BALTIMORE

A DRAMA BY
Kirsten Greenidge
Baltimore (1st ed. - 02.24.16) - baltimore6lm
Copyright © 2016 Kirsten Greenidge
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 “Incident”

Once riding in old Baltimore,

Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That’s all that I remember.

—Countee Cullen
Cast of Characters

SHELBY, 20, African American, resident advisor, sheltered

upbringing but outspoken, naïve despite her many academic
and extracurricular achievements, female.
ALYSSA, 18, of color, one of Shelby’s residents on the floor, smart,
female.
FIONA, 18, White, American, one of Shelby’s residents on the floor.
Also smart, loves pranks, female.
RACHEL, 18, Latina American, also identifies as being a Latina
with light skin, one of Shelby’s residents on the floor. Smart.
Socially conscious, perhaps overtly so, female.
LEIGH, 18, of color, American, one of Shelby’s residents on the floor,
female.
BRYANT, 18, of color, American, one of Shelby’s residents, male.
CARSON, 18, white, American, one of Shelby’s residents, male.
GRACE, 20, Shelby’s friend, lives off-campus, Asian American.
DEAN HERNANDEZ, 50s, of color, black and Latino male.*

*It is not essential Dean Hernandez be played by an actor who is actually

in his 50s.

Setting

The dean’s office; a campus bench; a common room on a dormitory

floor on the campus of a small New England college.

Time

The present.
All action takes place over between the afternoon and sunrise of
same twelve-hour period.

6
Casting Notes

In regard to casting and race: race and how it is represented and

discussed in the text as it refers to the actors chosen can and
should be fluid. For example, as written, there are references to
Rachel identifying as a Latina (i.e. her family and ancestors are
from Spanish-speaking countries in North, Central, and/or South
America / Latin America and the Caribbean Islands), not Hispanic,
and that when people see her they do not identify her as Latina. If
the actor playing Rachel has traits that seem to identify her as being
Latina, it is okay to slightly modify text to reflect this. To verify these
text changes, please contact the author’s publisher and/or agent
before public presentation.
It is essential that the actor playing Grace feel comfortable in this
role. Please contact the playwright via the publisher for a modified
script if the actor playing Grace is not Korean American and would
like access to a script that honors another ethnicity. Please contact
the playwright for similar concerns about the other roles. Otherwise,
please cast according to the ethnicity specified for each character.

Acknowledgments

Baltimore was commissioned by the Big Ten Theatre Consortium

as part of an initiative to support new plays by women with major
roles for female actors.
Many thanks to the following for their help and guidance in the
writing and development of Baltimore: Naomi Iizuka; Leslie Felbain,
Leigh Smiley, and the students at the University of Maryland’s
Department of Theatre and Dance; New Repertory’s Next Voices;
Elaine Van Houge and the students at the School of Theatre at
Boston University; Rhombus; Alan MacVey, Aislinn Franz, and
Mark Orsini.

7
 Baltimore
by Kirsten Greenidge

(A large projection in the shape of a dry erase board overhead.

As house lights lower we hear the sound of dry erase marker on
dry erase board.
Squeak, squeak, squeak.
The black outline of an open book appears on the dry erase board.
First the book cover, then the open pages. On the spine the words:
“study break” appear in fun, bubbly lettering.
House lights down.)
( Lights up fully on stage.
The dean’s office.
Afternoon.
If there is a realized set, then there should be moving boxes scattered
around the office.
SHELBY stands, smartphone in hand.
DEAN HERNANDEZ sits.
SHELBY seems to be having trouble with said smartphone.
The sound of a cymbal—crisp.)
DEAN HERNANDEZ. …So really, my hope is to help foster that
here, on our own campus. Because really, when we say community,
my query is: what do we actually—
SHELBY. Hold on. I’m sorry.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. No, no, of course.
SHELBY. New phone.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Ah.
(A ring tone.)
SHELBY. Shit.
(SHELBY looks up at DEAN HERNANDEZ.)
SHELBY. I mean shoot.
(DEAN HERNANDEZ smiles.)
SHELBY. Sorry, Dean Hernandez, I’m so sorry.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. The turnip truck didn’t just drop me off,
Miss Wilson. I’ve heard a few salty words in my time.
(SHELBY seems to freeze, looks at DEAN HERNANDEZ.)

9
10 Kirsten Greenidge

DEAN HERNANDEZ. Yours aren’t the first.

SHELBY. Oh right, right. Okay, so, where were…togetherness,
together, all together—
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Community.
(Ring tone.)
SHELBY. Keep talking, I’m getting all this.
(DEAN HERNANDEZ goes to speak—
Ring tone.)
SHELBY. Damn it.
(Ring.
SHELBY looks at DEAN HERNANDEZ.)
SHELBY. I mean—
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Perhaps you should pick up.
SHELBY. It’s really nothing.
(Ring.
SHELBY turns her ringer off.)
SHELBY. See? Keep going. Union, union…
(The phone vibrates.)
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Pick up, if you need to, Miss Wilson.
(The phone vibrates.
SHELBY fiddles with her phone some more.
She settles herself.
She focuses on DEAN HERNANDEZ:)
SHELBY. Unity. Got it. Go ahead.
(The phone beeps.)
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Maybe it’s your father—
(SHELBY shakes her head “no.”)
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Your mother—
SHELBY. No, no, she, they, know I have this interview. With you.
They know not to call.
(Ring tone.
SHELBY presses her phone.)
SHELBY. I just need the recorder to—
(Text notification sounds.)
 Baltimore 11

DEAN HERNANDEZ. Perhaps Miss Haj can help you to re-

schedule—
SHELBY. No no no, Dean Hernandez, I can finish, we can— I’d turn
the whole thing off but I need the recorder to—
(The phone makes a curious bleeping noise.
SHELBY looks down at the phone.)
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Miss Haj keeps my book. She can reschedule.
SHELBY. This interview, your interview is due tomorrow, though,
Dean Hernandez, and I. I mean it’s an important piece. About your
coming to SU, Sudbury, your starting here. The first black dean in,
in—
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Ever.
SHELBY. Right, yes, so it’s important.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Well thank you.
SHELBY. And what you have to say. About. About. I mean there’s
here but out. Beyond Sudbury, your work. Is. Crucial. I know my
parents think so. I mean I think so too. I do. I agree. I AGREE.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. With what, Miss Wilson?
(SHELBY looks at DEAN HERNANDEZ.
DEAN HERNANDEZ looks at SHELBY.
SHELBY seems to brace herself, then:)
SHELBY. And it’s due at eight AM so maybe this can just be a
conversation?
(The phone makes a whirring sound.
SHELBY looks down at her phone.
DEAN HERNANDEZ chuckles.
SHELBY regroups.)
SHELBY. I’ll turn my phone off and we can just talk.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. The old-fashioned way.
SHELBY. Great. Excellent.
(SHELBY puts her phone away.)
DEAN HERNANDEZ. So let’s: converse.
(DEAN HERNANDEZ grins.)
SHELBY. Or. Well. Um how about you just, you could just talk?
DEAN HERNANDEZ. You do not have any questions?
SHELBY. Sure I do. Of course I do.
12 Kirsten Greenidge

(Beat.
DEAN HERNANDEZ looks at SHELBY.
SHELBY looks at DEAN HERNANDEZ.
SHELBY grins sheepishly.)
DEAN HERNANDEZ. And so, what are these questions, Miss.
Wilson?
SHELBY. I’m, I’m really lost without my phone. My. Questions are
on my phone.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. I see.
SHELBY. But we can do this. I can do this. What, what would you
like to—
DEAN HERNANDEZ. That is the point, Miss Wilson, what is it you
would like to know?
SHELBY. Well um. How about all that stuff you said last week when
school started, at convocation, about leadership and, and, what you
said about the civic, the civic, ins…insti—
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Impulse—
SHELBY. Yeah, right. That is so interesting. That is so important.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Oh, I am so glad to hear you attended
convocation. Not many students, especially you juniors and seniors,
I’ve found, take the time to attend, to listen and attend. Interesting
word “attend”: to be present, to show up. So, that’s, well that’s a fine
place to start, don’t you agree? Tell me—I’m very interested—what
did you think of the convocation?
(SHELBY looks at DEAN HERNANDEZ.
SHELBY blinks.
SHELBY gulps.)
SHELBY. Well we, the Sentinel—
DEAN HERNANDEZ. The university’s journal—
SHELBY. Newspaper. I’m assistant editor, sort of, I mean I could be.
This article could help me to be, by the end of the semester anyway.
Anyway, yeah. The Sentinel posted online—
DEAN HERNANDEZ. You just never know who is out there. I’m so
glad to know—
SHELBY. Well, yeah, right, they, we— The university makes the first
years go to that kind of stuff, but I’m a junior, I mean, I— See, you
see, I’m an RA this semester, this year, this whole year, and that takes
up, took up, it takes up so much— There’s this one girl who keeps,
 Baltimore 13

she’s like homesick? I think? And I was, she, her parents, her mom, I
was on the phone, like in California there’s the time difference and
I was— The night before convocation this mom would not— It was
like this long phone call that would not: stop: did not end—and it’s
like: your daughter’s eighteen, she is fine—but this phone call would
not stop this mom was like a wind-up toy or something and, and, I
had to you know like calm down like de-stress and re-group after
all that so um I went out and I know I shouldn’t’ve but I really, was
just so stressed really stressed out I mean completely exhausted so
I had to get my mind off it, you know? Margarita Mondays: Sunset
Cantina: 5.99. Mango. But I. That means I. Totally slept through
my alarm. My phone is possessed—you see how it’s possessed— I
totally slept through convocation, through your welcome speech at
convocation—but I read it online most of it online and I have to say
I really. Yeah. Enjoyed it.
(DEAN HERNANDEZ smiles.)
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Enjoyed it.
SHELBY. I did.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Which parts, precisely, did you enjoy?
(SHELBY looks at DEAN HERNANDEZ.
DEAN HERNANDEZ smiles at SHELBY.)
SHELBY. Well. I.
(SHELBY looks at DEAN HERNANDEZ.)
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Ah.
SHELBY. No, no, I read it.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. The present evidence points to the contrary,
Miss Wilson.
SHELBY. I did. I read it, I mean. Well. Actually. I’ve found. That. If
I read each line of a long story or, right, like article I just. It takes so
much. Time.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. It does yes.
SHELBY. So I skim. I taught myself to be efficient. With my time. I
skim. I totally got everything you were saying, though.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. You’re making me think I should have
accepted the offer from State.
SHELBY. I did. I read it. I really did.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Make me sleep easy I chose the right student
body, Miss Wilson.
14 Kirsten Greenidge

SHELBY. I just didn’t. Agree with it.

