Another two character folk opera about Charles Darwin and his pregnant wife and/or widow
Completed score separate
NETTIE
But blown stomach Darwin I billow
again
Boy, just two years ago I could
look down and see
my own cunt
Bellied groping groping for Posthumous Marriage
Mother of the Year Awards
Blinded by Anteater Blight
prey to passing C.P.A.'s and cruising Aardvarks
I took to -
(spaced out, ya know.)
CHARLES DARWIN
Yeah, that time I was really there. Really started to get on your
case - there no one knowing on
fade far begone.
Christopher COLUMBUS
Sail on. Sail on. Sail on.
NETTIE
Really much like a connection you know between little mutant (our potential resinous embryonic son) and me. I felt a continuity with its dimwit, its epelipaptic - hermorphiliaca, and its necropniliac preoccystions.
CHARLES AS KIBITZER
He beat up on her a lot.
NETTIE AS KIBITZER
They had a mutual dependency relationship if you know what I mean.
CHARLES DARWIN
Ouch. Amen. Move over.
NETTIE
But if, in the saying, something gets so lost, so lost almost a moment into the already gutted plucked chicken of memory,
CHARLES
grunts loudly.
NETTIE
CHARLES, the obstetrician says I must stop eating Clark Bars or the infant will pee and be nuts, don't you think that's an old wives tale?
Remember when we made our very own chocolate chip cookies, Charlie, from the Nestle's toll house cookie make your own kit into two boxes?
CHARLES
One held the chocolate chips themselves, the other held the dry ingredients of a batter you just mixed water and a beat up egg with, added the morsels and -
NETTIE
Then darling, sword swelling (like some uncertain seated ambulance) I keep things - oops, (called you darling again) but my rage - so that can't be - I wish for a minute that things might be as they were once with Uncle Milty Mort Sahl, Sam Levinson and the Cape of Good Hope.
The ship's doctor took an echo cardiogram and the left fo'castle turret valve of my mitral artery had sprung a leak so I knew I was doomed maties, Dasher, Prancer, Vixen, Blixen.
CHARLES DARWIN
So we had plenty of meat - meal and molasses, salt pork, corn meal, but enough to keep the Spider Grandmother off of us. Darling what happened? CHARLES Darling! What was it that made this turn us into being Roman Gladiators and Monkees (form of rock group descended from the Beatles?).
CHARLES
The take ten giving and bled who struggled here, have concentrated it far above our poor power to pad or retract.
NETTIE
The failed will river boat nor chicken gumbo what we say here but it can never forget what they did here.
CHARLES
NETTIE, stop jabbering. I'll come down off the mountain and earn more money. Would money help?
CHARLES
Foreclose and smothered days ago our hindmothers brought forth on this canto, rent with torn factions, an equal, revived in property and postulated on the decibel that all men are created level. Now we are unmade in a great Scarbough Fair fasting whether that
faction or any faction so believed and so debilitated can long. We are sat on first rate cottonfield of that sore -
NETTIE
So when we couldn't sleep, and even your work began to falter - (I know my cooking and housekeeping became a shambles, I know that CHARLES.) But everything turned to glue in my hands. Annie did look like a little Russian princess, especially when you added the wine colored velvet cape that made a whole set with her muff and bonnet. It was for getting such a good report that you added the cape. Do you think that was wise CHARLES, rewards and - but there were no punishments. That child never did harm.
CHARLES
Stop NETTIE. It's like knives when you talk about her.
NETTIE
Do you think that Mendeli terror that his desire - never acted on, never expressed except in the most suitable way - small thoughtful presents, tiny outings, in any way harmed her - was so? He's still hurting over it and I can't say anything because he was so aware himself of how long he would have to wait - that no word of it all has ever passed his lips. But I know, mothers know things like that.
CHARLES
Please be quiet. It's survival of the fittest. She was never strong. We knew that.
NETTIE
I knew nothing of the kind.
CHARLES
Just be quiet for a while. I have to climb a mountain and need absolute - just for a moment - silence.
NETTIE
Four sore unleavened years ago our brothers sought north some incontinent, a skewed station constrained in battery and eradicated to the restoration that well then we're elated sequel.
CHARLES
Now we are collaged in a great festered some guessing whether any station so construed and so eradicated can Paul Revere.
NETTIE
We make book on the white metalmine of what for.
CHARLES
We have come to resuscitate a motion of that mine as a tunneled fasting place for those who here grave there lies that the station mine caves.
NETTIE
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a danger fence we cannot eradicate - we cannot concentrate - we cannot follow this sound.
CHARLES
So why couldn't it have stayed that way? When Sourpuss was patient we were united in a common task, that of helping relaunch one lost soul. Between that and our own work, we led a full and valuable life. But since she stopped being patient, and the energy we were saving for our patient became - pass the butter to me NETTIE and stop waving your arms like some kind of pockmarking contagion.
NETTIE
I'll wave my goddam arms when I goddam want. Here's the lass pissing butter.
CHARLES
NETTIE that's not butter, that's margarine.
