copyright © 2002 Molly Beth Brenner

BEFORE/AFTER
By Molly Beth Brenner
Copyright @ 2002
  (LIGHTS UP. Two women stand onstage. One is young and bubbly. The other has an eye patch. They are each holding an identical photo of a woman. The woman in the photo is a different woman from the women onstage.)
 
BUBBLY WOMAN (holding up photo):
This is me before the accident.
 
EYEPATCH WOMAN (holding up identical photo):
This is me after the accident.
  (FAST BLACKOUT. FAST LIGHTS UP. Actors are in the same positions.)
 
 
EYEPATCH WOMAN
Not everybody knows what happened. It’s not like I wanted to tell everybody about it. (points to the pictures) And you can’t tell it happened from just looking at me. I part my hair in the same place as before. I look just the same as before.
 
BUBBLY WOMAN
There are some bad things that you do want to tell everyone about. Some things you just have to repeat over and over. Like when my friend got strangled in her house, by her husband–I just wanted to tell the story to everyone I met. I did tell everyone I met. I don’t know why. It was like a compulsion. I even told my dentist. Poor Dr. Elizondo-- he must have thought I was a lunatic.
 
EYEPATCH WOMAN
I’m not a lunatic. I’m tired.
 
BUBBLY WOMAN
Yeah. I bet you are.
 
BUBBLY WOMAN
OK. Well, I drive a lot. To and from work, it’s like a 40- minute drive. I like it, I mean it doesn’t bother me, I usually just listen to the radio and kind of lose myself along the way, thinking or whatever. Sometimes I play games with myself, to pass the time. Like, "What’s that lump by the side of the road?"
 
EYEPATCH WOMAN
Where you try to guess what kind of dead animal or piece of... stuff the lumps by the side of the road are before you get close enough to actually identify them. I don't play it anymore.
 
BUBBLY WOMAN
Yeah, you wouldn’t.
 
EYEPATCH WOMAN
It's stupid.
  (Beat.)
 
BUBBLY WOMAN
Or with trucks I play, "What’s under the tarp?" All those trucks with their flapping tarps, every single day. Anything could be under there.
So this one evening he and I are driving together. Well, I’m driving, he’s sitting in the passenger seat. Very quiet. I am thinking, he is very quiet this evening.
 
EYEPATCH WOMAN
Not always.
 
BUBBLY WOMAN
I didn’t say always. Just this evening. It’s, like, twilight, you know, when it’s kind of hard to see real well. It's almost easier to see at night with your headlights on than it is at twilight, you know?
And it's been raining a lot. The fields are all full of those heartbreaking little violets that only usually come up in the springtime and last, like, half an hour. Or, like, a week anyways.
 
EYEPATCH WOMAN
Whatever. You know what she means.
 
BUBBLY WOMAN
Yeah, you know. This is kind of what they look like.
  (She passes a picture of violets around the audience.)
 
BUBBLY WOMAN
And so driving along. I think he might be humming. Or the humming could be me. There is humming coming from somewhere.
 
EYEPATCH WOMAN
Humming? Wait. I don’t remember that.
 
BUBBLY WOMAN
It might be the radio.
 
EYEPATCH WOMAN
Wait. What were you humming? Was he humming? What was the humming?
 
BUBBLY WOMAN
I don’t think the humming is important.
 
EYEPATCH WOMAN
Wait, how do you know?
 
BUBBLY WOMAN
But then there's something wrong. A light that isn’t right. A bright eye staring into our car. There's this like feeling of pleading for a split second, pleading at this light, look away, look away. A part of me already knows what’s going to happen. It's already punched through to her side, I'll never see that part of me again, it's not me anymore. But the rest of me is still right there, stuck, frozen. And then there’s the flash. The legendary flash. And then that’s all I know. She has the rest.
 
