High Life

Lizzy Dijeh

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781840029055
• eBook ISBN: 9781786823236
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

High Life is a powerful play about teenage suicide and family bereavement. Two Nigerian families bound together by grief. One devastating secret set to tear them apart. Reunited in grief, a wealth of secret motives, jealousy and insecurities are exposed. A mother's loss turns into obsession

Act Two

SCENE ONE

Friday. Stage still black. Sound of sniffling.

CHINWE: It was my fault.

REVEREND ISAAC: What do you mean?

CHINWE: I went to the house, after her mother had already left for work. I watched her drive away you see. I shouldn’t have gone there.

Pause. Lights rise but remain dim. CHINWE and REVEREND ISAAC are speaking through the grilled partition of a church confessional. REVEREND ISAAC is sitting on a chair on the right while CHINWE is on a kneeler on the left, dabbing her face intermittently with a tissue.

Tola opened the door. I asked after her parents but she just stood there staring at me. She was in her uniform, red wrist-bands down one arm, hiding by her sleeves, all the hairclips on her head were red even, I think she liked that colour, and her skirt was so short – how can they give them skirts like that, parading her naked leg as she strolls down the pavement, that is what I was thinking – how could her mum, her dad even, let her dress that way…to school? Then I could see, at her hip, it had been raised – she had rolled the whole thing up to her thighs.

REVEREND ISAAC: Did you go inside the house?

CHINWE: (Nods.) She looked like she had been crying. Straight away – her face – all puffy you know? I’m surprised her mother didn’t…but then, maybe she cried after…

REVEREND ISAAC: Why was she crying? Did she tell you? Did / her mother

CHINWE: You know, she has invited us to her house tomorrow and I tell you Isaac I am afraid. I am so afraid – I don’t want to go back inside there. All around Tola – her eyes will be staring at me like fingers. I will be like the devil invited to a christening.

REVEREND ISAAC: I am sure you are not the devil!

CHINWE: I am not an angel either.

REVEREND ISAAC: Neither am I. Who says you have to be an angel to do some good? Tell me about Tola, Chinwe – talk to me. You can talk to me. I am your friend.

CHINWE: She did not like me much. We quarrelled because when she came round she would eat everything in my fridge and take things from the house without asking. But she would do it with a smile on her face – politely – as if it was an accident, an honest mistake that I should forgive her for – as if it was my fault for over-reacting. It was stealing… When I tell her to stop she would then go crying to my husband and have him turn round and tell me not to over-react. I go to her parents they would do the same. Ira would always support her, Ikeye, he is a bit more liberal… sometimes.

Lights brighten gently.

If you only see the quiet smile she gives me when she wins her way! I kept quiet for the parents. Pretended we were friends to keep the peace. They spoil them too, too much. I tell you, money flies about like giddy mosquitoes in that house.

Pause.

You know I am not jealous Isaac. You know that? I am just saying how I feel about things.

REVEREND ISAAC: I understand you.

CHINWE: I stood in the hallway and she asked if I wanted some tea – if she could take my coat – that I could sit a while since I had already come. I said aren’t you going to school and she shook her head, but she didn’t say why and I didn’t ask. I thought it would have been rude. (Nervous laugh.) Rude! What is wrong with me!

REVEREND ISAAC: Please don’t frighten yourself.

CHINWE: She kept looking at me – but when I’d look at her she’d look away again. I’d try to chat and her answers would trail off like her thoughts…so after a while I put my mug down and got up.

REVEREND ISAAC: You left?

CHINWE: (Pace increasing.) She wouldn’t let me. Right then she exploded – she was frightened and angry and scared all at once. She started saying all these things Isaac, all these shocking things and then she was attacking me – tears were rolling down her face, she was punching and beating my back because I wanted to go – I didn’t want to listen to… that… Nyere m aka [help] – I saw the phone, I should have ran to it, I should have rang Ira, Ikeye, someone to help / her.

REVEREND ISAAC: Help for what?

CHINWE: What she had been hiding…what she had been doing Isaac.

REVEREND ISAAC: And what was that?

Pause.

CHINWE: A baby.

Pause.

You know Isaac, for a while…for a moment, I thought…

REVEREND ISAAC: Go on.

CHINWE: Maybe…maybe Mighty…he did / something

REVEREND ISAAC: He molested the girl?

CHINWE: (Angrily.) I said I thought! I only thought, just for a second…a moment…but he didn’t, he wouldn’t…not that. It was my own stupid thoughts – then it was gone. I was not jealous. I did not say that I was jealous!

REVEREND ISAAC: I am not contradicting.

CHINWE: I-It is j-just that she had a pretty face a-and she was always at our house on the sofa talking with him. His dinner was always going cold in the kitchen, sometimes not until after ten he would eat because she wanted to be there to talk all the time. To a grown man! Sometimes, I couldn’t even watch my TV shows because she and him were in there not watching but talking over it. Talking and talking until after ten with more words still coming. It was not right. Sometimes she would sit on his lap but only bab...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Characters
• Act One
• Act Two