black girl: What are you curious about?
biologist: Where to begin?
black girl: Are you curious about God?
physicist: Marvellous question —
mathematician: No. There has not been any curiosity on that subject in civilized countries since the fifteenth century.
physicist: I disagree. The national anthem belongs to the eighteenth century and in it you find us ordering God about to do our political dirty work.
biologist: But that’s not the same God. In the Middle Ages, God was conceived as ordering us about and keeping our noses to the grindstone. But with the rise of the bourgeoisie, you get a new God who is ordered about and has his nose kept to the grindstone. And then there is the third God / of the petty bourgeoisie —
mathematician: (to black girl) As you can see our miscellaneous collection of gods is not an improvement on Mumbo Jumbo, or whatever you call the god of your tribe so —
black girl: If that’s true, why do the missionaries teach us to believe in your gods?
mathematician: (to caravan) This is why we have to be careful. Who knows what they’ll do if they find out that God is an unnecessary and discarded hypothesis?
black girl: But why bother teaching us what you don’t believe?
biologist: She’s got a point. Why not just tell them the simple truth, that the universe has occurred through natural selection, and that God is a fable —
physicist: Why would we throw them back on the doctrine of the survival of the fittest when it is not clear that we are the fittest to survive in competition with them?
The biologist and mathematician dispute this, “oh come on,” “they can’t compete with us,” “we’re amazing,” etc.
black girl: (to black bearer as the others dispute) They know we can hear ’em, right?
black bearer shrugs.
mathematician: Ask that girl to divide a quantity by the square root of minus x, and she will not have the faintest notion what you mean. Yet, division by the square root of minus x is the key to the universe!
biologist: Nonsense! Natural selection is the key —
mathematician: Just last week you said conditioned reflexes were the key / to the universe.
physicist: who cares what the key is! We need to be teaching the natives to believe in a god who will give us a chance against them if they start a crusade against european atheism.
biologist: The natives are the least of our problems. We need to focus on the sun!
The physicist and mathematician cry out in protest. Ad lib “not again,” “will you let it rest,” etc. as the black girl and black bearer speak to each other.
black girl: (to black bearer as the others dispute) What’s the square root of Myna’s sex?
black bearer: I don’t know.
The black girl bangs her rod and shouts.
black girl: (interrupting caravan) Hey, where does the square root of / Myna’s sex grow!
The mathematician, physicist and biologist all stop arguing and look at the black girl. As per usual the naturalist eats peanuts. It’s a super big bag.
mathematician: (to black bearer) I told you to take her away!
black girl: Not until you tell me where the square root of Myna’s sex grows.
The physicist attempts to stifle his giggles. He’s unsuccessful.
physicist: Marvellous, marvellous!
mathematician: The square root of minus x grows in the mind. It is a number.
black girl: Which one?
mathematician: Can you count forwards from one?
black girl: One, two, three, four, five.
mathematician: Now count backwards from one.
black girl: One, one less, two less, three less, four less . . .
The physicist can’t hold it together and busts a gut laughing.
physicist: Marvellous, marvellous! I keep telling you that the next great civilization will be a black civilization.
biologist: The white man is played out, that’s why he’s committing suicide as fast as he can.
physicist: Marvellous, marvellous!
physicist is fully floor-rolling belly-laughing now.
black girl: Why’s everything I say so marvellous to you?
black bearer: Don’t.
black girl: What? I thought you white people were marvellous when I first saw your pale pink faces, but pretty soon I got used to it.
The mathematician gasps.
black bearer: She doesn’t know what she’s saying.
black girl: Yeah I do.
mathematician: I doubt that. Because if you did you would be prostrate at our feet in admiration of our colossal achievements. Have some gratitude for our intellect and our discoveries.
physicist: For our theories and our ingenuity!
mathematician: Our foresight and our ambition!
physicist & mathematician: our —
biologist: — inability to accept the fact that the sun is about to burn / itself out —
physicist: Oh come on! Not that again!
biologist: It’s true!
physicist: Put it to rest —
mathematician: my point is, there’s plenty about us that’s marvellous.
(to black bearer) Isn’t there —
(in confidence to biologist) What’s the bearer’s name?
The biologist shrugs.
biologist: I don’t know.
mathematician: (to black bearer) Well?
The black bearer looks over his shoulder then back to the mathematician.
black bearer: You talking to me?
mathematician: Yes you . . . bearer, tell her. You’ve been among us. You know the marvellous things we as a people are capable of.
black bearer: Uhh . . .
mathematician: Don’t be shy. I think it will be helpful for her to hear it from you.
