Balcony Theatre: In the Plums

While pregnant with Alyrica, and during the first year of her life, we lived at Tudor Heights apartments in Omaha.  Since I had a pretty reclusive existence as a new mother, I spent a lot of time writing outside on the balcony.  Occasionally, I would just write whatever I saw happening below.  I called those writings 'Balcony Theatre' and they mostly centered around the trouble-making children that hung out in the courtyard.  This was the last scene I wrote from my balcony perch, 6 years ago, when I finally learned the real names of the bullies that were often the antagonists of each scene.

Category: Recycled Scenes

Journal:  VOICE (unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of thought)

Date: 11-11-2006

Balcony Theatre

"In the Plums"

On the ground floor, there is no balcony for protection. The adults that live on that level of danger have become hardened over time and seem to have lost a little something of sanity. Across the way, a thirty-something black man in an over-large t-shirt and mesh shorts, hanging precariously under his boxered butt, opened his screen door and sauntered outside.

“India!” He bellowed toward the group of four girls at the bottom of the hill.

The youngest of them ran up the hill to him. She seemed to be tattling something to him which I could not make out.

“I tol’ you not to be messin’ ‘round with that Jade ‘n’ Elijah!”

“I didn’t!” She replied before going inside.

The guy just stood there, staring off into the distance like a cat in a litter box while he alternately, mindlessly it would seem, scratched his butt and belly.

The three girls, still at the bottom of the hill in front of our balcony, whispered amongst themselves. Each of them were posing their preteen bodies in womanly ways, shifting their weight from leg to leg with arms crossed under the tiny bumps of their breasts or hands on hips.

An old Indian woman passed them on the sidewalk, looking like a walking contradiction that has become so commonplace in this modern age. Swathed in bright-patterned cloths, she was talking in her native tongue on a tiny cell phone.

The long-legged black girl, whom we only know by the name we saw fit for her—Jiggles, started after the woman. “Hey! Can I use that cell phone?” She interrupted obnoxiously.

The Indian woman, out of annoyance or a limited knowledge of English one couldn’t be sure, ignored the girl and continued on as she was. Jiggles, determined, continued to ask anyway and followed the woman out-of-sight.

Coming from the pool at the other end of the courtyard, those notorious bullies, known only as Stick Legs and Old Kid to us, walked past the man still scratching himself carelessly.

“Hey!” The scrawny black girl that we call Skinny shouted up at them. “You cut my finger, Jade!”

She ran up the hill at them, leaving her friend behind to watch, and started squawking obscenities like a mother bird who’s spotted a cat too close to her nest. Her head circled around on her neck while one hand held her hip. She waved her other hand back and forth in their faces holding up her index finger.

“You cut my damn finger, Jade!” She screamed at Stick Legs in a very shrill lilt.

“I din’t do nuthin’ to yo’ finger, psycho! Don’t be yellin’ at me!” He screamed back just as high-pitched. “Let me see it!”

She extended her arm to show him her finger. He realized quickly, “There ain’t no cut—!”

Without warning, she kicked him hard between his skinny legs and he fell to the ground, screaming in pain. Apparently he didn’t realize quickly enough.

Old Kid, who had previously been watching all of this with a smug grin, stepped back in surprise. “You just kicked him in the balls!”

“I tol’ you!” She warned again. Her voice was slightly less menacing this time, probably because she knew she might have seriously injured the kid.

For another moment, which may have seemed like hours to Stick Legs, he writhed and howled as he held his hands between his legs. Old Kid, still standing back for fear of his own jewels being crushed, just watched without bothering to help. The black man, near enough to help the kid, went on scratching and watching the spectacle with hardly a reaction.

Skinny reached out her hand to help Stick Legs to his feet. “I’m sorry, Jade. Here.” She said sweetly.

Stick Legs took his hands away from his sore spot and grabbed her hand. Again, without warning, she kicked him hard between the legs and ran off yelling, “Never mess wit’ my fam’ly again!”

The black man, obviously very itchy and still scratching, watched Skinny take off and then looked back to Stick Legs doubled over on the sidewalk. His wife came out of the screen door.

“What’s going on out here?” She asked him.

He pointed after the girl and explained, “That one,” then turned and pointed at the boy howling, “kicked that one in the plums.”