Boxes
By Megan Wilde © 2008
AUNT LORRI: 73 years old. Wears coke-bottle glasses. Has dementia, spends her time sprawled on the couch, drinking from a gallon jug of milk and eating carrots.
MIMI CLARKE: 40-50 yrs old. She is the fourth generation of Clarkes raised in Abilene, but she is about to be the first family member to leave and move to Oregon, where her daughter WENDY lives. She’s a tough Texas-bred woman, wears Wal-Mart clothes, has a cottony-soft and slow Abilene drawl, and despite her sometimes austere demeanor, she is a very tender mother and can get pretty animated when telling a story.
WENDY: 24 yrs old. Hip and bright young woman, but quiet, with shy mannerisms, like frequently tucking her hair behind her ears and looking at the floor when she speaks. Her Abilene accent has been educated out of her, and looking at her and her mom, there’s not many clues they’re of the same ilk. She’s not comfortable with expressing sadness.
AT RISE:
Moving Day. In the living room, surrounded by big piles moving detritus – suitcases, boxes, papers, etc—WENDY and MIMI are sorting and packing their belongings. AUNT LORRI is sprawled on the couch. WENDY is going through a suitcase of her childhood mementos, while MIMI is looking through a box filled with her deceased mother’s personal keepsakes. Mimi and Wendy are making piles of stuff they want to keep and piles to throw away (a wheelbarrow acts as trash can). MIMI looks through everything slowly, reading each letter and pondering each photograph. WENDY is more merciless with her stuff.
MIMI
Well this moving business has me just about pooped. [twisting to stretch back and arms] How’re you doing with the Wendy museum piles?
WENDY
Oh pretty good. I think I’ve only got a few boxes left to go through, and most of it’s trash I think. You know, it’s so weird to look through all this stuff. I kept everything—receipts, detentions slips, movie tickets, fortune cookies. Like, I wonder, why the hell did I keep these little aquarium toys? I think they were from my first goldfish, remember Ditty Poo?
MIMI
Oh yes, you looooved your little Ditty Poo.
WENDY
Yea. [smiles] And then, like, why did I keep these little notes me and Becky and Linda used to write each other in Latin, about really silly stuff, like making bets that we were going to have chicken strips for lunch, or making fun of Linda’s crushes on Star Trek characters.
MIMI
What else did you find?
WENDY
Oh man, Mom, I found a whole box of old letters from David Reddington. God, he must have written me every single day when I got to college, even after I stopped writing back.
MIMI
Mmm, that poor young man was really, really enchanted with you, [Wendy rolls her eyes] and now don’t you forget, you were pretty enchanted with him too for awhile there. I got kinda worried you might decide not to go to college and stay here in Abilene with him. Heaven only knows what might have happened to y’all.
WENDY
Yea, thank god I left.
MIMI
[gets up to look at a pile Wendy has been throwing things into] Now wait a minute. Is this pile here stuff you’re keeping or stuff you’re throwing away?
WENDY
Oh that’s all trash. I haven’t found much stuff I feel like packing and hauling all the way from Abilene to Oregon.
MIMI
[poking through Wendy’s trash pile to edit what’s been thrown away, pulls out big heavy book] Now whoa there Wendy. This “Who’s Who of American High School Students” book? You might need that to apply for a job some day. [shuffles through more stuff, pulls out scribbly child’s painting in a frame] And your little bunny painting? You’re gonna throw this away?! Now come on Aunt Lorri, you tell this girl that there’s not many 6 year olds that could paint a rabbit this good. [admiring the painting, while Aunt Lorri groans and nibbles a carrot] Would you just look at that.
WENDY
Mom, it’s a fish.
MIMI
Oh…Are you sure? …[continues sorting through trash] Oh my god child, you’re not throwing away your yearbooks are you? [starts rescuing yearbooks]
WENDY
[tries grabbing yearbooks back] Aw geez Mom, these things weigh a ton. And really, I am not going to haul my 5 th grade yearbook around for the rest of my life.
MIMI
[refusing to give up yearbooks] Now come on Wendy, you’ll be real tickled to look through these some day, and I’m sure when you have children they’ll get a hoot out of seeing what you looked like, who your friends were…
WENDY
No… No! [grabbing them back] I won’t get a hoot out of it and neither will any of my offspring, IF I have any offspring.
MIMI
[putting a few books in her pile of stuff] Well fine then, I’ll keep them. Even if you don’t give a darn, I care if my grandchildren know what their mama looked like in fifth grade.
WENDY
[giving up and going back to her pile] Mom, you’re being ridiculous. We’ve already packed hundreds of pictures of me, probably one from every day of my life since the day I was born to the day I graduated from high school. And please, that’s enough about the grandchildren thing, okay? Just drop it already.
MIMI
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll stop. I know, that you know, that women have only a little window when they can breed, and if they don’t, well they’ll have to live with that decision for the rest of their lives.
