A letter from Randi’s father.
Cast
Randi Halle Millien
Shane Mark Millien
Roderick Brian Ashton Smith (Instagram @bashtons)
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
Music
EStrings Intro by Eendee of looperman.com
Created by Mark and Halle Millien
Cover Art by Halle Millien
Written, Directed and Produced by Mark Millien
Special Thanks to my boy Brian who came through in the clutch. He’s an amazing performer and a better friend.
Roderick’s Letter:
Hi. Uh, hello. Hi. I’m already bad at this. I’m sorry. This is so unfair to you both. You may have heard your mother and I, the other night. My intentions may not matter, but I didn’t mean for it to escalate the way that it did. I always wonder afterwards when it was that I lost control, and, it’s hard to pinpoint. I don’t know what mistakes I’m making anymore. Every morning I try to decide what the right thing to do is and by the time the sun goes down I still have no idea if I’d spent the day making things worse or making them better. I don’t know what will matter most to you in however many years it will be until you hear this. It’s supposed to serve as a time capsule, so maybe you’ll be adults. Maybe you’ll already have kids of your own. I’d like to have that conversation with you one day, parent to parent. I’m hoping that my actions will seem justified then, because I can’t justify them now, to my two beautiful children. Your uncle Desmond and aunt Mara love you very much, they would do anything for you, but I know it’s not the same as having me there. When this is all over I’ll sit each of you on my lap and we’ll talk about why I was away. Why I left without saying goodbye. I was always happy with your mom. It was never a fairytale, but I was proud of our story. I always felt lucky that she would even talk to me. I’d never met anyone like her. We were friends first. I watched guys approach her, watch them struggle with the words, fumble maintaining eye contact. Eventually receding until forgotten, with a resumé spotlighting all their tiny failures. I studied their advances so that I wouldn’t make their mistakes, knowing I would inevitably make my own. The day I found the courage to test my thesis, I had rehearsed my approach like a TV host’s monologue. I knew where to pause for effect, for laughter, for thoughtful consideration. I’d practiced when to look away and when to absorb her in fullness, calibrating against creepy, fine tuning my stare into a gaze. My mirror must have been so sick of me. It was a Saturday morning in the Spring. We were meeting Desmond and Mara for daydrinks. Not just them. Your uncles Frank, Juan, Serge, Marcus, Josh, Joseph and Robert. Your aunts Jessica, Jolie, Patricia, Tommy, Lolo, Eve, Tika and Ebony. I thought there might be safety in numbers if things didn’t go as planned, but back then we were always together. We didn’t need an occasion. So different from now. We’ve all dispersed like dandelion threads on the wings of wishes. And even if we hadn’t, now we live in isolation. Normal feels so far away. I asked her a couple of days in advance if she could help me go buy a suit for a wedding that was coming up later in the summer. She liked to clown me about how I dressed so I thought it would come across like I was taking her “suggestions” seriously. I’d pick her up, we’d spend a few hours together while I tried on ties and shiny shoes. She could see me look my best but in a casual environment. I could cheat her imagination into perceiving me differently. After a morning of tailoring, I’d ask her if she could give me a supplemental course, graduate with honors, or something like that. I got there 30 minutes early with Dunkin Donuts vanilla coffee that I knew was her favorite. I would catch her off her game, unprepared, shields down. I really was confident when I walked up to her door, but when she opened it...it was like getting to the dragon’s lair after weeks of planning on how to get out alive. She wasn’t ready yet. Her hair was everywhere at once like a fuzzy star and too beautiful to stare at directly. She had on an oversized t shirt. That’s it. A baggy faded inconsequential t shirt that managed somehow to hang on her like an heirloom tapestry. She said hey. And then I knew. It was pretend casual in the same way I was poorly trying to imitate. She was all stealth and the word was a shuriken. I stood there bleeding from the heart and lungs, trying to form a sentence, a word, a thought. In a jumble, sensations came over me that my lizard brain translated. HI. WHAT. NICE. HOW. YOU. FINE. I. SORRY. COFFEE. SHOES. But my wound was mortal. My breath came out in short clips while my lungs drowned in shame. I had been a fool. I wasn’t a hunter. I was meat. And the dragon had been waiting. She put a hand on mine and I was so thankful for the mercy of a quick kill. I thought that I was an eskimo brother to all those fools I tried to leach victory from and then I remembered that we were the opposite of eskimo brothers but I didn’t know the word for that and I was the King of All Fools and then...she willed the cup of coffee from my hand like a magic trick and said, “So do I get to be your date for this wedding, because I never asked, but it only seems fair considering the work I have in front of me.” And somehow I managed a not too feeble sounding “That was the plan,” and watched those dice tumble off my lips heady with the stakes, waiting for her mouth to annihilate or vindicate. She said “Good. Come in, I’ll get dressed.” Sevens. My life was never the same after that. Desmond and I, when we were kids, had always talked about what it would be like to have kids of our own. We were both determined to be different than our fathers. I’m so proud of Desmond, but it pains me more than I can describe to know how far I have fallen short. I’m hoping in the years to come I will have made it all up to you. What I want you to understand about this moment is that...it felt like being called to war. The stories you hear about Vietnam, Korea, the Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan, they were all muddy with questionable motivations and no clear goals. World War II was the last time this country seemed to have a purity in conflict. Our people were still being killed or degraded at the whims of white men, cheered on by white women, and shunned or spit upon by what are now People of Color, in unity, but then we were niggers and they weren’t and that was that. But the fight came to us and we responded. Black pilots and infantrymen distinguished themselves in battle against an enemy that was literally attempting to destroy all non Aryans and establish a master race. Despite the circumstances of our service, serve we did. With valor. And though our contribution was mostly ignored in the lifetimes of those who survived, our stories were told and they’ve become sacred. This moment feels like that to me. Our people are dying at a much greater rate than whites or POC, and so this virus has made us niggers again. Alone and vulnerable. And I have never been a nigger and my children were not born niggers and I want to do everything in my power to make sure that this remains the case. Because our story must be told. If we leave it for others to tell, there will be omissions. There will be faulty narratives. And there will be lies. I trained to be a nurse because I wanted to help people. Here in Dallas, right now, the virus is under control. But in New York, it’s like something out of a Black Mirror episode. I left last week to try and help make a difference. Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not a hero. I am no slayer of dragons. A hero would’ve had the courage to kiss my children on the head and tell them that everything would be all right. A hero would’ve held the love of his life in his arms and found a way to make her understand his choices and to heal the place in her that he had broken. I couldn’t do those things because I am a coward. I don’t have the strength to see any of you and leave in uncertainty. My optimism can only breathe in a space of limited consequences. Outside of that, I am as lost as anyone else, and my bravado has always been a watery illusion. Whatever I’ve said to you about why I did what I did in the past, I hope this clarifies it in some way that will be meaningful to you. If this is the last time you will hear my voice, then know that I regret it. I regret all of it.
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