Three Plays (7 page)

Big Mama, too!

[Big Mama bursts into tears. The Negroes leave.]

BIG DADDY
: Now Ida, what the hell is the matter with you?

MAE
: She's just so happy.

BIG MAMA
: I'm just so happy, Big Daddy, I have to cry or something.

[Sudden and loud in the hush:]

Brick, do you know the wonderful news that Doc Baugh got from the clinic about Big Daddy? Big Daddy's one hundred per cent!

MARGARET
: Isn't that wonderful?

BIG MAMA
: He's just one hundred per cent. Passed the examination with flying colors. Now that we know there's nothing wrong with Big Daddy but a spastic colon, I can tell you something. I was worried sick, half out of my mind, for fear that Big Daddy might have a thing like—

[Margaret cuts through this speech, jumping up and exclaiming shrilly:]

MARGARET
: Brick, honey, aren't you going to give Big Daddy his birthday present?

[Passing by him, she snatches his liquor glass from him. She picks up a fancily wrapped package.]

Here it is, Big Daddy, this is from Brick!

BIG MAMA
: This is the biggest birthday Big Daddy's ever had, a hundred presents and bushels of telegrams from—

MAE
[at same time]
: What is it, Brick?

GOOPER
: I bet 500 to 50 that Brick don't
know
what it is.

BIG MAMA
: The fun of presents is not knowing what they are till you open the package. Open your present, Big Daddy.

BIG DADDY
: Open it you'self. I want to ask Brick somethin'! Come here, Brick.

MARGARET
: Big Daddy's callin' you, Brick.

[She is opening the package.]

BRICK
: Tell Big Daddy I'm crippled.

BIG DADDY
: I see you're crippled. I want to know how you got crippled.

MARGARET
[making diversionary tactics]
:
Oh, look, oh, look, why, it's a cashmere robe!

[She holds the robe up for all to see.]

MAE
: You sound surprised, Maggie.

MARGARET
: I never saw one before.

MAE
: That's funny.—
Hah!

MARGARET
[turning on her fiercely, with a brilliant smile]
: Why is it funny? All my family ever had was family—and luxuries such as cashmere robes still surprise me!

BIG DADDY
[ominously]
: Quiet!

MAE
[heedless in her fury]
: I don't see how you could be so surprised when you bought it yourself at Loewenstein's in Memphis last Saturday. You know how I know?

BIG DADDY
: I said, Quiet!

MAE
: —I know because the salesgirl that sold it to you waited on me and said, Oh, Mrs Pollitt, your sister-in-law just bought a cashmere robe for your husband's father!

MARGARET
: Sister Woman! Your talents are wasted as a housewife and mother, you really ought to be with the FBI or—

BIG DADDY
: QUIET!

[Reverend Tooker's reflexes are slower than the others'. He finishes a sentence after the bellow.]

REVEREND TOOKER
[to Doc Baugh]
: —the Stork and the Reaper are running neck and neck!

[He starts to laugh gaily when he notices the silence and Big Daddy's glare. His laugh dies falsely.]

BIG DADDY
: Preacher, I hope I'm not butting in on more talk about memorial stained-glass windows, am I, Preacher?

[Reverend Tooker laughs feebly, then coughs dryly in the embarrassed silence.]

Preacher?

BIG MAMA
: Now, Big Daddy, don't you pick on Preacher!

BIG DADDY
[raising his voice]
: You ever hear that expression all hawk and no spit? You bring that expression to mind with that little dry cough of yours, all hawk an' no spit....

[The pause is broken only by a short startled laugh from Margaret, the only one there who is conscious of and amused by the grotesque.]

MAE
[raising her arms and jangling her bracelets]
: I wonder if the mosquitoes are active tonight?

BIG DADDY
: What's that, Little Mama? Did you make some remark?

MAE
: Yes, I said I wondered if the mosquitoes would eat us alive if we went out on the gallery for a while.

BIG DADDY
: Well, if they do, I'll have your bones pulverized for fertilizer!

BIG MAMA
[quickly]
: Last week we had an airplane spraying the place and I think it done some good, at least I haven't had a—

BIG DADDY
[cutting her speech]
: Brick, they tell me, if what they tell me is true, that you done some jumping last night on the high school athletic field?

BIG MAMA
: Brick, Big Daddy is talking to you, son.

BRICK
[smiling vaguely over his drink]
: What was that, Big Daddy?

BIG DADDY
: They said you done some jumping on the high school track field last night.

BRICK
: That's what they told me, too.

BIG DADDY
: Was it jumping or humping that you were doing out there? What were you doing out there at three a.m., layin' a woman on that cinder track?

BIG MAMA
: Big Daddy, you are off the sick-list, now, and I'm not going to excuse you for talkin' so—

BIG DADDY
: Quiet!

BIG MAMA
: —
nasty
in front of Preacher and—

BIG DADDY
:
QUIET!
—I ast you, Brick, if you was cuttin' you'self a piece o' poon-tang last night on that cinder track? I thought maybe you were chasin' poon-tang on that track an' tripped over something in the heat of the chase—'s that it?

