A Heart Divided (22 page)

Good-bye, sitcom writer. Hello, playwright.

Now the real work begins.

—Marcus

A HEART DIVIDED
a performance piece

created by
Kate Pride

A N
OTE
A
BOUT
T
ONIGHT’S
P
ERFORMANCE

Not long after my family and I arrived in Tennessee, I decided to write a play about Redford High School’s struggle over the Confederate battle flag. I must have started that play twenty times; each effort was a miserable failure.

I had just about given up when the one and only Mrs. Augustus invited me to the library to watch a tape of Anna Deavere Smith’s
Fires in the Mirror.

Fires….
is about the 1991 civil disturbances in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. For her play, Ms. Smith interviewed dozens of people involved in the story—black and white, Jew and gentile, young and old—and then turned verbatim excerpts of her interviews into a performance piece. Later, when I read her script, I saw how she’d treated her subjects’ words as poetry.

Ms. Smith found truth in the words of real people, in the poetry of everyday speech. She and Mrs. Augustus inspired me to look in the same place. The piece you’re about to see is the result. In her play, Ms. Smith played all the parts herself. But since I can’t act, I asked two brave and talented friends if they’d perform my play. Tonight, all the female characters will be portrayed by Nikki Roberts, all the male characters by Jack Redford. They spent countless hours listening to the tapes I made, so that they could capture the voices of the characters you’ll see tonight. The three of
us worked together on the physical selves and body language I observed during the interviews.

I want to thank so many people, especially those I interviewed for a play I was never able to write but who allowed me to use their words here. And most of all, I want to thank Mrs. Agnes Augustus and Ms. Anna Deavere Smith.

I dedicate this play to my sister, Portia.

A HEART DIVIDED
Compiled, edited, and directed by Kate Pride

All female characters—Nikki Roberts
All male characters—Jack Redford

C
HARACTERS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE:

I’m sitting on the window seat in my bedroom, speaking into a small dictation-style recorder. I’m a seventeen-year-old junior at Redford High School. I have brown hair with auburn streaks from the sun, brownish-goldish eyes; I am slender but not skinny, medium height. I’m wearing ancient, ratty sweats. My family moved to Redford from New Jersey a few months ago.

N
OW
I K
NOW

I’ve wanted to be a playwright
since I was twelve years old.
So when Marcus, the playwright
who taught my writing workshop, said:
“Your plays are as shallow as sitcoms,”
it just really hurt.
Like someone telling a proud mother that her baby is ugly.

I wanted to write a play
about Redford High’s Confederate flag controversy.
I thought:
“This will prove to Marcus that I’m a serious writer.”
He always used to say:
“You can’t write what you don’t know.”
Well, I’m this Jersey girl, right?
I
knew
I didn’t know.
So I started interviewing people who did.

Which was fascinating.
But it didn’t help.
Everything I wrote was awful.
Really, really awful.
So I thought:
“Well, maybe Marcus was right.
Maybe I write shallow because I
am
shallow.
Maybe I’ll never be more than a shallow writer.”
And I just—I hated feeling that way.

It’s funny. Ironic, I mean.
It wasn’t until my own life
and my own family
became part of the story
that I finally understood:
I couldn’t write it, because I hadn’t lived it.
And I could never tell it as well
as the people who had.

What I learned is:
how it feels to love so passionately you can’t even breathe and
how it feels to hurt deeper than the bone and
that good really can come from tragedy and
if I could
I’d still give up all the good
to undo the tragedy.

What I learned is:
I am
not
a shallow person and
if I live long enough inside the truth,
someday—I hope—I’ll be able to write it.
Because I can honestly say:
Now I know.

D
R.
A
NTHONY
B
LASI
, J
R.
(Professor of Sociology)

Dr. Blasi teaches sociology at Tennessee State University, an historically African American university in Nashville. Dr. Blasi, slightly smallish, sees the world through thick glasses and from under long brown-with-gray hair that is tied back in a ponytail. No longer trim, he still looks younger than his fifty-seven years. He wears multipocketed khaki pants and a blue patterned sports shirt. We meet in his cramped office at TSU, where he has to move some papers off a chair for me to sit.

