Scene 3
from And the Girls in their Sunday Dresses
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 May 2019
Summary
The queue. THE LADY is now sitting on the ground and is smoking a cigarette. She is dishevelled and is no longer fussing about her looks. THE WOMAN looks as she did in the previous scenes: simple and neat. She is whistling or humming the hymn of the previous scene.
LADY: I wish you'd stop that. It irritates me.
WOMAN: You can have your chair. You don't have to sit on the wet ground.
LADY: You don't have to patronise me.
WOMAN: It is your chair after all.
LADY: I don't care any more. I can sit anywhere I want. I can even lie flat on my belly in that mud puddle. It is not your business at all.
WOMAN: Well, if it suits you.
LADY: You are gloating.
WOMAN: About what?
LADY [bitterly]: Now that you know so much about me you think you can sit in judgement.
WOMAN: I didn't say anything.
LADY: I can see you. You think I am going to allow you to pity me, and to patronise me. You are Miss Perfect and I am a fallen whore.
WOMAN: If it will make you happy, let me tell you that I am not perfect.
LADY: How's that?
WOMAN: When I went to Cape Town for the first time it was with a man.
LADY: SO what's wrong with that?
WOMAN: He was my boss.
LADY: Yeah?
WOMAN: I ran away with my boss to Cape Town. He was a young man oa Letaliana. I was his maid. I looked after his house while he ran his restaurant business.
LADY: See how strange life is?
WOMAN: He was a philanderer, Letaliana leo. Brought different women home every day. Mostly ladies of the night. But oh, he was charming, with an impish sense of humour. It was the easiest thing to fall in love with him.
LADY: Same with mine. These Mataliana are all like that it seems.
WOMAN: Yeah. Then he made one of his many women pregnant, and decided to live with her. I couldn't bear another woman living permanently in that house, and I told him I was quitting. He wouldn't hear of it. [Mimicking Italian accent] I cannot live without you, ausi. Let us run away to Cape Town. I have many brothers there.
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- Information
- And the Girls in their Sunday DressesFour Works, pp. 23 - 30Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 1993