Mother

Daniel Keene

• Publisher: Currency Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781925359008
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

Mother is a one-woman play that tells the story of Christie, a homeless woman in a world detached, unforgiving and destructive. It gives voice to the fallen and dispossessed, to those who exist at the edge of safety, at the point of being undone. It speaks of madness, denial, ignorance and free-falling poverty. Utterly devastating, yet written with Daniel Keene's characteristic lyricism, Mother is wrought with tenderness, violence and loneliness in equal measure.

ONE

CHRISTIE picking through rubbish on a block of vacant ground

Crows calling

Bruised sky

Rust and rot

yes

that night when Lenny come home he smelt the drink on my lips

he said what’s that

he knew what that was

how many times do I have to tell you he said

he’d told me a hundred thousand times

I don’t know I said how many times

you promised you wouldn’t he said

I know I did I said

what good’s your promises he said you addled bitch

I’m not addled I said I’m as good as gold

funny he said you’re funny

I’m not trying to be I said

I was often funny when I wasn’t trying to be as far as Lenny was concerned

you don’t know what’s funny and what’s not he said

I know more than you think I know I said

that’s not much then he said you know next to nothing

next to nothing is not nothing I said it’s something

and you don’t know what it is I said

I don’t want to know what it is he said

you do I said I can tell you want to know

no I don’t he said I don’t want to know nothing about you

then why’d you marry me I asked him

because I was lonely he said

I was lonely too I said

so that’s what happened and we’re not lonely anymore are we I said

he just looked at me with that look he’d get now and then

and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking

but I knew it wasn’t anything good

/

I took a drink because I needed a rest I explained to him

I needed a rest because of the baby who was very fractious today

very what he said

very fractious I said

what’s that mean he said

the nurse at the clinic told me I said

she said I had a very fractious child

and do you know what it means he said

yes I said the nurse at the clinic explained it to me

explain it to me he said

I don’t want to I said

because I’d forgotten what it meant exactly

except that there was a lot of crying involved

because the baby isn’t comfortable in himself I said

what’s wrong with him Lenny said

it’s nothing serious I said he’s got the gripe and he’s not happy

a baby that little’s not happy or sad he said he’s too young

he doesn’t know what he is

he doesn’t have to know what he is I said

just because he doesn’t know he’s sad doesn’t mean he’s not sad

I thought he was fractious Lenny said

you don’t even know what it means I said

neither do you he said

/

don’t drink that stuff he said

where do you get it from he said

I’m not saying I said

then I didn’t say anything else

and he just looked at me like I was a mad woman

/

it was from Mrs Kennedy that I got the drink

she lived two doors up the street

she was as old as a stone

she was kind to me when I needed a bit of relief

she was as mad as a budgie

but she knew how to mix a few things together

common stuff you could get anywhere

it was her mother’s recipe from when times were wor...