P
OLYVALENT

Symbols can be polyvalent.
Multivalued.
People will rally
around a symbol,
but often for different reasons.
You take the
American flag,
being waved so much now.
For some
it refers to a simple
group feeling
that they feel threatened,
And they want to reaffirm to others
that it’s
a representation
of civil liberties.
And for others,
it’s for everyday life
that’s being disrupted.
So people will take a flag,
but affix
different meanings
to it.
People will rally around a flag,
and not around the meanings.
Intellectuals get worked up
about the meanings,
but oftentimes people are more
upset by the burning of a flag
than by the reason why
it’s burned.

J
EREMY
E
PPS
(
High School Student
)

Jeremy Epps is a tenth grader from McMinnville, Tennessee. I meet him at the food court at the mall when he and his girlfriend ask me what I’m writing. Jeremy is medium height, thin, with sandy hair and a strong Tennessee accent. He wears an army T-shirt and baggy jeans. When he finishes high school, he plans to join the army. He was shy at first but got more comfortable when he spoke about his family.

T
EN
W
ORDS
A
BOUT THE
S
OUTH

I’m gonna be kinda famous for being in your story?
The first ten words that come to mind
when I’m asked about the South:
Hot.
Fun.
Boring.
I’m trying to think—
Weird.
Twisted.
It can be Exciting.
Deep. There are deep people around here.
Wild.
Redneck.
Girls.

Mama was born in California,
so she’s not really from the South.
But she’s lived here most of her life.
And Daddy’s a Rebel.
He’s been in the South his whole life.
He’s all about the Rebel flag.
I mean, that’s just his heritage.
My grandmother,
she’s just a regular sweet old lady.
That flag is just a flag to her,
it’s just the Southern flag.
None of that racism stuff bothers her.

D
R.
B
O
A
LFORD
(Curator, Battle of Redford Museum)

Dr. Alford is the curator of the Battle of Redford Museum. He’s in his fifties and has a long, angular face. We meet at dawn on the dew-covered battlefield, now the municipal golf course. Near us, clumps of golfers stand around, waiting to tee off.

H
ALLOWED
G
ROUND

We are walking today on
Hallowed Ground.
Back in 1863—
on this very earth—
in the space of three hours—
almost five thousand men died horrible deaths.

Major General Redford was
here.
(he points to the grass under our feet)
And the Union lines were
there.
(he points toward the far end of the first hole)

Two Confederate charges
nearly wilted the Federal lines.
Redford tried to persuade his superiors
to remain on the offensive.
But a timely Union strike
at the Rebel left flank
forced the Army of Tennessee
from the field of battle.

The land was littered
with casualties on both sides.
There was no morphine for the wounded.
There were no paramedics.
Only death on
Hallowed Ground.

Today they play golf on
Hallowed Ground.
There is a fast-food restaurant on
Hallowed Ground.

I had a great-great-grandfather in that battle.
He opposed secession
but fought for the South.
I had another great-great-grandfather
who owned slaves—I’m not proud to say.
Both men died in that battle.

People don’t know.
People don’t realize.
One out of every three Southern
white men of military age
died
in the Civil War.
One out of every ten up North.
Today, half of white Southerners
are descended from Confederates.

Northerners need to think—
to imagine—
a war fought in
Newark.
Chicago.
Detroit.
For Southerners
the war was fought
on a thousand battlefields
beneath our very feet
where the blood of our fathers
fed
the roots of trees
that even now
stand
on Hallowed Ground.

L
UKE
M
ATTHEW
R
OBERTS
(
R.H.S. Student
)

Luke is a senior at Redford High. A straight-A student, he has elected to attend Fisk University in Nashville—a traditionally black school—rather than Harvard. Both schools offered him scholarships. Luke is tall, slender, and muscular under his baggy clothes. He taps a foot or drums his fingers impatiently throughout our conversation at the Taco Bell in Redford, and speaks in staccato bursts.

