Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry [8]
RUTH (Maximum indifference) Did they?
WALTER (Looking up) What’s the matter with you?
RUTH Ain’t nothing the matter with me. And don’t keep asking me that this morning.
WALTER Ain’t nobody bothering you. (Reading the news of the day absently again) Say Colonel McCormick is sick.
RUTH (Affecting tea-party interest) Is he now? Poor thing.
WALTER (Sighing and looking at his watch) Oh, me. (He waits) Now what is that boy doing in that bathroom all this time? He just going to have to start getting up earlier. I can’t be being late to work on account of him fooling around in there.
RUTH (Turning on him) Oh, no he ain’t going to be getting up no earlier no such thing! It ain’t his fault that he can’t get to bed no earlier nights ’cause he got a bunch of crazy good-for-nothing clowns sitting up running their mouths in what is supposed to be his bedroom after ten o’clock at night …
WALTER That’s what you mad about, ain’t it? The things I want to talk about with my friends just couldn’t be important in your mind, could they?
(He rises and finds a cigarette in her handbag on the table and crosses to the little window and looks out, smoking and deeply enjoying this first one)
RUTH (Almost matter of factly, a complaint too automatic to deserve emphasis) Why you always got to smoke before you eat in the morning?
WALTER (At the window) Just look at ’em down there … Running and racing to work … (He turns and faces his wife and watches her a moment at the stove, and then, suddenly) You look young this morning, baby.
RUTH (Indifferently) Yeah?
WALTER Just for a second—stirring them eggs. Just for a second it was—you looked real young again. (He reaches for her; she crosses away. Then, drily) It’s gone now—you look like yourself again!
RUTH Man, if you don’t shut up and leave me alone.
WALTER (Looking out to the street again) First thing a man ought to learn in life is not to make love to no colored woman first thing in the morning. You all some eeeevil people at eight o’clock in the morning.
(TRAVIS appears in the hall doorway, almost fully dressed and quite wide awake now, his towels and pajamas across his shoulders. He opens the door and signals for his father to make the bathroom in a hurry)
TRAVIS (Watching the bathroom) Daddy, come on!
(WALTER gets his bathroom utensils and flies out to the bathroom)
RUTH Sit down and have your breakfast, Travis.
TRAVIS Mama, this is Friday. (Gleefully) Check coming tomorrow, huh?
RUTH You get your mind off money and eat your breakfast.
TRAVIS (Eating) This is the morning we supposed to bring the fifty cents to school.
RUTH Well, I ain’t got no fifty cents this morning.
TRAVIS Teacher say we have to.
RUTH I don’t care what teacher say. I ain’t got it. Eat your breakfast, Travis.
TRAVIS I am eating.
RUTH Hush up now and just eat!
(The boy gives her an exasperated look for her lack of understanding, and eats grudgingly)
TRAVIS You think Grandmama would have it?
RUTH No! And I want you to stop asking your grandmother for money, you hear me?
TRAVIS (Outraged) Gaaaleee! I don’t ask her, she just gimme it sometimes!
RUTH Travis Willard Younger—I got too much on me this morning to be—
TRAVIS Maybe Daddy—
RUTH Travis!
(The boy hushes abruptly. They are both quiet and tense for several seconds)
TRAVIS (Presently) Could I maybe go carry some groceries in front of the supermarket for a little while after school then?
RUTH Just hush, I said. (Travis jabs his spoon into his cereal bowl viciously, and rests his head in anger upon his fists) If you through eating, you can get over there and make up your bed.
(The boy obeys stiffly and crosses the room, almost mechanically, to the bed and more or less folds the bedding into a heap, then angrily gets his books and cap)
TRAVIS (Sulking and standing apart from her unnaturally) I’m gone.
RUTH (Looking up from the stove to inspect him automatically) Come here. (He crosses to her and she studies his head) If you don’t take this comb and