The Monster Trilogy

RM Vaughan

• Publisher: Coach House Books
• Year: 1999
• ISBN:
  9781770561601
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Canadian Drama
• Index: Literature

Ogres, trolls, demons – monsters, like violence, are always represented as male. Not this time. Celebrated playwright RM Vaughan gives us, in three one-act monologues, three very monstrous women.

In A Visitation by St Teresa of Avila upon Constable Margaret Chance, we meet a middle-aged police officer whose world view is determined by her obsession with race, bloodlines and genetic determinism. The Susan Smith Tapes (made into a film for CBC and Showcase by Jeremy Podeswa) shows the famous American who drowned her two young sons trying to recapture the public's attention by auditioning for talk shows. And Dead Teenagers introduces us to a frustrated reverend unhealthily addicted to the spectacle of large funerals for murdered children.

Production History

This play was originally produced for the 1998 Rhubarb! Festival at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto.

It was directed by Moynan King and starred Kirsten Johnson as Susan Smith.

The Susan Smith Tapes was made into a short film by Jeremy Podeswa in 2001 in a co-production by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Rebel Films and Showcase Television.

Kirsten Johnson starred as Susan Smith.

Susan Smith sits on metal-framed bed in a bare prison cell. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail. She wears a blue denim shirt and blue denim pants. The breast pocket of her shirt is numbered. Over her head is a single, dull light.

Smith sets up a video camera on a tripod in front of her bed.

SUSAN SMITH: Hello, Miss Oprah? I hope you can see me all right. I don’t photograph too well. I mean, with these lights and all. And the white – white makes me look fat. Miss Oprah, I’m sending you this tape because I think maybe you never got near my last letter. It came back all bent up and ragged like a worn-out mop and I don’t like to think you’d treat a heartfelt letter that way. I know you got some helpers on your show, so maybe it was one of them did it to my letter. Funny thing was, when I make the word ‘heart’ I don’t spell it out h-e-a-r-t but I draw it directly on the paper, like a valentines heart (draws heart with finger in the air), I always done that, since I don’t remember when – and, well, when my last letter came back, somebody, well, somebody mean, took my letter and cut out every one of my signature hearts. Why do people do these things? Guess some folks can’t forgive and forget. They say taking a piece of a person’s handwriting is a way to do the voodoo on the person. Do you believe that?

Miss Oprah, I hope you still remember me. My name is Susan Smith, and I did a evil thing.

She stops the camera, rewinds for a few seconds, then starts again.

Miss Oprah, I know you still remember me. My name is Susan Smith. Evil things happened to me.

I have to talk to you in the video because I’m on sandwiches for the next two days. That’s what we call it in prison when they suppose you might do harm to yourself. See, if you get on sandwiches, it means you don’t get no fork or knife to eat with, seeing as you can take yourself down with even a plastic knife. And the warden says that goes for pens, too. There was a girl here who took a Bic out and worked the small end of the clear part on the bottom of her shoe till it was sharper than a snake’s tongue and then she – well, never mind all that. So they give me the video instead, being my constitutional right to communicate through the United States Postal Service, but I was thinkin’ there’s sure lots more sharp parts on a video than an old fool Bic – but maybe there’s people here who want to see me come to hurt, and then they can say nobody said nothin’ about a video, and wasn’t that Susan Smith smarter than we all thought, doing herself in with two little red buttons and a busted lens. You see, I ain’t saying I never thought of my options.

Miss Oprah, I’m scared. So what, everybody’s scared. I learned that here. But I’m scared of history. What are people gonna say about me in the future times? Miss Oprah, a lot of untrue stories have been said about me and I need to have my time to make my say. I was a good mother to Michael and Alex, right up till the bad time. Those boys was always clean and dressed sharp and they never went hungry one minute of their lives. That is my truth. Can’t nobody take that achievement away from me.

A loud splashing sound is heard by the audience, the sound of a car hitting a lake. Smith does not hear it.

Do you know that song ‘Two Hearts Beat Like One’? Used to be my little joke that I was gonna rewrite it and make it ‘Three Hearts,’ for me and my babies, and make a million dollars. Fix everything. But we was like that, Three Hearts. Some days when they was at the playschool I’d just burst out cryin’ and didn’t know why and then they come home and the sitter, she’d say, ‘Alex had hisself a stumble on the front steps, banged up his knee,’ and I knew that’s why I carried on crying before. I was connected. I felt those boys inside me sure as they was still unborn in me. All day and all night. Every day. I was alive with them boys, Miss Oprah, and I nearly died with them too.

Sometimes I get hungry, right after supper, right on a full stomach, unsensible hungry, and then I says a little prayer to my angels up on God’s lap. Momma hears you, boys, Momma hears your tummies rumblin’. Now you ask God for your supper. Beans and wieners. White bread with brown sugar. And then I ain’t hungry no more.

I love my family, Miss Oprah. I trust you. Momma still talks about the day you came down from Chicago to visit the lake where my boys went to Glory. We don’t see too much Hollywood in South Carolina. Momma said you was real ordinary like and still had your good Southern manners. I wish you hadn’t brought your cameramen to the lake, though, because it’s such a pretty lake and now the whole world only sees the bad side of the location. Maybe you and me can work together to make that old lake shine again.

I am good on TV. I come across natural.