W
HAT
I
NTEGRATION
M
EANS

My father is a preacher.
He raised us on the
Integration Hallelujah.
(
imitating his father
)
WE ARE
ALL
EQUAL IN
GOD’S
SIGHT!
WE MUST
LIVE TOGETHER
IN A BEAUTIFUL
RAINBOW
CAN I GET AN AMEN?

My parents think holding hands and singing “We Shall Overcome” will defeat racism.
Shee-it.
You think white teachers
treat a gifted brother like they
treat a gifted white boy?
Nah.
Goes against integration’s
assumption of stupidity.

Integration means
Brother’s suspected of everything.
Integration means
Brother didn’t earn it,
somebody gave it to him.
It means
Brother’s guilty until proven innocent.
Stupid until proven smart.
That’s the Holy Grail,
unholy lie,
called Integration.

Institutionalized insecurity.
Internalized inferiority.
Integration gave us Redford.

N
ICOLETTE
M
ICHELLE
R
OBERTS
(
R.H.S. Student
)

She prefers to be called Nikki. She’s a senior at Redford High School, Luke Roberts’s twin sister, and Reverend Roberts’s daughter. She is tall and slender and moves with the grace of a dancer. Like her father, she is a motivator of people. Next year she’ll attend George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She plans to enter politics. We sit in the bleachers at Redford High during our lunch break. There’s a lot of background noise from PE classes and the like.

T
HE
S
TUDENTS
S
HOULD
V
OTE

Our parents raised us to be color-blind.
I had black friends,
white friends,
whatever.

It wasn’t until I was in middle school
that I realized:
Everyone at our church was black.
And my white friends went to white churches.

It wasn’t until I was in middle school
that things changed:
Some black friends accused me of “acting white.”
Some white friends stopped inviting me over.

It wasn’t until I was in high school
that I got really angry
that the Confederate flag
was the emblem of my school.
That our football team
was called the Rebels.
Those symbols
didn’t represent me.
Those symbols
didn’t represent a lot of people.

People said:
“Redford High’s emblem has
always been the Confederate flag.
The football team
has always been the Rebels.”
I said:
“Wrong.
Only since 1961.
When my daddy
led the sit-in at Jimmy Mack’s.
Before that,
it was the Wranglers.”
People can be so ignorant.
They don’t even know
the history of their own town.

I thought the students
should have a chance to vote—
did we want a new team name?
A new school emblem?

The principal said
we had to gather student signatures and
if we got enough signatures
we could have our vote.
He gave us an impossible job,
and we did it.

We must have made thousands of flyers:
JUST SAY NO
to the Confederate flag.
More and more students got behind it.
It was gratifying to see how social action
was leading to real change.
We knew we had the numbers.
We were going to win.

C
HARLES
“C
HAZ
” M
ARTIN
, J
R.
(
R.H.S. Student
)

Chaz is a senior at Redford High who will attend The Citadel next year, as his father and grandfather did before him. He has dark hair and eyes, a broad chest, and a friendly grin. He plays tight end for the Rebels football team. We sit on his front porch, in rocking chairs. His tone is straightforward and earnest.

A
MERICA

I was raised to be proud
of my Southern heritage.
I’m not going to apologize for that.
Heritage.
Tradition.
These things are important.
They tell you who you are in the world—
where you belong.

It is real hurtful when people assume that
if you have a high esteem for the
Confederate flag
you must be a racist.

I think slavery was evil.
It’s always evil
for one people to enslave another people.

But it goes back to the Bible.
Blacks aren’t the only ones
who have been slaves.

I plan to enter the military
to serve my country.
I will be proud to do so.
And if my country
sends me to war
I will go.
I would give my life
to defend the United States of America.
Not white America.
All
of America.
Where we believe in liberty and justice for
all.

J
ACKSON
R
EDFORD
III
(
R.H.S. Student
)

Jack, eighteen, is a senior at Redford High School. The town is named after his great-great-grandfather, Major General Jackson Redford, a hero of the Civil War Battle of Redford. We’re in Jack’s home, the historic landmark Redford House. An heirloom rug stained with Major General Redford’s blood lies on the floor. Jack is as classically handsome as the general for whom he was named. When he’s nervous, he runs his hand through his hair.