DEAN HERNANDEZ. Okay. All right. Now we’re cooking, right?
(SHELBY looks at DEAN HERNANDEZ.)
SHELBY. I mean.
(SHELBY looks at DEAN HERNANDEZ.)
SHELBY. I mean you talk about people like they’re, we’re vegetables,
fruits and vegetables at the grocery store. You know, with barcodes
or something.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. We each meet each other with a certain
history lapping at our insides.
(SHELBY looks at DEAN HERNANDEZ.
SHELBY blinks.)
SHELBY. But labels like that are kind of. I don’t like labels very
much. We’re all human, right? I told that to my floor their first day
and they really got it, I think. Your speech. Kind of. Made me feel.
A little bad about myself. The world’s different now. People my age,
need, need—
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Better answers.
SHELBY. Our world is much more complex, much more, much
more—
DEAN HERNANDEZ. So why bother speaking out, fighting at all—
SHELBY. No, I—
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Or maybe the fight is over. Maybe everyone
just needs an iPhone and a good job.
SHELBY. Mad respect, for your work, for like what you write about,
about consciousness—
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Awakening.
(SHELBY looks at DEAN HERNANDEZ.)
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Consciousness and awakening—
SHELBY. Right, right, sure, I mean God knows we need to hear
that now. But, but, it’s like a dollar short and a day late right? You’re
talking like we live in the clouds. You’re writing books but no one
reads anymore, we’re on our phones so…
(SHELBY holds up her phone.)
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Cultural and racial renaissance. I write
about cultural and racial rebirth—
 Baltimore 15

SHELBY. Well fine but from. Like. Whatever. I don’t know. Applying
old ways. Just continuing as if the last fifty years didn’t happen, it’s
like living in dust when yeah, maybe a job and an iPhone is all each
person needs to reach their potential if everyone had one everyone
would be informed and be able to vote and so many problems would
be solved: access: I mean: you can shoot movies on this thing and it
can tell me if I have an ear infection plus keep track of all the shoes I
think are cute like Jesus that is amazing that is the kind of world we
live in today: now, and, and—
(SHELBY looks at DEAN HERNANDEZ.)
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Yes, Miss Wilson?
(DEAN HERNANDEZ looks at SHELBY.)
SHELBY. This interview isn’t going very well, is it?
(DEAN HERNANDEZ smiles.)
DEAN HERNANDEZ. I wouldn’t say that.
Have Miss Haj schedule for next week. You’ll have more questions
for me. I’ll be more settled in and we can agree to disagree then.
SHELBY. I don’t want to disagree. Who wants to disagree? I want, I
really need this story for my résumé—
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Miss Haj keeps my book.
(The phone vibrates violently.)
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Pleased to meet you, Miss Wilson.
(DEAN HERNANDEZ extends a hand to SHELBY.
SHELBY looks at DEAN HERNANDEZ’s hand.)
SHELBY. Right. Sure.
(The phone vibrates: loud.
The phone vibrates: louder.
As it does, the sound of the dry erase marker begins again.
Squeak, squeak, squeak.
A sweet image appears near the book above: a heart or flower:
buoyant. The word “cutie” appears within the heart or flower.)
(The lights change.
Later the same afternoon.
SHELBY lets out a frustrated growl that turns into a moan.
A bench.
GRACE and SHELBY.
SHELBY’s moan rises.)
16 Kirsten Greenidge

GRACE. I’m sure it wasn’t that bad. He said go back next week: go
back next week.
SHELBY. It’s all arbitrary anyway. Dividing people up. There is one
race.
GRACE. That’s his whole life’s work, Shel.
SHELBY. He’s an antique, the way he talks about it. And he talks
about it all the time. On CNN, on NewsHour. I googled him up the
wazoo. But if his generation had done its job maybe we could get on
with, with. Maybe we wouldn’t be seeing the same story over and
over in the news. It is the same story, over and over in the news. The
world is falling apart.
GRACE. He didn’t do that, Shel.
SHELBY. Well, I know—
GRACE. He’s been writing about it for years.
SHELBY. WE HAVE ALL THE BOOKS.
GRACE. And he is definitely not the one shooting people.
SHELBY. I know that and you know what I mean. I just want to
write this fucker and be done with it.
GRACE. Basically you told him to go piss on the work he’s been
doing for those last fifty years—his entire life’s work—and flush it
down the toilet.
SHELBY. I did not. And he’s not that old. Is he?
GRACE. Go back next week.
(SHELBY’s phone buzzes.
SHELBY picks up her phone and shakes it.)
SHELBY. What is wrong with these childrens?
GRACE. You should’ve applied to the library like me.
SHELBY. They’re going to kick me off the paper which cannot
happen, just cannot happen—
(SHELBY’s phone buzzes.)
SHELBY. And these stupid ungrateful freshmen will not stop
calling. What has it been? Three weeks? Less than a month. Less
than a month away from home and they can’t live without mommy
whhhhhhhyyyyyyy? Grace: why is this happening to me?
GRACE. Seriously, the library, instead of having four-year-olds as
roommates.
 Baltimore 17

SHELBY. That’s work-study. I can’t. And, RA looks good on paper.

And if they were just my roommates they would not be calling me
for every little thing that goes wrong all day long.
GRACE. You do get paid for it.
SHELBY. No one normal would do this for free—
(The phone vibrates.
SHELBY checks it.)
SHELBY. See? See?
GRACE. Just answer it.
SHELBY. They weren’t supposed to bother me every frickin’ second
of the day.
GRACE. Ask to go back to Sherman.
(Beat.)
SHELBY. I don’t wanna do that.
GRACE. Doesn’t hurt to ask. Sherman, or the library. You don’t have
to do this all year.
SHELBY. I’m not work-study, I don’t qualify for work-study, they’re
not just going to give me a job.
(Slight shift.)
GRACE. No one just “gave” me a job.
SHELBY. I didn’t mean it like that.
GRACE. I work hard.
SHELBY. Um, you sit behind a desk and tell people where the
bathroom is.
(Less than a slight shift.)
GRACE. I am not the one who got fired from the Athletics Department.
(Beat.)
SHELBY. I didn’t.
GRACE. Well no one gave me anything, no one is giving me anything
for free, I am working—hard—to be here.
SHELBY. I know.
GRACE. Yeah, well.
(Silence.
Icy.)
18 Kirsten Greenidge

SHELBY. And I didn’t get fired.

(GRACE and SHELBY look at each other.
Something slides, warms.)
SHELBY. Sorry.
(Beat.)
GRACE. Me too.
SHELBY. I know you work. I know that, I do.
(Quiet.
Quiet.
Then.)
GRACE. Just do the interview over. Use that Shelby je ne sais quoi.
(The mood rises again.)
SHELBY. I was so nervous I couldn’t even work my phone. Me. My
phone. GRACE. It was insanity.
GRACE. Shelby, Every Professor loves you.
SHELBY. No every professor loves you.
GRACE. No you.
SHELBY. No you.
GRACE. You.
SHELBY. You.
GRACE. Youuuuu.
(They both laugh and giggle hysterically.)
SHELBY. So glad we started that.
(As if they are superheroes or secret agents:)
GRACE. Survival of the freshman onlies. Combating micro-
aggression in every class.
SHELBY. “You speak so well.”
GRACE. “Could you give us the black perspective?”
SHELBY. “The Japanese1 perspective?”
GRACE. “Yeah. No I can’t ’cause I’m Korean.”2

1
Change from “Japanese” to “Chinese” if actor is Japanese.
2
Change to actor’s ethnicity if actor is not Korean American.
 Baltimore 19

SHELBY. “Don’t get offended, besides, if you go here you can’t

complain.”
GRACE. “About anything ever.”
SHELBY. Ha.
GRACE. “Or maybe you don’t really want to be here?”
SHELBY. Ha.
GRACE. They fucking wish.
(Beat.
SHELBY groans. Loudly.)
GRACE. You’ll have that dean eating out of the palm of your hand
before fall break.
(The phone vibrates.)
SHELBY. They. Are. Killing. Me. I have a life force and they are
draining it from every bone in my body.
GRACE. Just answer it.
SHELBY. I have a life force and they are draining it from every bone
in my body.
(SHELBY looks at her phone.)
SHELBY. They just want me back at the dorm so I can hold their tiny
little hands while they wallow through their own tiny shit.
GRACE. Does Res Life not screen people? You are like the worst
resident advisor to walk the face of the earth.
(But GRACE smiles.
So SHELBY smiles, too.)
SHELBY. That’s dramatic.
GRACE. You’re dramatic.
SHELBY. My freshmen are dramatic. I am realistic.
(The phone vibrates.)
GRACE. Just answer.
SHELBY. There’s one kid that wears tighty-whities to the bath-
room.
(The phone vibrates.)
GRACE. Answer your damn phone.
20 Kirsten Greenidge

SHELBY. Like no pants, no robe, just, waltzes down the hall like it’s
his own personal living room. And another girl, the one who wears
these unironic veggie pajamas every day. The celery stalks on them
have eyes. I think they’re following me. She invites people into her
room to watch porn on her laptop. I am herding cats.
GRACE. Maybe ask: “What am I afraid of? What am I, Shelby Wilson,
when I look into these students’ faces, what is it I am running from?”
SHELBY. Thanks psych major.
GRACE. Hey, that’s music therapy major to you.
SHELBY. It’s all some squishy touchy-feely phssssh that I don’t
know how you sit through every class. Sports medicine is much
more cut and dry.
GRACE. With your hall? You need to ask yourself: how can I change
the energy of this situation?
SHELBY. Are you seriously paying for a degree in this subject?
GRACE. They can’t all be horrible.
SHELBY. Yes, yes they can. Of course they can. Because of them my
interview’s going to be late and I’m going to have to go all the way
back to Dean Hernandez’s office next week all over again.
GRACE. Better read that speech then.
SHELBY. Oh. My. God. I read it. I do not agree with it.
GRACE. Dean Hernandez’s just an old hippie. Pretend you’re
talking to someone who doesn’t shower and smokes a lot of weed.
SHELBY. I don’t turn things in late, Grace. And, you think he smokes
weed?
GRACE. What’s your mom say about all this?
SHELBY. How will my mom know if Dean Hernandez smokes
weed? You think my mom smokes weed?
GRACE. What’s your mom say about all this?
SHELBY. She’s just going to tell me I told you so about skipping
convocation. She’s drooling all over Dean Hernandez coming here. I
guess she and my dad saw him speak a couple times? I don’t know.
I am not on board. Content of character, right? Isn’t that what they
all took and ran with? Then they should use it. It’s not right when
professors only see us as symbols; it’s not right for people like him
to make a living off talking about it all over the place either, in this
day and age—
 Baltimore 21

GRACE. In this day and age? Are you eighty-five?

(GRACE’s phone vibrates.)
SHELBY. Oh great, now they’re calling you?
GRACE. Maybe I have a date.
SHELBY. Yeah right.
GRACE. Rude. There’s tons of swipe-right action going on around
here.
(GRACE looks at her phone.)
GRACE. Whoa.
SHELBY. Is he that ugly?
GRACE. No. Whoa. Noooooo. Look.
(GRACE shows SHELBY her phone screen.
SHELBY leans in to the phone screen.)
SHELBY. Whooooaaaa.
GRACE. Who would do that?
(The sound of the cymbal.
Squeak, squeak, squeak.
The words “Dinner: 6:30: McCougnahey Hall Smiley Face”
appear on the dry erase board.)
( The lights change.
Later that same afternoon.
FIONA and BRYANT.
The common room on a dormitory hall.
BRYANT has his phone in hand.)
FIONA. Dude.
BRYANT. This is off the chain, Fi. All these likes, a hundred shares
in like two minutes. The whole campus is like:
(He makes his hands look like something just exploded.)
FIONA. What is her problem?
BRYANT. Only a matter of time before it’s not just all over our
campus but like it all spreads—
FIONA. That celery freak posts everything. I should cram her phone
down her throat.
BRYANT. It’s Alyssa’s who’s pretty upset though. I mean, it’s on her
door, right. But she’s gonna calm down. I mean, once you talk to her.
22 Kirsten Greenidge

FIONA. Me? No, no: you. You needa talk to her. Like seriously.
BRYANT. Because why? Because we both black?
FIONA. You know it was a joke, right?
BRYANT. Yeah, sure.
FIONA. Go tell her it was a fucking joke. Like afros. Afros are mad
funny, when you see them for real on Halloween.
BRYANT. Halloween’s not that real, Fi. And, I guess all that on her
door was probably shocking?
(FIONA looks at BRYANT.
BRYANT looks at FIONA.
FIONA looks at away first.)
FIONA. Call Shelby.
BRYANT. Yeah right. Does this got to do with sprained ankles or
Gatorade? That, my friend Fiona, is all Shelby our Surely Stressed
RA cares about.
FIONA. This is her job, though. We are residents and we need advising.
BRYANT. This is some shit.
FIONA. Text her then. Text Shelby. I don’t answer my phone either
but she’s gotta see a text, right? Bryant: Do it.
BRYANT. Maybe just go talk to her. Talk to Alyssa.
FIONA. I draw all the time. I doodle shit all the time. I have
notebooks filled—
BRYANT. With stuff like that?
FIONA. She better not jump off a bridge because of this. My dad
will kill me if this turns into some craziness the dean calls home
about or some such mess: damn.
BRYANT. Alyssa’s sensitive, you know that.
FIONA. I do not. I do not know anything about her. What I know about
her except now she’s about to open her big mouth and get me in trouble.
She could do anything, say anything, like in First Year Seminar—
BRYANT. I can’t believe that hokey class.
FIONA. First Year Sem she’s all up, standing up, talking about stuff
she doesn’t know anything about, about people she doesn’t know
anything. She acts like she from the hood, I’d like to know what
“hood” she thinks that is. Right?
BRYANT. She was just saying in her experience—
 Baltimore 23

