Shane begins to trusts Randi’s inexplicable instincts.
Cast
Randi Halle Millien
Shane Mark Millien
Mara La
SFX and Music Contributors
SFX
Q Tone [Query]
Tone 4.wav by patchen of freesound.org
Q Tone [Response]
Tone 3.wav by patchen of freesound.org
Gunshot
Heathers Gunshot Effect2.wav by okieactor of freesound.org
Music
Mara’s Letter Theme
My Heart Sets In The West by Planetjazzbass of looperman.com
Created by Mark and Halle Millien
Cover Art by Halle Millien
Written, Directed and Produced by Mark Millien
Thank you to everyone that has supported us during this difficult time. Thank you to the protesters risking their bodies and health. Thank you to the medical professionals who are healing bodies or granting them peace. Thanks dad. Dedicated to my brother Mitchel and the future of our family.
Mara’s Letter:
I’ve had a hard time figuring out what I am supposed to be doing right now. People are feeling “called” to things, to do things in this moment. To show up. “Where and when” is how you’re supposed to respond. “Sign me up.” Less than that, and you’re not sufficiently woke. And people tend to react strongly to accusations of being complicit to the institutions of white supremacy. Your father, he doesn’t think I react strongly to anything. He’s out now. At a protest. They’ve made their way over the bridge, apparently, complying with the downtown curfew. Like everything else in this city, even the agitators are milquetoast. The crowds at the White House yesterday were gassed, right next to the famous church at Lafayette Park. One minute he’s in the Rose Garden giving a speech, evading questions, or answering them in the most selfishly convoluted ways possible. You could hear it like ambient noise as the backdrop to his rhetoric, people screaming and unnamed soldiers pressing. He called them terrorists. He said that he would call in the military if governors didn’t have the stomach to declare war on their citizens. Then he left the dais and strolled across the park, to take a picture with a bible, one he couldn’t claim as his own, and held it up like a hostage with a proof of life document, while the cameras clicked. Afterward, the Arlington police chief removed his detachment, seemingly disgusted that they’d been used to remove the protestors so that the Commander in Chief could dip his toe in militant evangelical propaganda. I’m trying to keep a grip on all the loose threads that keep slipping from my fingers and somehow I’m not doing enough, but I am exhausted. Everyday. By the time I’ve made dinner or cleaned up dinner or wrangled the mulish children towards their bedtime rituals, after a day of redundant meetings, hosted by an employer that is laying off people every few weeks, cutting the pay of those they decide to keep, and trying to solve EVERYTHING for everyone, I have nothing left. Nothing. I’m angry that I feel guilty. I’m hurt that I feel lazy. I’m frustrated that I feel frustrated. I’m anxious that I’m excited by nothing. This carousel is killing me. It’s just too much. Should I be reading more or less? Should I be speaking up at my job that is making expendable decisions or applaud any minimal effort they muster In Black life appeasement? I can’t organize a virtual walkout! I don’t work at Facebook! Am I supposed to memorize all the names? Breonna Taylor’s killers still haven’t been arrested. Sean Monterrosa is a new one. A peaceful protester who put his hands up and kneeled right before a police officer shot him five times through the windshield of his unmarked car, because of the gun he saw in his pant’s pocket that turned out to be a hammer. I should have a better handle on this, three months in. I should have adapted to this new shitty normal. I should be sponsoring teachers or composing the new black anthem or finding a cure to common idiocy. I should be finding inspiration in the “movement”. But I’m not. I don’t. It’s been a week since the protests started. The EU has weighed in, calling out American cops for appalling abuses of power. The world is watching and they’re siding with us, but you think that’s stopped them? Twenty-three states have called in the National Guard, thousands have been arrested, and they keep beating us, maiming us, killing us, while the world is watching. And not just us. Old. Young. Black. White. Asian. But mostly poor. There are wildfires in Siberia. Right now. It’s 20 degrees hotter there than on average. Siberia. We are broke. We have no savings. Where would I find another job, in this climate? Where is my hope supposed to come from? What I won’t do is put that on you two. You are coming of age in all of this. You’ll grow up suspicious of the air you breathe and the company it keeps. A white supremacist, more obvious than most, sits in the White House. I’m supposed to look to our children to save us? Am I wrong to feel like we don’t deserve to be saved? That we owed you more than this? The marching has lasted longer than I thought it would this time, I don’t know what makes it different, but am I supposed to think it will last or that it will change anything? Why am I not enough? To provide for our family? To teach you? To raise you in strength? To keep you safe? The maternal mortality rate in America is absurdly high for a first world country. Most of it is due to the rate of death from black women who are pregnant. All of the research suggests that it is not physiological or economic or any of the natural drivers of illness and susceptibility. The research indicates that it is prolonged exposure to racism. That it eats away at the core of you, forcing your body to make a choice. You, or the baby, and so many of the mothers die. A woman asked me yesterday at the store, how I was doing. I think I was supposed to know her. This white woman standing too close, eyes anchored with concern over the brim of her star-spangled mask. I think we’ve met. She seemed so genuine. I told her I was weathered. That’s the term for it. The accumulated abuse of macro and microaggressions. Weathered. She had no idea what I meant but she wanted to help me, she asked me what she could do, she was so desperate to fix it. I showed her a picture of you two, along with Randi and Harrison, on my phone from just a few days ago running inside from the backyard as the sky opened wide and an avalanche of rain funneled from bright clouds. I told her “Love them when I’m gone. I’m always gone.” I don’t know why I said that. Still. I’m not going anywhere. I couldn’t if I wanted to and there isn’t anywhere I’d rather be, but I meant it. Somehow. And she heard me. No one cries that hard unless they’re really listening.
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