Lorna French Boy September 2016 Characters
Tom Robinson: 25 year old African American man with a crippled left arm. Husband of
Helen and father of Ella May.
Helen Robinson: 24 year old African American woman. Wife of Tom and mother of Ella
May.
Calpurnia: 35 year old African American woman. Friend to Tom and Helen and
housekeeper to Atticus
Ella May Robinson: 8 year old African American girl. Daughter of Tom and Helen.
Atticus Finch: White American man in his 50s. Defense attorney for Tom and employer of
Calpurnia
1 Lorna French Boy September 2016 Scene
Darkness. An extract from Billie Holliday’s ‘Strange Fruit’ plays. As the song ends light
comes up on the scene.
(0:00 – 0:42)
Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Night. A dingy room in the Maycomb jail. The silhouette of prison bars are visible on the
back wall. At the only table in the room Tom Robinson, a 25 year old African American man
sits across from his wife Helen, a 24 year old African American woman. Tom’s hands and
feet are shackled and his withered left arm rests in his lap.
Helen:
You got any sleep?
Tom:
-
Helen:
Mr Finch, he say how it can be hard for a man to rest his head; all the noise in this
place all hours.
Tom:
-
A moment as Helen considers Tom. Tentatively she reaches for his good hand but
Tom refuses the gesture and she withdraws her hand from his.
Helen:
(Her voice cracking slightly from the tears she is trying to hold back.) Brought
some of that stew you like. It’s cold but it still taste good I reckon.
Helen gets up from the table and moves across the room to retrieve a basket. She
places it on the table between them and retakes her seat.
2 Lorna French Boy September 2016 Helen:
Cal’s sent you some of those biscuits a hers ain’t no one can resist those.
Tom:
-
Helen:
(Tears in her voice now.) Please? Mr Finch said I can’t stay but a few minutes.
Tom:
(Finally looking up at her.) Mr Finch? Mr Finch told you that huh?
Helen:
I ain’t nothin’ to ya? You not being fair.
Tom:
I been fair my whole damn life; look where it’s got me.
Helen:
It ain’t over yet Tom. Mr Finch gonna see to it, you comin’ home to me any
day.
A moment. Tom gives Helen a look filled with real hate.
Tom:
You know I was fair, respectful, decent in all the ways they told me I had to
be? I called Mr Gilmer Suh so many times in court I almost lost count. 18
times I called that man Suh, imagine? Him tryin’ to kill me and I can’t do
nothin’ but Suh, Suh, Suh.
Helen:
Don’t think on it Tom; it’ll drive you mad.
Tom:
I’m already half way there it seems like. Can’t do nothin’ but think in here.
‘Specially after yesterday, after the fellas on that jury they (Helen interrupts.)
Helen:
Tom you sure look thin; try some stew.
Tom:
Ain’t hungry.
Helen:
What they been feedin’ you you don’t want my cookin’?
Tom:
That ain’t it.
Helen waits for Tom to explain himself but he fingers the handcuffs with his
good hand instead.
3 Lorna French Boy September 2016 Helen:
I know I didn’t just leave my babies cryin’ with Calpurnia and come all this
way for you to treat me like my prayin’ and worryin’ and tryin’ to care for
you best I can don’t matter much to ya.
A beat.
Tom:
I need to get used to bein’ without you.
Helen:
Tom?
Tom:
You and them babies need to do the same with me.
Helen:
Our babies Tom, yours and mine.
Tom:
(Indicating his shackles.) You not seein’ the whole of it Helen. With your
stew and your biscuits and your, you sleepin’ ok Tom? That’s polite talk
for when you goin’ visitin’. You ain’t visitin’; you sayin’ goodbye.
Helen:
Tom Robinson, I won’t hear talk like that. You know Mr Finch gonna
go back to court, get ‘em to change their minds.
Tom:
He ain’t gonna win no appeal. Not with the people in this town, or the ones
in the next town over or the town after that. She lived on assistance her
whole life and I been working non stop for Mr Link Deas 8 years straight.
But they kick him out the court for sayin so and call me boy over and over.
Even though they gotta know she lyin’, Miss Mayella, she get to look at me
like I'm worse than a bit of dirt under her shoe. I done nothing wrong ‘cept
feel pity for her situation I swear. But they got the system so everyone
gotta talk to her respectful and talk to me like I'm a kid in short pants,
like I'm trash.
Helen:
You ain’t trash.