FIONA. How she know me? Alyssa don’t know me. Telling me about
systemic this and that and micro and macro and, and. You know
what I say? I say? You know what? Go to where you and me are
from, then go to where she’s from, and then tell me who knows what.
BRYANT. There’s more to it than that.
FIONA. I better not get kicked out because of her stupid ass. I am so
right on this, B, I am telling you, Alyssa would not last ten minutes
where I’m from. Where you’re from either.
(BRYANT looks at FIONA.)
BRYANT. …Maybe.
FIONA. No, I’m right.
BRYANT. I guess hear that. Shoot, I walk out my front door at home,
I got all kinds of people ragging on me.
FIONA. And you got to take it. You got to know how to roll with it.
The worst those other kids threw down at me was “snowball.”
BRYANT. What the hell’s that?
FIONA. That’s me, at home. Like now they just call me that all the
time. ’Cause when I was little I had this bright white hair—so bright
it make a blind man see, right?—and the kids at my school, that’s
what they’d call me: snowball.
(BRYANT laughs.)
BRYANT. That’s funny.
FIONA. Fuck you.
BRYANT. That’s funny.
FIONA. Yeah, it is. See, I can take a joke. Did I go cry like a baby
when kids at school yelled that at me? In the halls even. No I sure as
shit did not. ’Cause what would they yell back? Those kids would’ve
yelled back “Aw snowball, you melting? You meltin’ girl.” And then
they laugh louder.
BRYANT. Well, there’s like a history, a legacy in this country—
FIONA. NO NO NO: my intent was to have a joke. This is complete
crapola. Afros are funny. This, this is also funny. Go talk to her.
BRYANT. What’s in it for me?
(BRYANT looks at FIONA.
FIONA smiles at BRYANT.
FIONA kisses BRYANT.
It’s a pretty quick kiss.)
24 Kirsten Greenidge

BRYANT. Aww. That was sweet. School-girl sweet. But this is

college.
(BRYANT looks at FIONA.
FIONA looks at BRYANT.
BRYANT looks at FIONA.)
BRYANT. In fact, this is a university. They give out PhDs and shit, yo.
(FIONA laughs.
BRYANT grins.)
FIONA. Oh okay, fine.
(FIONA cups BRYANT’s crotch.
BRYANT smiles.
FIONA kisses BRYANT again, with more force.)
BRYANT. Snowball.
FIONA. You wouldn’t know it now. It’s almost like yours.
(BRYANT looks at FIONA.
BRYANT pulls away.)
FIONA. We’re almost twins.
BRYANT. Get out of here with that.
FIONA. Don’t you think?
BRYANT. You’re fine the way you are.
FIONA. No, in the sun, I get dark. I get tan and dark, like you, we’d
match, I swear in spring, one good day out in the sun, we’d match.
BRYANT. Whatever you say.
FIONA. We would.
(FIONA looks at BRYANT.
BRYANT and FIONA look away from each other.
Quiet.)
FIONA. At home…I’m…the only white girl to get along with
everybody. It’s only here no one likes me. My grandparents? bought
our house a long time ago? and the neighborhood’s? all changed.
Everyone my dad grew up with, all those families’ve moved out
but my family’s kept the house. It’s one way, borrowing against
the house, they paid for Catholic school for all of us, so me and my
brothers and sisters—’cause there’s the seven of us—we were some
of the only white kids, but except for snowball no one really picked
on me, they knew my brothers would kick the shit out of them. And
you know, those families who left? my grandmother would say
 Baltimore 25

they would say, when they were packing, they would say to her:
“Mary, you stay here, you won’t even be able to borrow a cup a sugar
no more,” ’cause they thought, they just had these ideas the new
people would keep to their own, but my grandmother didn’t seem to
mind a bit. My dad, he— But my grandma. She even’s learned some
Spanish words ’cause the church changed over about ten years ago?
First communion used to be white veils and blonde and red hair.
Freckles. Now it’s shiny black and brown curls. After a sunburn, I’m
almost just as brown as you. I look pretty good.
(Beat.
Beat.)
BRYANT. I’ll talk to Alyssa.
FIONA. You’ll think I’m amazing.
(BRYANT smiles.
FIONA smiles.)
BRYANT. You kinda…
FIONA. What.
BRYANT. You kinda. You know. Lay it on thick, right?
FIONA. What, you don’t like it? What?
(FIONA moves towards BRYANT.)
BRYANT. I do. I like it.
FIONA. Yeah you do.
(FIONA smiles at BRYANT.
BRYANT looks at FIONA.
…
BRYANT smiles at FIONA.)
FIONA. Talk to Alyssa.
(…
…
BRYANT blinks.)
BRYANT. I’ll talk to Alyssa.
FIONA. At dinner.
BRYANT. Sure.
FIONA. Talk to her at dinner.
(BRYANT and FIONA look at each other.)
BRYANT. I’ll talk to her at dinner.
26 Kirsten Greenidge

(BRYANT and FIONA kiss.)

FIONA. (Smiling:) Yeah you will.
(FIONA leans in to BRYANT.
Squeak, squeak, squeak.
Giant puckered lips get drawn onto the dry erase board.
When they are completed, we hear a puckering and kiss sound.)
(Early evening.
A cafeteria.
CARSON enters carrying a tray with an apple on it.
BRYANT enters carrying a tray with an apple on it.
They see each other.
They acknowledge each other.
Friendly.
Other student fill the space.
If the cast is large [i.e. there is the ability to have extra chorus
members], it enters the space, too. All carry trays. Each tray has
an apple on it.
The sound of the cafeteria turns percussive.
Students mill about. If there are enough students in the chorus,
they begin to separate and group themselves according to race
and ethnicity: a dance, a ballet with edges. Included are LEIGH,
GRACE, RACHEL, BRYANT, FIONA, and CARSON. Absent
are SHELBY and ALYSSA. If there are not enough students to
have a fulfilling dance-like experience, GRACE, RACHEL,
BRYANT, FIONA, and LEIGH should mill about the space and
regard each with suspicion.
BRYANT and CARSON seem distinct from the others, but not
bonded as friends.
Mill, mill, mill: all bite their apples.
BRYANT and CARSON smile faintly at one another.)
(As the above happens, we see SHELBY at the bench, looking at
her phone, pacing.
SHELBY looks her phone, paces, looks at her phone, paces…paces,
paces, paces…)
BRYANT. Some shit, huh?
CARSON. Oh man yeah. Poor Alyssa.
BRYANT. Like (He makes a blowing up sound as before). You seen her?
Alyssa?
CARSON. No one’s seen her. Her face was like. And then she. No
one’s seen her at all.
BRYANT. Right.
 Baltimore 27

(Beat.)
BRYANT. Well. If you uh, see her, tell her, I, I, I…
(Beat.)
BRYANT. See you back on the hall, right?
CARSON. Yeah, see you back home, yup.
BRYANT. If the room’s a rockin’—
CARSON. What?
BRYANT. I’m just messing with you. I got a quiz tomorrow. Gotta
hit the library. I won’t even be home ’til late. You got the room to
yourself. If you need it?
(CARSON blinks.)
BRYANT. Aight, so see you.
CARSON. Oh, okay. Bye.
BRYANT. Later.
CARSON. Bye.
(BRYANT bites his apple.
CARSON bites his apple.
Both chew.)
(SHELBY on her phone.
She also holds a bag of potato chips.)
SHELBY. …Mom you are completely and officially not helping
me with all this: I don’t want to go to my hall and I definitely do
not want to go back to Dean Hernandez’s office, I just want to
lie in a ditch…I know I need this interview and I did not get fired:
OHMYGODIREADIT…well no I don’t know because you and Dad
never talk about…I’m not being fresh I…I will turn it in: of course
I don’t want to live in the basement the rest of my life I wouldn’t…
stop yelling—my inner action? I don’t know what my inner action is
telling me to do, I am not ten years old anymore Mom…what tone…
well maybe if you and Daddy would tell me what all that was like I
could, I could…because I don’t know how to talk, really talk to them
and just tell me how to, how to…okay fine, sure, no, I understand,
you have to go…I’m not crying, no, no, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh…I’ll
get it done, I said I’ll get it done I will.
(SHELBY looks at the potato chip bag.)
SHELBY. Yeah I’m eating great, sure.
(SHELBY squashes the bag with her hands and stuffs it in her bag.)
28 Kirsten Greenidge

SHELBY. Uh-huh, fine. Love you, too—

(Squeak, squeak, squeak.
Two cartoon-like eyes—vintage, retro: a little bit Betty Boop, and
little bit something else—are drawn on the dry erase board.
The sound of the lips puckering.)
( Later in the evening, but still early.
The common room.)
CARSON. That’s some cold-ass shit right there. Just not answering
your phone. It completely erases our needs, right?
RACHEL. I knew this place was whack. When I came on the tour.
Brown people in all the pictures online so when you come to visit
you think maybe they’re all in class but then you sign everything,
move in here, and boom. Ha.
LEIGH. Sucka.
(CARSON laughs.)
CARSON. You’re so right. The pictures on the website—
RACHEL. I got the real whiff of this place the first week of class.
There’s a guy sits next to me in Intro to Soc—
LEIGH. Let me guess he’s not one of them brown faces in the online
pictures.
RACHEL. No, no, claro que no.
CARSON. I love it when she speaks Spanish. I love it when you speak—
(RACHEL looks at CARSON.
RACHEL starts, then stops, then continues with her original
train of thought:)
RACHEL. This guy in Soc refuses to staple, refuses to staple his
weekly Reader Responses together in the corner. I said to him, you
want to borrow my stapler? He says no, he says, Cold day in hell
when I staple a paper for this Jerk Off. I don’t think he’s ever ever had
a teacher of color ever.
LEIGH. Intro to Soc is taught by a black person?
RACHEL. I don’t know what he is, exactly—
(LEIGH checks her phone.)
LEIGH. From his campus profile he sure is something.
RACHEL. I didn’t think I’d still have to be going to school with
people like this. What kind of parents send their kid to college to
behave like that?
 Baltimore 29

CARSON. All I know is: I am not, I am no longer, comfortable

sleeping here.
LEIGH. If I can sleep here, you can sleep here.
RACHEL. No, Carson’s right.
LEIGH. We can all sleep here.
CARSON. She’s a bully. Fiona? She’s a bully.
RACHEL. She’s just dumb.
LEIGH. Ummm, dumb can burn your house down, don’t get it
twisted. Dumb is dangerous.
CARSON. Fiona is a bully and I am not, I am definitely not
comfortable.
RACHEL. Fiona, all them down that side of the hall—especially
the one with all of Whole Foods painted on her pajamas?— Dumb,
dumb, dumb.
LEIGH. I say, I say we take action, right? I say we write the president-
of-this-mutha-up-in-here. Go over Shelby’s head.
RACHEL. I saw her at convocation, President Verity.
CARSON. Oh I totally slept through that.
RACHEL. Her watch? A buck and a half, easy.
LEIGH. What are you talking about?
CARSON. I did. I knew Fiona was trouble.
RACHEL. President Verity’s watch.
CARSON. At orientation, when we all first met, I knew Fiona was
trouble. I thought to myself, I thought to myself. Wait, hold up, I
know what it is. You know what it is? It’s the way she’s all over
Bryant like he’s some exotic pet tiger or something. From minute
one, at orientation. She is always rubbing against him—
LEIGH. You’re just jealous.
RACHEL. Of which one?
LEIGH. Fiona drapes herself all over him—
CARSON. Like she’s a pashmina scarf—
LEIGH. Poor Alyssa.
RACHEL. President Verity’s watch is fifteen hundred dollars easy.
That is what I am talking about.
30 Kirsten Greenidge

LEIGH. Shoot, first black president of this university, she can do

whatever she wants, in my book.
RACHEL. Yeah, yeah, yeah but, but if you’re picking out fifteen-
hundred-dollar watches but your job is, I mean, this is school, this
is an institution, of higher fucking learning, this is not Wall Street.
CARSON. I like President Verity. I feel like I could go to her office,
have some hot cocoa, get cozy on a chair, just talk.
RACHEL. I like her, too, I like her fine. Before I got here I read all
her articles.
CARSON. Black president, black dean—
RACHEL. “Something” soc prof.
LEIGH. Out of um, how many else? Two and a half flies in the
buttermilk, that’s it. That is it.
CARSON. It’s a small school. How many people of color did you
expect?
RACHEL. I swear I counted enough Latinos for a student group in
that brochure. I look for them in the caf and it’s like crickets right?
(She makes a lonely chirping sound.)
CARSON. Well I knew it. I knew Fiona was trouble.
LEIGH. Bryant can’t handle himself, that’s the problem. Shoot, we’re
here hardly a month and he’s all up in Fiona’s business like Oh my
goodness. I mean what is up, right? What kind of brother does that,
right? Lets someone roll herself all up on him like that like that?
Where’s his sense of self, right? I ask you.
RACHEL. Maybe he’s adopted.
CARSON. What’s that mean?
LEIGH. No, he’s black.
CARSON. Of course he’s black.
LEIGH. So you see race or you don’t see race?
RACHEL. No one but a Klansman says they do and no, like, he’s
black.
CARSON. Fine, so I’m just the white guy. So I can’t say anything
right or true about race.
RACHEL. Just admit there are some things you do not know, and
listen.
CARSON. Just admit you attack and then I do not feel like listening.
 Baltimore 31

