For the Reckord Read online

  MEMBERS OF THE BALM YARD

  CHILDREN

  DOCTOR

  Act I. Scene

  1. Afternoon.

  2. Night.

  3. Next morning.

  4. Late afternoon.

  Act II. Scene

  1. Early evening.

  2. do.

  3. do.

  4. Night.

  5. do.

  6. do.

  7. do.

  Act One

  SCENE ONE

  JOSHIE is sitting on a log in the yard. DELLA is in the house sitting on a stool facing upstage, nursing the baby, singing a lullaby.

  Enter LAL.

  LAL: Joshie! True what they say Joshie?

  JOSHIE: Who say, Miss Lal?

  LAL: What they say about Tata.

  JOSHIE: Who say?

  Drum.

  LAL: Shepherd Aaron.

  JOSHIE: Shepherd Aaron work obeah on my brother to kill him, then spread it around he soon dead. Miss Lal, you didn’t hear doctor say obeah is just silly black magic?

  LAL: Obeah silly black magic. What more say the doctor?

  JOSHIE: Doctor say give him a little time Tata soon better.

  LAL: Joshie, Shepherd Aaron say that doctor is a hell doctor; more, he is a white man. I feel for Tata as my own child, but I know who have the healing power.

  JOSHIE: One whole year Shepherd Aaron work on the baby, while my mother was living with him. You were with us then. And Shepherd could find no cure for Tata.

  LAL: The doctor find cure?

  JOSHIE: In one month?

  LAL: More than a month.

  JOSHIE: Give him time.

  LAL: The Shepherd Aaron is a terrible man. You see how Tata wither up, wither up dying from fever. That same doctor said Vie called him too late, but Shepherd Aaron laugh. Your mother inside?

  JOSHIE: With Tata.

  LAL: I want to help, to show my sympathy.

  She begins walking away. JOSHIE calls her back.

  JOSHIE: Miss Lal.

  LAL: Joshie?

  JOSHIE: My mother confidence the doctor. Don’t frighten her.

  Miss LAL raps tentatively on DELLA’s door. She calls softly.

  LAL: Adella.

  DELLA: Oh, Lal, I glad you come. I hear the voice talking to Joshie and strain my ears but couldn’t make out it was you. You talk so soft.

  LAL: Soon now I will bawl my throat out and Tata’s ears won’t catch a word. (Full of pity she looks at TATA.) How God punish you for that day you leave the Shepherd.

  DELLA: How many times my conscience walked out his house but my feet couldn’t follow it. But when that girl Liza left Shepherd’s flock, and to take vengeance he turned on her, filled her ears with whispers of crippling and death, so gradually she fall off her play and her food, her mind turn wild, her flesh hot, and in agony she dead; then God’s mercy fell like the bright morning over the darkness of my life with Shepherd, and with my own baby so long sick, inveigled me to run to a doctor with him. Run, Lal. A power drove me greater than Shepherd and my feet couldn’t stand firm against the stream of it.

  LAL: Not power. You love the white man. It excite you to find a white man will mix with you.

  DELLA: I risk my baby life to get a white man?

  LAL: Yes. Doctor sweet as breeze. Not a day pass but he down here seeing Tata. Yet Tata is still… (She searches for a word and finally uses a euphemism that at the same time suggests what a change the sickness has brought about on the child she helped to nurse.) not himself. (Almost screams.) Why doctor don’t take the child to hospital?

  DELLA: He was waiting for a bed.

  LAL: All this time?

  DELLA: They lie three to a cot in the hospital. You won’t catch my child there.

  LAL: The bed doctor want is down here. He know too many of us living to bother with the sick, so he venture Tata for a spree with the black gal.

  DELLA: Lie, lie, lie. He is a gentleman to me. Joshie love him. Savagery drive me from Shepherd and the doctor’s gentlemanliness keep me. How Shepherd moved through his women with no reverent feeling, mashed them in his mouth like ripe bananas to fill a maw that soon emptied out again. Any tenderness he dropped was only seed to lure me to a dry spring. His eye pitched on no beauty he wouldn’t swallow, flesh and bone and feather. I tell you, Lal, I thought once what made me leave Shepherd was a sudden mood. But it was a deep instinct surging strong from the bottom of me. I hate his power, solid as the earth, and pray I could gather up strength like an earthquake and shake him.