4 Lorna French Boy September 2016 Helen attempts to put her arms around Tom’s neck when he resists this she
tries to cling to him and he has to use more force than he intended to push her off him. Helen
ends up in a heap on the floor.
Tom:
You and I are whatever they tell us we are!
Helen:
No Tom, this ain’t you.
Helen looks up at him.
Helen:
The man I married never put his hands on a woman like that in his whole
life.
Tom:
You sure ‘bout that? You sure I’m not just a nigger who took advantage
of that poor little white woman? Just another nigger in that nigger-nest
down by the dump who’s dangerous and grabs white women round the
neck and cusses them and says dirt.
Helen:
(Just above a whisper.) Stop.
Tom helps Helen up.
Tom:
You heard Mr Gilman; ain’t no nigger can be helpful without taking
money for it. We ain’t neighbourly like them white folks up where Mr
Finch and Mr Gilman live. We niggers ain’t got no generous or good in
us; we always after somethin’, somethin’ ugly.
Helen:
That word seems like you can’t get out your mouth enough sure is ugly.
5 Lorna French Boy September 2016 Tom:
People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.
They was lookin’ and listenin’ for a nigger and didn’t make no difference
that I try to be a clean livin’ God fearin’ man, try to work hard as I can,
take care of my family and don’t bother nobody.
Helen:
I see who you are.
Tom:
That should matter, what you say but it don’t not to them.
Helen:
That girl is heartless; sittin’ up in court lyin’ her heart out with her hand
on the bible.
Tom:
She ain’t heartless it’s what Mr Finch said, guilt because she broke a
code that Maycomb holds dear, that the South cannot live without.
Niggers/ and white folk
Helen:
/I ain’t stayin’ if you keep on.
Tom:
Negroes and white folks must be separate. Negroes always at the bottom.
Ain’t no white folks gonna let negroes move onto their street without
any trouble. Separate restaurants, wash rooms, drinking fountains. I
reckon even Mr Finch would come after me if I sent Ella May to his
daughter’s school.
Helen:
(Laughing.) Him and the whole town.
Tom takes the cloth covering off the basket and peers into the bowl of
stew.
Tom:
How’d you get money for meat? Must be runnin’ real low by now?
Helen:
Um, well, I been workin’.
Tom:
You never said.
6 Lorna French Boy September 2016 Helen:
Ain’t had chance; barely seen you since they dragged you out the house
with the neighbours watchin’
Tom:
Why you pickin’ a fight?
Helen:
I ain’t meanin’ to.
Tom:
I been worried sick, ‘bout you, ‘bout the chillurn. How you managin’
without my wages.
Helen:
They miss you, ‘specially Ella May. Had to make her promise she
wouldn’t follow me.
Tom:
Don’t want no child a mine seein’ me in chains.
Helen:
I had the little ones to make you something.
Helen digs in the basket she brought with her and takes out a drawing on a crumpled piece of
paper. Helen smooths out the paper as she puts it on the table.
Tom goes to pick up the picture but cannot touch it.
Helen:
They tried so hard to make it nice for you.
Tom:
I …. (He trails off.)
Helen:
When they ask me when’s Daddy comin’ home I tell them soon baby
soon.
Tom:
You shouldn’t get their hopes up.
Helen:
That’s what Ella May says.
Tom:
You gotta face it.
Helen:
Not yet.
Tom:
Their moving me to Enfield tomorrow.
7 Lorna French Boy September 2016 A moment. Helen lets out a deep breath and closes her eyes.
Tom:
Will you do something for me darling?
Helen studies Tom’s face.
Helen:
Enfield’s what maybe 70 miles? I’ll have to leave the kids with Cal
overnight when I visit / she won’t mind.
Tom:
/I need you and the kids to move away from here.
Helen:
Won’t be for long. Mr Finch says / six months maybe.
Tom:
/Forget me.
Helen:
You can hold on for just six more months Tom.
Tom:
Mr Finch means well but you know/ it’s over.
Helen:
/ Don’t give up.
Tom:
It ain’t giving up; I just can’t fight a brick wall no more.
Tom stands.
Tom:
I should be able to hold my head up high, be respected, as a man, I should
be able to put my hand out to another man, to shake his hand on equal
equal terms, even if he is white.
Helen:
You know that ain’t never gonna happen.
Tom:
That’s why I want you and the chillurn to move up North.
Helen:
You must’ve lost your mind locked up in here. Who we know up North?