[Gooper laughs, loud and false, others nervously following suit. Big Mama stamps her foot, and purses her lips, crossing to Mae and whispering something to her as Brick meets his father's hard, intent, grinning stare with a slow, vague smile that he offers all situations from behind the screen of his liquor.]

BRICK
: No, sir, I don't think so....

MAE
[at the same time, sweetly]
: Reverend Tooker, let's you and I take a stroll on the widow's walk.

[She and the preacher go out on the gallery as Big Daddy says:]

BIG DADDY
: Then what the hell were you doing out there at three o'clock in the morning?

BRICK
: Jumping the hurdles, Big Daddy, runnin' and jumpin' the hurdles, but those high hurdles have gotten too high for me, now.

BIG DADDY
: 'Cause you was drunk?

BRICK
[his vague smile fading a little]
: Sober I wouldn't have tried to jump the low ones....

BIG MAMA
[quickly]
: Big Daddy, blow out the candles on your birthday cake!

MARGARET
[at the same time]
: I want to propose a toast to Big Daddy Pollitt on his sixty-fifth birthday, the biggest cotton-planter in—

BIG DADDY
[bellowing with fury and disgust]
:
I told you to stop it, now stop it, quit this—!

BIG MAMA
[coming in front of Big Daddy with the cake]
: Big Daddy, I will not allow you to talk that way, not even on your birthday, I—

BIG DADDY
: I'll talk like I want to on my birthday, Ida, or any other goddam day of the year and anybody here that don't like it knows what they can do!

BIG MAMA
: You don't mean that!

BIG DADDY
: What makes you think I don't mean it?

[Meanwhile various discreet signals have been exchanged and Gooper has also gone out on the gallery.]

BIG MAMA
: I just know you don't mean it.

BIG DADDY
: You don't know a goddam thing and you never did!

BIG MAMA
: Big Daddy, you don't mean that.

BIG DADDY
: Oh, yes, I do, oh, yes, I do, I mean it! I put up with a whole lot of crap around here because I thought I was dying. And you thought I was dying and you started taking over, well, you can stop taking over now, Ida, because I'm not gonna die, you can just stop now this business of taking over because you're not taking over because I'm not dying, I went through the laboratory and the goddam exploratory operation and there's nothing wrong with me but a spastic colon. And I'm not dying of cancer which you thought I was dying of. Ain't that so? Didn't you think that I was dying of cancer, Ida?

[Almost everybody is out on the gallery but the two old people glaring at each other across the blaming cake. Big Mama's chest heaves and she presses a fat fist to her mouth. Big Daddy continues, hoarsely:]

Ain't that so, Ida? Didn't you have an idea I was dying of cancer and now you could take control of this place and everything on it? I got that impression, I seemed to get that impression. Your loud voice everywhere, your fat old body butting in here and there!

BIG MAMA
: Hush! The Preacher!

BIG DADDY
: Rut the goddam preacher!

[Big Mama gasps loudly and sits down on the sofa which is almost too small for her.]

Did you hear what I said? I said rut the goddam preacher!

[Somebody closes the gallery doors from outside just as there is a burst of fireworks and excited cries from the children.]

BIG MAMA
: I never seen you act like this before and I can't think what's got in you!

BIG DADDY
: I went through all that laboratory and operation and all just so I would know if you or me was boss here! Well, now it turns out that I am and you ain't—and that's my birthday present—and my cake and champagne!—because for three years now you been gradually taking over. Bossing. Talking. Sashaying your fat old body around the place I made! I made this place! I was overseer on it! I was the overseer on the old Straw and Ochello plantation. I quit school at ten! I quit school at ten years old and went to work like a nigger in the fields. And I rose to be overseer of the Straw and Ochello plantation. And old Straw died and I was Ochello's partner and the place got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger! I did all that myself with no goddam help from you, and now you think you're just about to take over. Well, I am just about to tell you that you are not just about to take over, you are not just about to take over a God damn thing. Is that clear to you, Ida? Is that very plain to you, now? Is that understood completely? I been through the laboratory from A to Z. I've had the goddam exploratory operation, and nothing is wrong with me but a spastic colon—made spastic, I guess, by
disgust!
By all the goddam lies and liars that I have had to put up with, and all the goddam hypocrisy that I lived with all these forty years that we been livin' together!—Hey! Ida! Blow out the candles on the birthday cake! Purse up your lips and draw a deep breath and blow out the goddam candles on the cake!

BIG MAMA
: Oh, Big Daddy, oh, oh, oh, Big Daddy!

BIG DADDY
: What's the matter with you?

BIG MAMA
:
In all these years you never believed that I loved you??

BIG DADDY
: Huh?

BIG MAMA
:
And I did, I did so much, I did love you!
—I even loved your hate and your hardness, Big Daddy!
[She sobs and rushes awkwardly out on to the gallery.]

BIG DADDY
[to himself]
:
Wouldn't it be funny if that was true….

[A pause is followed by a burst of light in the sky from the fireworks.]