  LAL: While you stay here fretting yourself, Shepherd easy. Like a god he order his people, they cut you off. You starve and Joshie and Tata, while he don’t feel the crumb of hunger.

  DELLA: If only I could get a chance to leave Trench Town. I believe, I believe doctor and me fit so like hat and head, that before long he will ask me to come work with him in St. Andrew.

  LAL: Among all the white people?

  DELLA: I tell you Lal, the lowest servant work would content me. Every morning I pray to God, “temper Doctor’s heart and make him want me to come, and make him ask me”; for me this Trench Town dark, with limber devils in it.

  LAL: You put it to him already?

  DELLA: Sometime now. I suggest; get no notice. Then again I hint, go round, come round, hint again.

  LAL: M-m-m. And he not out with anything yet.

  DELLA: He looked at me from under his eye. Don’t rightly know how to take it, but he is so perfect I think there’s a hope one day he will say to me, “Della come.”

  LAL: (Laughs.) You know he live by himself.

  DELLA: He not low down like Shepherd you know. I don’t think women trouble him at all. But if he has me, he has me. And I tell you Lal, I’d be glad, for a sick baby can’t fill a woman’s ache.

  LAL: And white man won’t fill it neither. You believe when you keep house for him he would take you decently and give you joy. In their Bible it says wolf and lamb lie down together. But they never mix up religion and business. No, you’re black, and white man would scorn you.

  DELLA: I’m not expecting him to touch me; but it wouldn’t be that he scorn me; that doctor could desire to caress me like a night wind but is too high a man to take the pleasure he is not married to.

  Drum.

  LAL: Caress you. No Della. The sympathy that would caress, long time now would invite you to a decent living. The Doctor fear if he touch you at all it would be to swell up and sweep over you. That man would batter you like a hurricane; flash his lightning against you, and walk ‘way leave you. For black to white is flesh to a tiger. When they come ‘cross it, they tear it.

  DELLA: Say no more.

  LAL: But he’s a timid man. All this storminess frighten him so he dare not touch you.

  They stop speaking and we hear JOSHIE’s pipe.

  DELLA: I begged Joshie not to play that tune. Makes my blood run cold.

  LAL: I must go now, Adella.

  DELLA: No, no you can’t do that. I’m so glad you come. At night I sit alone, and hear the boy groan and catch up his breath. Lord, Miss Lal, I wish I wasn’t alone. Why everybody keep so far from the sick Miss Lal? No answer. But you know why. You know the whole street tremble under Shepherd Aaron rod. But I tell the world Shepherd can’t harm me or mine if I lie down like a lamb in Jesus Christ. (Calls out.) Joshie, I beg you stop playing that tune. (To LAL.) It reminds me too much of the Shepherd. (Tune stops.) Your belly empty out and you don’t feel safe outside him… You know I leave Shepherd now nigh two month and is the first time you come to see me. God knows I would do well to fear the Shepherd because he turn every eye from me, every mind he turn from me, and only Joshie and Tata know when I cry.

  Faintly begins to be heard a sound of drums and singing. It is a march of SHEPHERD and his balm-yard and they seem to be coming in the direction of DELLA’s house.

  LAL: You hear it, Della, you hear it? Shepherd danger song.

  JOSHIE calls from outside.

  JOSHIE: Me mother,
you hear the music?

  DELLA: Call in Joshie, Lal.

  JOSHIE has already come rushing in.

  JOSHIE: I ran down the road and saw Shepherd, boasty, wheeling his staff like a regimental sergeant-major. Every five minutes he wheeled round and curled up and bowed to the young ladies in the procession. Run out and see his red cloak and Jordan banner, and how he breathe hard and shake his head and snuffle his nose like the ram-goat at Government stud-farm.

  DELLA: The sound draw nearer.

  JOSHIE: You might be able to stay here and see them. I see that lady Vie, an’ she dress up like red-stick spinach in seed. You should see her. She was a bowing fool. The sun hot and the dust thick, but she was in the spirit.

  DELLA: The sound draw nearer.

  LAL: They’re singing. “Death Oh my Lord”. Is the Shepherd danger song. Vie turned away from Shepherd but she come back. Adella, to turn is a fearful thing. I won’t stay in this house any longer. Go back to Shepherd. He slay Vie’s daughter Liza, he have the power.

  Exit LAL.

  DELLA: (Weeping.) Joshie, he coming this way. Lal tear up my courage like old newspaper. If he come now…

  JOSHIE: Mama!

