Jenna Lassen

Playwriting II

K. Aspengren

 

 

 

(Lights up on a woman standing in front of a bright window, looking out with her back to the audience. The stage is set as the interior of a good-sized wooden house, circa 1850’s, belonging to a poor couple. On the table are paper, ink and quill, and a small vase holding violets. The woman is Mrs. Foltette. She is almost thirty, pleasantly rigid, wise, and devastated by the reoccurrence of grief in her life.)

 

 

MRS. FOLTETTE

 

It’s fortuitous, us living in the woods like this. God has blessed us. I won’t forget that.

 

(She turns from the window and sits down at the sturdy kitchen table, preparing to write a letter.)

 

Mr. Foltette says the location is ideal. Safer, he says, and less chance of trouble with those Sioux or having to dispute property lines and such with neighbors. Big area, all to ourselves. Beautiful woods, really. All to ourselves.

 

(She pauses for a few moments, and then commences writing.)

 

I’m writing to my sister. I have just buried my sixth child, and need to thank her. She had her husband make the headstone. That’s one thing we don’t have here – stonecutters, blacksmiths...doctors.

 

Mr. Foltette says we have much to be thankful for. I won’t forget that! Our garden keeps us from going hungry, and there’s game in these woods. And the cemetery, where my children are buried, is in the loveliest clearing. The sun, when it comes, shines right through those tall trees and sort of… sort of dances around on the ground. I picked it especially when my first child was buried. I...I have just buried my sixth.

 

She was a girl – Eloise Miranda, after Mr. Foltette’s mother and also his Aunt Miranda Lucas-Foltette, whom I never met, as she was unable to attend our wedding party. It is a pretty name and will look quite well on the headstone, I think.

 

My sister’s husband does well with the stones for us. They are all so white and dusty when Mr. Foltette removes them from the wagon, gently lifting the canvas away from the engravings, as if rough handling would wear them away.

 

I like to touch them, and the white powder comes off on my fingers, and I...well, I don’t tell Mr. Foltette of it, but I fancy it’s angel dust. Because there are angels in these woods, you know. Or...

 

(Laughs shyly, nervously.)

 

Well, I know it’s a notion, but sometimes I think it is the children. I hear them sometimes, in the woods. They are playing, dodging in and out of the tall trees, laughing and-

 

(Catches herself as she gets too excited, closing her hand over her mouth. She takes a moment to compose herself, but there is a waver in her voice.)

 

They pick the yellow violets. I find them where the children lie. I...I am not allowed to indulge in sinful fantasy, says Mr. Foltette. And I do not. I do not.

(Looks at the flowers on the table and sighs.)

 

Things wilt too fast, here. The headstones, they don’t hold up in the woods. The environment is too dewy, too damp, I think, and the stones begin to streak and crumble after only a few years. They age so fast, and quickly forget the short lives they are meant to represent. They age me, as well. I am not two and thirty, and already I am streaking and showing years I never lived.

 

 

(She stands and paces around the main floor, touching items along the way.)

 

Mr. Foltette built this house himself. It took him two years, and then two more before he had enough money to pay for our wedding. He built a big house, a grand estate, he called it. We expected the children would fill it. We expected...  I will not forget how we are blessed. Many don’t have a house at all, and certainly few one as large and well-made.

 

Mr. Foltette expects we will still have a big family, like the one he had as a boy. He had nine sisters, you know, and not but three brothers.

 

(She smiles, imagining.)

 

I wouldn’t mind nine sisters. I have only two brothers and one sister. I had four brothers, but two died as infants.

 

(She stops smiling and returns to the window.)

 

God giveth, and he taketh away. I will not forget his provision.

 

I will not, but there are still things I would ask for, though Mr. Foltette hates to hear me pray for further blessing. He considers it ungracious and sputting. But...the things I would really have, most would not consider blessing. And I certainly do not pray them in front of Mr. Foltette.

 

(Takes a moment, then, with conviction, speaks.)

 

Yes, I would have dishes and mending and scrubbing and cooking and soothing and scolding and...and any of the hardships of homekeeping! I would have chores and illnesses, scrapes and tears – all these things, over having to sit there at the table, writing my sister for headstones and imagining my babies as ghosts, tormenting me from the woods.

 

(Shaking, she stops for a moment and takes a deep breath.)

 

 

I would have a nursery instead of a cemetery.

 

I would have...I would have Mr. Foltette inconvenienced in any way rather...rather than hear him remark on the blessing of having so much wood present with which to build small coffins. That is, indeed, one blessing which I would not miss. But I won’t forget. I won’t forget.

 

(She returns to the table.)

 

Mr. Foltette will arrive soon with the headstone. I must finish my letter and prepare a meal, for he will be hungry and weary. Tomorrow we will place the stone, Eloise’s stone, over the place where she lies with the rest of the children.

 

Tomorrow I will rub the white dust from her name and listen for the children, picking violets for her in the woods.

 

 

(Lights down.)

 

END