LEIGH. What Rachel means is culturally, no matter what color tone

Bryant’s skin is, Bryant is a black person.
CARSON. You act like there’s a scale from one to ten. Like a metric
system of race—
RACHEL. I wouldn’t call it a scale. But, like, people, you know, pick
up on it. Like I introduce people to my mom and my dad and they
look at them and they look at me and my last name’s not Spanish but
my mom’s like basically Sofia Vergara after like six kids and a deep
deep love of Wendy’s chocolate Frostys—
CARSON. That is not nice, Rach.
RACHEL. People see my family and they have no idea where I fall
on the Latina scale. Half the time they are calling me Hispanic—
which is like whatever sometimes my own family says they’re
Hispanic—but I am like: am I from Spain? I am Latina. Go read a
Buzzfeed about it or something but do not call me Hispanic because
I am not from Spain.
LEIGH. What if one of your cousins called themselves Hispanic?
What if your own family couldn’t agree, present a united front?
RACHEL. I’d lecture whoever that dude is on solidarity until he
started to cry or agreed with me. Why? What do you call yourself?
LEIGH. To me it’s the intent, right? You can call me African
American, you can call me a name my grandparents fought for, but
if your voice is really saying I should be licking your boots, then we
got problems.
CARSON. No one asks what I am.
(Both look at CARSON.)
CARSON. I hate those boxes on forms. Just an empty space of
nothing, which is what “white” means. Those boxes don’t tell anyone
anything. The whole thing makes me sleepy to think about, it’s so…
(Both look at CARSON but he seems lost in thought and does not
elaborate.)
RACHEL. Me? I have my priorities sharpened like a knife. I decide
what these people call me. I’m no cartoon to be laughed at. I learned
that in high school. You can’t serve yourself up to let other people
define you.
CARSON. Well I don’t use it. I do not use the scale.
RACHEL. Congratulations you are the only one in America who
does not notice what the rest of us look like, act like, speak like.
32 Kirsten Greenidge

LEIGH. Fiona was, she was trouble from get.

CARSON. Yes, I guess I am. I guess I just maybe am. Maybe I am the
last American in the whole states of all the Americas.
(LEIGH turns to CARSON.)
LEIGH. Well aren’t you the great white heterosexual hegemonic
great white hope now, aren’t you, Carson?
CARSON. Now you’re just being mean. You know, you know, I’m
not sure about that whole hetero thing.
RACHEL. Yeah. President Verity’s watch is a very, very nice watch.
CARSON. (To LEIGH:) Take that back.
LEIGH. How’d you get that close to her?
RACHEL. I couldn’t see every bit of it, but what I did see, what I did
see, made me think: they totally make money off us.
LEIGH. They don’t make shit off me. I have three scholarships and
two loans to be here.
RACHEL. Fine, call up President Verity and tell her what Fiona put
on Alyssa’s door—and only her door, she didn’t write that shit on my
door, or Carson’s door—
LEIGH. I’d like to see her try that shit on my door.
RACHEL. We should call her. See if President Verity comes in here
and talks to us in these dorms or sends out a press release first.
LEIGH. President V needs to wake up.
RACHEL. Right?
CARSON. That is some cold-ass shit, Shelby not answering her
phone. We are clearly in need.
LEIGH. Fiona drew it, she should be the one to answer for it.
RACHEL. We’re on our own, is what I mean. This place is old. It
doesn’t matter who’s in charge. This place is old and white and it
wants to get older—
CARSON. And whiter? Look, every teacher could be black, yellow,
and brown, and that would not automatically make it a good school.
RACHEL. This place cannot say it is an institution of higher learning
and then just conveniently only employ people who all look the same.
It cannot and expect to survive.
LEIGH. Shelby and Bryant? People like them got to get themselves
together or they got to go.
 Baltimore 33

CARSON. Shelby cares. I think she cares. Which is why I don’t get
why she is doing this, leaving us alone in here to freakin’ freak the
freak out like this.
LEIGH. Right. She is. Where’s Miss Wilson, when you really need her?
CARSON. She spent three hours on the phone with someone’s mom
last week, I thought she was different—
LEIGH. Miss “I don’t see race.”
CARSON. Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she is the other real American.
LEIGH. What-the-fuck-ever: I thought I was gonna gag, when she
said that at the first hall meeting.
RACHEL. Everyone does.
CARSON. I don’t. I see two of my best friends.
LEIGH. Awwwwww.
RACHEL. We’ve known each other for three weeks so, like, whatever.
CARSON. God made the world in seven days, so we’ve known each
for like three times the Bible.
RACHEL. Everyone sees race.
LEIGH. Yeah, you might be on your own for this one, Carson.
RACHEL. Post-racial, post my ass.
LEIGH. Ha.
CARSON. That’s very bleak. To say it out loud like that.
RACHEL. You don’t see race because you are white, you are the default.
CARSON. We do not live in 1955 Mississippi. It’s not 1955 or 1975
or 1985.
RACHEL. Do you even read the newspaper, Carson? You don’t even
have to look past the front page to get confused about what year it is.
CARSON. If this were 1955 we would not be friends.
LEIGH. Eighth-grade summer, I was washing cars for cheer.
RACHEL. (Sings:) Welcome to the car wash: woo-oooo.
CARSON. You’re flipped.
LEIGH. I was washing cars for cheer and this car pulls up and it’s
like one of those old station wagons, huge way-back part, wide as
two lanes of the street.
CARSON. (To RACHEL:) Seriously, what song was that?
34 Kirsten Greenidge

LEIGH. And this car, right, it’s got this huuuuge billboard
strapped to its roof right? And painted on the billboard, like real
handwritten paint was “Impeach Obama.” And you know, we all,
see my neighborhood’s, my town is like all black, right? All black
people living in the same place for years. It’s a historic place. People
are proud to come from there. We give house tours at Christmas.
Growing up there made me proud to be black. I can’t pull out
family trees or heirlooms or any of that stuff—how many black
families really can?—but my neighborhood makes me fly above all
that. But this dude just rolled on into our car wash, with all of us
whose parents and grandparents made lives for themselves here,
who fought for what power they ended up having, for knowing,
whether they agree with Obama or not—I mean, my grandfather
hates Obama, but he understands what his presidency means to our
neighborhood—it was, I just thought: this is straight-up racist shit
here and what makes it, what makes this dude think this is funny,
that this is some kind of joke, is we’re black girls, the lowest rung
of the ladder to him—everywhere in the world just about—and that
allows him to pull up and expect us to wash the dirt from his car
and “yes sir” him with that sign poking up off his roof with him
thinking that Obama sign is a joke. We thought we’d get in trouble,
heaps of trouble if we said anything. So we didn’t say a word. We
washed that dude’s car like it was 1955, like it was 1855.
RACHEL. It’s always Mississippi, no matter what.
CARSON. No, things change. They do. At home, I have a Chinese
grandmother. Me, a white guy, I have a Chinese grandmother. And
when I see her I just see my grammie.
RACHEL. Okay I will admit that’s sweet.
LEIGH. We like to make racists seem so incredibly evil—like first
cousin to the devil—so that it feels like they could never exist, but
they do. They exist and they are not the boogeyman. They “just” see
your Chinese grammie, too, but the thing is, they see her as “cute”
and “adorable” and want to get Chinese recipes from her and act
like every word she says should be printed inside a fortune cookie.
CARSON. What is your problem? Why would you say that to me?
LEIGH. Shelby acts like she is living inside a magical fairy world
where nothing means anything because she doesn’t want it to. I’ve
seen that girl’s Facebook page. May as well just post a big dumb
yellow smiley face on it 24/7.
CARSON. You’re going to judge someone from their Facebook.
LEIGH. Is that not the point of Facebook?
 Baltimore 35

RACHEL. No one real uses Facebook anymore anyway, there’s too

many parents on there.
LEIGH. There is not one thing on there about Ferguson or Black
Lives Matter. Shelby’s got nothing on any of that.
RACHEL. Well I don’t know. I had to, I know I had to step back from
some of all that. Where are the Latinos supposed to fit in all that? Or
Native lives? They’re dying too?
CARSON. Maybe being political’s not her thing.
RACHEL. I am political, I am just conscious about how and that I am
Latina and race in America is simplified to be black and white but I
am not black or white—
CARSON. Well maybe she is tired of talking about it. Sometimes
people get—
LEIGH. Who has the luxury to just “get tired” of it and “decide” to
stop? None of her accounts—Twitter, Etsy—
CARSON. Etsy? So she’s supposed to knit about it?
RACHEL. How far back have you trolled her exactly?
LEIGH. I think she turned in her race card, yo. Only thing she wrote
about Black Spring was about that mother and her son throwing the
brick in Baltimore. And, for the record, my moms would have beat
my black ass. All she could manage was some shit about violence
begetting violence, which is whack.
CARSON. Maybe, Shelby’s evolved beyond race.
RACHEL. Well race is gonna slap Miss Shelby the RA hard across
the face—
LEIGH. Once she walks back on this hall, yes it is.
CARSON. I appreciated her first meeting speech.
LEIGH. Shelby is whack and this school is whack whack whack: let’s
all transfer.
CARSON. That’s mature.
LEIGH. Everyone sees color.
CARSON. No. No I do not.
LEIGH. Who do you sit with in the caf?
CARSON. Who do you sit with in the caf?
RACHEL. I hate that caf.
CARSON. You can sit with me in the caf.
36 Kirsten Greenidge

LEIGH. You and Bryant are roommates and you don’t even sit with
him.
RACHEL. And your grandmother is your “Chinese” grandmother.
Not your grandmother.
CARSON. She is old. She is from China. She is my CHINESE
GRANDMOTHER.
RACHEL. I say we start posting this outside school, like off campus:
blow it the hell up: CNN, HuffPo: everywhere.
CARSON. I have a bio quiz tomorrow. Can we time it so it like gets
everyone so bothered there’s no classes and I don’t have to take it? I
shouldn’t’ve let my two moms choose my schedule.
LEIGH. Can you imagine if that kid with the brick had two black
moms? Shit.
RACHEL. (To CARSON:) You cannot time a video to go viral. That
is the point, the mob takes over. That is my soc major talking now. I
like it.
CARSON. There’s a video?
RACHEL. No, there is not a video.
CARSON. I don’t want to see Alyssa’s face all over the place. Like
her face coming home to that.
LEIGH. There is no video.
CARSON. She’s pretty, Alyssa. It doesn’t even look like her, what’s
up there.
(Beat.)
LEIGH. It doesn’t matter what the hell that shit looks like or what
Alyssa looks like. What was the intent, right?
CARSON. Where the hell’d Fiona know how to draw something
like that?
LEIGH. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
CARSON. I know that. I’m the one who doesn’t think we should
sleep here. We should camp in the quad.
LEIGH. In the dirt?
RACHEL. That is a genius idea, jerk off.
CARSON. Iamnotthejerkoffyouaretheonessayingmeanthingsabout-
mygrammie.
(Beat.)
 Baltimore 37

CARSON. I just don’t understand why, why this is happening. Why

Fiona’d even do that?
LEIGH. Where the hell could Shelby be? What the hell else could she
be doing? Let’s all try again.
(The three take to their phones, text.)
(Squeak, sqeak, squeak.
The dry erase board.
Two bunny ears, cartoonish, get drawn.
Then the words: “Study Break, 8:30” get written, as well.)
(LEIGH types on her phone.
RACHEL and CARSON pack up their stuff [if they have any]
and walk off, texting.
LEIGH is left texting.)
(The bench.
Evening.
SHELBY sits, book open on her lap.
The phone vibrates.
The phone beeps.
The phone beeps.
The phone beeps and beeps and beeps.
SHELBY bites a thumbnail, stares.
The phone beeps and beeps and beeps.
SHELBY looks at her phone and places it neatly on her lap.
SHELBY sits.
SHELBY bites a thumbnail, stares, sighs heavily, gruffly.)
(Squeak, squeak, squeak.
Leaves and trees appear on the dry erase board.
Foliage.)
(GRACE walks, earbuds in her ears.
Opposite, RACHEL walks, earbuds in her ears.
RACHEL and GRACE bump into each other.)
GRACE. Sorry.
(They both remove their earbuds and look at each other.)
RACHEL. Oh, I’m sorry.
(GRACE goes to put her earbuds back in.)
RACHEL. Oh, wait, you’re Shelby’s friend.
(GRACE looks at RACHEL.)
RACHEL. I live on her hall.
38 Kirsten Greenidge

GRACE. Oooooh. Right.

