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I wrote this in the two weeks after the bombing. It is published in "Ensemble Studio Theatre: Marathon '97" by Smith & Kraus. The monologue has been performed by Conchatta Farrel, Socorro Santiago, and Patricia Neal professionally, and many others from readings in nursing homes to high school speech and drama contests. The Oklahoma City bombing marked the biggest terrorist event in US history, and the crime was committed by Americans.
"SPARROW"
COPY. 1995
My back yard is like a birdland Peyton Place in April. They’re up there in the treetops, lookin’ fancy for each other and singin’ their birdie love songs--courtin’, flirtin’, and braggin’ on who builds the best nests before they decide who they’re gonna marry and mate with. They love to peck in my garden, too, so rich with worms and tender little shoots. Grampa taught me the trick of plantin’ a mulberry tree smack in with the peaches. Birds will go straight for the berries and stay clean off your fruit.
I get up with the birds, I surely do, and get right out here every mornin’. I bring out the quilt I’ve slept under the night before and toss it over the clothes line to air. You want the sun to hit it ‘cause sunshine kills a lot of germs, but you don’t want your quilt right out in the hot sun, because that will fade your colors. So, I air my quilt before the sun gets too high, and do my level best to keep the birds out of the garden. It’s too early to pick, so there’s nothin’ else I can do until the dew burns off. I use the time to give thanks for the day. In my own way. I’m not much of one for church.
I had been out here for a while. I judged it to be comin’ up around nine o’clock and I had started back to the house for my sun hat when all of a sudden, all the bird sounds went flat dead. I looked up to see if a hawk was flyin’ over, but there wasn’t no hawk. Not even a cloud. Just shock stillness.
Then, out of nowhere, this crazy little female sparrow flies straight into the screen on my kitchen window. I never seen a bird so terrified. She was beatin’ her wings bloody, peckin’ and pullin’ at the stray wires stickin’ out of the screen, squawkin’ shrillin’. What a racket! She was tryin’ to get into my house, which for a bird is downright crazy. It’s a bad omen. A real bad omen. It usually means a death in the family.
For a second, I thought it was gonna be me, ‘cause my heart fell heavy like ten tons of lead and my guts went all quivery on me. And that bird was still pitchin’ such a hissy fit she was near flailin’ herself to death against the screen, so I whipped off my apron and waved it around to shoo her off...fly away bird! Fly away! Fly away!
My mouth suddenly filled with the taste of copper, and I spit and spit, but I could not get it out.
I went on in the house and latched the screen door tight. I turned the light off in the‹ kitchen and pulled down the shade. I thought I’d make myself a cup of tea and call Doris Ray. She’s the cousin who keeps the closest tabs on the family, so if something bad had happened to us, she’d be the first to know. I put on a sweater and hunkered up over my tea.
The birds were talkin’ amongst themselves again, but not up to level. Definitely not up to where they were... I peeked out. When birds hug the branches in broad daylight, there is evil afoot. I decided I had to know, so I dialed up Doris Ray. She said, “Turn on the TV, Merriweather. Turn on the TV right now!”
What channel?”, I say, she says “Any channel,” and hung up.
I turned it on. Oklahoma City. A bomb.
My god, I’ve never seen so much blood outside a war. Did somebody start a war? A day care center, they say, a truck bomb like at the World Trade Center, but this time it’s Oklahoma. Oklahoma!?
Here comes a woman runnin’ up to the wreckage. She’s lookin’ for her baby and they can’t hold her. She’s past one cop. Wait, mamma, wait! You can’t go in there. Let the man do his job. They got her. Hang on, girl. Hang on.
It’s the Federal Building, so it’s gotta be political, but what a price? What are we payin’ for? Oklahoma? What the hell do we have in Oklahoma that anybody wants so bad they got to blow us up?
Doris Ray called back. Her emergency/disaster unit wasn’t activated to go down there, but she was on call anyway as we were expectin’ bad weather.
I said, “Come on Doris Ray, let’s me and you go give blood. I got to do somethin’ before I cry myself blind.”
We pull up to the hospital, and the line was already two blocks long. Whoever did this must not have counted on us standin’ up for each other like we do. We’re tough damn people. Everybody whose family has been in Oklahoma more than a hundred years is descended from either Indians or outlaws, or both, and we’re gonna get you, you son-of-a-bitch. We gonna put you down like a mad dog.
That’s all people was talkin’ in the blood line, and at the Post Office, and in the bars that night. Speculations on Saddam Hussein or Khaddafi--but to me that didn’t make sense cause Oklahomans have had good relations with the Arabs for years. Half the steak houses in the state serve taboulleh.
Somebody else said Waco because it was April nineteenth, but that didn’t make sense either. Who the hell cares about some weird, gun-collectin’, apocalyptic-cult, pederast who thought the world owed it to him to be a rock star? What kind of hero kills his own people?
