Miracle Play

by Joyce Carol Oates

Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1974

87 pages

Excerpt

TITUS

You got that plugged in?—is there a socket back there?

(to audience)

He pluggin' that in. All this is a wire for electricity, here. See, it's got the insulation, or whatever they call it. And this-here is a 100-watt bulb, it says so on the top of it . . . all this small part's too trivial for my dream, the dream took care of itself an' didn't bother with such nuisance. O.K., you got that plugged in? Now I will explain: every black boy in America has a certain thought, that he grows up into, an' that is the electric chair . . . but damn if they ain't gettin' rid of it, state by state . . . an' I expect it will turn up like the wild animals in a museum somewhere, where you can't get at it. That changes a way of life. That modifies a way of life. But I was born at such a time that I had a long expectation of it, the electric chair, an' it made me think fast, an' I come to like it, you know, in a crazy way . . . how you get to like something you been adjacent to for awhile . . . .

(boastfully)

In fact, you people are comin' to like me . . . I very adjacent to you. However, this is the fact: that the trick of the electric-stuff is in my head, like in all black boys' heads, an' their mommas naturally got that worry also, so it a family enterprise. But I am not a nigger, I am something else, an' that allow me to triumph over the shitty little trick of the electric-magic, which is just some plugged-in strategy, that anybody could do if he pulled the switch . . . . So I take this 100-watt bulb an' I display it like this

(holds it high, in his right hand; like a sword or a torch)

an' I talk to myself in utter confidence . . . in the magic, that it will work. You watch.

(He closes his eyes, holds one hand to his forehead as if concentrating very hard.)

. . . Here is the need for some hard concentration!

(He tries again, seems to be straining, so that his face twists into a mask of anguish.)

This calls for strong energies . . . all the flow-through of the energies that is loose in here, an' in the universe . . . but I equal to it, I an't goin' to back away . . . .

Page address:
http://jco.usfca.edu/works/drama/miracle.html