EYEPATCH WOMAN
Yes, the flash. The legendary flash. And then nothing for a while.
And then I woke up. And I could feel this hand on my lap. I remember sitting there for a long time, with my eyes closed. Trying to figure out, is that my hand? Is that somebody else’s hand? How do you tell? And then my eye opened. And it sort of-- touched the hand, just very carefully, brushed the hand and moved across the arm attached to it, and then crept up the arm to the shoulder, and then very slowly up to a face. My eye moved very slowly, very carefully. It would sort of move up an inch, then back down, then try moving up the arm again. (points to her eyepatch) It's been dead ever since, thank God. And then of course, you know, I saw-- everything. His mouth was open. He had been about to say something. And reaching, like he was reaching across me to lock the car door.
They finally pried him out of there, pulled him out and laid him on the shoulder. I stood and listened to the road say cry, cry on my shoulder. I didn’t cry. I shook. I lost a little chunk of tooth, they were chattering so bad. I still have it. Here, look.
  (She passes a chunk of tooth around the audience.)
 
EYEPATCH WOMAN
But I didn’t feel anything.
 
BUBBLY WOMAN
I had had this strange dream the week before where I saw a gurney sitting at the foot of my bed. Just sitting there. Waiting. Very still and somehow totally real. It was awful. It was worse than this thing, somehow. Realer.
 
EYEPATCH WOMAN
I asked the doctor, how come there’s not a lot of blood? He said, the damage is all on the inside. He wasn’t a real doctor. It’s on the inside. I took that string of words from him when he held it out. I cupped it and I stroked it and turned it over to hear it again and again. It’s on the inside. It’s on the inside. Broken blood vessels, torn tissue, muscles worked apart by splintered bone. That beloved corpus in a full-body, permanent cringe.
 
BUBBLY WOMAN
Permanent cringe. Sounds like something expensive to have done to your hair.
 
EYEPATCH WOMAN
Bitch.
 
BUBBLY WOMAN
Fine. See if I talk next time you ask.
 
EYEPATCH WOMAN
I hate you.
And then later, the usual tedium. Sorrows. The bonfire of losses, log upon log. The cockpit black box at the bottom of the ocean. All the things he thought that I’ll never know. And the words, stuck fast in the birth canal, his throat of many colors, where all the songs would have begun. It’s hard to even remember that now.
 
BUBBLY WOMAN
Ha! That one’s mine. That one’s easy. His voice is gold and kind of crunchy in the morning. Don’t you remember? And cracked open like a geode when he’s pissed off. And remember all the times when you said things that slit him right open? On purpose? Remember how velvety and wet his voice sounded then, after you pulled out the knife? I get all that, for good. That's mine. Mine, mine, mine.
 
EYEPATCH WOMAN
I hate you.
 
BUBBLY WOMAN
Oh well.
 
EYEPATCH WOMAN
Well at least I don’t have to end. And end and end. (mocking) "Oh no! Look away! Look away!" And know over and over it's all my fault.
 
BUBBLY WOMAN
Bitch.
 
EYEPATCH WOMAN (pointing to her eye)
So one less eye, so what?. One less ugly thing to see. Your legendary flash burned it out of the socket-- that’s the only thing I can thank you for.
  (FAST BLACKOUT. FAST LIGHTS UP.)
 
BUBBLY WOMAN (holding up photo):
This is me before the accident.
 
EYEPATCH WOMAN (holding up identical photo):
This is me after the accident.
 
EYEPATCH WOMAN
Not everybody knows what happened. It’s not like I wanted to tell everybody about it. (points to the pictures) And you can’t tell it happened from just looking at me. I part my hair in the same place as before. I look just the same as before.
 
BUBBLY WOMAN
There are some bad things that you do want to tell everyone about. Some things you just have to repeat over and over. Like when my friend got strangled in her house, by her husband–I just wanted to tell the story to everyone I met. I did tell everyone I met. I don’t know why. It was like a compulsion. I even told my dentist. Poor Dr. Elizondo-- he must have thought I was a lunatic.
 
EYEPATCH WOMAN
I’m not a lunatic. I’m tired.
 
BUBBLY WOMAN
Yeah. I bet you are.
 
 
END OF PLAY
 
"Before/After" IS COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL AND MAY NOT BE DOWNLOADED, TRANSMITTED, PRINTED OR PERFORMED WITHOUT THE EXPRESS PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR

Originally performed July 19, 2002 at The Hideout, Austin, Texas. Directed by Jericho Thorp.

Original Cast: Etta Sanders as the Eyepatch Woman, Audrey Sansom as the Bubbly Woman.


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