Our Lady of 121st Street

by Stephen Adly Guirgis

  LENNY: You don’t like that?

  SKANK: I mean, it’s cool, I guess, but—

  LENNY: Listen, Skank, it’s time for you to go.

  SKANK: Okay, okay, I’ll just be quiet, okay?

  LENNY: No.

  SKANK: I’ll sit in the back.

  LENNY: No.

  SKANK: See, man, the thing is, thing is I got a drink coming, from the guy, the bartender, so, uh, I’d like to just—

  LENNY: Do you see a bartender?

  SKANK: Do I see a, no, but …

  LENNY: Do you see this knife?

  SKANK: Okay. I’m leaving.

  (SKANK exits. A beat. He returns.)

  SKANK: This is wrong, man, this is, I want my drink! My drink is owed to me and I want it, and if you wanna fuckin’ stab me, then fuckin’ stab! Okay? I been stabbed before, I’ll be stabbed again, fuck it man, stab!

  (LENNY goes to stab him.)

  SKANK: Whoa! Whoa! Wait! I’m goin’, I’m goin’!

  (SKANK exits again. A beat. SKANK opens the door very slightly and whispers through the crack.)

  SKANK: Dude? Big guy? Whoa, Whoa! Don’t get up. Listen. I’m gonna wait out here. When the bartender comes back, I’m gonna get my buy back, guzzle it, and split. Okay? Okay? Right, great, I’ll be out here.

  (SKANK exits, a pause, the bar door opens.)

  LENNY: That’s it, death!

  (MISS REYES and DEMARIS appear.)

  LENNY: Oh. Hi, Miss Reyes. Hi, Demaris.

  MISS REYES: Oh, my God! When you got out, baby?!

  DEMARIS: It’s fuckin’ pourin’ out there.

  MISS REYES: Guttermouth!

  DEMARIS: Chicken head!

  MISS REYES: If you want to drink on my check, you better reconsider that attitude.

  DEMARIS: My hair’s all fucked up!

  MISS REYES: Keep playin’ games wit’ me, see what happens. (To LENNY) Whassamatter, Poppo, no hugs and kisses? Doan be stingy, baby, give it up.

  (They embrace; LENNY halfheartedly, MISS REYES with gusto.)

  MISS REYES: Mira, Lenny, you lookin’ good, Poppo. They feeded you good up there, eh?

  DEMARIS: How come Daisy at the Chinese eatin’ wit dat nigga?

  LENNY: What?

  DEMARIS: What his name, “Cheyenne”?

  LENNY: Who is Cheyenne?

  DEMARIS: He a nigga.

  MISS REYES: He is not! He’s one of those Bible people, Poppo, you know, decent, nothing to worry.

  LENNY: But, Miss Reyes, that’s my lady!

  MISS REYES: Lissen, Poppo, I know she’s your lady, but a woman like Daisy, a little religion couldn’t hurt.

  DEMARIS: Look who’s fuckin’ talkin’.

  MISS REYES: If you ask me, you deserve better, Poppo, a man with thighs like you got.

  DEMARIS: You’re disgusting.

  MISS REYES: I’m just saying.

  DEMARIS: Buy a dildo, Ma, it’s cheaper.

  MISS REYES: Can you believe that she came from out of my uterus, Lenny?

  DEMARIS: I wanna margarita, Ma.

  MISS REYES: You thirsty, Lenny?

  LENNY: Yeah.

  MISS REYES: Well, we gonna take care a that! All you can drink, then, we gonna drink one more! Ay, where’s the bartender, what’s his name, the Irish?

  LENNY: Thass what I wanna know.

  MISS REYES: (Shouts) Excuse me, Mr. Irish, you back there?

  DEMARIS: Less go to the other place, Ma.

  MISS REYES: They doan cash my check there.

  DEMARIS: So? Just blow them like you do when I’m not around.

  MISS REYES: Demaris!

  DEMARIS: I’m juss playin’.

  MISS REYES: Lenny doesn’t know that you’re just playin’!

  DEMARIS: I’m juss playin’, Lenny, my mother’s a virgin.

  MISS REYES: Where is this man? (Shouts) Excuse me, please, you have customers out here waiting for ordering!

  DEMARIS: I went to Spofford!

  LENNY: Yeah?

  DEMARIS: I fucked bitches up! Niggas try to play me, I jack them up too! I got a new hairstyle, but it’s fucked up because a the rain.