AUNT LORRI
[groaning] Ugh, all this talk of residues.
[WENDY looks pissed. They sort in silence for a moment.]
MIMI
[finds and shows WENDY an old photo] Well, looky here. Would you believe this little blond-haired twirp is your Uncle Mo? And woo-ey! Would you look at that little stinker’s grin, like he just swallowed a bird. My god he was a hellion even then.
AUNT LORRI
[frightened and upset, like ‘oh christ, mo’s here!?’] Oh no, Mo!?
MIMI
[tisks] Oh hush you Aunt Lorri, he’s not here. Just drink your milk. Now Wendy, this little twirp was like a tick on me and my sisters. Me and Jan and Jodie, we just loved playing with our dolls, playing house and school and all kinds of things. And every day Mo’d come pester us, whining “I wanna play I wanna play.” But if you gave that boy a doll he’d just start making it act as rude as a hog in a beauty parlor, squealing and smacking our dolls and making fart noises and carrying on.
WENDY
[snickering] Oh man, I can so picture that.
MIMI
Oh yes. Well, so, one day we told him we’d let him play so long as he started going by his real name. “What’s my real name?” he asks. “Ignorant,” we say. Well he didn’t know what Ignorant meant, so he thought that was just fine and let us call him Ignorant all day. But oh me, later Mama was not happy with us when Mo goes up to her and tells her “I’m Ignorant!”
[Laughing, a pause, Wendy pulls an animal trophy from a box]
WENDY
Is this Granny’s dog trophy?
MIMI
Oh come on Wendy. That’s no dog. That’s a sheep.
WENDY
Oh…
MIMI
No, that trophy belonged to my aunt Lucy. She raised some magnificent sheep. Poor woman couldn’t carry on a conversation with a human being, but sheep, she could just talk to for hours and hours.
WENDY
Now, which one was Aunt Lucy?
MIMI
Well, she was the sister of your Aunt Lorri here, on my Daddy’s side of the family. But Mama and her were real close too, for awhile, and she and your Aunt Lorri actually lived together for several years, like spinsters used to do, till poor old Lucy got goofy.
WENDY
Goofy?
MIMI
Well, she was already a little odd, you know, and then she got in a car accident and just got…well, just dadgummed goofy. Started crying all the time, doing strange things. Like she’d go out to the garden every morning and just start ripping up flowers and shredding them to pieces. Aunt Lorri’d have to come out and stop her. Oh goodness me [laughing] I remember this one time… See, she and Lorri hated cooking, so their kitchen was just as bare as a your uncle Mo’s head. But on their kitchen table they always had this one jar full of some gooey-looking pink stuff called “Fruit Lovely”.
LORRI
[pining] Ohhhhh, that was all I ever wanted. That stuff was better than an orgasm.
MIMI
Well then Aunt Lorri how come you never took it to bed with you? My word. So, that jar of Fruit Lovely probably would have outlived every one of us, sitting there on that kitchen table, ‘cept for one day, when Mama and all us kids were over, Lucy comes sizzling into the kitchen, and her crazy self grabs that jar and pitches it out the door, shouting “Goodbye Fruit Lovely!”
WENDY
[laughing] Oh man, that’s awesome. Fruit Lovely.
LORRI
[angry at Wendy for making light of the story, throws carrot at her in frustration] It was a serious situation!
MIMI
Boy you two were quite the match, weren’t you Aunt Lorri? Why don’t you go get yourself a new carrot to gnaw on? [sighs, as Lorri rises and reluctantly shuffles offstage. A pause as Mimi returns to sorting.]
Oh Wendy, see, this is why I’ve just kept putting off sorting through Mama’s boxes.
WENDY
What do you mean? Cuz of Aunt Lorri?
MIMI
No no, not cuz of her. No, I just don’t know what to do with Mama’s stuff. You know, after Mama died, I had to go through all her bills and bank statements and insurance records and all that kinda stuff. And some of that was pretty hard to go through, but at least I knew what I needed to keep for her estate and what I should throw away.
WENDY
Yea…
MIMI
But these boxes, Mama’s boxes, her memories, I don’t know... Just about every thing in here has a story, at least to Mama. And most of it means something to me. But to you... Like this pile of photos, you probably wouldn’t know half the faces in here from the king of Siam. So after I’m gone, not much here is going to mean anything to you, or your children…[Wendy casts a dirty glance] if you decide to have children. And, then I start thinking, well, I’ve already got my own photos of most of those folks anyway. Boxes and boxes and boxes of them, as you kindly keep reminding me, thank you. But still, I just don’t feel right throwing Mama’s things away.