The experts were sayin’ Middle East, and I was thinkin’: fine. Let’s see how you like diggin your dead babies from the rubble. Blood for blood. We’ll bomb you all. Bomb you into oblivion, and we won’t care if it’s your babies, or your old people, or what.
Then, it came out that the guys were from Michigan, and I just couldn’t picture wipin’ out all the people in Michigan the way I could when I thought it was gonna be
somebody over there in Baghdad.
I said, “Doris Ray, I am so ashamed.”
She said, “Don’t beat yourself up too bad, Merriweather, you just had a little knee-jerk reaction.”
She’s a paramedic, so I took her word.
Okay, you live in the free-est country in the world. You can go where you want any time you want, say what you want, live any way you want to as long as you don’t hurt anybody. You hate the government? You don’t want to pay taxes? Fine. Stay off the damn roads. Deliver your own goddamn letters. Dig yourself an outhouse in the back yard and dig yourself a water well, too, while you’re at it. See how long you last.
Well, you just can’t wallow in bitterness, can you? Can’t just watch TV and cry. Doris Ray came over and we tried to figure out if we knew anyone who--was in it. We didn’t think we did, but it turns out that my chiropractor’s niece had a job interview at the Department of Agriculture that mornin’. Some lady showed her where the bathroom was on that floor so she could give herself the once over before she went in. She made it, but the lady who showed here where to go got killed. And, Wynona Stokes, right down the road, used to babysit two little boys on her ex-husband’s side who were cousins to one little girl who died in the blast. None of our blood kin was down that way.
So, Doris Ray and me, we started a blanket drive. Blankets are important to our people--her and me are both part Cherokee and blankets count for--let’s call it ‘security’ to us, -- on a lot of different levels. When a couple marries, he gives her a ham and she gives him an ear of corn and we say they join the blankets. When a couple divorces, we say they split the blanket.
I couldn’t find the key to my cedar chest, so Doris Ray broke in with a nail file. She’s the handiest girl with tools I ever seen. I started unpackin’ and unfoldin’ my quilts, and spreadin’ them out on the bed. We’re a long line of quilters in my family.
It was a treasure chest full, with most every design: Double Nine Patch, Tumbling Blocks, Prairie Star, Star of Bethlehem, and a plain, big block quilt pieced by my dear old blind Uncle Bus. Grandma Ruth’s quilt: Flyin’ Geese, she brought from Burke County, North Carolina in 1832. Aunt Taffy’s satin rosette spread--too fragile almost to be handled. A Dresden Plate, signed Leota Charles, 1907. These were family heirlooms, not mine to pass outside the family, so I decided to donate just ones I’d done myself.
Doris Ray started sweatin’. She said, “Hell, let’s go to Wal-Mart and just buy some new.”
I said, “I’m gonna pick three.”
Every time I’d pick one up, she’d say: “Not that one.”
I settled on the Log Cabin I pieced out of Daddy’s workshirts and overalls when he died. Then, I took up the Tree of Life that reminds me so of Mamma, and put it on the pile.
The third one was my pride and joy. Fifty States. The one that has a block for each state embroidered with the official bird and flower. Real colorful, a pleasure to the eye. I took the blue ribbon at the Tulsa State Fair for it.
Doris had eyes for that one, I knew she did, and she bit her lip when I put it in the box. Then she gave me a hug and said, “This will warm their hearts.”
I had worked every thread with love, and my spirit was strong in them all. I chanted a healing prayer over the box before I taped it up. Doris took it out to her car, and I came out back, as I hadn’t been in the garden for four days. I needed a good day in the garden.
The birds had took their chances on each other. They were all paired up and busy building nests. I goosed a few weeds around the tomatoes. I thought of old Nana Sims, that old girl could sure gum a tomato—gobblin’ and grinnin’ with the juice runnin’ down her chin like a little ol’ toothless baby....then, I thought of those little toothless babies, dead in Oklahoma City, who was never gonna get a chance to taste any kind of‹food at all, and it like to broke my heart.
I dragged the hoe on out to the squash. There I found the sparrow, dead. The ants had got to her. I got the shovel and dug a sparrow grave. Coulda done it faster with a post-hole digger, no bigger than a sparrow is, but I felt I owed her a decent burial. She was the first messenger to bring me the terrible news. I think the sky grew too thick with the souls of human beings that day, and it frightened her to death.
Now we gotta try to get over this. We’re not ever gonna forget it, but we got to find a way to put ourselves back together. When they did this to us, good people came from all over to lend a hand, and our brothers and sisters who could not come, let us know they were united in thought and in deed. It happened here, and it happened to us, but we all know it could have been anybody.
In this land, we’re made up of every shade, every color, every stripe. In the morning, we all greet the same sun, and together or apart, agree or disagree, when we lie down at night, we all sleep under the same patchwork called One Nation Indivisible.
They have ripped at our heart. We pick up our thread, pull the pieces together, and we begin to mend.
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