  MISS REYES: Demaris, stop flirting.

  DEMARIS: I ain’t flirtin’!

  MISS REYES: How’s my son doing up there, Lenny? He’s okay?

  LENNY: Yeah. You should, maybe, visit him.

  MISS REYES: Please. It’s enough with my husband and my grandson.

  LENNY: Mr. Reyes is locked up? When’s he get out?

  DEMARIS: 2007.

  LENNY: Thass not so bad.

  MISS REYES: Please. My first man was a black, he got locked up. Then I had a Irish, they locked him up. DeMaris father was Italian, he’s still locked up. Mr. Reyes can stay locked up, for all I care. You know what I’m gonna do? The next time I marry a man, it’s gonna be an Indian man with his own newsstand, something nice.

  DEMARIS: I wanna fuckin’ drink, Ma!

  MISS REYES: You juss asking for the belt tonight, aren’t you?

  DEMARIS: The belt? What are you, trippin’?

  LENNY: Listen, why don’t we go to Donnelly’s, you could cash a check there.

  DEMARIS: Donnelly’s? That’s been closed.

  LENNY: They closed Donnelly’s?

  MISS REYES: Two years ago.

  LENNY: Okay, what about we go to that old lady’s joint on Fiftyfourth—

  MISS REYES: That’s gone, baby.

  LENNY: So, fine, we’ll go to that Muggsy’s, whaddya call it, Bar and Tap.

  MISS REYES: Muggsy died, they making a Disney something.

  LENNY: Disney?

  MISS REYES: Ay, bendito, you been gone awhile.

  LENNY: I thought Disney was Florida.

  MISS REYES: Disney’s spreading, just like the AIDS.

  (Pause)

  LENNY: Hey, Demaris, how’s Wilfred, I ain’t seen him.

  DEMARIS: You ain’t seen him ’cuz he dead.

  LENNY: He’s dead?

  MISS REYES: Oh yeah. Mira, after he died, his mother, she got so depressed, she died. And then her husband and his brother, they went out one night, and they died—except they got killed.

  LENNY: Which brother you talkin’ about? Carlos?

  MISS REYES: Oh, no, not Carlos, but he dead too.

  LENNY: What?

  MISS REYES: Yeah. He was doing real good, too. He finished his treatment program, and he got, like, a good job, right? So, his job, right? He was working in a lavatory for science, but he wasn’t a scientist or nothing, he was a custodian, but he liked the job ’cuz you know how he was always innerested in, like, the stars and mechanics? Anyway, he was happy, and proud, too. He was walking around like his old self, you remember?

  DEMARIS: Macho man.

  MISS REYES: Four foot eleven in shoes, but he could carry himself, right?

  DEMARIS: He was cute.

  MISS REYES: Anyways, he was cleaning up the lavatory one night and he decided to mop the walk-in cooler ’cuz he was going all out on this job.

  DEMARIS: Mami tell him why they got a cooler.

  MISS REYES: Because a dead brains!

  LENNY: What?

  MISS REYES: They do experiments on dead brains to see how they could make research. But they gotta be cold, ’cuz I don’t know why.

  DEMARIS: So they could be fresher.

  MISS REYES: Anyway, Carlos, he opens the cooler, walks in, starts mopping, and then he dies.

  LENNY: How did he die?

  MISS REYES: You see, earlier, Carlos walked into the lab and saw that somebody had left out a really big piece a dry ice, like a mini iceberg. So Carlos, being Carlos, sees the dry ice getting wasted, so he drags it into the cooler and forgets about it. Later, like, hours later, he returns to mop the cooler but the dry ice, it makes gas, you know …

  DEMARIS: Carbon dioxides.

  MISS REYES: The cooler was filled up with carbon oxides, which is poison. And invisible! But Carlos didn’t know he was walkin’ into poisons ’cuz it don’t smell like nothing, so
he just died.

  DEMARIS: Nigga died.

  MISS REYES: The worst part too? He died on payday!

  DEMARIS: Thass so messed up!

  MISS REYES: They found the check in his pocket. He didn’t even get to cash his first check.

  DEMARIS: See what happens when you try to do the right thing?

  LENNY: I … we … we used to play handball together. Me, Carlos, Figgy—

  DEMARIS: Figgy dead too.

  LENNY: What?

  DEMARIS: Nah, I’m juss playin’. He at Rikers.