WENDY
Well, Mom, I’m not sure what to say. I guess you could at least throw out any photos of people you’ve already got pictures of. Then the others, if you find something that’s meaningful to you, well…. I don’t know. I’ve got to say though, please remember how little space you’ve got at your new house for things like this, and remember the boxes and boxes and boxes of this kind of stuff we’ve already packed.
MIMI
Oh I know, just ask myself is it really worth hauling from Abilene to Oregon right? But Wendy, see, [looks for example in box] what do I do then with things like this picture of Uncle Edward.
WENDY
Remind me who Uncle Edward was?
MIMI
Oh Edward was my Grandma Suggy’s brother. Whoo, just about all I remember of him was that he had this mighty, booming preacher’s voice, and [impersonates his voice] he’d shout at us little kids about how we should behave ourselves at the supper table.
WENDY
[peeking at the photo] Huh, it looks like he’s got one leg.
MIMI
Oh yes, he lost a leg in the war. He couldn’t drive cuz of it, but somehow that man got around on a bicycle.
WENDY
No way… how does a one-legged guy ride a bicycle?
MIMI
Well, just fine actually. In fact, one time his brother, let’s see, your Granny’s mama’s brother…goodness, I can’t remember his real name, but we all called him Uncle Buh. Anyway, Buh and his wife went out on a roadtrip to West Texas. And on the way they saw this little bitty house out in the middle of nowhere with the name Clarke on the mailbox. And Uncle Buh was a real friendly folksy man, so he just went up and tapped on the door to ask if they was kin. And Buh and this man got to visiting and this man says, “Well wouldn’t you know, just a few months ago there was a one-legged man named Clarke showed up here on a bicycle asking the very same thing.” Now can you believe that, Edward making it all that way on a bicycle with just one leg. But he did it!
WENDY
Wow, that’s, just mind blowing.
MIMI
So see what I mean? I find pictures like this, and I wonder, what if this is the only photograph there is of Edward Clarke? This amazing man. And then I look at all this other stuff, and I start wondering, well, I might not know who this lock of hair belonged to, or why Mama kept this picture. And what if it’s all that’s left of some person’s life? What if it’s all there is to say, “this person lived, and was my family.” So I think, well, if Mama thought it was worth hanging on to, maybe someday I’ll figure out why. Or after I’m gone, maybe you’ll want to figure out why. Maybe you’ll need to figure out why. Who knows? I just don’t want to be the one who erases part of our history by throwing Mama’s stuff away.
WENDY
Yea, I can imagine that… [uncomfortable pause, Mimi keeps sifting through box]
MIMI
Oh and the letters, Daddy’s letters. At least there’s no question I gotta keep these. [looking at one] Oh look, this one here’s from when Mama was out on that trip in California with us. You were just about to start the first grade. [reading] “I scratched Jan’s car today on accident. I was hauling some wood and nicked the door. She got huffed up about it, but when she pointed to the scratch, I just pointed to her bumper. It was about to fall off.” Poor Jan, seems like just about every time she left the house she got in a fender bender.
[Wendy is looking sad, Mimi doesn’t notice and keeps reading to herself, then aloud]
“Say hello to the ocean for me and squeeze my little Wendy. Ask her what she is thinking about.” So there you go Wendy, a squeeze from your Grandpa.
WENDY
That’s so funny, that he wanted you to ask what I was thinking about.
MIMI
Oh yea?
WENDY
Yea, because he always did that. I used to get so annoyed at family dinners because he’d tell Mo and everyone to hush up and say, “Now let’s all hear what little Wendy’s thinking about.” And last week, when everyone was over here for your going-away party, they were all talking away, Mo was hamming it up, and I thought, you know, no one here’s really interested in listening to me. And yea, I know that’s silly, but I guess it just made me miss Grandpa.
MIMI
Yea.
WENDY
So, letters like that, looking through all this stuff from your mom, these relatives who’re gone, it doesn’t make you kinda sad?
MIMI
[smiles] No, not really. It’s kinda nice actually. Like reading Daddy’s letter here, it just feels like visiting with him. And all Mama’s things, [looking through box] well, I feel like she’s here remembering the stories with me…. Oh! Look at this! [pulling out and opening a jewelry box] Mama’s costume jewelry. I haven’t seen this in years. [pulls out a necklace and takes it over to Wendy, puts it on her. Mimi then starts trying on some of the jewels herself.] Oh how you and Mattie used to prance around in these. Y’all had such a blast together. Poor Mama though, she would have liked to have had more chances to wear her jewels.
WENDY
[fiddling with the concrete reminder of the necklace, Wendy starts getting really sad] Mom, I’m feeling a little worn out. I’m gonna take a break, and then maybe I should go pack up some more dishes?
MIMI
Well I think that’s a real good idea. You don’t need to feel like you’ve got to help me here. These are my Mama’s boxes. I’m okay doing them.
[speaking to herself as Wendy leaves]
Oh, some day you’re gonna have boxes of your own to do.