RACHEL. Rachel.
GRACE. Busy night.
RACHEL. Busy night, yeah.
GRACE. Insane.
RACHEL. You um, you seen Shelby? We’ve all been—
GRACE. I know.
RACHEL. So you know where she is?
(GRACE looks at RACHEL.)
GRACE. That picture’s intense—
RACHEL. Don’t tell me you’re like protecting her, like come ON.
GRACE. I think she needs to process.
RACHEL. Process?
GRACE. She studies sports medicine, she can’t talk her way out of
a paper bag.
RACHEL. You think she’d do the same for you?
GRACE. What are you talking about?
RACHEL. She wouldn’t.
GRACE. You don’t know her.
RACHEL. She would not.
GRACE. I don’t think that’s true.
RACHEL. She takes.
(GRACE starts to put her earbuds in.)
RACHEL. I’ve seen her in the caf. The moment when you get your
tray filled and you turn to the dining hall to find your seat and you
feel that pang: where do I belong, where do I go? What’s it? Three
years? She still looks out in the dining room, when she gets her tray.
She finds you second.
GRACE. Yeah. Who do you sit with in the caf?
RACHEL. I hate that fucking caf. I fought so hard in high school just
to be me and now, here, I have to— I had this teacher, senior year,
everything I did. One day I had this orange, I was about to eat this
orange, my nail is about to slice into this orange and she yells out
“Rachel, this is not the time to eat” and my face gets hot, although I
 Baltimore 39

should have been used to it by then because she was always yelling
at me, but, so, I put my orange away but she does not stop, she pulls
out her lunch bag and says, “This is real food, Rachel” and she pulls
out crackers and I’m like what the? And the keeps going “This is
a sandwich” and I think, okay, she is having one of those moments
teachers do when they go off and lose it and I get quiet, and the two
white girls eating Chips Ahoy in the back keep eating their food and
I let it go because that’s what my mother and father would want me
to do, don’t make waves, definitely don’t act too Spanish, and it’s not
until the end of the year…I got into here, and this other girl, Mary
Ellen Peterson, got rejected from Brown, and she’s mouthing off
about it during class and saying it’s because of students like me she
didn’t get in, meaning minority students, and that’s why, because of
quotas and affirmative action, and I could see this teacher suddenly
see, that for the entire time she’d been talking to me a certain way
and the other students were, were, but the one thing that was not
wrong with me, that she could not deny, was my grades, I got As,
and so she could not, Mary Ellen could not say these things, and she
stopped her, she said, “Mary Ellen, Rachel is not the reason why you
did not get into Brown.” And it was the first time she saw me, saw
the classroom we’d all been sitting in, that she’d created, oranges
and sandwiches—all of it—all year. I still would not trust her as far
as I could throw her, but I will never forget seeing her see that for
herself. As her. Ask Shelby what she sees, when she sees you.
(GRACE looks at RACHEL.)
GRACE. At home for myself I’m just Grace. I am not just Asian. I am
just me. I came here and thousands of years of world history gets
poured into my skin like lava.
RACHEL. Ask her.
GRACE. She’s my best friend.
RACHEL. She needs to wake up.
(RACHEL looks at GRACE.
GRACE looks at RACHEL.)
RACHEL. Next time you see her. Ask her what she sees.
(Quiet.
SHELBY at the bench.
SHELBY stuffs chips into her mouth by the fistful.
When she’s had enough—which is a lot—she stops.
SHELBY wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, gruffly.
Beat.
SHELBY paces some more.)
40 Kirsten Greenidge

(The common room.

LEIGH.
Evening.
BRYANT enters.)
BRYANT. S’up Leigh-high. You see Alyssa?
LEIGH. She inviting you to Thanksgiving?
BRYANT. It’s September.
LEIGH. Your new girlfriend.
BRYANT. We ain’t like that, me and Fi.
LEIGH. How could you even talk to her after what she did?
BRYANT. That’s why I needa find Alyssa. Smooth this all over.
LEIGH. Whatever, Jeeves.
BRYANT. What is your problem, Leigh?
LEIGH. How could you even talk to her?
BRYANT. It was a joke, right?
LEIGH. Tell me how it’s funny.
BRYANT. Alyssa’s always got her books out—
LEIGH. Um, ’cause this is college, right?
BRYANT. You know what I mean.
LEIGH. Good luck with that government major without books.
BRYANT. All my materials’re online, baby: no books, no mess. I
travel light.
(LEIGH looks at BRYANT.)
BRYANT. You know where Alyssa is or not?
LEIGH. What’s like your deal?
BRYANT. What you mean?
LEIGH. Do you um hate all black people or just me and Alyssa?
Rachel for good measure? Maybe we throw in Carson too at the end
of the day, I hear he’s got a Chinese grandma, you could hate her,
too.
BRYANT. I don’t hate nobody? I’m trying to find Alyssa. I’m like an
episode of Cops up in here.
LEIGH. You got a whole lot of self-hate, that’s what you got.
(LEIGH turns to go.)
 Baltimore 41

BRYANT. Hold up, hold up, hold up—

LEIGH. Why do you even like her? Fiona. Why do you even like her?
Why do you keep defending her?
BRYANT. Who cares who I like, do you know where Alyssa is?
LEIGH. Fiona’s disgusting. She is a disgusting human being.
BRYANT. You oughta get along with her. Four more years.
LEIGH. I’m lucky it’s a huge major. I can avoid that hot buttered
mess. Which you should, too.
BRYANT. You know, I don’t need this. I’ll find her myself.
(BRYANT goes to leave.)
LEIGH. Wait. Seriously. For real.
BRYANT. What.
LEIGH. Why?
(BRYANT stops, looks at LEIGH.
LEIGH looks at BRYANT.
BRYANT looks down.)
LEIGH. Alyssa’s just as pretty.
BRYANT. She’s all right.
LEIGH. Alyssa’s just as pretty.
BRYANT. I know. She is.
LEIGH. So why not choose her?
BRYANT. I don’t know what she told you, right. I don’t know what
you girls talked about, but—
LEIGH. And now, after she put that thing up—
BRYANT. It was a joke.
LEIGH. What is wrong with you? One girl one time throws herself
at you and you’re so thirsty you don’t even think, you don’t even
question—
BRYANT. I get it, you don’t like it ’cause of the black girl white girl
history thing—
LEIGH. No, no—
BRYANT. You need to get yourself over that, Leigh.
(LEIGH looks at BRYANT.)
42 Kirsten Greenidge

LEIGH. She is, she is going to take you to Thanksgiving dinner.

You’re going to sit there at her table and you’re going to pass the
potatoes and the gravy and the dinner rolls and you’re going to sit in
front of the television with her father and her uncles and her brothers
and you’re all going to pretend they are happy to see you and they’re
going to talk about the football game on TV and you’re going to
talk about the football game on TV and in the kitchen her mother is
going to pull her aside and say it’s not me, it’s your father and after
dessert, when you’re helping the aunts clear the table, when you’re
drying their plates and their cups and their spoons, her dad is going
to have a smoke with her on the porch and he’s going to finally look
at her for the first time since she put on a training bra and he is going
to talk to her for the first time since she quit the soccer team and she
won’t call on Friday and she won’t call on Sunday and before finals
she’ll be through with you because she won’t need you anymore.
You are so tiny. You are so, so small like a speck.
(Beat.)
BRYANT. Why do you even think about this stuff?
LEIGH. That first day, you liked Alyssa.
BRYANT. I carried up a suitcase I didn’t propose motherfucking
marriage.
LEIGH. She likes you.
BRYANT. We’ve been here three weeks, who, like, who even knows
anything?
LEIGH. You know enough to be smoothing things over for a fuck-
ing disgusting person who by the way is not funny, who by the way
is dumb as a bag of bricks if she thought drawing that shit—that
“jungle boogie” crap splashed all over Alyssa’s bedroom door—if
she thought any of that shit was at all funny.
BRYANT. I’ll find Alyssa myself.
LEIGH. Yeah? Good luck.
(BRYANT goes to leave.)
BRYANT. She sees me. Fiona. She likes me. Alyssa. Doesn’t act like
she sees me, likes me, she. It’s harder. I don’t know why. With people
like Fiona—
LEIGH. White people.
BRYANT. I show up, they’re happy to see me.
LEIGH. That’s because you put on a show.
 Baltimore 43

BRYANT. When? When I do that?

LEIGH. If I have to tell you, if I have to spell it out—
BRYANT. Maybe I just don’t believe in rubbing people the wrong
way every single minute of every single day. Not everything is a
civil rights thing.
LEIGH. Little tap dance here, little shuffle there.
BRYANT. See, this is, this…
LEIGH. I’m wondering, I’m wondering, when you’re going to stop
and think on it, like really have to think on it.
(BRYANT looks at her.)
BRYANT. I got aunts and uncles and cousins and we’re just black.
No one goes around thinking on it at all.
LEIGH. “And we so happy massa.”
BRYANT. We are. I don’t like feeling like shit all the time so I sit
myself in the middle of people who aren’t gonna make me feel that
way all the time. White people? They don’t want to talk about race,
they don’t want to feel like shit. Most of them, you talk about race,
and they out the door fast. With them, it’s easier. With you I feel
heavy. All the time. I feel exhausted. I don’t like it. I should get to
choose how I feel, what I feel, when I feel it.
(LEIGH looks at BRYANT.
BRYANT looks at LEIGH.)
BRYANT. But I’d like to talk to Alyssa. Just to say—
LEIGH. Save me some turkey and cranberry sauce.
(Beep, beep…
The sound of a phone beeping.)
(The bench.
SHELBY looks at her phone.
SHELBY slumps on the bench like a rag doll.)
(CARSON and FIONA.
The dorm.
CARSON and FIONA pass each other in the hallway.
They regard each other.
CARSON seems to linger and they brush by each other.
CARSON stops.
FIONA stops.)
FIONA. What do you want?
44 Kirsten Greenidge

CARSON. Like, um. Yeah. Like things really, things really’ve. Hit
the.
FIONA. Don’t act like you haven’t been talking about me all
afternoon like some sort of—
CARSON. I just meant there’s a lot of tension—
FIONA. I’m not into that new age crapola granola like your moms
shoved up your ass your whole life—
CARSON. Okay, like whoa.
FIONA. Don’t act like you’re on my side.
CARSON. I am not on any side—
FIONA. Shyeah, save it for your therapist.
CARSON. What is the matter with you? And who is the one who
needs a therapist, climbing into some dude’s bed the first week of
freshman year like hello? Attention much? Start acting like the
engineering major you said you were at orientation.
FIONA. The TAs treat me like shit I think ’cause I’m a girl and
it.was.a.joke.
CARSON. Well I mean you drew it. Does it look funny?
FIONA. My dad has tons of pictures like that in a box in his closet.
Obviously someone thinks they’re funny or they wouldn’t make
them.
CARSON. “In a box in his closest” sounds like some shady-ass shit,
Fi. Like what is up with your dad?
FIONA. Nothing. Nothing is up with my dad. I just found them. He
just has them. Some of them even look a little like Mickey Mouse.
Old school. What’s wrong with Mickey Mouse? No wonder your
major is undeclared you’re confused as hell. There is nothing wrong
with Mickey Mouse.
CARSON. That shit does not look like Mickey Mouse.
FIONA. They can’t take a joke. Back home, the people in my
neighborhood, I bet they would’ve thought it was funny.
CARSON. It’s racist.
FIONA. I am not racist.
CARSON. That’s not some Disney, shit, Fiona.
FIONA. And you all don’t know. I draw all the time. All the time.
CARSON. You draw stuff like that all time?
 Baltimore 45

FIONA. Everyone is so touchy, people didn’t used to be like this.

