Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry [44]
(She promptly sits down and props her chin on her fist)
ASAGAI (Charmed) All right, I shall leave you. No—don’t get up. (Touching her, gently, sweetly) Just sit awhile and think … Never be afraid to sit awhile and think. (He goes to door and looks at her) How often I have looked at you and said, “Ah—so this is what the New World hath finally wrought …”
(He exits. BENEATHA sits on alone. Presently WALTER enters from his room and starts to rummage through things, feverishly looking for something. She looks up and turns in her seat)
BENEATHA (Hissingly) Yes—just look at what the New World hath wrought! … Just look! (She gestures with bitter disgust) There he is! Monsieur le petit bourgeois noir—himself! There he is—Symbol of a Rising Class! Entrepreneur! Titan of the system! (WALTER ignores her completely and continues frantically and destructively looking for something and hurling things to floor and tearing things out of their place in his search. BENEATHA ignores the eccentricity of his actions and goes on with the monologue of insult) Did you dream of yachts on Lake Michigan, Brother? Did you see yourself on that Great Day sitting down at the Conference Table, surrounded by all the mighty bald-headed men in America? All halted, waiting, breathless, waiting for your pronouncements on industry? Waiting for you—Chairman of the Board! (WALTER finds what he is looking for—a small piece of white paper—and pushes it in his pocket and puts on his coat and rushes out without ever having looked at her. She shouts after him) I look at you and I see the final triumph of stupidity in the world!
(The door slams and she returns to just sitting again. RUTH comes quickly out of MAMA’S room)
RUTH Who was that?
BENEATHA Your husband.
RUTH Where did he go?
BENEATHA Who knows—maybe he has an appointment at U.S. Steel.
RUTH (Anxiously, with frightened eyes) You didn’t say nothing bad to him, did you?
BENEATHA Bad? Say anything bad to him? No—I told him he was a sweet boy and full of dreams and everything is strictly peachy keen, as the ofay kids say!
(MAMA enters from her bedroom. She is lost, vague, trying to catch hold, to make some sense of her former command of the world, but it still eludes her. A sense of waste overwhelms her gait; a measure of apology rides on her shoulders. She goes to her plant, which has remained on the table, looks at it, picks it up and takes it to the windowsill and sits it outside, and she stands and looks at it a long moment. Then she closes the window, straightens her body with effort and turns around to her children)
MAMA Well—ain’t it a mess in here, though? (A false cheerfulness, a beginning of something) I guess we all better stop moping around and get some work done. All this unpacking and everything we got to do. (RUTH raises her head slowly in response to the sense of the line; and BENEATHA in similar manner turns very slowly to look at her mother) One of you all better call the moving people and tell ’em not to come.
RUTH Tell ’em not to come?
MAMA Of course, baby. Ain’t no need in ’em coming all the way here and having to go back. They charges for that too. (She sits down, fingers to her brow, thinking) Lord, ever since I was a little girl, I always remembers people saying, “Lena—Lena Eggleston, you aims too high all the time. You needs to slow down and see life a little more like it is. Just slow down some.” That’s what they always used to say down home—“Lord, that Lena Eggleston is a high-minded thing. She’ll get her due one day!”
RUTH No, Lena …
MAMA Me and Big Walter just didn’t never learn right.
RUTH Lena, no! We gotta go. Bennie—tell her … (She rises and crosses to BENEATHA with her arms outstretched, BENEATHA doesn’t respond) Tell her we can still move … the notes ain’t but a hundred and twenty-five a month. We got four grown people in this house—we can work …
MAMA (To herself) Just aimed too high all the time—
RUTH (Turning and going to MAMA fast—the words pouring out with urgency and desperation) Lena—I’ll work … I’ll work twenty hours a day in all the