SCENE 2: A NEW WAY OF BEING

Same place, the sun is a little bit dimmer than it was before, mid-afternoon. DARNELL, JOSEPH, and LORAINE are all in their respective seats, paying no mind to one another.

A song by Kaytranada plays, JAZZ enters stage left. Gold Headphones, blue JANSPORT backpack, blue jeans, long blue hoodie, light feet, and a joyful heart. She dances paying no mind to the scene she's stumbled into. Until she trips and falls, scraping her hand very badly, the music stops.

LORAINE gets up and looks in her bag pulling out a bottle of water, some alcohol swabs, band-aids, and walks over to the kid. JOSEPH and DARNELL look on, she bends down until she is eye level with JAZZ. No words are said, LORAINE smiles brightly and disarmingly and holds out her hands, which acts as a question for JAZZ to accept or not to accept care. JAZZ puts her arm in LORAINE's hand and LORAINE begins treating the wound.

DARNELL: So you just have a first aid kit handy on you wherever you go?

LORAINE: (Nonchalantly) You never know when you might need it.

JOSEPH: Kid, what were you doing out here not paying attention to where you were going?

(JAZZ does not answer, her gaze fixed on the wound LORAINE is cleaning up.)

JOSEPH: Child? You can't answer when grown folks are talking to you?

(LORAINE stops what she is doing for a moment to look at JAZZ, she taps her left ear and points to JOSEPH. JAZZ gets the point and takes her headphones off and looks up at JOSEPH.)

JAZZ: (Thick Brooklyn accent, an child's voice.) What's up, Mister?

JOSEPH: What were you doing not paying attention to where you were going? Your mama ain't never tell you to be aware? That you don't have the luxury of not being aware of your surroundings? Of dancing freely out in the street?

(DARNELL is silent, his lips in a thin line.)

JOSEPH: Where your people at hmm? What you even doing out here alone -

(LORAINE finishes up cleaning the wound.)

LORAINE: (Chidingly and with finality.) Alright, Joe.

(She smiles at JAZZ and fixes up her sleeves.)

LORAINE: What's your name dear?

JAZZ: (smiles, it is a large and toothy smile.) Me? They call me Jazz.

LORAINE: (laughs) Well Jazz, when's the last time you ate? Hungry? (JAZZ is silent.)

LORAINE: You can tell me Jazz. You hungry? (JAZZ nods her head, and LORAINE reaches into her bag pulls out a sandwich baggy, a banana and the half-full water bottle.)

LORAINE: You eat ham? (JAZZ nods.)

DARNELL: (Scoffs.) You feeding swine to that child?

(LORAINE'S gaze cuts to him.)

LORAINE: You got something else to feed her?

(DARNELL cuts his eyes away)

LORAINE: I didn't think so, here you go sweetheart. (She holds the food out to JAZZ who looks a little hesitant to take it at first but after some thought, gently takes the food from her hands.)

JAZZ: (opens the bag quickly and takes a few rushed bites.)Thank you, ma'am.

JOSEPH: Are we really going to act like her walking around in headphones, unaware, unhearing, unyielding, is a good idea? You remember the funeral, the mourners, the poster of the "gentle-souled big guy with the headphones"? ALL Micheal Brown.

DARNELL: Joe, she is a child. Should this child be punished for doing what children do?

JOSEPH: She ain't just a child, she's a black child.

LORAINE: (Voice hard and unwavering) But a child nonetheless, and here with us, right now, she will remain and be treated as one despite the fact that she may not be treated as such by the institutions that surround her. T

There is tension in the air, JOSEPH shrugs his shoulders and sighs, understanding there is no use starting a fights that he won't win.

LORAINE: (Thoughtful.) Joe, do you know what learned helplessness is? (JOSEPH does not answer.) LORAINE It is when a person who is traumatized gets used to their traumatization. Their coping mechanisms can be varied and complex, rules of behavior that keep them safe and alive. Rules that they force upon others traumatized like themselves. And if this traumatization has been experienced by a whole group of people then it becomes shared trauma. The ties that bind those groups of people become not just of blood, love, and family but of survival and trauma. It becomes the culture of that people as does the stifling of any inherent growth those people would have a chance of cultivating just because of those generational coping mechanisms.

DARNELL: Are you saying the ways our parents, the ways which kept us alive was wrong? Are you blaming them for their own reaction to the horrendous things that were happening to them every day of their lives?

LORAINE: No. Their ways, it worked then. It kept us alive, but like a stint on a broken bone it was temporary, it was not meant to last, but meant to encourage us to cultivate and seek healing. Those ways, as thankful as we are for them… are now obsolete.