People need to calm down. Obama got elected that proves we are all
okay. I mean: what more does everybody want? Everyone needs to
quit whining when they offended. This is America. Just work hard
and quit fucking whining. There’s people have it worse. If you hate
it here so much fucking leave.
CARSON. Um like whoa.
FIONA. Oh stop it with the bleeding-heart routine.
CARSON. Fiona.
FIONA. There are certain ways to be. It has nothing to do with color.
CARSON. What are you talking about?
FIONA. So much complaining: this is a good place.
CARSON. Well sure but.
FIONA. I see it, I see it where I’m from all the time, all the… Be
grateful to be here: get a job, learn English, learn it correctly, right?
Pay for your own groceries and don’t have baby mamas or baby
daddies, don’t drop out of school, don’t rap about hos and guns—
CARSON. Because only white people should have guns.
FIONA. That is not what I said.
CARSON. I don’t. I do not know what you mean.
FIONA. What minorities do not want to hear is that numbers-wise,
they are not in control, so there cannot be equality, so they need to
deal. Here, out in the world.
CARSON. They need to deal with being discriminated against.
FIONA. With how things are.
CARSON. In a few years they will not be minorities. And your logic,
your logic that it is okay to mistreat people, to be a bigot—
FIONA. I am not.
CARSON. Because, because statistically you are entitled to be one,
is, is. It’s not right.
FIONA. Is what? How about some solidarity, here, Carson? Three
weeks hanging out with Leigh and Rachel and those two have made
you, made you. Which I do not understand. Admit that could be
considered funny. Admit that you—
CARSON. I am not admitting anything.
46 Kirsten Greenidge

FIONA. I know you do know what I mean. I know you know what I
mean about all of this. They can’t have it both ways. We’re supposed
to like them just because they’re black? Or their abuela scrubbed
floors? Well guess what, my family worked like dogs, too. Guess
what? I had not one thing to do with slavery, so why should I be
made to talk about it or think about it over and over again it has
absolutely nothing to do with me.
CARSON. What you drew on Alyssa’s door has everything to do
with you: you are the one who drew it. And. Newsflash, it looks a lot
like something that crawled out of slavery’s ass to me.
FIONA. Not everything is racial. They make it so hard to be around
them when they drag race into every single thing. It’s not always that.
Everything is not always one thing. They are always spouting off.
When do I get to say how I’m feeling? I don’t.
CARSON. When you do shit like that, it makes it seem obvious
what you feel—
FIONA. They get to spout off about all sorts of things, blame people
for things.
CARSON. Who is blaming—?
FIONA. My brother is a cop. And three of my cousins. When do they
get to, get to: my brother does not, they all do their jobs, and to sit
there in class and have Alyssa spout off about, about. My brother
could get blown away anytime, anytime: he could never come home
again: and half this country wouldn’t give a rat’s ass.
CARSON. You just shouldn’t have done it.
FIONA. I don’t have to explain myself.
CARSON. If you just see it from Alyssa’s side.
FIONA. I am what I am and I say what I say and what should I do?
Apologize for myself all the freaking time? Like is this America? Is
there not free speech here?
CARSON. You can say whatever you want but you can’t pretend
what you do just exists all by itself, that it doesn’t hurt people just
because you didn’t meant it to, and if it does, just um yes: apologize.
FIONA. You know exactly what I mean. By everything. Can’t you
just agree a little? That it’s funny?
CARSON. Can’t you just say you are sorry?
(Beep, beep.
Beep, beep.
The sound of a phone beeping.)
 Baltimore 47

(The bench.
Later the same evening.
SHELBY.
GRACE enters.)
GRACE. You can at least pick up for me, right?
(Quiet.
Quiet.
Quiet.
Finally:)
SHELBY. There are no mirrors in our house. In my parents’ house:
there’s no mirrors.
(GRACE waits.
SHELBY continues.)
SHELBY. My parents are very big on inner actions, on what you
accomplish. I’ve been staring at calendars since the day I was born:
every square is always filled up. My great-grandfather? He was
good at filling them up, too. He made all his money in real estate.
It was one way to do business without showing yourself, without
people coming face to face with someone. Over the years that is how
our family came to exist. We bought more and more through papers
and lawyers. We subsisted on money and cars and good schools.
Color? Race? Unless it fit on the glossy side of a black history poster,
we all just were not going to talk about it.
Dean Hernandez told me, when I was in his office, that we all have
history lapping at our insides and I wish I could see that wide, vast
sea inside my grandfather. When did he first decide to hide behind
bank notes and house deeds? But I can ask any of them about any
of it.
We were told we had to be better, so if anything happened to us, was
said to us, it would not sink in too deeply. When it’s Kindergarten
and someone whispers some ugly thing at first maybe you don’t
believe it, but then that whisper can grow. That’s when what they
taught grows, too. I am better: I am above this. So there is no need to
have a conversation. So you swallow that ugly instead.
I never learned how to talk about any of it.
GRACE. You’re a quick study: go back to your floor and try.
SHELBY. You don’t understand. Your parents sent you to Korean
school. They gave you cultural consciousness—
48 Kirsten Greenidge

GRACE. (Smiles:) Every Friday and Saturday. Me and three other

Grace Kims. Four Esther Lees.3
SHELBY. (A whine:) Tell me what to dooooo.
GRACE. You act like you were raised on a rock all alone but you
were not. You have experiences to draw upon as a person. Go have a
conversation with these people.
SHELBY. No, no. You are equipped. I am not equipped. You got this
way to know yourself. I bet you never asked the tooth fairy to bring
you blonde hair. I wrote the tooth fairy and asked her to leave me
blonde hair.
(GRACE looks at SHELBY.
GRACE smiles.)
GRACE. I wrote to Santa for round eyes.
SHELBY. Those assholes didn’t bring us shit.
(Quiet.)
GRACE. You see me, right Shel?
SHELBY. Stay with me, Kim.
GRACE. No, I’m not joking. I…I’m… I am asking. When you see me.
What do you see?
SHELBY. I can’t have you cracking up, too, Grace.
GRACE. No, I’m not joking. I…I’m asking. When you see me. What
do you see? Because. You talk about content of character and labels
and you seem hell bent on tearing apart Dean Hernandez—
SHELBY. I just don’t understand why my parents, who have Martin
Luther King and Kennedy on one wall—and those guys stare ahead
and never talk to each other in our house, have noticed—and Mal-
colm X on a bookshelf somewhere—I do not understand, I am way
past realizing, that parents, who seem to be in love with the civil
rights beyond saying more movement can not have a conversation
about racism that, essentially, says more than “racism sucks.”
(Beat.
GRACE focuses.)
GRACE. When you see me, what do you see? Like, do you see Asian
or Grace or just the only other lonely person to talk to our freshman
year? Like what do we have in common?
SHELBY. See? You go talk to my floor. You know how to—

3
Change to appropriate school and appropriate common names if applicable.
 Baltimore 49

GRACE. No, no, I am asking. You are taking from this and I need you
to give me an answer or at least join me in, in…
SHELBY. I thought you wanted to help me.
(Shift.)
GRACE. You know I almost didn’t come back this fall. I almost went
to visit my grandparents in Korea.* My grandmother loves spas. Loves
spas. She came in May and we went to a few, after finals. To relax she
said. My mom paid for everything. And it was. It was very relaxing.
By the fourth one. Man, I was super relaxed. My grandmother
reached over, we were under some hot towel treatment thing, and
she touches my jaw, and she says, “So pretty. Prettier if we just take
it in, just a little.” I wasn’t really surprised. In Korea they do this all
the time. I go there and I stand out. Everyone can tell I’m American
because I look the most Korean. I’m dark. To them I’m fat. I stand way
out. But then she didn’t stop. She kept going. She had plans for my
eyes, my nose. The color of my hair. It wasn’t that it could happen, it
was that at some point, I knew, she and my mom and planned these
trips, spa trips, planned out what work to get done. And I almost
didn’t come back this semester. I almost fell for it. I almost saw what
they did. Almost. At home I’m just me. And I’m going to stay that
way. But. So. I need to know what you see. Because I’m proud I’m
“dark” and “fat” or their version. And if all that is arbitrary to you,
then I don’t know, Shelby. I don’t know what I am to you.
(Buzz.
The phone.)
GRACE. You should go back to your floor. You shouldn’t hide.
(GRACE looks at SHELBY.
SHELBY looks at GRACE.
Buzz.
But SHELBY just looks at the phone in her hand.)
GRACE. Pick it up.
(SHELBY looks at GRACE.)
GRACE. Answer the phone, Shel, wake up: look around.
(SHELBY looks at her phone.)
GRACE. Right.
(GRACE leaves.)
SHELBY. Grace, no, I, I.
(SHELBY thinks.
SHELBY looks at her phone, then resolves to follow GRACE.)
50 Kirsten Greenidge

(Squeak, squeak, squeak.

Cartoon-like cleavage, a la Betty Boop gets drawn.
A bar of “Jungle Boogie” by Kool and the Gang plays.
It’s short.
Just a spike of sound.
Squeak, squeak, squeak.
The words “FYI Lights Out: Midnight!” appear on the dry erase
board.
Sudden.
A spike.)
(ALYSSA in the common room.
She is typing on her phone.
CARSON enters.)
CARSON. Alyssa. Oh sweetie.
(ALYSSA looks up.
CARSON goes to her, then stops short.)
CARSON. It’s disgusting. It’s just awful, Alyssa, sweetie. It just is.
How are you?
(ALYSSA jerks herself away from CARSON and makes deep
guttural sound.
ALYSSA’s shoulders begin to move.
ALYSSA’s shoulders begin to shake.
The sound of the cymbal.
Then music low, rising.
Squeak, squeak, squeak.
ALYSSA’s shoulders shake.
The dry erase board fills in:
Amidst the typical dry erase board images another image appears.
Its eyes and mouth are cartoonish and garish: extra large, bulging.
The lips from before get filled in: larger, larger, until they too are
grotesque.
The foliage fills in to appear like a jungle.
The ears fill in to appear like a rabbit as:
ALYSSA cries without making sound.
Squeak, squeak.
Musical notes appear on the dry erase board.
The opening riff to “Jungle Boogie” by Kool and the Gang plays.
ALYSSA cries without making sound.
CARSON looks at ALYSSA.
CARSON looks at ALYSSA.
The music rises, rises.
The sound of water lapping, lapping…)
 Baltimore 51

(SHELBY enters.
FIONA, BRYANT, RACHEL, LEIGH enter.
All speak at once: we hear the first few words of each character’s
monologue overlap several times:)
BRYANT. How about duck and cover?
CARSON. We’re from Raleigh, well, Apex—
RACHEL. I’m your hairdresser, your neighbor—
GRACE. Which ultimately doesn’t mean shit.
LEIGH. The problem is, the problem is, all this
history folds into itself and, and, and—
BRYANT. How about duck and cover?
CARSON. We’re from Raleigh, well, Apex—
RACHEL. I’m your hairdresser, your neighbor—
GRACE. Which ultimately doesn’t mean shit.
LEIGH. The problem is, the problem is, all this
history folds into itself and, and, and—
BRYANT. How about duck and cover?
CARSON. We’re from Raleigh, well, Apex—
RACHEL. I’m your hairdresser, your neighbor—
GRACE. Which ultimately doesn’t mean shit.
LEIGH. The problem is, the problem is, all this
history folds into itself and, and, and—
(Cacophony, cacophony, cacophony as the above repeats and
repeats and rises and rises until:
Beat.
Stop.)
(The following is frenetic.)
BRYANT. Stop and frisk. How about duck and cover? I’m five years
old, I’m five years old and I’m in the backseat of my mom’s car and
I’m playing with this airplane, this white, this like space shuttle, tiny,
cast iron, got NASA on the side, and I make this space shuttle twist
and turn and twist and turn and I don’t pay attention, I twist and
twist and when my mom stops the car bam, that seat belt, that damn
seat belt, is twisted around my five-year-old self and I can’t get loose
and she’s got her bag from work and my sister’s backpack and my
lunch box and she’s pulling and it’s getting tighter and my dad’s
like let me cut it, I’m gonna cut it and my mom’s like call 911 and my
52 Kirsten Greenidge

dad’s like hell no but my mom is like now, call it now and he does
and they come and they cut me out and my parents breathe for the
first time in 20 minutes right and they’re about to say thank you, of-
ficers, thank you, thank you and one cop is nice, pats my head, pats
my dad’s back, but the other one, his buddy, just lays into my mom
and dad, in front of me, just lays into them like it’s all their fault and
I want to say it was me flying, it was me soaring, it was me, it was me
and my parents who were, who are, everything, everything, to me,
to my sister and me, they just stood there, they just took it, they did
not move, they did not blink and just like that I knew why, I knew,
I saw, how that cop saw them, how that cop saw all four of us…I’ll
know I’m grown, really grown, have power, when I control how I
feel, what I feel, when I feel it. That, that is power. That is all I want.
I don’t think that is very much to ask. Actually.
CARSON. Actually, she is, she is my grandmother. The way my
moms tell it Grammie Lin May was the only one—’cause we’re from
Raleigh, well, Apex, and it’s not like the South, it’s not at all like the
deep, I mean you have to drive a bit to get to farm people but once
you do, you… And their families, my mom’s family, on the Mead
side, they’re pretty well known, and when my mom came out. Gram
was the only one. I mean Christmas and Easter and all my birthdays,
every single one of my birthdays, my christening, my confirmation:
my gram was there for all of those. They all three met at church and
Gram took care of them and we are a family. Gram stepped into a
role, a choice. Which means everything to me. I don’t think I could
do that. I know I can’t do that. I just think of doing that, and I get
tired. My major, the crush I have on my Earth Science lab partner:
I don’t step forward into anything. So Grammie Lin May means
everything to me because she didn’t have to take two lesbians under
her wing in Apex, North Carolina who probably, who, I know maybe
were taught not even to see her, to really see someone like Grammie
Lin May, I know that: she did not have to do that at all. But she saw
them. She stepped into them. She is my grandmother. And she does
make amazing Chinese food and sweet tea and barbecue. I am not
like Fiona but Leigh, bless her heart, is wrong she is so wrong I do
not see color.
RACHEL. I sure as hell do. My mother? She is. She is like a cartoon.
The nails, the lips, the hair: she gets it blown out, her hair. I had no
idea it was so curly until I overheard one of my aunt’s at Christmas,
talk about it. My aunt married a Colombian. A good kind of Latino.
My other aunt, married a Mexican. Not a good kind. The aunties
make jokes about it. Spins my blood. We learned, my brothers and
sister, we learned to pretend to laugh or not say anything at all. The
saving grace about my girlfriend to my family is that 1) she goes to
 Baltimore 53

