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Picture
La Llorona
Cecelia Raker


People:
MARIA:

A sixteen-year-old girl. She might be Latina; she might just be taking Spanish classes at school.

LA LLORONA:
The reason you don’t go out alone at night down by the arroyo, a ghastly woman with long, dark hair. She wears a torn white dress and string of severed children’s hands. She is Latina.


Place:
The arroyo out behind a bad neighborhood, on the edge of the desert in the American Southwest, right now. The streambed is dry most of the time, but when the rains come, the water flows fast enough to kill you.

A dark and stormy night. Weeds lash the banks of the arroyo, where water flows fast and angry against the dry earth. MARIA, a gangly girl with dark hair, makes her way down the embankment.

MARIA
Hey!
You coming to get me?
You real, ghost lady?
Hey!
Come and get me!
A long wait, the wind rising. MARIA definitely isn’t scared nope, she is holding it together. For sure. She’s not crying. Shuttup.

MARIA
Come and get me.
Please.
An eery weeping rises above the wind. LA LLORONA stumbles on. She’s whistling something that might be a children’s song or lullaby (A La Ru Ru Nino? Ring Around the Rosy?) interspersed with sobs that might be giggles.

LA LLORONA
aay, mis hijos!
will you give me your name, mija, will you will you will hey kid will you give me your hey kid
wanna come down
by the water tonight
wanna hear the water run
in the arroyo
it sounds like music
ven, ven, hey mija
you wanna tell me what your naaaaame is
come on

MARIA
Maria. my name is Maria.

LA LLORONA
really?
no jodas?
me too!
that’s my name too!
you’re not shitting me?
I got the same name as you!

MARIA
yeah, I know. we got the same name. ‘cept mine’s alive.
so.
um.
How’s it going?

LA LLORONA
Llorona down by the dry creek
by the cracks in the dirt
where the water don’t run no more Llorona
llorando
hair splayed out on the wind
like a crow wing
like a splatter of blood like a
child’ssssss cry in the night Llorona
eyes como lunas blancas
como dry bone snake spines out in the desert
no pupils

MARIA
that good, huh?

LA LLORONA
Llorona hears the blood
pumping in your
burnt out veins
squeezing your fingernails
into your plump soft palms
hears your eyelids straining Llorona
holding in salty water
why?

MARIA
I got a situation.
he left, and I.
well.
She rubs her hand on her abdomen and lets it rest there.

LA LLORONA
aaaay, mis hijos!

MARIA
I’ma be all like you, now.
One Maria
Two Maria
Red Maria--

LA LLORONA
mira mija
you don’t wanna be like
me
pinche saint Peter won’t let me into the pearly gates
keeps asking me where my kids issssssssssss
what kind of fucking question is that, coño
you KNOW where my kids—
asshole gringo what the fuck

MARIA
well gimme a sec down there in the water with those rocks and the flash flood situation and
you can
tell him I’m your kid.

LA LLORONA
you're not a kid

MARIA
I'm only 16, bitch.

LA LLORONA
not a kid you're pregnant
A long silence.

LA LLORONA
Llorona took the soft ssssskin
the little unsure smiles
the tiny fingernails
like jewels
freed the sound from their
little ears
opened their faces with
rocks
blood like lace in the water Llorona
went back to el rico rich man and said
I’m a virgin again
I got no kids, I’m pure
I’m free.
And that pendejo still wouldn’t marry me.
Llorona looks back over her slump shoulder
long line
long, long line of Marias with bastards in the womb
some of us handle the situation with more
grace
than others

MARIA
I got no grace.

LA LLORONA
Llorona outside the gate looking in and it’ssssssss
peaceful
in where they let you see God
wish I could say
go home and let that baby grow

MARIA
wish I could wish I could wish I could should would...
whatever.
Aren’t you sposed to like eat my soul or something?

LA LLORONA
tienes miedo?
you scared of me, mija?
got old dry blood under my
fingernails from prying open
the lid of my coffin tienes miedo?
I could breath on you and
the sound of demons could
never leave your ears Lllllllllllorrrrrona
you want that?

MARIA
no but.

LA LLORONA
Llorona curling up her hands
in that wild hair you got
latching on
como bats and birds and inssssects writhing and
pulling you
down under the dessssspair
with me

MARIA
I shouldn't've

LA LLORONA
oh, late for that now!
you’re gonna get it,
you’re gonna get what I got to take from you.

MARIA
no, I only—my mom says I have to I have to go with her to the hospital tomorrow and I

LA LLORONA
you're gonna get it

MARIA
what's it?

LA LLORONA
it t t t t t t
Llorona
heart like cactus spines
full in the drought
cut one open and you find
agua milagrosa

MARIA
milagrosa.
Miracle?

LA LLORONA
dejame decirte—
you claw your way down deep
past the grave dirt Llorona
and the iron smell
on your hands from
holding onto those pearly gate bars and
looking inside y el picor en el cuello where they won’t stop
looking at you looking at you
looking
get down under the smell
and the weeping and the
blood
find it t t t t
find
no matter rich man no matter pure
you just you only you you are the one
choosing.

MARIA
heart like
Llorona--
LA LLORONA disappears. MARIA shivers and lets the rain fall on her upturned face. The wind whistles and weeps.

Cecelia Raker is a Boston-based playwright currently at work on a cycle of movement-and-text pieces based on fairytales, a few more traditional plays, and a collaborative experience with the Project:Project devising collective. Recent exploits include production in the Boston Theater Marathon and a reading at the 2014 Great Plains Theater Conference Playlab. www.ceceliaraker.tumblr.com

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