The Lamplighter, стр. 4

Scene 3: Interior Fort

ANNIWAA:

It smells bad down here. So bad I don’t want to breathe. So bad, I take small sips of the dirty air.

Sometimes strange people come down. Their skin is pink. They look through me like they can’t see me. The women are moaning but they can’t hear us. The sounds they make with their mouth are strange. I don’t know what they mean.

At first when they shove and push me down here, I am hungry, so hungry I am hollow. Now, I don’t want to eat. I don’t want to eat if I can’t eat with my mama. A woman here, with the markings of the enemy, tries to feed me a little. At night I sleep under her arm like a bird under a wing. We are all crush-crush in here.

I am getting smaller by the day. I am a girl getting smaller. Maybe soon I will be the size of a goat and then the size of a yam and then the size of a cricket and then I will vanish. Maybe I will start to grow backwards. Soon I might be ten, then nine.

My hands are small and my legs are sticks.

My belly is swollen in a strange way. I can feel but I can’t see myself. I can feel I am not myself.

When I get really scared, I try and make my Mama come for me.

I close my eyes and say it to myself. Please. Please. Come and find me. Come and get me. Please. I see her in my head. She is in the yard, pounding fufu. She is wrapping kankei cake in banana leaf. She is digging for yam. I can see her in her yellow head-tie. I see her walking through the trees, past the ones with the big curly leaves, past the wide one that is older than my grandmother. Striding like a giant. Coming to find me.

Then, all of a sudden, my mother is gone. I can hear the big monster howling at the thick dungeon walls.

Sometimes I can hear singing, strange singing.

Song: All

CONSTANCE, BLACK HARRIOT, MARY and THE LAMPLIGHTER sing as if they are in the fort’s chapel.

ALL:

All glory be to God on high

And on earth be peace;

Good-will henceforth from heaven to men

Begin and never cease.

ANNIWAA:

One day slips into another day. The dark comes and folds up the days. I wonder if I will ever get out of here. I wonder if I will ever go home. I wonder if I will be a girl when I get out of here. A girl, twelve. Maybe a girl, thirteen. Fourteen. Maybe not a girl anymore. Maybe a woman. Maybe I’ll have grown into a small woman without my mother.

Scene 4: Herself Talking

Exterior a place of memories. Caribbean countryside, Devon quayside and urban landscape. Cane field. Suggested rather than stated.

The same chorus of three women will accompany the telling of the Lamplighter’s story, to give the impression that any single story is a multiple one.

FX:

(The sound of wind with the sound of sea on cobbles in the background added.)

THE LAMPLIGHTER:

Reader, be assured this narrative is no fiction.

I have not written my experiences in order to attract attention to myself. On the contrary, my description falls far short of the facts. It is not my intention to horrify.

BLACK HARRIOT:

This story was written by Herself.

MARY:

This is Herself talking.

CONSTANCE:

I am. She is. You are. They. They is. They are, they are, they are.

LAMPLIGHTER:

Nobody ever told my story before.

I was the one who was recaptured and sold

For eighty pounds, on December 8th 1792,

forced then to board a vessel at Lamplighter’s Hall,

Avonmouth, heading for the plantations.

BLACK HARRIOT:

To board a ship and cross the water

Board a ship and be carried over

To be carried across the water

And land with strangers all over,

All over again

MACBEAN:

I saw her –

Tears flowed down her face

Like a shower of rain.

The Inn where she was sold

Still stands on Station road,

Shirehampton, Avonmouth.

I saw her open mouth.

I saw the lost look in her teary eyes.

CONSTANCE:

Avonmouth, open mouth.

MARY:

We were sold in English Inns.

BLACK HARRIOT:

We were sold in Bristol coffee houses.

We were sold in Liverpool warehouses, shops, on the front steps of Custom House, on the east side of the old dock.

At the slave ports of Lancaster, Whitehaven, PortsMOUTH, PlyMOUTH, DartMOUTH

CONSTANCE:

Mouth, lips, teeth.

BLACK HARRIOT:

Exeter, Glasgow, CHESTer

CONSTANCE:

Chest, heart, lungs

MACBEAN:

To be sold by Auction at George’s Coffee House, betwixt the hours of six and eight o’clock, a very fine Negro girl about eight years of age. Any person willing to purchase her may apply to Capt Robert Syers, Merchant Draper near the Exchange, where she may be seen till the time of sale.

BLACK HARRIOT:

We were sold for sugar in the coffee.

Sugar in the tea.

MARY:

We were sold for tobacco and rice.

Sold to make the cities rise.

MACBEAN:

To be sold for want of employment…a healthy Negor wench, of about 21 years old, she has a female child of nigh three years old, which will be sold with the wench, if required.

CONSTANCE:

Bristol, London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh

MACBEAN:

Horses, to be sold at the Bull and Gate Inn