- September 3, 2004 - No Shame Roanoke
Performed by Laura Tuggle Anderson
- June 12, 2005 - National Best of No Shame at Piccolo Spoleto (Charleston)
Performed by Kris Laguzza
On the Disappearance of my Grandmother
DRAMATIC POEM/MONOLOGUE
By Laura Tuggle Anderson 2004
You walked away.
Away from your schoolroom, away
From your car — you didn’t even take any clothes with you.
The principal called your parents,
Wondering, questioning,
Florence has never simply not shown up before,
What are her kindergartners to think?
They had no answer.
Like so many things in our family, they ignored it.
For five years you were just — gone.
Then for sixty years, no one spoke of the day you left
Or what you did during those five years.
After five years — you called your parents.
Your answer — you met a Navy man and were married in Norfolk, Virginia.
In a Baptist church no less.
Your Lutheran preacher father said nothing,
Lips tight as they’d been for the previous five years — no word
Nothing
For five years.
And then this — phone call.
They must have — I would have —
Pored over every detail —
She kept her stockings straight,
She wore pearls every day,
She always smiled,
She loved children,
She didn’t leave a note — just left.
They must have — I would have —
Asked why —
Did we not raise her right?
Were you fed up with Monroe, Washington,
And went looking for yourself in the big city?
How did you spend your time those five years?
How did you end up in Norfolk of all places?
And so suddenly, as though it just occurred to you
On a whim that day
That this life wasn’t it.
Had to leave.
Had to go.
I try so much — I try to see you doing that —
Vanishing completely out of your life,
For no one but yourself,
Then marrying without your parents’ consent or knowledge or even in the proper church —
And I am dumbfounded at your disappearing act.
That magician died one day along the way,
The whimsical schoolteacher with dreams she set her feet to —
And there you turned somehow into the quiet bird who barely whispered
Without your husband’s consent.
Why did you come back to your family?
Did you miss them, need them that much?
I try to see you, and all I see is a cutout figure,
A doll of you with a young girl’s face I’ve made up to look like mine.
Where did you disappear to?
I could do that.
I might have to.
Did you ever wish you hadn’t reappeared?
THIS SCRIPT IS COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL AND MAY NOT BE DOWNLOADED, TRANSMITTED, PRINTED OR PERFORMED WITHOUT THE EXPRESS PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR
Performed by Laura Tuggle Anderson
Performed by Kris Laguzza
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