The lights go out. Lights up on Smith sitting before the camera.

Mr. Springer, my name is Susan Smith. You did a show on me a few years back, and I’m just saying thank you again and a hello to you. I guess you can tell I’m still in prison. I gained some weight since you saw me last, from the sittin’ all day. I was upset first about the extra pounds, but where am I supposed to be goin’ for the rest of my life that I need to be pretty? Kinda a relief, just to let go. If I’m healthy, I thank the Good Lord for my fortune.

Mr. Springer, when the incident I done involving my two boys came out, there was a whole team of folks at the county District Attorney office workin’ day and night to fix me for the electric chair but they lost. Listen to me! Of course they lost, ‘cause here I am alive and jawin’ away like a TV talk show person myself!

People down here say you are just another up-North liberal Jew, but I don’t take account of that kind of talk. The world needs all creeds and colours. I saw you done a whole program on the badness of the death penalty, and I was thinking you should do another one because the issue is very large in the minds of many people. I can help out, if you like.

When my boys was killed, I took responsibility. I was slow to it, I admit, but eventually I come around to the truth. People say the best ways I can pay back for my boys is for me to go on over to the other side myself, but there’s more than one way to make amends.

I want to come on your show and tell young mothers my story, so’s they can learn from my example. That’s what I feel all the men on the death row should be made to do, is to talk in public. Like a lecture. Say what they done and why they done it and be a lesson to others. If the State of South Carolina up and hauled me to the electric chair, they only get a one-shot deal on the example of my life. That’s a sinful waste of the human spirit.

I been practicin’ my set piece, and now I would ask you to hear it out.

She reads from a sheet of paper.

My name is Susan Smith, and I have experienced great tragedy in my life. The death of a child is every mother’s worst all-time day and nighttime nightmare. The death of two children is double that plus some traumas nobody can name. I am here today to tell all you kind people that human life is precious and unreplaceable. I know because I will never hear my baby boys’ voices again. I will never see them goin’ off for the first day of school, never help them with learnin’ their times tables, never go down to the front porch to meet their girlfriends and never hold their own babies in my arms. Life is cruel and beautiful too, but the cruellest day in the world came when circumstances situated to take my babies from me. Even after I am dead and gone I can still hold my head up high to the sky above and say no matter what, I am a mother, and that is a no-refund deal.

She sets the paper down.

Well, it’s just a start. I was always better at writin’ Christmas cards than whole letters. A message of love is the shortest breath, my momma used to say. What do you think? I’m bashful to admit that I copied the sound of it from them mini-stories you tell at the end of your show. Hope you don’t take no offence.

The sound of two baby boys screaming is heard. Smith does not hear it.

Mr. Springer, I don’t deserve to die. There is women in here who killed their husbands who was beatin’ on them, and women who killed for money, and women who killed by accidents, and ain’t one of us needs to sit in a metal chair with our hair shaved off to understand we done wrong in God’s eyes. My boys and me, we had a special bond. We was like people who can talk to each other without saying a word, them gifted people with angel powers. I couldn’t walk away from that power, Mr. Springer, nobody in the world could. My mother love was too strong. Them boys woulda spent the rest of their lives wondering why they was so bad that their momma put herself at the bottom of the lake rather than be with them. I would have put a curse on my own children had I gone to Glory before my time. I admit to my shame I wanted to commit suicide, but I did not leave my boys abandoned, I did not take the easy road and leave my babies to make on in the world without a mother.

I made a choice, for my babies. That’s what folks is afraid of, the deep-down feelin’ they got that they don’t wanna hear talkin’ to them – the voice that says Susan Smith done right, horrible right, but right. It’s too hard to bear.

I made a choice, in a second, in a half a minute, and it moved the world to tears.

That’s why they lost on the death penalty. ’Cause it’s psychological. Wrong in the heart don’t cousin with right in the brain. Anybody wants to come kill me better look around and ask hisself when was the last time he sacrificed like I sacrificed for my babies. Most people won’t even put a sick dog down, they’s so selfish. I am not afraid to cry on Wednesday so I can smile on Sunday.

That’s the problem with the electric chair – it don’t look to the future. It don’t calculate for the limitless quality of the human potential. All my life, I have always looked to the horizon, not the trail.

Mr. Springer, I sometimes think I am the bravest woman I know. Please contact me care of the warden when you get a chance to watch this tape. Thank you and goodbye for now.

She shuts off the camera. The lights go down. Smith sits in front of the camera.

You may not remember me – I guess my story’s old news to you folks up in New York – but my name is Susan Smith. I was watching your program 20/20 last night on the night guard’s TV and it was a repeat of a show you did three years ago on my hometown, after my babies were found.

I liked the way you walked around the lake, like it was a sacred place, which it is to me, and the way you talked, sorta soft and sorta hard at the same time, like a mother. If I may suggest something, Miss Walters, I think your decision to wear jewellery down at the lake was right and proper. I understand that with your people there is a custom of wearing personal ornamentation as a sign of respect for the dead. I’m only bringing this up ’cause some folks in town said they thought you was crass, but that town is full of ignorant people who never been nowhere in the world.

Miss Walters, I liked the way you described the candles folks left by the lake – you said they was like ‘tiny sparks of life for two tiny lives that were snuffed out early,’ and that is so true. My babies went to God like birthday candles, special and bright and just the right size, but only ...