That monument.
Floodlit against the streaks of dawn.
That shimmering checkerboard of
gray granite squares
etched with the names
of Union and Confederate soldiers,
and white paper ones
with our handwritten names of slaves
that weren’t really their names at all.
It was so quiet.
As if God was holding His breath.
It wasn’t enough.
It wasn’t nearly enough.
But it was something.
KATE PRIDE (R.H.S. Student)
I made important changes to this monologue on the same day that A Heart Divided was to be performed at the Redford Cinema. The actress was kind enough to incorporate these last-minute revisions. I recorded both the original monologue and the late changes while sitting on the window seat in my room.
A HEART DIVIDED
“A house divided against itself
cannot stand.
I believe this government
cannot endure permanently
half slave
and half free.”
In case you slept through American history,
Abraham Lincoln said that.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot
about a heart divided.
How the heart of Redford
was so divided
by that monument
and the high school
so divided
by the Confederate flag.
The funny thing is,
I’ve been thinking
that it’s okay.
Mostly.
I mean, it’s the people who only want one opinion—
their opinion—
that we have to worry about.
And then one day
an innocent girl
ends up in the line of fire.
And no one saw who did it.
And both sides blame each other.
Well, I figure the crazies on both sides did it.
Hate was responsible.
Life can be just so—
so random.
I mean, what sin was my sister paying for?
There’s no logic.
No fairness to it.
Terrible things happen to wonderful people.
The only way
I can deal with
the horror of random bad
is to see that—from it—
we can choose purposeful good.
And we did.
Choose.
Redford High
voted
to change the school emblem
to the Liberty Bell,
and our team name to the Liberty.
The Redford city council
voted to add the names
of all the slaves
who resided in Redford County
at the start of the Civil War
to the town square monument.
Four thousand three hundred and eighty-four slave names
now etched
forever
in the granite,
alongside the names of soldiers from both sides.
The single slave names—
AMANDA
SAMUEL
BIG JOE—
help remind us of all
that was taken from them.
All that they lost.
And today,
the American flag
at that monument
flies three feet above
the Confederate battle flag.
To remind us.
It’s not a perfect solution.
But I’m pretty sure that perfect doesn’t exist.
This morning,
I noticed the
tulips in our yard
are in full bloom.
Spring is here.
The school year is almost over.
And when it is,
my family will move back to New Jersey.
My amazing little sister
will be in a rehab program
at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.
She had her third—and hopefully last—
surgery ten days ago.
Then, yesterday, she spiked a fever.
Her doctors said it isn’t serious,
but they wouldn’t let her out of the hospital
for this performance, and
if you know Portia
you know how mad that made her.
We’re making her a videotape.
She said she plans
to interview people
and make her own play
from the patient’s point of view.
Knowing her, she’ll do it, too.
Strange to think that
soon I’ll be back at my old high school.
Back with my old friends.
Old house.
Old life.
You’d think I’d be happy to leave Redford.
And I am happy to leave some of it.
I’m happy to leave the football stadium,
where I still see Portia’s blood.
And I’m happy to leave
the person who signed my name to a play full of hate,
and the people who were so eager to believe I was the author.
I confronted the girl who was responsible.
She denied she’d written it,
said I didn’t have any proof.
But I could see the truth in her eyes,
and she knew I knew.
Word got around.
It was a subtle thing,
but people began moving away from her.
She wasn’t even nominated for prom queen.
All that—
I will be happy
to leave behind.
But then I recall
how the Tennessee breeze
smells after a thunderstorm.
The view of lush, rolling hills
from the water tower.
The taste of hot cobbler
with cold ice cream.
The hoot of a whippoorwill.
The kindness of strangers
after Portia was shot—
how they kept on being there
for weeks and
months and
as long as we needed them.
In my mind
I hear the voices of
the people who welcomed me—
the kids at Warren Elementary.
The volunteers at the Peace Inn.
Birdie
and
Mr. Derry
and
Reverend Roberts.
The amazing Mrs. Augustus
And Nikki,
who, that very first day,
put her hand out
to a know-it-all
Jersey girl
with a bad attitude.
And Jack.
He will be at Juilliard this fall.
His mother is not happy about this.