  DELLA: Stay with me, Joshie.

  JOSHIE: You can’t stand up to him, but I going to call the doctor. Let me go quick. If is this yard he coming to, he might block up my way.

  DELLA: I weak, I can’t stand up…

  JOSHIE: The doctor will drive him away. I’ll bring back the doctor.

  JOSHIE is cut off by the SHEPHERD and his followers who are by now in the foreground dancing and harmonising. At the end SHEPHERD cries.

  SHEPHERD: Amen. Hold up your banner high. Wipe off the sweat streaming down like Christ’s blood. The Good Shepherd will rescue his sheep from the doctor White-Wolf. Sing it out.

  His followers break into a perfectly harmonised wail of the hymn ‘There were ninety and nine that safely lay, in the shelter of the fold.’ JOSHIE makes a dash at passing, but SHEPHERD intercepts.

  Joshie, boy.

  JOSHIE: I got nutten to say to you. I know who will answer you.

  SHEPHERD: You, an upright boy, black like me, take umbrage ‘gainst me. I surprise Joshie. What gives boy?

  JOSHIE: Give me pass.

  WOMAN IN THE CROWD: Boy, have respect. Where you want pass to go to?

  JOSHIE: Ruffians, give me pass.

  SHEPHERD: Ruffian? That is White-Wolf word. He howl it out. Never let it echo from your mouth. Where your mother?

  JOSHIE: (Mockingly shielding his eyes and peering into the crowd.) Look like she not with you, Shepherd.

  SHEPHERD: Boy, the sun hot, the dust high, me temper short. Tell your mother Shepherd call her. Tell her to bring Tata out and make her peace with me. (To his followers.) Hum the peace song, sing it out. Make it touch Della’s heart.

  SHEPHERD leads off “AMEN”; all join in humming. DOCTOR appears.

  JOSHIE: Me mother, doctor come.

  DOCTOR: Give Tata poison, Aaron, and you can harm him. But your hymns can’t hurt him and your magic can’t help him.

  Humming stops.

  SHEPHERD: Black God. Black Christ, come judge between man and monster, make the monster leave off Adella’s bed, Adella’s body.

  The CHORUS groans.

  DOCTOR: Adella’s bed be damned. When I start practising to come by a bed I’ll be as insatiable a cock as you.

  SHEPHERD: Sing it out. She lie down with the White-Wolf, but come the black lion, fear take the suckling; it whimper, she clutch it, but surely it dead. What is the word?

  CHORUS: Death.

  DELLA screams. SHEPHERD and his followers exit with a low, breathless chant, SHEPHERD having made his obeah mark on the ground.

  DELLA: Is the same way they call when Vie daughter dead. And now Tata will sink lower into that vale. God strike off this charm from my baby that Shepherd set; I can’t tear it off.

  DOCTOR: (Intones.) Tata’s all right. There’s no charm on your baby. Calm Della, Shepherd has no power. Rest. There’s no charm.

  DELLA: (Hysterically.) He have his hand round Tata throat. Feel the jaws tight. Oh, my belly heavy.

  DOCTOR: Calm now, quietly. You won’t be frightened by two silly marks on the ground.

  DELLA: He kill their children, rob their money; crawl over the whole body of them like dog flea. Balm-yard people are dogs and Shepherd suck their blood. Doctor, you are a friend brushing stinging wasps from me, brushing away spiders that grip, grip, grip at my heart.

  DOCTOR: We want the whole balm-yard away from Shepherd. It’s not only the jumping at the meetings, wearing themselves out night after night. It’s the brutal stupidity and flourish of ignorance.

  DELLA: Joshie, go fetch Tata water.

  DOCTOR: Rest Della.

  DELLA: Doctor, you have space for a servant at your yard?

  DOCTOR: I’m a doctor, not an employer.

  DELLA: A servant couldn’t come nowhere near your privacy. She live in an outhouse.

  DOCTOR: If she stayed in the outhouse. But rest. When I say rest, rest. You’re not a child. Close your eyes. Breathe deep. Lord, woman, you’re your own terror, killing yourself.

  DELLA: I not excited any more.

  DOCTOR: Well, after a month with me, frightened at the first puff of Shepherd.

  DELLA: I try to remedy this fear of obeah, but it cover me like flesh. When I die I’ll be rid of it. But a healthy roof for me and my children would help cure it.

