HOLY LAND by Sandra Kleven

A Dramatic Monologue

Holy Land

I will take you to a place I used to be.
I will take you for no reason.
I can tell you nothing.
I have no story.

I don’t even want to go there myself.

So . . . how do we begin
this story you refuse to hear?
Should we start this tale of winter here?
On this broad reach of
river gone to ice?

Do you hold a memory of deep and bitter cold?
Bring it up now. Double it. Add wind.
Add the bite of fine ice
against your cheek.
Around your face, try beaver fur
Guard hair long, coarse and silky.

The undercoat, like goose down, tickles in your nose
when you breathe in.
It is a winter hat, handmade for those who run dogs.
You don’t run dogs.
Your hat cost you 400 dollars
at the museum store.

And we better get you gloves, too.
Beaver mittens, laced on a cord that
runs up both sides and around your neck,
like mittens for a first-grade child.
There is a reason for this. A good reason.
Think of what it means to lose a glove out here.
This is a deadly place.
No second chances for you out here.

It is soooo cold.
Are you gonna walk or ride behind me?
It’s up to you.
There is nothing to be afraid of here.
You can’t fall through this ice.
It’s four feet thick where we stand.
Look, tracks of trucks and snowmachines.
It’s the ice road.
No danger here.
The only thing to fear is
open water.
You know,
unexpected
gaps in the ice.
Watch out for them.

So, you want to go home now.
Holy cow!!
We are just getting started.
You just got here and already you want to go home.
Okay, okay.
How can we get you home again?
Do you have 400 dollars?
Maybe the jet will take you back to Anchorage
while there is still time.
Oh, no!
You don’t have that kind of money.
You spent all your money on your
hat and gloves.

You will stay
for a while,
Gussaq.

That’s the way it is here.
No roads in.
No roads out.
We go around in
circles here.

This is a plain land.
Nothing to see.
Look in all directions.
You see nothing.
Blue sky today. White ice.
It blinds.

But, you know, if you will look down . . .
In summer,
to see the beauty of the
land,
look down.
Fall to your knees.

Press your face to the verdant green.
Let the fragrant wash of this moist carpet
draw you down into the earth
where you belong.
Dig a deep hole to make a hiding place.
What will you see from there?
What will you see looking out
from your hiding place?
Welcome to our world!
Yes, I welcome you.
I am glad to see you.
Today, I will show you this place.
I will make introduction.
We will walk to boardwalks
and the graveyard
so you can learn.

Come with me,
as if I am a ghost
of Christmas past.
I will be the ghost of Slaviq night.
All right! I will tell you that
Slaviq is our name for Russian Christmas.
Why can’t you just think about things
for a while?
You have to be spoon-fed.
You are so demanding
in all this.
Your mind
will fill in the
blanks
if you just pay
attention.

If you will listen,
I will tell a
powerful story.
I will show
you what you are
in for.
Come now and look at our dead.
Or, maybe, wait a while
for that.

Instead, I will show you the store.
Why is this store important?
Anyone would ask that.
Don’t apologize for your questions.
How could you possibly know?

This is our store.
I see it in dreams.
I go into the store
because I want to get a copy of the
Tundra Drums.
We’ll look at the ads.
Find you some work
to do
around here.
But I have more reasons.
We are going to the store because
I want to see someone
I know.
I look for someone
I know.
Take care not to ask about anyone because
they might be dead.
People turn up dead
around here
all the time.
It is better just to watch
and see who shows up.

This is our store.
So I told you that already.
Did you look around when I said it?
Did you pay attention to this store?
It is a big store.
It sells clothing, food and guns.
It sells everything you need.
Do not dismiss this store.
The store is where we go
when we need the
things money can buy.

“Camai, Peter. How you doing?
Eeyee, so cold.
I am doing good.
How is your sister, Olinka?
When you go back to the village,
tell Olinka to send me some strips.”

Peter is looking for a jug.
He will get drunk and freeze tonight.
His mother is not living.
She fell off the sea wall and drowned.
So often they do not find the
people who drown
in the river.
Do you want to know why?
Do you want to know
about this place
at all?
Watch what you say.

I will tell you why they disappear.
If I appear to blame you,
please know that none
of what has happened
is your fault.
My ruined attitude
and my ugly mood
are not your responsibility.

This river,
the river you walked
when we began this tale,
runs deep and cold
in the summer.

The waters are glacier fed,
heavy with silt.
When you fall in,
your boots,
your pockets
and all the creases in your clothes,
fill up with silt.

The weight pulls you under.
Gone.
Just as quick and as finally
as in the old gangster movies
when they filled your boots
with wet cement and dumped you in the
East River.

So, they call the Troopers to come in and
drag for your body.
Maybe they look harder for white people,
I don’t know.
I guess your body will end up on a sand bar.
They will pull you
into a boat
and take you to a church for
a decent
Christian burial.
They will sing “Amazing Grace,”
I imagine,
and they will sing of those
in peril on the sea.
We will weep with genuine sadness
at your passing
and we will make room
in our graveyard for you.

