A Woman Clothed in Words by Anne Szumigalski Page B

expected to see her again. The island he had promised became a ploy, a lie. He was a liar. But she wanted, loved him still. I have come to ask you to ... to what? he couldn’t understand. To bury the baby Laurence found in the grave. The one forgotten in her little box. Did you phone the police, he answered, you must let them know. Did you tell your mother, your father. She knows he doesn’t just mean the baby. About that time when he had taken her into the house through the garden. Into the bed behind the curtain and called the whole thing an island in the dark and it was, but that was gone now, she wondered had he taken other girls there since then. She asked him out loud. Have you? He answered too easily. Of course not. But why are you here? We sinned, he explained, God was angry. Your god, she said, mine doesn’t care but yes the baby, the bone baby the little head, we all care about her, and please will you come and bury her and please don’t tell and we’ll bring flowers and we’ll even plant them, we’ll name her, we have named her Rhiannon, Rhiannon of the birds.

Three Women at the End of the World
    Editor’s note: The five scenes published here are much of what survive from an unfinished play Anne was working on in her last years, Three Women at the End of the World. The title was provisional: in a note to herself, she wrote “Perhaps this is the only play – the one woman – perhaps it’s the middle one of three plays. I don’t know yet.” The following scenes were intended to be performed in water – somehow. Anne also noted, “During the whole play distant shelling and bombing can be heard.”
    At the suggestion of Tom Bentley (who directed her play Z in 1994 for Twenty Fifth Street Theatre in Saskatoon, and who was working with Anne on this new project) I have chosen not to publish a few other scenes, set in a small house in a bombarded city. She wrote elaborate stage directions to introduce those scenes but the dialogue is, in Bentley’s words, “not far enough along to represent Anne’s skill in a good light.” The scenes in the hut have two main characters, a man named Tek and a woman named Amina. Their relationship to the watery pair of Payly and Mako is uncertain.
    The connection between the two adult pairs was probably to be established by other scenes involving Amy, a girl of eleven, and Ronny, her younger brother. They are the children of Tek and Amina, but (like Payly and Mako) they take to the water. One of the scenes printed here is a monologue spoken by Amy in a boat, while Ronny sleeps. The other four scenes are dialogues between Payly and Mako.
    One final disclaimer: the scenes appear now in the order Anne left them. This does not necessarily mean they would have been performed in this order.

    A stretch of water.
    Payly (M) and Mako (F).
    It’s dark. Noises of scuffling

    Mako – No shoving.
    Payly – No pinching. We agreed no pinching.
    Mako – No shoving.
    Payly – No pinching Mako my dear.
    Mako – No endearments. Shove off.
    Payly – (bitterly) Darling darling darling. Give me a break.
    Mako – I’m broken already.
    Payly – You’re broken? What about me. I’m more broken than you are.
    Mako – No one is more broken than I am.
    Payly – What makes you think you are so special, so specially broken. You always have to be somebody special. More splendid, more brilliant, more broken. Prove it.
    Mako – Your death and mine, that’s the proof. I’m more dead than you are.
    Payly – My what.
    Mako – Your death. The last one.
    Payly – There is never a last death. Only a first one.
    Mako – First or last, you are not denying that we are dead.
    Payly – Most people are dead.
    Mako – That’s not true. The latest statistics show that more people are alive today than all the people who have died since the beginning.
    Payly – (morally) Statistics are fools. You can torture them just like you can torture people and make them say what you want. And anyway, what