ONE
(Chicago, mid July. a three-story apartment building. the left window of the first floor is boarded up. there is glass on the concrete on that side of the house. across the street is the house of Chicago Housing Authority’s Ombudsman Ms. Wright. Lucille, Virginia, and Ethel sit on the front porch.)
(Lucille rocks subtly back and forth in a metal foldout chair on the right. she smokes a cigarette. there are a container of cookies underneath her chair.)
(Virginia sits on the top step and fans herself with a folded piece of paper. a sloppily opened envelope is in-between her legs on the bottom step.)
(Ethel scratches off a lottery ticket with a penny. she keeps pulling them out of her fannie pack and scratches them off.)
Virginia
they mail you your letter yet?
Ethel
shouldn’t have to mail it hell white lady Wright could just walk it over.
Virginia
did one of they people walk it over?
(Lucille exhales, releases a puff of smoke)
Ethel
Lucille
Ethel
Lucille
no.
Ethel
Lucille
Virginia
oh well it won’t be long then. I got mines today
court hearing’s on the thirtieth Ethel when’s yours?
Ethel
didn’t look
Virginia
what you mean you aunt look? you think them people just gone be okay with you not showin up? one day you gone come home from buyin one of them damn lot’ry tickets and your whole life gone be sittin right here on the concrete
Ethel
V you be quiet / talking all that nonsense I wont be here long enough for them to throw me out
Lucille
ha! her stuff wont be out here long the way Juju ‘nem steal where’s Juju anyway?*
Virginia
where you plan on goin?
Ethel
I don’t know yet but i’m not going to sit around and keep waiting for a Section 8 voucher I may or may not get * I haven’t seen Juda’s thieving self since monday Lucy
(Lucille puts out her cigarette and leaves the butt on the porch’s rail)
Lucille
he’d better come get these cookies while they still warm
Virginia
what sense do that make V? you just leavin without somewhere to go
might as well stay til they hand out them vouchers and get one of them /
Ethel
expensive ass single family homes or a refurbished mid-rise no thank you
Lucy why are you always baking that boy cookies
Virginia
you’d think she’s have enough money to get on outta here the way Juju be payin her to bake cookies for him every other day
Lucille
ya’ll hush up now its me and Juju’s thing
Ethel
Virginia
Lucille
and there’s no point in Ethel waiting to move into another ghetto / different location same niggas
Ethel
exactly I can barely deal with the foolishness around here
Virginia
now who said it’d be a ghetto? they got some nice lil houses
Lucille
they just wanna move the niggas out of the way and make it pretty for the white people
Ethel
and build some rinky dink town home look-a-likes in a clustered run down neighborhood so the negros will be so overjoyed about not having roaches that they don’t realize nothing’s changed around them same gangs same people same predicament
Lucille
that’s why im not going nowhere
Virginia
how you figure? yo eviction lawsuit is on its way honey aint you about two months behind on rent?
Lucille
I told them / Joanie just got out of job corps at the end of June and that she’s all set yup to be a nurse over at st mary’s and is going to give me the money I need to pay rent for June and July. She been clean for comin up on a year a year and half now and she coming on back now
Ethel
V you go too far sometimes
Virginia
she 24 she betta be straightenin up we can only hang on to the sins of our youth for so long
Ethel
and how is your daughter doing Virginia?
Virginia
just cuz I couldn’t bear no fruit don’t mean I don’t know the difference between somethin ripe and rotten
Ethel
Lucille
(Virginia tears the ragged edges of the envelope off slowly as she speaks)
Virginia
I aint want no chirrun no way seem like enough of a burden to have to share yoself with a man and then he leave then to have to turn around and share yo body yo life with somebody you raisin to leave too it’s too much and you still find yoself wantin to give them everything in you that they aint already take i’m betta without it
Lucille
Juju needs to bring his self on here