She’s not happy that we’re still together, either.
But she loves him anyway.
That,
I have learned,
is what mothers do.
People say that high school love never lasts.
People are wrong.
Of all the things that Redford is to me,
most of all,
it is—will always be—
Jack’s hometown.
This is where I met him and
this is the place he loves and
this is the place where I learned to love
so passionately I couldn’t even breathe.
And what it feels like
to hurt to the bone.
My writing teacher, Marcus,
told me,
“You can’t write what you don’t know.”
Well, now you’ve seen the play
I finally wrote.
Judge for yourself.
A long time ago,
my mother
embroidered a pillow for me
that says:
THE PURPOSE OF LIFE IS A LIFE OF PURPOSE.
I thought
the purpose of my life
was to become a playwright.
I still want that.
But I don’t think it’s my purpose anymore.
Purpose is:
Who you touch.
How you change the world.
The good you leave behind.
I can honestly say that
when we drive away from Redford
I will look back at that monument
and see it forever changed
by the good my sister left behind.
And I
will be
smiling
through
my
tears.
-CURTAIN-
afterword
Redford and History
If Redford, Tennessee, were to exist, we envision it as being between the real-life towns of Brentwood and Franklin, just south of Nashville. We take liberty in making Redford a county seat; it would actually be in Williamson County. The equivalence described in Redford County between white and slave populations at the outbreak of the Civil War is similar to that in Williamson County. The bloody Civil War engagement we set in Redford is fictitious, but is inspired by the 1864 battle at Franklin, which exacted a horrifying human toll. The facts of the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins as depicted in Reverend Roberts’s monologue “1961” are accurate. In Nashville today, major city facilities are named for Z. Alexander Looby and Mayor Ben West.
A Heart Divided, the Play
Within Kate’s play, if a character is mentioned in the narrative or is specifically tied to the internal action of the story, we wrote the monologue. If the person is someone whom Kate interviewed for context or commentary, the monologue is excerpted from a real interview that we conducted for this book. We changed some locations for dramatic purposes. We were not able to use all the actual interviews we conducted, though each was fascinating in its own right. In addition to Jeremy Epps, Professor Anthony Blasi, Christopher Sullivan, and Reverend Frederick Taylor, we thank Nashville songwriter and pastor Joel Emerson, author Don Hinkle, Tennessee river catfish guide Phil King, Charles Kimbrough of the Nashville office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Professor Reavis Mitchel of Fisk University (Nashville), and Maggi Vaughn, poet laureate of the state of Tennessee, for their willingness to talk to us. While we gladly grant permission for classroom use of Kate’s play, all other rights are reserved, including dramatic performance rights.
about the authors
Cherie Bennett and Jeff Gottesfeld met in 1987 when both lived in New York City. They moved to Nashville in 1990. After nearly a decade in Tennessee, they now live in Los Angeles with their son. They have collaborated on fiction, plays, and other writing projects. Bennett’s Life in the Fat Lane was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults; their widely produced play Anne Frank and Me had a successful off-Broadway run. For more information, visit them at www.cheriebennett.com.
Published by
Delacorte Press
an imprint of
Random House Children’s Books
a division of Random House, Inc.
New York
Text copyright © 2004 by Cherie Bennett and Jeff Gottesfeld
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
The trademark Delacorte Press is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries.
Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/teens
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at
www.randomhouse.com/teachers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bennett, Cherie.
A heart divided / Cherie Bennett and Jeff Gottesfeld.
p. cm.
Summary: When sixteen-year-old Kate, an aspiring playwright, moves from New Jersey to attend high school in the South, she becomes embroiled in a controversy to remove the school’s Confederate flag symbol.
eISBN: 978-0-307-55665-3
[1. High schools—Fiction. 2. Schools—Fiction. 3. Moving, Household—Fiction.
4. Flags—Confederate States of America—Fiction. 5. Racism—Fiction. 6. Race
relations—Fiction. 7. Theater—Fiction. 8. Southern States—Fiction.]
I. Gottesfeld, Jeff. II. Title.
PZ7.B43912He 2004
[Fic]—dc21
2003010031
March 2004
v3.0
A Heart Divided Page 19