The Unnatural and Accidental Women. Marie Clements

doing my job.

      AUNT SHADIE:

      What’s that?

      ROSE:

      I’m taking account.

      AUNT SHADIE:

      Reminds me of the government. Taking count but not accountable.

       She picks up her suitcases and begins to leave.

      ROSE:

      You’re going like that?

      AUNT SHADIE:

      (looks down on herself) Why not?

      ROSE:

      You sure you don’t want me to find you some pants?

      AUNT SHADIE:

      It’s alright. There’s a good draft …

      ROSE:

      Oh please.

      AUNT SHADIE:

      … and frankly, if the pants look anything like the cardigan, I might as well be dead.

      ROSE:

      Suit yourself.

      AUNT SHADIE:

      I always have.

       AUNT SHADIE keeps on walking. Lights fade on ROSE. AUNT SHADIE stops and sits on her suitcases. She reaches inside one of them and pulls out a pack of tobacco and rolls a cigarette. She reaches in and picks up an outfit from when she was a housewife. She smells the material and closes her eyes in memory. The clothes talk to her and she to them. She drapes them over her body and smokes her thinking smoke. Lights fade, leaving a bright butt and smoke rising up.

      SLIDE: Rose Doreen Holmes, 52, died January 27, 1965, with a 0.51 blood-alcohol reading. “Coroner’s inquiry reported she was found nude on her bed and had recent bruises on her scalp, nose, lips and chin. There was no evidence of violence, or suspicion of foul play.”

       Lights fade up on ROSE, as she affectionately touches her switchboard. It responds with light flashes and beeps and muffled voices.

      ROSE:

      I’ve always been right here. No matter where I am, I am in between people connecting. I like to think I’m the one who connects them, but mostly I like to think that they have to go through me. If nothing else, it gives me a place. A place in the making, the flashes of being … the feeling of feeding that beeping energy into a whole that understands it, and soothes it, into a gentle darkness. A small whimper when it enters—a connection between the here and there—a giant light it becomes. It begins and ends with the beeping, but it goes through me. I wait for the cry like a mother listening, hoping to slot the right thing into its void—hoping to be the one to bring about the pure answer. Again, the pure gentle darkness that says I have listened and you were lovely, no matter how loud your beeping cry becomes, no matter how many times I wanted to help but couldn’t. There is something maternal about it, the wanting to help, the trying, going through the motions on the switchboard, but in the end just being there always it seems just listening to voices looking for connection, an eternal connection between women’s voices and worlds.

       ROSE leans over and nosily watches AUNT SHADIE enter REBECCA’s world.

      Everybody always thinks that the switchboard operator is listening in on their conversations, and they’re not always wrong. The tricky thing is to act like you don’t know a thing. I swear on the Queen, it’s a tricky thing.

       AUNT SHADIE enters dressed as a young housewife. She is carrying her suitcases and a folded piece of paper. She sets the suitcases down and places a paper on the table. She turns to leave, but stops as REBECCA picks it up.

       SLIDE: RUNNING SHOES

       SFX: Sound of wind in the trees.

       Backdrop gradually brings in close-ups of Hastings Street when it was the centre of shopping. The Army and Navy, Woolworth’s—late 1960s/70s.

      REBECCA:

      My dad—the Character—was still full-limbed but hard-of-hearing when he died. Still asking “Eh?” after every sentence I spoke, but quick to hear the sound of change falling to the ground. Death was no big surprise for him. The thing he couldn’t get out from under was the day she left. I found him holding a piece of paper she had put on the kitchen table. He held it for a long time and then simply folded it and put it in his pocket. “Where’s Mom?” I asked.

       SFX: Sound of tree falling and landing.

      He said, “She went for a walk.” I thought maybe she had gone to the IGA or something. Somebody was always having to go to the IGA. When she didn’t return and he didn’t move, I started complaining about the big fact that I was supposed to get new running shoes today. I was supposed to go downtown today. I was supposed to get a hamburger today … milkshakes, fries and ketchup at Woolworth’s. It was supposed to have been a great day, and now we had to wait. I was getting pissed off, because I was getting tired of going to the Salvation Army for smelly clothes, and I felt like I was gonna be normal like everyone else when Mom said we could go to the Army and Navy and get something new, something that smelled good, something that nobody had ever worn. Blue suede running shoes—three stripes on either side. I had to have them. It was unbearable, and my dad just standing there, and my mom deciding to go to the IGA. I thought it was a master plan. Both of them against me being normal. I started yelling—the injustice too great. My dad just stood there like he didn’t hear anything. “Get in the truck,” he said. We went. I ate hamburgers and floats and fries and everything I could see in the posters of food on the walls of the Woolworth’s cafeteria on Hastings Street. We went to the Army and Navy. We went home. No Mom. Again. “Where’s Mom?” again. He said, “She left us. I didn’t know anything was wrong.” He sat down. I took my running shoes off. I would never wear them again. Nothing was going to be normal.

       REBECCA takes the running shoes off and kicks them. AUNT SHADIE turns around and silently picks them up, putting them properly under her chair. She exits.

       Fade out.

       SFX: Sound of car streams, transforming into the tide.

       SLIDE: FOUR DAYS: DAY 1—Glenaird Hotel

       SFX: Sound of tide hitting the edge of the island/bed.

       The hotel room is an ocean of blue. The bed an island. The lone woman sits on her island. She is wet and holds a white pillow that shapes her different needs. The comfort of a child, a lover. THE WOMAN reaches over and grabs a drink from the table beside her. She places it down and in … in her own drinking rhythm. The ocean gets deeper in its colour.

      Rhythms of a drinking room: 1) Tide—Time, 2) Light vs. Shadow, 3) Drinking Rhythm.

       SFX: Sound of the tide begins to increase and finally sprays to telephone static.

       SLIDE: I’M SCARED TO DIE 1

       A click of light on. MAVIS sits in a huge beaten-up armchair. Her hotel room matches the chair. It is beaten and slightly tinged with hues of brown. As she sits, MAVIS leafs through her address book looking and reminiscing about each entry. She urgently picks up the phone and dials. A light flashes up on the switchboard, and we hear ROSE speak in the darkness.

      MAVIS:

      Hi, Mona? It’s me.

       SFX: Weird static and otherworldly connection.

      ROSE:

      I’m sorry, you’ve reached the operator.

      MAVIS:

      The operator? I didn’t