[IV-MAN OF WAR] 

[“If and When” by the Three Degrees begin to play or something like it. A moment in Time. A Memory. A funeral] 

(What is it about men that triggers The Unknown Woman’s memory?) 

UNKNOWN WOMAN 

(NOTE: During a reading or even a show this poem should be performed seated; perhaps the Unknown Woman clutches the U.S. flag) 

(NOTE: Man of War and History Lesson must always be performed together and back to back)

When Hugh and I first met
He was sexy as fuck
Tall
Black
Always had a fresh cut
He liked to  squeeze me on my butt 

(laughs) 

I was working at a bookstore
And  freelance writing
He was coming in to  get his mama a gift
“What do you suggest”
He ask
Tell me bout her
I say 

“She Black
Sweet
like to cook
like supporting Black businesses
like history
she pretty” 

Alright I say
Got the perfect text for her 

When I got the book
His dark eyes linger longer than a proper  gentleman’s eyes should
And I didn’t blush
Or look away
If we  gonna play
we gonna play
Hand him book
Let my hands linger  longer than my proper upbringing said was ok
He didn’t draw his hand away
“You beautiful”
He tell me
Leaning close
And I laugh
And tell him
The way to my heart requires greater words than that 

I give him my number
He text me  right away
First date turned to two
And when I met his mama we all knew 

He was the type of man made for me
And  it helped we had the same type of Tea 

We wed
In a small church
My dress was everything
It had a train that extended the length to eternity and back baby 

We were happy
The happiest I had been 

But
Time tells all tales 

When Hugh told me they were calling him back into service
I was opposed
Having been in the service is one thing
Being in the service is another
I asked him
Why
He said
“Following in the footsteps of the men who went before”
He was an army brat
Said
“I wanna do my part” 

My heart couldn’t persuade him
Nor could my words
Told him
I was unmoved by the idea of Black men
Immigrant men
Bleeding for a country that makes regular blood offerings to racism 

I tell him
I got a family of men
Who went to war
And returned changed
And
Not all my cousins returned even when their bodies did 

“I been to war”
He say
“and baby we fighting our own wars everyday” 

And I didn’t have the heart to tell  him
I hear his tears when we sleep 

I know the way he paces when he thinks I don’t know 

I didn’t have the heart to tell him
that sometimes his  eyes weep when they stare at me 

He say
“You a witch can’t you draw a  charm”
I tell him
But you don’t believe in magic 

And
how I wish he did 

And no amount of pleading changed his mind 

It was summer
When the call came
Said
Hugh won’t be  returning
Said
he died defending his country
This country
A country that doesn’t even find it important to call him he
A country that now tells me we ain’t really married
A country that tells me I ain’t really She
A country that props up a racist bully
and call him president
He left me for a  country
That to me ain’t never been too kind
Left me to a country
That constantly mistreats me and mine
Even when we die for them 

A wife
I was
Once held in such high regard
Now a  widow bride
Who holds ashes
Close to her Breast
as if
my laments bring me anything other than more memories
a siren call for sorrow 

My husband
Trans like me
died for this cesspool
For a place that hates us
For this wretched hell
For this withered place 

I got a family of men
Who went to war
For a country that don’t give them no respect
For a country that gives me even less 

(Redbone Woman begins to sing the National Anthem. Unknown Woman raises her fist in defiance. Peaches and Didi join her. They are defying the toxic patriotism of those who wish to kill Trans people. This is a funeral for Hugh.) 

(The light shifts swiftly, cutting Redbone Woman’s singing off as a spot hits Didi. Didi gives the Eulogy. History Lesson is a sermon.) 

INTERLUDE II- HISTORY LESSON 

DIDI 

Someone once told me
“Not all the founding fathers were bad”
As if offering absolution to violent white men was ever my life’s calling
They got a whole system that makes excuses for their abuses
I won’t be its mouthpiece
I won’t be its magical negro
I won’t be its crucified Christ 

History lesson
In 1442
A white man
Dumbfounded
smelling like shit
Lands on sacred ground
Found Gods there
called them savage
White man plants flag on Edens
And demands even myths become his playthings
Brought Godlessness to the Gods
And thought himself righteous
You call him Columbus
I call him
dumb ass dirty white man who smelled of the shit he slept in the night before 

You see
white men want even there God to beg on his knees
Utilize heaven for justifying their making Earth hell
In their hands
God becomes a rapist
And Mary
becomes nothing more than the first recorded case of Stockholm syndrome 

Before that
Europe once Europa
Once knew what rape feels like
When Zeus devoured her womanhood
And made the rivers within her become cold
So
angry Europe
Abandoned her Blackness to pale petitions of whiteness
And the seeds wrought in her womb
Forgot the lyrics to the psalms Black Mother once sang
Became imitations of the African Grandmother womb by whom Europa’s own milk still drinks 

After
then
White men with musket
And biblical text
Decimated Grandmother’s babies
Destabilized economies
called it scientific fact
Called it the modern age
Called it the American way
Grandmother Africa still groans
Weeps tears of blood
A bountiful of riches She births
Riches that Her children pay as tribute to now skin bleached Europe
Who spreads white supremacy
and call it missionary work
Who call it law 

Even
After
Black folk
Fought for freedom
Became affluent in deed
Spoke in tongues white folk couldn’t comprehend
Boot straps they were pulled up from
By their own hands
White men
Destructive gnats
Come
Birthing genocide on US soil
Their DNA recalling when their ancestors killed Indigenous folk before
Tulsa burns down
Black bodies in mass graves
White men remember when they made a trail of tears bleed lives
O how white Men know how to kill
Displace
Erase
And feign absolution 

Before then
Your Declaration of Independence
Called me and mine savages 

Now
Someone say
“Not all the founding fathers were bad”
And I say
Allowing slavery
Is the same as enslaving
Allowing rape
Is the same as being a rapist
Allowing the genocide of First Nations people
Is the same as killing them
Allowing evil
Is its own form of participating in it 

There are already laws to excuse the evils of white men
History books that pretend away their violence
White women who look the other way
A system of death and destruction that reinforces them
No
I have no more for these supposed “founding fathers”
Or the white men who have decimated the people
Who have decimated this land
You can have them and their ills
For my linguistic defenses are needed for the people whose lives they destroyed

Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi (she/her) is a Black Nigerian, Cuban, Indigenous, American performance artist,  a Helen Hayes-nominated actress, author, educator, speech writer, a Helen Hayes Award-winning playwright, advocate, dramaturg, a Hayes-nominated choreographer.