8 Lorna French Boy September 2016 Tom:
Up there Ella May can be somethin’ other than the bottom of the heap
maybe. And little Davie; I know’s just a baby now but in a few years he’ll
be a man wantin’ to hold his head up, take his family to live somewhere
other than the town dump where you always gotta do your livin’ in
smellin’ distance of the town’s trash. I ain’t gonna lose my life knowin’
my children gonna be kept in their place by white folks. ‘Til somebody
accuses Davie of lookin’ at a white woman the wrong way, and he ends up
swingin’ on the end of a rope out in the woods some place.
Tom holds his head up high and tries to cross the room to Helen. His feet
get tangled in his leg irons and he falls to the floor. At that moment his daughter, Ella May,
8, runs into the room followed quickly by Calpurnia.
Calpurnia:
(Laughing.) Looks like them chains doin’ their job and keepin’ you down.
Ella May:
Daddy, daddy, I wanted to bring you something.
Ella May throws herself down next to Tom and takes a chocolate cupcake
out of her pocket. She has carefully wrapped it with tissue to protect it. She gives Tom the
cake proudly.
Ella May:
I made this for you Daddy, well Miss Calpurnia helped too but I did the
frosting.
Calpurnia:
This girl would not mind me once she had it in her head that chocolate
cake was her daddy’s favourite.
Helen:
Ella May, didn’t I tell you to mind Miss Calpurnia?
Ella May:
Yes Ma'am.
9 Lorna French Boy September 2016 Helen:
I honest to goodness don’t know what to do with you sometimes.
Ella May:
(To Tom.) Daddy, I did mean to mind Miss Calpurnia but Burris Ewell
took to teasin’ me when he caught me in the yard. He threw rocks at me
and told me my daddy was goin’ to the chair.
Calpurnia:
Now girl why in the world didn’t you tell me that boy’d been botherin’
you?
Tom:
What would you have done about it Cal?
Calpurnia:
Well, I’da, um, well …. (She trails off.)
Tom:
Ain’t no way any of the three of us could stop a white boy, any white boy
pesterin’ our girl.
Tom and Helen exchange a look. Ella May helps Tom up.
Ella May:
Daddy do you like your cake?
Tom:
I love it honey. Thank you.
Ella May:
See Miss Calpurnia; I told you he liked chocolate best. (Indicating the
icing.) See Daddy, it’s horrible and brown underneath because it’s
chocolate but I made it nice and pretty and white with the frosting all over
it. You gonna try it Daddy?
Tom:
(Looking at Helen as he speaks.) Ella May, how would you feel about
moving somewhere else, up north?
Helen:
Daddy’s going to be going away soon and I think/ you’ll like the north.
Helen reaches for Tom’s hand and he lets her intertwine her fingers with
his uninjured hand.
10 Lorna French Boy September 2016 Tom:
You can do anything you like in the north, much more than in Maycomb.
Ella May:
Even throw a rock at Burris Ewell so it gets him right between the eyes
and not get in trouble?
Helen:
Ella May what did / you do?
Calpurnia:
/ Lord help us.
Ella May:
He started it. Daddy try your cake.
Tom nibbles on the cake and smiles.
Tom:
It’s real tasty honey.
Ella May is pleased.
Atticus Finch, a white American man in his 50s enters hurriedly.
Atticus:
Tom, you have to wrap this up I’m afraid. Sheriff’s looking to move you
tonight.
Tom:
You said tomorrow.
Atticus:
Tonight’s better for you. Some people in town are agitating over the appeal.
Helen claps a hand over her mouth. Tom puts an arm around her.
Tom:
(Extending his uninjured arm to Atticus.) Atticus, I want to thank you for
everything you’ve done for me and mine.
Atticus watches Tom steadily for a moment. Tom stands with his hand
11 Lorna French Boy September 2016 extended waiting to see what Atticus will do.
Calpurnia:
Now Tom, this ain’t proper and you know it.
Helen:
Leave him be Cal; let him hold his head up one time.
Atticus crosses to Tom and shakes his hand.
Atticus:
It’s been a pleasure Tom.
Tom:
(To Atticus.) I got time for some stew and biscuits?
Atticus:
If you’re quick. Once you’re settled at Enfield I’ll come out and we can go
over the approach for your appeal.
Tom:
Sounds good to me.
Atticus exits. Helen gives Tom a look. Tom kisses her.
As the lights go down Tom sits down at the table and Calpurnia and Helen unpack the food
from the basket and begin dishing his food. Ella May sits on Tom’s knee and together they
look at the picture her two younger siblings have drawn.
12