Wellesley and 2) she’s the good kind: Venezuelan. I see my mother

and I see how she serves up this way to be Latina and it changes
depending on how many white people are around, how many black
people are around, how many Latina people are around. She almost
threw a tantrum when, when we went to an Ethiopian restaurant
and she noticed our table was where the other Ethiopian people were
seated and she went full on white lady—she may as well have been
wearing white gloves and a Jackie-O pillbox hat—and demanded a
new table. She thought she was being judged for, for, I don’t know,
the one-tenth of whatever blood no one likes to talk about she has. I
am very specific about who I am. I am not my mother. In the movies
you do not see me, you see people like my mother. You know her.
She’s fun and loud. Wears an apron. You don’t see people like my
kind in the movies. But I am your neighbor, I am your hairdresser, I
am your doctor: I am real.
GRACE. Which ultimately, ultimately doesn’t mean shit, right?
What you say you think, what you want to say you do, what matters
is, what matters is: if you can’t look someone in the eye and see them,
really see them, and then meet them, really meet them—
LEIGH. The problem is, the problem is, all this history, all this
history folds into itself and over itself and there’s all these lines, all
these lines, and it is black and white, it is here and there, right and
wrong you do not, you do not—
FIONA. And it was a joke.
CARSON. A black man walks into a bar.
RACHEL. A blonde chick walks into a bar.
BRYANT. A spic walks into a bar.
LEIGH. An Eskimo walks into a bar.
GRACE. A spook.
LEIGH. A cracker.
CARSON. A chink.
RACHEL. A wop.
BRYANT. A jap.
LEIGH. A mick.
GRACE. A kike.
CARSON. Whitetrash.
RACHEL. Indian-giver.
54 Kirsten Greenidge

BRYANT. Gook.
LEIGH. Wetback.
GRACE. Guido.
FIONA. A joke.
(Shift.)
BRYANT. You got to ask yourself.
CARSON. Ask yourself.
LEIGH. Ask yourself.
BRYANT. What is a joke?
RACHEL. What’s the etymology of a joke?
GRACE. Why do we laugh?
LEIGH. Why do we laugh?
FIONA. We’re all supposed to laugh.
BRYANT. The magic of a joke.
LEIGH. The kick.
CARSON. Is in.
LEIGH. Is in.
BRYANT. The discovery, right? The joke really happens in the part,
at the end, in the picture that’s left over. We laugh—
CARSON. We laugh—
GRACE. We laugh.
FIONA. We do, we do laugh—
BRYANT. At different things because we have different thresholds,
different, different, thresholds for what is funny or painful or, or—
FIONA. No, no, no—
BRYANT. Americans? Across the board: what do we have in com-
mon? We like our jokes aggressive.
CARSON. Bryant, where you from?
BRYANT. I’m from where we don’t end sentences with prepositions.
RACHEL. Bryant, where you from, asshole?
FIONA. We can laugh together, see, we laugh together.
(Shift.)
 Baltimore 55

CARSON. Sand nigger.

RACHEL. Prairie nigger.
LEIGH. House nigger.
BRYANT. Field nigger.
CARSON. Nigger nigger.
GRACE. In school it was: ching chong, ching chong.
RACHEL. It was: you’re Spanish? Are you legal?
BRYANT. It was: give that kid a football.
LEIGH. It was: but where are you from?
GRACE. It was: I love Chinese food can you teach me to make
Chinese food? Even though—
RACHEL. You all have the same father?
GRACE. Even though—
LEIGH. Where are you from?
GRACE. Eventhough—
BRYANT. Etymology, right? Where’s it come from, right?
GRACE. Chinese, Korean whatever, they’re all the same so—
CARSON. I got tan: we’re twins.
BRYANT. It was: you know how to rap, right?
GRACE. Ching chong ching chong.
LEIGH. This black girl walks into a bar.
ALYSSA. I have a voice.
(Stop.
Stop. Stop. Stop.)
ALYSSA. I took the SATs and I did track and field and I volunteered
and I, I, I did all the things, the same things, I think, everyone does.
To get here and looking at that door, my bedroom door, seeing how
she saw me, if only for a moment, split moment…you think you’ll
throw down, you think you’ll get into it, scratch out eyes, gnash
teeth, go for a throat, tear skin and hair. But I just felt exhausted.
Bone tired. And bare to the world. Years of history boiling up into
this moment, split moment, for everyone to see, a thousand fold. If
I could burrow deep, deep, deep…nowhere dark and warm enough
to hide me, hide that, if that’s what someone could see in me. You
think you’ll yell and shout, but. I took the SATs and I did track and
56 Kirsten Greenidge

field and I sat in this food pantry and did the inventory and handed
out groceries and families would come in each week and we’d talk
and when I got accepted here they were proud of me. Didn’t know
me or my family before I started helping there and they were proud
of me. And in that moment, that split moment, I was so ashamed,
of something I know I didn’t even do. Stupid. I know it’s incredibly
stupid. I should have forced, forced air up through my throat, over
my tongue to say, to say: there is no maybe, I did everything everyone
else did to be here. I am not saying I deserve anything more, I am
saying I have a name. I am asking someone to remember my name
not look me in the eye and smile and, and, and, erase, erase what I
am… I, I Have A Voice.
(Shift.)
FIONA. IT WAS A JOKE.
(The sound of the cymbal.
The montage stops.)
LEIGH. Like hell it was.
(ALL look at LEIGH.)
SHELBY. Let’s all, let’s all just—
FIONA. It’s not, it is not, my fault Alyssa can’t take a fucking joke.
CARSON. Maybe let’s make a circle—
(SHELBY looks to GRACE.)
SHELBY. Please Grace. Please. You know how to do this.
(GRACE looks at SHELBY.
GRACE looks at SHELBY.)
GRACE. … …A healing circle—
SHELBY. Okay, sure, yes. A healing circle.
LEIGH. I am not making a freaking healing circle.
BRYANT. Yeah, the ship’s out to sea on this one, yo.
SHELBY. No, no, we can— If we all calm—
LEIGH. Where the hell have you been?
SHELBY. I, I—
CARSON. She’s here now.
SHELBY. Right. We.
LEIGH. There is no we, Miss Post-Racial USA.
 Baltimore 57

SHELBY. I do not believe in labels. There should not be labe—

GRACE. Shel, maybe not now.
SHELBY. I don’t.
GRACE. Just.
SHELBY. Fine.
GRACE. Okay.
(SHELBY looks at GRACE.
GRACE looks at SHELBY.)
SHELBY. I got this.
GRACE. Sure.
CARSON. Sure. You do. Of course you do. Shelby, you do. Let’s let
Shelby talk.
LEIGH. No, no, let’s not let Shelby do anything. I say we let this
motherfucker blow the hell up.
RACHEL. Yeah, I say burn it down. What do you say, Grace?
GRACE. No, let’s take some time—
SHELBY. Yes, some time to—
LEIGH. We’ve given you time enough.
RACHEL. We’ve given you all night.
SHELBY. I admit. I didn’t know—
CARSON. Isn’t this your job?
GRACE. Let’s air both sides.
LEIGH. There is no “both sides.”
SHELBY. Alyssa—
LEIGH. Don’t talk to her. We’re the ones that keep texting, calling.
SHELBY. Well maybe let’s let Alyssa.
LEIGH. No, no, do not talk to her. Let’s talk to you, you who deep
down hates, I mean really loathes who she is.
SHELBY. I don’t.
LEIGH. You can’t stand where you came from, who you are, who
we are.
SHELBY. That isn’t true.
(LEIGH turns to GRACE.)
58 Kirsten Greenidge

RACHEL. I don’t know how you stand her she can barely stand you.
It’s like I said. She doesn’t see you.
(SHELBY turns to GRACE.)
SHELBY. Don’t listen to her.
(SHELBY turns to LEIGH.)
SHELBY. Let’s talk to Alyssa—
LEIGH. No, no, you talk to us. We are they ones who’ve been calling
your sorry ass—
FIONA. Like babies. Like little fucking crybabies. People called me
snowball and did I cry in my sleeve no I did not. If it was such a big
deal, if it was so wrong, Bryant wouldn’t be cool with it, he sees it’s
a joke, don’t you Bryant?
SHELBY. Let’s all—
FIONA. B.
(BRYANT looks at FIONA.
BRYANT looks at ALYSSA.
BRYANT looks at LEIGH.)
FIONA. You lousy piece of—
LEIGH. Because he’s tired of being used—
FIONA. No—
LEIGH. —Of you draping yourself all over him, like he’s some circus
animal you’re parading around and then you won’t even talk to me
or ’Lyssa or Rachel. We’re the only two girls in our major, you won’t
even look me in the eye—
(FIONA turns to BRYANT.)
FIONA. I like you—
LEIGH. You like the idea of him being black.
FIONA. So I like him being black and I hate you being black, that
makes perfect sense.
RACHEL. You don’t understand because you don’t listen.
FIONA. (To BRYANT:) I like you and you like me. Tell them.
(BRYANT looks at FIONA.)
GRACE. Let’s try talking this—
FIONA. Bryant. Tell them. And Lys, you know it was a joke—
 Baltimore 59

(CARSON puts out his hands, waves them as if to say “noooo,”

to FIONA.)
CARSON. Shhhhhhhh.
FIONA. You were there. You were laughing, too. And this isn’t our
problem this is their problem. They can’t take a lousy joke. You were
laughing too, just admit it.
(ALL look at CARSON.
CARSON looks at everybody.)
CARSON. I shouldn’t’ve. I don’t know why I did. I shouldn’t’ve at
all.
RACHEL. I knew it, I knew it: you have no point of view, you have
the privilege—
FIONA. I can’t believe this shit. Half of you all were there why are
you doing this to me?
GRACE. Maybe if we all take one turn to really get this off our
minds, to really—
FIONA. Bryant, tell them. You like me.
BRYANT. I…I…I’m powerful. When I’m with you. Because you need
me to be a certain type of…but…it doesn’t feel very good.
FIONA. You tell them my intent, right?
(BRYANT looks at FIONA.)
FIONA. B.
(…
…)
BRYANT. I can’t.
(FIONA lunges for BRYANT.
CARSON and RACHEL stop her.
SHELBY lets out a wail.)
SHELBY. Ahhhhhhhhh stooooooop.
GRACE. Maybe take a deep—
SHELBY. No, no, no.
GRACE. Shel—
SHELBY. It is so easy, it is so easy for you.
GRACE. Shel—
SHELBY. I never had Korean school.
60 Kirsten Greenidge

LEIGH. Um, you’re black?