NETTIE
Boo hoo God, now he's accusing me of being chinsey with the groceries and me trapped to the stove day and night to turn out the special dishes he craves, filet of colatura Givenchy, pressed duck under broken glass.
CHARLES
I've accused you of nothing so far. I only wanted to patch things up between us. Honest NETTIE, you go sometimes a little far.
NETTIE
Well I'm nervous. Touch my boob.
CHARLES
What do you mean, touch your boob?
NETTIE
No I don't mean for sex or anything. I mean like, well, can't you feel the lump?
CHARLES
Again with the lump. NETTIE you've got another lump. It's this what's been making you -
NETTIE
Please touch the lump.
CHARLES
No I won't touch the lump.
NETTIE
Please, touch it just for a minute. See, you can feel the lump right there.
CHARLES
Don't come to me with any more lumps. I don't like to touch your lumps.
NETTIE
But don't you feel compassion?
CHARLES
I'll feel compassion but I don't like to feel lumps.
NETTIE
Bled frayed used toilet white betrayed wandering into a Mother place again and going to really hold the note this time.
CHARLES
Get tough get moving to the promised land on your way kinaherra on your way kinaherra on your way get lost nit picking in some universal howl
NETTIE'S DAUGHTER
Mute and piteous they stood there, Mother in one of those uncannily hippy umbilical Cauls she wears instead of shawls or coats like regular people, looking clearly the sanest of the three, I trying to look cool and detached but not managing to.
Mama don't cry. Don't worry Mama. It'll get better.
Come on Mama,,
I'm sorry you people are so upset by my putting a little thorazine in NETTIE's tea. I was just trying to help. She seemed so frightened every time she talked to her hallucination, CHARLES DARWIN, that I figured since it had made my symptoms go away when I was in New Jersey -
CHARLES DARWIN AS SKY BOSS
Cut the crows feet, bull turds, slut nerds swine nerds and shtupping.
CHARLES DARWIN AS DARWIN
Who said that?
CHARLES looked at his shoes and, as was usual with him when faced with a decision, let his tongue dwell long and lovingly on a familiar crevasse in a rear molar.
Mother crossed herself nervously with a spider latke.
Queen Victoria ran a rusty razor across her wrists lazily, as if inviting comment.
CHARLES
"I said that!"
NETTIE
Who are you?
CHARLES AS SKY BOSS
I am He of Whom it is Spoken.
NETTIE
Yeah but who is that?
CHARLES AS SKY BOSS
Sky boss. Ise sky boss I king of the sky the earth the clock
clicking heavens, the all the Way Out Person.
NETTIE
Well are you God?
CHARLES AS SKY BOSS
Okay, you're finally getting the idea. Yes, I'm here because you fellas have got yourself into some kind of uptight you haul ass no I'll haul ass no you haul ass no I'll haul ass spot again. Effen you keep up messin up our Sunday barbecue grounds with more of dat come you ain't gwine to hebben and dats my last word on the subject.
NETTIE
My husband, CHARLES, said he would be more careful in the future as to where his come came, but he only said it to make God go away and as his fingers were crossed at the time, this posed no threat.
NETTIE'S DAUGHTER
Mama, please don't cry.
NETTIE
Needing to be ongoing ingoing outgoing inlashing tongue flashing backbiting snapwhipping ratcatching sharecropping in some lime age leep peopled pizza parlour again Mammy, waiting for the gwine to arrive.
NETTIE'S DAUGHTER
Mammy what's gwine?
NETTIE
Gwine is Lenny Bruce dialect forgoing, my famous songstress daughter. Going going gone.
CHARLES
Sold to the first heirloom ivory lace tablecloth to walk up to the stand. Congratulations little lady.
NETTIE
If I have shoes for my feet and food for my children to eat,
everything gonna be awright everything gonna be awright.
NETTIE'S DAUGHTER
Don't cry Mama. Don't cry.
It'll get better in a while.
Please don't worry
NETTIE
It's hard to be rejected by a man when you've been opening to
him for a long time and you not one so open in that way anymore.
NETTIE'S DAUGHTER
I know Mama.
NETTIE
When it started getting obvious that he was getting it on with her I stopped tiptoeing through the tulips and turned into a pecky cypress, you know, to express my feelings sort of. You know how you just hang there and turn into a pecky cypress sometimes?
NETTIE'S DAUGHTER
I know Mama, I know.
NETTIE
I keep having this feeling they are going to auction me off on
the Boardwalk at Atlantic City. I keep hearing the auctioneer with
the frostbitten paw saying "Step right up ladies and gents, to our
right we have the last one left of the seven wonders of the world,
NETTIE Darwin, formerly Doctor Cup Custard, up for sale to the
first glue factory that can use a still functioning female
workhorse, good for anything but breeding purposes now because of
history, hysterectomy, hysteria. Guaranteed no cataracts,
artifacts, automatic self-destructs or other hassles, still a good
cook.
NETTIE'S DAUGHTER
Don't cry Mama. Don't cry.