Singe Numberless Death: Scene 5

(NAOMI alone in Ford Falcon, silent and motionless at first.
Then slowly she begins to exercise: simple movements of her
arms, then legs, and finally her torso.)
NAOMI: Fingers open, fingers close. Open. Close. Just when
you thought you were dead. Hands reach, hands return.
Just when you thought they were lost forever. Arms up,
arms down. Up, down. Like flying.
And you thought there was no getting out. Just flap
hard enough, girl, just keep flapping. Look: legs. Move
one, move the other. A simple miracle to keep hope alive.
Will there be no end to it, to all of it? How can these
muscles, these tissues and nerves and synapses keep
working after that? How?
What did granmama used to say? Keep moving, always
moving, and let the bastards try to catch up with you.
(Laughs.) The bastards have caught up, and still arms
work, legs work, body stretches, stands, continues moving
in spite of all. In spite of them. If I'm not careful I'll be
dancing in a moment. (NAOMI uses the frame of the Ford
Falcon to exercise, stretching arms and legs outside of the car,
beginning to develop a rhythm to her movements. Bootsteps
approaching.)
Concentrating on my exercises, I don't hear the
footsteps approaching down the corridor to my cell. The
massive metal door opens without giving me time to cover
my eyes.
MILICOS: Put on your blindfold!
Keep still! (They drag her Downstage to the chair, toss her ip
it. No attempt is made to tie or gag her this time. Each of the
MILICOS produces a cattle prod.)
I am a son of a bitch!
They pay me to torture and be a son of a bitch!
Let's have a quick electrical fondling of this one. (They taunt
NAOMI with rapid-fire questions they never expect answers
to, pointing the cattle prods at her on each question.)
What's it like, eh?
Where?
When?
How?
Do you understand you died the moment you came here?
You're ours, got it?
'Cuz you're gonna get it! (NAOMI stands, oblivious to the
burlesque behind her. She moves away from the chair.
MILICOS surround the chair, as if she's still in it, and
continue their taunting interrogation. NAOMI points back at
the empty chair.)
NAOMI: Why don't I remember anything? I was there, wasn't I?
That was me they did that to, wasn't it?
MILICOS: Do you like this?
Or this?
Do you?
NAOMI: What's wrong with me?
MILICOS: What's your pleasure, baby?
NAOMI: I don't remember if I was standing or lying, if I
screamed or not. I don't remember.
MILICOS: You're ours, got it?
'Cuz you're gonna get it!
NAOMI: I must have gone away, far far away, so far away that
what was happening wasn't happening. I wanted to
scream but could not. I hoped I'd die. Death is the only
way out, I kept telling myself. It happened in broad
daylight. Coming home from school, I get into the elevator
with a stranger. He's fat and traps me between his
stomach and the mirror. "How old are you?" he asks
between clenched teeth, so that his soft fat has an excuse
to move closer to me. An anxious hand rubs against
body, hurries through the pleats of my smock, touches
me, pinches me. I go tense. I smell a blue smell. A glove
covers my mouth. A voice promises me pleasures I don't
understand. On the third floor I push him aside, I open
the door and run away. The blue smell stays there.
MILICOS: Do you understand you died the moment you came
here?
NAOMI: I free myself from one ordeal to find myself in the
grip of another. I am afraid to go out and afraid to stay
home, afraid to move, afraid to feel afraid. Tomorrow he'll
be there at school. Tomorrow must not come. I hide in the
present tense within the walls of our apartment, spying
down on the menacing street. Girls, women, young
people, walking alone along the sidewalk. Around the
corner, something will happen to them and then bars will
grow on their windows.
MILICOS: I am a son of a bitch!
They pay me to be a son of a bitch!
NAOMI: That obsessive throbbing stays with me. Endless days
and months. An endless year of watching bodies glide
down the street with their heavy sexual cargo. I go to
school holding my father's hand. I undress the teacher
and she looks ridiculous with her grey pubic hair and her
flaccid breasts. During history class I imagine armies of
rapists. (Whispered:) And now, here they are. (She points
back at MILICOS. They've finished their rape, the cattle
prods hang loose at their sides as they begin their noisy exit.)
MILICOS: You bitches, how dare you provoke us right here.
Under our very noses.
In our house.
And we even let you.
You're all a bunch of communists.
Mothers of subversives.
Still you dare to march and make demands.
Women should stay at home.
Off the streets.
None of this damn marching
This pathetic protesting.
What do you think you'll accomplish?
You can't bring back the dead with your slogans
Your pictures
Your morbid dancing.
Why do you think they call them "the disappeared," huh?
(ONE member hangs back to deliver a final threat to the
audience before exiting:) If only I could, I'd make a clean
sweep of the Plaza with machine gun fire. (Waving the
cattle prod like an automatic weapon and making the
appropriate sounds of gunning down a crowd, he exits.) You
would not come back.