  DOCTOR: A bachelor’s servant must be a shrivelled up old cow so the neighbours won’t whisper.

  DELLA: Is a slim chance they would whisper. But you would let me starve rather than take it.

  DOCTOR: A young Queen of Sheba needn’t beg. Any day, today, five men would vie for you.

  DELLA: Like five dogs for a bitch. Doctor, this place unsettle my mind; I’m not well. I need a friend to take me out of it.

  DOCTOR: I suppose I should go ahead and take you. I suppose. All my life I’ve supposed and left it at that. Coming down here was the only thought I’ve ever acted out. Acted out!! Jesus. Isn’t that just what it is.

  DELLA: You ever frightened yet, Doctor, ‘bout your food supply? When I was with Shepherd he get in clothes for me to wash. Now I still get in a trickle, but I watch it dwindle. I watch them squeeze me out.

  DOCTOR: You rake up the coals, eh Della. For a long time the misery down here rested on my mind. So to ease my ache I dreamed. It preserved my sleep. But I did wake up and came down here.

  DELLA: If you’re not giving me relief from Trench Town, is better Tata dead. For without him I could wander, and seek work, and make myself again, even on the wages pittance.

  DOCTOR: Don’t chide me, Della. I’ve done something – I’m not God. Doesn’t your Bible say each must bear his own burden?

  DELLA: Also, bear each other’s burdens.

  DOCTOR: Yes, mutual frustrations often have a common solution. Heaven knows I do my share for you and the devil couldn’t trap me into more. Here’s a pound Della. I must run before the fire in my belly starts to burn me, stronger than the outside sun.

  Exit the DOCTOR.

  DELLA tears the pound and throws it down on the ground. JOSHIE rushes to pick it up.

  JOSHIE: He give you a pound and you tear it up. Why you vexed? You should be glad. Is the first time Doctor give us money. I going to paste it.

  DELLA: If you see a stray dog hungry on the street, what use to throw bread to it? After you’re gone it range hungry again. Sympathy would take it home and care it, or send it to the police to put out its life. Then if you wouldn’t throw scraps to a dog, you shouldn’t throw them neither to a woman, her boy and baby. (In desperation.) He can’t leave me here in Trench Town to Shepherd torment.

  JOSHIE: We could leave.

  DELLA: If I was alone I could perhaps get a job. But who going to employ me with Tata.

  JOSHIE: Someone might take pity.

  DELLA: Pity? Must I wait on pity? Sooner than walk out of Trench Town and w
ander and beg, as God live and as vengeance against Him, I would go back to Shepherd and degrade myself in the yard, mingling with every man, and whore on the street.

  JOSHIE: Tomorrow, make one more try.

  DELLA: Tomorrow I will beg him again. Tonight pray he won’t harden his heart without cause ‘gainst my need.

  SCENE TWO

  SHEPHERD’s room. He is going through obeah ritual, lighting a candle, blowing on the flame, until it flutters, then blowing it out. He does this several times, with great earnestness.

  SHEPHERD: Little wick, feeling the death wind, go mad with terror, then out. Out with Tata (He calls someone offstage.) Frank, run next door and call Lal to me. This morning I took the word death to Tata. Yet a baby can’t catch the word, and hold it to his heart, flutter like this flame, then out. If Tata didn’t hear the word, he can’t conceive the fear, nor Della whisper to him her own fright. And without the word all the hundred elements of obeah at work come to nothing.

  A knocking. LAL enters.

  Lal, you visit Della this morning.

  LAL: Yes, Shepherd, I visit Della but…

  SHEPHERD: But you false, since I lay stringent command on the whole yard to shake her with silence.

  LAL: I only breeze in and breeze out again to warn her your power high. It wasn’t as a friend I went to her but as an omen.

  SHEPHERD: Silence was my omen and through it Della would’ve felt Shepherd’s hand reaching up on her, gently, to take her away.

  LAL: I sure she feel your hand.

  SHEPHERD: I never asked you assure nutten. I gave you a command to obey. What you say, Lal?

  LAL: I beg your pardon?

  SHEPHERD: Think whether pardon can brew again that silence your busy-ness spill over. How the beat of the danger music this morning would melt her heart, if for three weeks, tormented, and straining her ears in a silent desert for news of the Shepherd, this was the first sound.

  LAL: Shepherd, Shepherd, I went to her room out of sympathy for her. I can’t help sympathy. I don’t know what to do.