Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry [11]
WALTER (Mumbling) We one group of men tied to a race of women with small minds!
(His sister BENEATHA enters. She is about twenty, as slim and intense as her brother. She is not as pretty as her sister-in-law, but her lean, almost intellectual face has a handsomeness of its own. She wears a bright-red flannel nightie, and her thick hair stands wildly about her head. Her speech is a mixture of many things; it is different from the rest of the family’s insofar as education has permeated her sense of English—and perhaps the Midwest rather than the South has finally—at last—won out in her inflection; but not altogether, because over all of it is a soft slurring and transformed use of vowels which is the decided influence of the Southside. She passes through the room without looking at either RUTH or WALTER and goes to the outside door and looks, a little blindly, out to the bathroom. She sees that it has been lost to the Johnsons. She closes the door with a sleepy vengeance and crosses to the table and sits down a little defeated)
BENEATHA I am going to start timing those people.
WALTER You should get up earlier.
BENEATHA (Her face in her hands. She is still fighting the urge to go back to bed) Really—would you suggest dawn? Where’s the paper?
WALTER (Pushing the paper across the table to her as he studies her almost clinically, as though he has never seen her before) You a horrible-looking chick at this hour.
BENEATHA (Drily) Good morning, everybody.
WALTER (Senselessly) How is school coming?
BENEATHA (In the same spirit) Lovely. Lovely. And you know, biology is the greatest. (Looking up at him) I dissected something that looked just like you yesterday.
WALTER I just wondered if you’ve made up your mind and everything.
BENEATHA (Gaining in sharpness and impatience) And what did I answer yesterday morning—and the day before that?
RUTH (From the ironing board, like someone disinterested and old) Don’t be so nasty, Bennie.
BENEATHA (Still to her brother) And the day before that and the day before that!
WALTER (Defensively) I’m interested in you. Something wrong with that? Ain’t many girls who decide—
WALTER and BENEATHA (In unison) —“to be a doctor.”
(Silence)
WALTER Have we figured out yet just exactly how much medical school is going to cost?
RUTH Walter Lee, why don’t you leave that girl alone and get out of here to work?
BENEATHA (Exits to the bathroom and bangs on the door) Come on out of there, please!
(She comes back into the room)
WALTER (Looking at his sister intently) You know the check is coming tomorrow.
BENEATHA (Turning on him with a sharpness all her own) That money belongs to Mama, Walter, and it’s for her to decide how she wants to use it. I don’t care if she wants to buy a house or a rocket ship or just nail it up somewhere and look at it. It’s hers. Not ours—hers.
WALTER (Bitterly) Now ain’t that fine! You just got your mother’s interest at heart, ain’t you, girl? You such a nice girl—but if Mama got that money she can always take a few thousand and help you through school too—can’t she?
BENEATHA I have never asked anyone around here to do anything for me!
WALTER No! And the line between asking and just accepting when the time comes is big and wide—ain’t it!
BENEATHA (With fury) What do you want from me, Brother—that I quit school or just drop dead, which!
WALTER I don’t want nothing but for you to stop acting holy ’round here. Me and Ruth done made some sacrifices for you—why can’t you do something for the family?
RUTH Walter, don’t be dragging me in it.
WALTER You are in it— Don’t you get up and go work in somebody’s kitchen for the last three years to help put clothes on her back?
RUTH Oh, Walter—that’s not fair …
WALTER It ain’t that nobody expects you to get on your knees and say thank you, Brother; thank you, Ruth; thank you, Mama—and thank you, Travis, for wearing the same pair of