(LULU is working at her homework. MAMARITI is carefully cleaning the typewriter. RUTH is writing in a diary.)

LULU: Homework, bloody homework! Every day is homework. Got to wash the dishes for Mama, look after the customers, but these school teachers, they don't understand.

RUTH: What are you doing?

LULU: I'm writing a composition.

RUTH: I'll help you.

LULU: Will you? You're a star, hey!

RUTH: What's it about?

LULU: It's called ‘My Family’. God, my teachers are dumb - what a stupid title: ‘My Family'!

RUTH: Well, what have you got there?

LULU: First I started writing about my mother.

RUTH: Mmmm?

LULU: She's just a cheeky old woman, breaking the law, working on her beer, and planning for her future which never comes.

MAMARITI: Sis! You stupid little idiot. How can you say all those things about me after all I've done for you?

LULU: Ag Ma, it's just a composition.

RUTH: And?

LULU: I'm also writing about my brother Mingus, who's always stealing goods from the railways.

RUTH: I'm not sure you should say those things.

LULU: But they're true!

RUTH: So?

LULU: Do you know, Mingus and the American gang, they stop the intellectuals, die situations, on the street corner, and to make trouble they make them recite Shakespeare!

RUTH: Shakespeare?

LULU: That's what Jakes told me. He says he's got a special line he learnt just in case/Oh what a rogue and peasant slave ami'.

RUTH: Hamlet!

LULU: Ja. I was going to write it here but Jakes says I shouldn't - he says all my teachers will think it's bad English! So I just write, ‘Mingus steals goods from the railways.'

RUTH: Surely there are nice things you can write?

LULU: My teacher says telling the truth is a virtue.

RUTH: But there are all sorts of truths. It's true to say your brother steals from the railways, but it's also true to say that he gives your mother money to run the house, and money for your school.

LULU: He can keep his money for school.

RUTH: No! He pays for you, why not tell that truth?