Reader’s Theater



Reader’s Theater

Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963

Adapted by Barbara Tschantz

From the novel by Christopher Paul Curtis

Characters:

|Momma |Byron |

|Dad |Kenny |

The scene opens with Momma and Dad on the couch. Kenny is sitting behind the couch. We hear Kenny’s thoughts out loud as Momma and Dad talk.

Momma: (Worried) My Momma called from Birmingham today. The police think some white men planted the bomb in the church to go off during Sunday School. They just held a funeral for the four little girls who died. Momma says a lot of people from the church are still in the hospital. Lord, Daniel, when I think that our little Joetta had just left that church …

Dad: I was searching for her in the ruins – calling her name – when a man walked right by me carrying a young girl. His pajamas looked like they’d been dipped in red paint. I couldn’t think of anything but our Joey. It’s a sad day when someone would hurt so many people to keep Negroes from registering to vote and going to the same schools as whites. But we’re safer here in Flint.

Momma: How will we explain this to the kids?

Dad: Joey doesn’t need to know a bomb went off in the church. But Kenny …

Kenny: (Seriously) They don’t know I’m back here, hiding in the World-Famous Watson Pet Hospital, the space between the couch and the wall. My 13-year-old brother Byron named it that because every pet we’ve ever had knows this space has magic powers. If one of our dogs got hit by a car and could walk away or if one of them chewed through an electric wire, they’d head right for the back of the couch. I’ve been spending a lot of time here.

Momma: He’s been disappearing, Daniel. Hours go by and I don’t know where he is.

Dad: Doesn’t Byron know where he is?

Kenny: Byron, an official juvenile delinquent, is the reason we took a trip from our home in Flint, Michigan, to Birmingham, Alabama. He was always getting into trouble. He set fire to our army men in the house. He bullied kids. The last straw was his new hairstyle, a straightened, bleached “conk” that he said made him look Mexican. Momma and Dad were taking Byron to live with my Grandma Sands in Birmingham for a while. She’d straighten him out. I can’t figure Byron out. Just when I thought he was so mean, he saved me from drowning, rescuing me from the Wool Pooh.

Momma: Something’s wrong. I wonder if Mrs. Robert’s friend was right. I wonder if he really did see Kenny in that church afterward. Lord, who knows what that poor baby saw.

Kenny: I couldn’t tell them the truth. I had been at the church. I saw Momma yelling “Why?” over and over as she pulled Byron away from the pile of rocks that had once been the church. I saw the little girl in her frilly, black dress and shiny shoes, lying so still in that man’s arms. I even tried to pick up a shiny, black shoe from under the concrete. But when I got the shoe loose from the foot with the frilly white sock, I saw the Wool Pooh! This scary gray man with no face had come to get my sister Joey and take her wherever dead people go.

Dad: Wilona, he says he only left Grandma Sands’s to tell us Joey was OK. What can we do?

Kenny: I walked as quick as I could from the church to Grandma Sands’s house. I looked up – and there was Joey in her white, frilly socks, standing on the wooden floor in front of my bedroom door! I guessed the Wool Pooh was taking Joey around for her last visits.

Momma: Even though Kenny says he wasn’t at the church, Joey swears it was him she’d followed away from there, and you know that child would just as soon die as lie.

Kenny: I didn’t believe it was the real Joey until she started boohooing like an idiot for Grandma. The Wool Pooh had missed her! She’d seen a boy who looked like me and followed him out of the church before the bomb went off.

Momma: I just wish I knew where he goes. And why.

Mom and dad leave the scene. Byron walks in to talk to Kenny behind the couch.

Byron: Kenny, come check this out!

Kenny comes out from the couch, and the boys go to a mirror. Byron pulls on a chin hair.

Byron: And there’s another one coming out, too!

Kenny looks at himself in the mirror next, then sinks to the floor, crying. Byron sits next to him.

Kenny: (Weeping) I’m sorry, Byron.

Byron: Shut up and cry if you want.

Kenny: (Crying out) Why would they do that, By? Why would they hurt some little kids like that?

Byron: (pause) I don’t know, Kenny. Momma and Dad say they can’t help themselves, they did it because they’re sick, but I don’t know. I ain’t never heard of no sickness that makes you kill little girls just because you don’t want them in your school. I don’t think that they’re sick at all, I think they just let hate eat them up and turn them into monsters. But it’s OK now, they can’t hurt you here. It’s all right.

Kenny: I saw what happened, By. I saw two of those little girls. I thought Joey got killed, too.

Byron: We all did. But man, nothing’s going to hurt you now.

Kenny: You don’t know what I did, Byron. I left Joey. I thought the Wool Pooh had her and instead of fighting him like you did, I left, I ran from him. How come you were brave enough to fight him and all I could do was run? All I could save was a shoe, a stupid shoe.

Byron: Awww, man, you ain’t gonna start talking that Wool Pooh mess again, are you? I told you the Wool Pooh was some made-up garbage. The only one I was fighting in the water was your stupid behind; there wasn’t no one in that water when I pulled you out but you and me. There ain’t no such thing as a Wool Pooh. And there’s no such things as magic powers, either. You think I don’t know why you been hanging out behind the couch? Expecting some magic powers or genies or a angel to make you feel better? There ain’t no such thing. Dig this: You wait behind that couch for the rest of your life and nothing’s going to happen. Besides, aren’t you glad that you’re the one who led Joey away from that church?

Kenny: But it wasn’t me, Byron. I never –

Byron: Man, shut up and listen. If you hadn’ta been born who would have took her away from the bomb? No one. If you hadn’t been born and she walked outta that hot church and saw some stranger waving her from across the street, do you think she would have followed him? Heck no. And if you hadn’t been born who woulda gone in that church to see if Joey was really in there? Me and Momma and Dad was all too scared, you was the only one brave enough to go in there.

Kenny: But Byron, what about those other kids? They had brothers and sisters and mommies and daddies who loved them just as much as we love Joey, how come no one came and got them out of the church? How’s it fair?

Byron: Kenny, how’s it fair that two grown men could hate Negroes so much that they’d kill some kids just to stop them from going to school? How’s it fair that even though the cops down there might know who did it nothing will probably ever happen to those men? It ain’t. But you just gotta understand that’s the way it is and keep on steppin’.

Today is the day you check out of the World-Famous Watson Pet Hospital. You ain’t got cause to be ashamed or scared of nothing. You gonna be alright, baby Bruh. I swear for God.

(Byron leaves)

Kenny: (Calmer) Byron is wrong when he says there ain’t no genies or angels. There’s an angel in the way Dad still smiles at me even when I mess up. And when Momma calls me over in front of a bunch of my friends to wipe the sleep out of my eyes. And when I let Joey throw a stupid tea party for me. And the way Grandma Sands wraps her arms around us and cries, “My fambly.”

But Byron’s also right about some things, too. He knew what he was talking about when he said I’m going to be all right.

Adapted from Curtis, C.P. (1995). The Watsons go to Birmingham – 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis. New York: Yearling.

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