They all stare at the black bearer.
black bearer: Okay uh . . . your guns are marvellous.
mathematician: Our guns? Surely you can think of something better than that.
physicist: Now now, I can see why he might say that. Our guns have saved their people from the man-eating lion and the trampling elephant.
black bearer: Uh, I was thinking more about how they delivered us into the hands of the man-beating slave-driver and the trampling boss.
black girl: Seriously?
black bearer: Yeah, you don’t know this?
black girl: No.
black bearer: Let me guess, you were raised by a merciful missionary / on a meaningful mission?
black girl: On a meaningful mission! How’d you know?
black bearer: White people don’t like to talk about this.
mathematician: (to caravan) They know we can hear ’em, right?
The physicist and biologist shrug.
The black girl and the black bearer continue to ad lib, “I can see why,” “every time I bring up . . . ” etc. over the mathematician.
black bearer: So, long story short, they used their guns to make slaves of us, then when they were too lazy to shoot, they gave us the guns and taught us to shoot for them. Tragic for us, / marvellous for them.
black girl: Marvellous for them. Okay, so / is that why —
mathematician: May I just interject and say that nobody here used guns to do anything to you, and also slavery (which-I-think-we-can-all-agree-was-a-terrible-chapter-in-human-history) is long over. It was abolished in —
(in confidence to physicist) when was it abolished?
physicist: 1807.
biologist: No that was the trade — Or was it that you could trade, but just couldn’t have a slave back home?
physicist: 1838?
biologi
st: I think that was the end of the apprenticeship period.
physicist: The what?
biologist: Well you can’t just end it all at once, there’s a lot to work through. Apparently it was brutal. I think we ended it early —
physicist: Really? Marvellous, marvell —
mathematician: (to black girl) my point is slavery has been over for like . . . a hundred years or something — and you can’t just blame us for that. Your people were as much a part of the buying and selling of slaves as our people were.
black bearer: That may be, but my people sure didn’t reap the benefits yours did.
black girl: That’s for sure. Just look at all those bags you got to carry. If slavery’s over why do you got to work yourself to death while they get to walk around with more than we could ever eat or drink — Like look at that guy (referring to naturalist) — his bag of nuts could feed me for a year.
black bearer: Ever heard of colonialism?
black girl: Who’s col —
mathematician: You said once I told you what minus x was you’d go. So (to black bearer) take her away please.
The black bearer doesn’t move, neither does the black girl.
You know, there are plenty of other bearers we can hire to carry our things —
physicist: (in confidence) Actually it was pretty tough to get him.
biologist: I think it’s the season. Seems like everyone is caravanning now.
physicist: I know, right!
mathematician: (to black bearer) I’m not going to ask you again.
black bearer: 1834.
The physicist and biologist share a look of confusion.
mathematician: We’ve been through this. It is impossible for us to give you a raise in the current economic climate —
black bearer: Britain abolished slavery in 1834. Papers were signed in ’33, but, like you say, there was a lot to work through.
The physicist and biologist react, ad lib “huh,” “is that so,” “you don’t say,” etc.
mathematician: (to caravan) See! She’s upset our man. That’s why he’s spouting this seditious rot. I knew this would happen.
Pause.
Well, isn’t anybody going to do anything? Look at his eyes! He’s dangerous!
Total silence. No one moves.
Fine. I will put a bullet through him since none of you men will!
The mathematician draws a revolver.
physicist & biologist: Stop it. No! What are you doing? She’s gone mad! Stop her! (etc.)
pow! The gun fires and the biologist is grazed.
biologist: ahhhhhhhh!!!!!! The Lord is my shepherd / I shall not want —
physicist: Our father which art in heaven —
pow! The mathematician fires again. Everyone ducks except for the black girl, who winds up and hits the mathematician with her rod. crack! The mathematician goes down and the black girl’s Bible goes flying. Pages everywhere.
black girl: You’re the heathens and savages. You don’t know how to live and let others live, and when I find God, I’ll have the strength of mind to destroy —
The black girl goes in for another swing but the black bearer yanks the rod out of her hand and drags her away. Everyone’s pretty much talking at once.
Get offa me.
black bearer: We gotta go.
black girl: I need my Bible.
mathematician: (regaining consciousness) excuse me, will someone please see to my cerebellum?!
The physicist and biologist help the mathematician to her feet and off to their camp, ad libbing, “come on, up you get,” “be careful,” “easy does it,” etc. The naturalist keeps on eating peanuts. The black bearer takes off with the rod and the black girl spots her Bible. It’s a hot mess. Big ole catch-your-breath, holy-shit silence / beat.
black girl: Oh no.
naturalist: Peanut?
black girl: No thanks.
The black girl tries to repair her happy birthday Bible but it’s hopeless.
Ugh! Why’d I have to go and hit that old lady!
naturalist: Anyone in your position would have done the same thing.