  MISS REYES: Oh! Do you remember Mikey the Cop?

  LENNY: Dead?

  DEMARIS: Nah, but he was was one of the cops who shot that black guy.

  LENNY: Ya mean the black guy in the papers?

  MISS REYES: No, no, not that black guy. It was … All I know, it was one of those black guys they shot (you know how they do?), like from a coupla months ago.

  DEMARIS: It was longer than that.

  MISS REYES: Anyways, one of the black guys who the cops shot this year, that I can’t remember which one, it was Mikey who shotted him.

  DEMARIS: Thass why I got a gun, so I could shoot back.

  MISS REYES: Doan get me started on that gun, Demaris! Lenny do you think it’s proper for a seventeen-years-old girl to carry a gun?

  LENNY: I doan know.

  DEMARIS: Tell him about Lucy!

  LENNY: Lissen: anything good happen while I was gone?

  MISS REYES: Sure! They got a two-dollah movie theater! But now it cost $3.50.

  DEMARIS: They closing it, Ma.

  MISS REYES: Don’t say that!

  DEMARIS: Serious. They gonna make a underground shopping mall.

  MISS REYES: Thass not true!

  DEMARIS: Face it, bitch, it’s true.

  MISS REYES: Demaris, what I told you about calling me a bitch?

  DEMARIS: I’m juss saying they closing the theater, bitch.

  MISS REYES: Stop it! Juss stop it.

  LENNY: Demaris, you wanna smack? The fuck is wrong wit’ you?

  DEMARIS: Excuse you?

  LENNY: Someone need to spank your ass.

  DEMARIS: All I said was they closing the theater ’cuz they closing it, and she need to deal wit’ that and get a fuckin’ job so we could go to the regular fuckin’ theaters like regular fuckin’ peoples. They closing that mothahfuckuh down, all right?

  MISS REYES: No way! I’m gonna make a complaint to Giuliani!

  DEMARIS: He doan give a fuck about you.

  MISS REYES: Stop with the language.

  DEMARIS: He doan give a fuck about any a us niggas.

  LENNY: Demaris!

  MISS REYES: Ay, where is this bartender? This is not right!

  DEMARIS: Why they want a old, ugly, alcoholic bitch in their theater for anyway?

  (MISS REYES smacks DEMARIS. DEMARIS punches MISS REYES takes out her gun.)

  DEMARIS: I’ll kill you, bitch.

  MISS REYES: Demaris, stop!

  DEMARIS: You don’t raise your hand to me, bitch!

  LENNY: Demaris!

  DEMARIS: Those days are over, bitch, you got that?!

  MISS REYES: I got it, I got it.

  DEMARIS: Fuckin’ slut. (To LENNY) The fuck you lookin’ at?

  LENNY: Thass your mother.

  DEMARIS: That ain’t my mother! Thass a old dried-up bitch think she can still beat me down. Thass a bitch down there.

  MISS REYES: Don’t talk back to her, Lenny.

  (DEMARIS kicks MISS REYES.)

  LENNY: Hey!

  DEMARIS: The fuck you gonna do? You a bitch too.

  LENNY: Excuse me?

  (DEMARIS turns the gun on LENNY.)

  DEMARIS: You deaf, bitch? You gonna spank me now, Lenny? Lemme ax you somethin’: When you was upstate, you was suckin’ mad dick, right?

  LENNY: What?

  DEMARIS: Niggas was wearin’ out that ass, right? Say “right”!

  LENNY: Demaris—

  DEMARIS: Say “right.” They took your ass. Right?

  LENNY: Listen—

  DEMARIS: You think I’m playin’ wit’ you?

  LENNY: No—

  DEMARIS: So answer the fuckin’ question. They raped you, right? Right?

  LENNY: Demaris.

  DEMARIS: Say it, bitch, say it!

  LENNY: Yes.

  DEMARIS: Yes, what?

  LENNY: What you said … they did.

  DEMARIS: They fucked you?

  LENNY: DeMaris—

  DEMARIS: For real?

  LENNY: Yeah, Demaris, for real.

  (Pause)

  DEMARIS: Swear to God?

  LENNY: Yeah.

  DEMARIS: They fucked a big ape like you?

  LENNY: I mean … I, I fought back … I …

  DEMARIS: Oh, my Gawd!

  LENNY: What?

  DEMARIS: Oh my God! You so stupid!

  LENNY: What?

  DEMARIS: I was juss playin’.