Harlem Duet

Rhythmic music opens the scene as Malcolm X tells the tale of George Washington selling an enslaved person for a gallon of molasses. Billie’s apartment is empty, save for her bed and a few boxes. Othello surveys a final clean-up and then walks into the bedroom. Billie enters and places a small bag in her pocket as she heads to the kitchen. Othello enters the living room for one last look. He comments on the volume of things that were in the apartment, with Billie responding, “Yeah. It’s hard to throw things away” (87). He tells her that his new house with Mona is “huge” (88) and that they will be getting married in three weeks. Billie tells him that she wants to return the handkerchief he gave her “centuries ago” (88), which pleases Othello. She asks that he give her a couple of days to find it and clean it. He then says that he understands how hard things have been for Billie. He can come by to pick it up, and as he leaves, he asks her to say hello to her niece, Jenny. After he’s gone, Billie unwraps the package in her pocket to reveal a vial. She goes to her freezer, opens the door, and stares inside, mumbling sentiments of death.

In Harlem in 1862, delta blues play under a male voice reciting the Emancipation Proclamation. She is holding Him in a pose reminiscent of Michelangelo’s The Pieta. His body is lifeless, and there is a rope around His neck. As She caresses His form, She tells a tale of a man who wanted to find a magic spell to be white. A psychic advised him that the only way to become white is to enter the Whiteness. She then makes a cloaked reference to His relationship with Miss Dessy, saying that after the man found his “ice queen, his alabaster goddess” (91), he made love to her and died. At that moment, he became “Her and her whiteness” (91).

The sounds of strings play against a barrage of sound bites and media images on a repetitive loop, all having to do with racial conflicts: the Clarence Thomas / Anita Hill Hearings, the OJ Simpson trial, Malcolm X, the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, and Martin Luther King Jr. Alone in her apartment, Billie is carefully preparing Othello’s handkerchief with one of her concoctions. Wearing rubber gloves, she gently folds the handkerchief into the gift box in which Canada brought her mother’s ring. She then starts pacing and hyperventilating. She sits, body rocking, and throws her head in her hands. It occurs to her that she has the remnants of the potion on her gloves and has exposed herself. She throws them off and begins wiping her face with her clothing. In a panic, she runs to the kitchen sink to wash her face and hands.

The same sound loop from Scene 4’s opening plays at the start of Scene 5. Magi and Canada are sitting on boxes, with one large box between them as a dining table. Magi is serving a large homemade meal to Canada. She gets up and checks on Billie, who is sleeping in her bedroom.

Magi tells Canada that she found Billie in an unimaginable state: “I checked on her when I got back from church. I thought she was speaking in tongues” (94). Canada tells Magi how much he is enjoying the meal, and she responds with a brief history of how she learned to cook from her mother. She also shares that she has lived in the apartment building all her life. Her great-grandmother, who worked at the house, became the property owner’s mistress and bore him two children. His wife never suspected, as “One brown baby looks just like another to most White folks” (95). When she died, Magi’s great-grandmother became the lady of the house, even though outsiders assumed she was the maid. When the man died, he left everything to his white children except the house, which stayed in Magi’s family ever since. Canada tells Magi that her cooking is the way to a man’s heart. When she tells him she’s not had much luck in that department, he simply replies, “Yet” (96).

Billie finally awakens and joins them, although her mood is unpleasant. She berates Canada for just showing up and expecting things to be fine between them. Quickly apologizing, she tells Canada she is glad he came. Canada responds in a lengthy monologue: He tells Billie that he wishes her mother were here to help her through this experience, as she would know what to do. He then tells her how she is a combination of them both and reveals that Billie’s mother also had a history of depression because “if you spend too much time around White people, you start believing what they think of you” (97). He recalls Billie as a child, and how he wanted to come to be with her now and once again see the little girl who “shrieked with laughter and danced to the heavens sometimes” (98). He moves to embrace Billie. She does not resist.