GRACE. Would you stop negating my, my, my experience?
SHELBY. What, Grace, no—
GRACE. Yeah, I get it, life sucks. But you do not have it worse
because you are black and you certainly need to learn to see people.
SHELBY. I did not say—
GRACE. There is not, there should not be, this, this, pillar, this
ladder of, of, racial, race, racial—
SHELBY. We are in this together—
GRACE. You don’t act like it.
SHELBY. We are in this—
GRACE. Whatever I say you one up it.
SHELBY. The entire campus is blowing up because of me, because
of my—
GRACE. At some point you have to listen and take everything in
and really, and really, accept it and absorb and listen—
SHELBY. Oh my God, I can not with this shit. You know why? Because
I am a sports medicine major. I am not, I do not. We are post-racial,
people, we are post-racial I should not be dealing with this crazy shit
I should be taking multiple choice tests tests about bones and blood
and tissue and sinew. Kill each other, go on and rip each other to
shreds I do not care: I DO NOT CARE. You’re behaving like animals,
like, like, you’re trying to rise up and above but instead you’re just
biting and clawing each other and this is exactly what, this is exactly
what…race is a distraction, it is, it is this made up thing that you all
are letting distract you from, from. There is so much other stuff, real
stuff, I mean these labels are not, are not none of this is real it is silly,
it is stupid, it is ass-i-NINE to get stuck, to get stuck, to get, to be you
are all just stuck on this idea and it is, it is. I am so tired.
(ALL look at SHELBY.)
( Dark, dark…but light remains on the dry erase board.
Dark then turns to the soft glow of dawn.)
( DEAN HERNANDEZ’s office.
Morning.
SHELBY sits.
DEAN HERNANDEZ enters.
Shift to the office.)
 Baltimore 61

DEAN. Ah, Miss Wilson. Good morning.

SHELBY. You know why I’m here.
DEAN. Miss Haj told me you’ve been waiting.
SHELBY. I needed to come now, not next week.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. It seems the campus has seen quite the night.
SHELBY. They’re all revolting. Even my best friend will probably
never speak to me again. It’s. A mess—
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Can I get you some tea?
(SHELBY smirks.)
SHELBY. Is that what you made the Black Panthers to drink when
the shit hit the fan?
(DEAN HERNANDEZ grins.)
DEAN HERNANDEZ. I don’t think you did your homework, Miss
Wilson. I was a just an “associate” of the Panthers.
SHELBY. So no tea?
DEAN HERNANDEZ. But I found their social outreach programs
very exciting, energizing. A child cannot learn if she is hungry. A
person won’t ask for change if he’s too busy worrying about food
and shelter. I hope you read up on that part, too, Miss Wilson.
Most people go for the sensational material and don’t attend to the
basics.
SHELBY. You like that word: attend.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. I do.
(Quiet.
Quiet.
SHELBY slumps.)
SHELBY. It’s me. It’s all my fault. All this
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Surely this is not so, Miss Wilson. I’ll get
you that tea.
SHELBY. I came here to help put people back together. My major?
Sports medicine? That’s all I came here for.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Admirable.
SHELBY. No. It isn’t. I didn’t want to get messy.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. I see.
62 Kirsten Greenidge

SHELBY. Keeping ice packs cold, putting clean towels by the

whirlpool. Last year, that was my job. But I got fired. See there was
this player, a five-year player. Fills up a seat on the bench so the team
is deep, but is a little too small or too slow or too dumb to really play
and he’d busted up his knee in a practice and was out, kaput, done.
I got to know him when he’d stand in the whirlpool for the heat.
I’m just here to play ball, he’d say, I’m going to get better and play
more ball. Never a star, always a team player, and my job was to
record his progress and my boss was all over me to get it all down so
they could kick him off the team, but football was his life, he’d been
playing since he was five years old. A few scribbles on my sheets and
it was all going to end. So I…I didn’t take down everything the way I
should’ve. I let myself get messy. I let myself get messy because that
kid is the only other black kid in my year. Because before I worked at
Sherman I did not cause trouble, I did not draw attention to myself.
In my family you do not let anyone see how scared you are, even
if you’re shaking so bad you can hardly stand up. And you sure as
hell do not let anyone see the parts of you that are different. But I sat
with that ball player and I know, I know I saw him and he saw me
and I wasn’t going to let this school—this place that just a few years
ago wouldn’t’ve let us in if we’d paid it—I was not going to let them
kick him out, I wasn’t going to let them erase him. I kept that kid
on that team until my boss found out and: no more job. Big hole on
my resume. My parents, my mom was pissed. Your story, becoming
editor, was supposed to fill it up. But I do not like muck and mess.
It’s much better to keep your nose clean.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Well that’s unfortunate ’cause seems to me
like your nose is deep in it, Miss Wilson.
SHELBY. Tell me what should come next.
(SHELBY looks at DEAN HERNANDEZ.)
SHELBY. Please.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Make something of the mess. Just ’cause
you’re sitting looking at a heap of junk doesn’t mean it has to stay
that way.
SHELBY. You and my parents’ generation were supposed to bring
the change up in here.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Wade around in the muck. See what happens.
SHELBY. I hear “shut it down” and I don’t even know what that
means. Shut down what? Go back to living in tents and mud huts?
Mike Brown, Trayvon, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray Sandra Bland—
 Baltimore 63

DEAN HERNANDEZ. Those names slip over and off your tongue
so, so easily Miss Wilson.
(SHELBY looks at DEAN HERNANDEZ.)
SHELBY. Those are sad stories. They are terrible things.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. The history—
SHELBY. I know the history.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. And yet. Those names slip over and off your
tongue so, so easily.
SHELBY. I know the history. I know it. I do.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. But you don’t own it.
SHELBY. Of course I don’t own it. I’m not the one who did those
things and I’m not the one who should—
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Miss Wilson you conduct yourself as if per-
haps you really do not know very much history at all.
SHELBY. My history is Power Rangers and SpongeBob. My world-
view is a bunch of memes cut and pasted together. My history will
be, when I look back: why sit and talk to someone when I can just
look it up and know the answer for myself, by myself.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. I’ll get that tea. Send you on your way—
SHELBY. My generation is going to evade history. I think we are
going to do that and there’s nothing you and my parents can do
about it and you have no answers to that and you all can’t stand
that. You’re asking us to answer old dead questions. The world we’re
going to live in does not even exist yet.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. And yet, here we are. Paralyzed by it.
Because, on the contrary, Miss Wilson, history defines everything.
It outlines, it highlights, it labels: everything. It is the alpha and the
omega—
SHELBY. This kind of thing, this kind of talk drives me crazy, your
convocation speech—
DEAN HERNANDEZ. We do not need to agree, of course we do not
need to agree, but we do need to acknowledge, we do need to admit,
that what is in that picture is soaked through in history, it is soaked
through with a message that is now splattered all over that girl and
that picture did not just appear there, Miss Wilson, someone, some
one person thought it and drew it and whether she understands it
or not, history has leaked out and made messes all over the place
whether you like it or not. You can choose to believe in the tooth
64 Kirsten Greenidge

fairy, Miss Wilson. You cannot choose whether or not to believe in

history. You have the ability to reshape all this mess. You, indeed,
own it.
SHELBY. Maybe they’ll all just transfer. Let it all blow over.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. They deserve much more than that.
SHELBY. They should not be my problem.
(Quiet.
Quiet.
Quiet.
DEAN HERNANDEZ considers before he speaks.)
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Baltimore.
SHELBY. Transfer them all to the same school? Yeah, right.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. I saw the whole of Baltimore from May until
December—
(DEAN HERNANDEZ looks at SHELBY.)
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Countee Cullen. Poet.
SHELBY. I knew you were this kind. This kind of professor who
tricks students into—
DEAN HERNANDEZ.
I saw the whole of Baltimore from May until December
Of all the things that happen’d there that’s all that I remember.
“The Incident.”
SHELBY. I only took one English.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Little black boy rides the train, gets called
the nasty name little black boys often get called, which I have been
called. “Hernandez” is one thing. Black and Hernandez…well, this
little boy, that is all he remembers from his trip to Maryland. Not the
food or the Bay or, see, when I was little and heard this, read this, I
thought of all the aunts and uncles, this kid must have visited with.
I thought of Sundays maybe at his grandfather’s church, I thought
of him sitting on a stoop in July heat. I thought of him hauling out
somewhere with a cousin or two to swim, cool off…I felt, Miss
Wilson, this little boy was me and I felt, with particular keenness,
Miss Wilson, with a sharp, sharp pang in my side and fire in my
throat, that moment when Cullen writes and I’m not lying when I
say, when I say, that when I read this as a child: a young black kid
reading about this ride on this train I knew, I knew, I could see into
this boy’s eyes. I knew I could see him and he could see me. It is not
 Baltimore 65

about labels it is about seeing, really, seeing and saying “I see.” I see
and I agree you have worth.
You do not know this piece of writing, Miss Wilson?
SHELBY. Probably, I guess. I don’t know.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. I tell you I was haunted, haunted by this
piece of—
(SHELBY looks at DEAN HERNANDEZ.)
DEAN HERNANDEZ.
Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was not whit bigger
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue and called me—
SHELBY. I get it.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. When you refuse to name it, Miss Wilson, it
grows thick and clean and pure and has the power—
SHELBY. I just want you to help me.
(DEAN HERNANDEZ looks at SHELBY.
Beat.
Quiet.
Beat.
Quiet.)
DEAN HERNANDEZ.
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December
Of all the things that happened there
That’s all that I remember
I swear I could see him because I knew that, that pin prick when
the rest of the suit felt fine, that drop of ice cold rain when the skies
seemed so blue and the sun—
(SHELBY shifts.)
DEAN HERNANDEZ. This does not have to be their Baltimore,
Miss Wilson—something that sits and festers. Sure, this morning I’ll
call all the appropriate people I should call—the health centers, the
other deans, President Verity, the parents. But you don’t need to wait
for me to do all that.
66 Kirsten Greenidge

SHELBY. It’s that I don’t feel comfortable—

DEAN HERNANDEZ. We’re not on this campus to feel comfortable,
to bathe in what makes us happy or what makes us feel right and
powerful all the time.
SHELBY. I know that—
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Go get your hands dirty.
(SHELBY looks at DEAN HERNANDEZ.)
DEAN HERNANDEZ. And make an appointment with Miss Haj.
You owe me an interview.
SHELBY. I’m not going to make my deadline. The sun’s about to
come up. It’s way too late.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Indeed it is. But: you write a new story, how
about?
(SHELBY looks at DEAN HERNANDEZ.
DEAN HERNANDEZ smiles at SHELBY.)
DEAN HERNANDEZ. We do not need to agree but we must try to
live in—to attend—the same set of conversations while we are here.
(Sound.
All the hallmates speaking at once.
Soft.)
SHELBY. How can I ask them to do that, if I don’t know what those
conversations are supposed to be? For anybody. I don’t, I don’t.
(The hallmates’ speech gets a bit louder.
SHELBY looks in their direction.)
DEAN HERNANDEZ. That ball player, you felt for him.
SHELBY. Yeah. I did.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Whether or not it was wrong you wanted to
do right by him.
SHELBY. Yes.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. So there’s a voice inside you. Maybe just a
whisper of a voice. That wants to try to do right and it’s frightening.
It’s difficult because it’s angry and upset—
SHELBY. Yeah.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. But above all: it exists.
SHELBY. It does.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Don’t ignore it. Attend to it.
 Baltimore 67

SHELBY. Attend.
DEAN HERNANDEZ. Attend.
(Voices as before.
The common room.
SHELBY looks towards the space.
SHELBY steps into the space.
The hallmates and GRACE are quiet.
GRACE looks at SHELBY.
SHELBY looks at GRACE.)
SHELBY. (To GRACE:) I’m sorry. For not listening for…everything. I
do. I don’t know how to talk about all of it, with every single person—
GRACE. No one does. If they say they do they’re bluffing.
SHELBY. But I’m gonna try.
GRACE. Yep.
(GRACE smiles at SHELBY.
SHELBY smiles at GRACE.
[This moment should be sweet but not overly sentimental.
A hug is most likely most definitely too much.]
SHELBY takes in the group.
SHELBY looks at ALYSSA.
ALYSSA looks at SHELBY.)
SHELBY. Alyssa, let’s start with you.
(ALYSSA looks at them all.
ALYSSA takes a step forward.
As she is about to speak the dry erase boards fills with more marker,
which covers up all grotesque imagery from before.
SHELBY motions for FIONA to join.
The dry erase board fills with more marker: elegant circles and arcs.
One by one all join the circle to talk.
The blank dry erase board, completely filled begins to erase itself.
The group speaks.
We do not hear their voices.
ALYSSA is the most animated.
Evidence of their discussion should suggest it is lively rather than
dismal, robust rather than sentimental. It is indeed, a discussion.
Not a rally, not therapy. A beginning to the new school year.
The sound of the cymbal, soft.)
End of Play