The black girl goes back to her Bible.
black girl: I still shouldn’t’ve done it. God wouldn’t’ve done that — but maybe he would’ve. You know how many gods I’ve met today — I have so many questions and this stupid thing keeps falling apart.
naturalist: What do you expect? The Bible is hopelessly pre-evolutionary.
black girl: Huh?
naturalist: It is a record of what men once believed and a measure of how far they have left their obsolete beliefs behind. It’s hard for something that old and that out of date to hold itself together. You’re better off without it.
black girl: Old or not, it’s better than nothing. Without it I got no guide. I have to fix it.
naturalist: Then you’re going to end up like my colleagues over there.
black girl: I doubt that.
naturalist: They claim to be evolutionists but, really, they’re fundamentalists with a top dressing of science. Sure they take in new ideas, but they never think to throw the old ones out. And, like it or not, the Bible is an old idea.
black girl: The Bible is the word of God.
naturalist: The Bible is a record of how the idea of God develops —
He turns to the audience, and at some point takes out his taped-up or crumpled-up preface and begins to read; you choose where.
— from a childish idolatry of a thundering, earthquaking, / famine-striking, pestilence-launching, blinding, deafening, / killing, destructively omnipotent Bogey Man, / maker of night and day and sun and moon, / to a braver idealization of a benevolent sage, a just judge, an affectionate father —
black girl: (breaking character) What are you doing, GBS?
That’s not the next line.
You wouldn’t —
Are you . . . are you . . .
you’re doing your preface!
The naturalist / gbs holds up his preface.
naturalist / gbs: and what if i am!
The black girl gasps.
They need to know that the idea of God is evolving / finally into the incorporeal word that never becomes flesh, / (to audience) at which point modern science and philosophy takes up the problem with its / vis naturae, its élan vital, its life force —
black girl: No they don’t —
We don’t have time for this —
Stop it!
Forget what they need to know — What you need to know is that this play is a one-act, so we’ve only got fifty-five minutes to do the whole damn thing. Don’t get me wrong, we’d love more time, but this here play was commissioned to be short and sweet — And that’s exactly what these people came for. Sure they want to say they’ve been to the theatre, but they don’t want to feel like it. So, sorry, but this can’t be your two intermission In Good King Charles’s Golden Days, or your I-put-a-play-inside-a-play-and-called-it-a-dream Man and Superman — This has gotta be a quick light look at religion–racism–slavery–patriarchy–privilege–oppression–voice-appropriation–colonization–discrimination–assimilation–immigration–colonialism–feminism–imperialism–iconoclasm and the intersectionality-of-intersections — oh, and then on top of that, this has got to be a comedy, so that by the time these guys (referring to audience) leave, they are in the kinda mood that’s gonna make them wanna plan their next trip back, tell their friends, renew their subscriptions, and, better yet, make a sizable donation to the theatre.
And lastly, but most importantly, this adaptation —
naturalist / gbs: At this point I’d say it’s more of a response.
black girl: — is written b
y a “black girl,” so because of her expertise in said “black girl-ness,” she’s gonna highlight and present stuff in different ways. I mean developing me into a character, instead of just a mouthpiece for your ideas, takes up a ton of space alone. And that’s not me being ungrateful. I think it’s dope that in 1932, you (white old dude) wrote a story with a black girl front and centre, and that you were all about interracial relationships, and writing in dialect, and plant-based eating — I’m not hating on the fact that you got a whole theatre festival named after you, or that you won a Nobel Prize for peace.
naturalist / gbs: It was for literature actually.
black girl: But this here is an adaptation, so the playwright’s gonna, you know . . . a-dapt. In fact she’s taking the advice you give in your preface. ’Cause like while you may not be a god to the world world —
naturalist / gbs: Well . . .
black girl: — you are one in the theatre. And just like you say the Bible is a record of how the idea of God develops, I like to think that your work is a record of how your ideas developed. Ideas that shouldn’t just be held up and prized, admired and museum-ized by the same old eyes. Your work should also be explored and scrutinized by people with a different kinda wise. And, you know, read how you propose we read the Bible. “In the proper spirit . . . with all our wits about us.”
naturalist: You’re a smart girl with new ideas. Don’t let them get muddied up in the Garden of Eden.
black girl: Huh?
naturalist / gbs: That’s your cue, right?
black girl: Sorry, I just thought we’d be arguing for a bit more.
naturalist / gbs: Like you said, we haven’t got much time.
black girl: Right you are, GBS.
The naturalist / gbs leaves and the black girl is left alone with her pitiful excuse for a happy birthday Bible.
Scene 5
The black bearer runs toward the black girl with the rod in his hand, screaming at the top of his lungs.
black bearer: Help! Help!
black girl: What’s going on?
black bearer: Mamba!
Mamba!
The black mamba enters hissing.
black mamba: Ssssssss!
Ssssssss!
The black bearer takes a swing at the black mamba but misses. The black girl gets in between them.
Up the Garden Path & The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God Page 11