters or monster heads out with my fingernails and put them in a
cigar box. The pile of my little
creations would glisten in the sun like rubbery jewels. Reds, blues, greens and yellows. [Eyes still closed, she reaches out to hold
an invisible box in front of her]
And then I snap shut the top of the cigar box and shake it to hear the
soft rattle of my scorpions, cobras and Dracula heads bounce and rub up against
each other and the sides of the box. [Eyes pop open, smile disappears, hands
drop to sides]
My
little Creepy Crawler factory keeps me busy for about a week and Humberto stays
out of my way. But then he decides to
take care of me. Makes me stay in the
house after Momee leaves in the morning.
Then he asks me questions with words I don’t understand. And he laughs this strange laugh. And then he gets real serious. Starts touching me. And each day he touches more and more and
takes my panties off to do that. Then he
starts putting things in me. First, his
fingers. Then things. Like the leg of my Barbie and then a spoon
and later pencil. With the pencil, I
start to bleed and I scream. Momee comes
home early that day. She sees Humberto
doing that to me with the pencil and she screams like me and slaps Humberto
hard on the head and he falls over like a cardboard cutout. Momee scoops me up and rushes me off to the
hospital. Has to take the bus because we
have no car. And I’m crying and she’s
crying. People stare. It’s hot in that bus. And crowded.
And the emergency nurse at the hospital whispers something to the doctor
and the police come. I’m nine and
Humberto is thirteen when this happens.
They take him away and I never see him again until his funeral. I found out later that after they took him
away, he was in and out of jail and lived the queer life when he was out on the
streets. He hustled. When he hung himself, he weighed a hundred
and twenty-two pounds. Five foot
ten. Shaved head. With eyes that look like mine. I went to his funeral but Momee refused. Popee came out from Florida for it. I’m glad I went. Popee hugs me and kisses my cheek. Mija, he says. I’ve missed you so much. But I can’t stay in L.A. Say hello to your mother. And then he leaves and all I can do is focus
on his Old Spice smell that clings to the side of my face where he kissed
me. [She
lightly touches the side of her face with her right hand]
Momee
still works. Cooks at the cafeteria at
the Ronald Reagan Building. The
Titanic. I’m almost finished with high
school. It’s okay. But I wander through classes like I’m under
water. It’s in slow motion, kind of, and
the sounds of the other kids and the teachers become muffled and hard to
understand. Sometimes I sit in class and
my name just keeps running around in my head.
Amna. Amna. Amna.
Until finally it doesn’t sound like my name anymore. Sounds like something strange and far
away. Something that burns hot and
shines like the silver studs that run up and down my left earlobe. And I like it and wonder if my Grandma used
to say her name over and over and over in her mind, too. And if she did, did it change and become
something else? Something completely
different? Something better?
[After
a few moments, spot fades to black while she stands looking at the audience]
End.
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