But today, you need a job!
Let’s find you a good job.
You can work here as
a nurse, a doctor, a counselor, a supervisor.
You can drive a cab. You can be a bootlegger.
You can run dogs.
There is a lot of work
for smart Gussaqs
like you.

This is not so much the thing that bothers us.
It’s not that you Gussaqs come in
and try to take over everything
bringing your brains
in a briefcase
with school papers for your wall
to show us that
someone thinks
you’re smart.
Even though this is an annoying manner,
it is not the biggest problem
you bring us.
It troubles us when you go.
You can’t take it for long.
You bow out.
You are the three-year people
or maybe fifteen-.
Long enough to earn your retirement.

We stay for the long run.
We are the people
of 10,000 years.
When you are off
swimming in Mexico
we remember you.
If you ever return,
we greet you like family.
Our concern for you is real.
You will set aside
what I show you here.
I know this before I begin.
You will go back to wherever it is
you came from.
You will go to where you will not hear me whisper,
“What have you done to my people?”
And you will work at forgetting.

I would take you somewhere else
in this small river town
but there is nowhere else to go.
There is another store down by the river
but we were already down that way
and what would be different if we went back, huh?
What would be different?
We could go to the high school
but it is just a high school,
like any high school anywhere.
What could we see there?
Should we join our friends in the
high school gym and
watch the Warriors play?
Should we “honor our loved ones
not by how we grieve
but by how we live”?
Are you thinking of telling me how to live?

The other place we always go around here
is the post office.
It is no different from any post office
except that the outer door
is locked at night.
Imagine that.
Here, in this cruel landscape,
the door is locked at night.
Well, of course. We must understand that
they do not wish to have drunks
come in at night
just to pass out
and be safe from
death
by freezing.
No problem.
City cops will get most of the drunks
who roam the streets.
Take them into
protective custody.
Throw them into the
back of the van
and drive real wild
to throw them
around
like
pinballs.
It’s the only way to teach them
a thing or two.

I, myself, don’t like drunks either.
I don’t like the way
the drunk Gussaq
pulled down the pants
of his Native girlfriend
showing her privates
to the others at the
party.
She wasn’t into it.
She tried to fight him off.
He made her feel low and ashamed.
It didn’t matter that she was drunk.
She knew what was happening.
And these things had happened to her
so many times.
The raping and the ridicule.
All she does now is
drink.
I don’t know.

She left her kids years ago
but they still come around
trying to find her.
Her youngest son is twenty-one.
I know him.
He wants her to act like a mother.
She wants him to just
leave her
alone.

He finds her drinking
and he beats her up so bad.
This got him arrested and
now he’s in jail again.
I just don’t know what to do about this.
I’ve talked to him
so many times.
Are you sick of this place yet?

What could I say
to teach you
a thing or two?

There is a museum.
Let’s go.
Let’s look at the old times.
It is smelly in here.
It stinks of old seal oil and
animal skins.
See, this is a raincoat from the old days.
It is sewn from strips
of seal gut.
There are shoes woven from grass.
There are mukluks
and fancy fur parkas.
Fine hand sewing,
a design for each place.
Touch this here.
Delicate beadwork.
Tiny seed beads
red, blue, orange.
There are things for sale here.
This is where you bought your hat!
You remember now.
You should get some carved ivory earrings.
The hook for the ear,
carved from the ivory.
Walrus tusks.
When you get some money,
send them to your mother.
She will rub them with her fingers.
She will treasure them.
She must penetrate her piercing with a blade of grass
to slowly make it bigger
so the hook will fit through.

Do you see something else?
Is there something in that grass basket?
Did the Shaman leave anything in here?
Maybe not.
Maybe there is nothing here for us.
The best old things are kept behind glass.
Keep that power locked up.

One hundred years ago,
the old ones warned the missionaries
not to build on this side of the river.
They did not curse the land as some say.
It was a friendly warning.
Think about it.
Does a wise man build his house upon the sand?
Who would build a town
on the outside bend
of a meandering river?
This river slashes through the delta silt.
The only thing solid in the ground is permafrost.
Once the river exposes it, the permafrost thaws
and the riverbank fails,
falling away as the river
moves toward town.
Can you see what happens here?

We used to sit and watch the river erode,
taking houses,
washing machines
and cars.
We have often wondered how
these Gussaqs could be
so stupid.
Now, they have to move the whole town
back every
ten or twenty years.
All the old town has been
lost to the river.
Millions went into the
new sea wall.
With freezer tubes that go
into the earth
to keep the permafrost
solid.
We just don’t understand
Gussaqs at all.
They never will admit
they made a
mistake.

Well, I know that
you will want to hear about Natalia.
So, I suppose we could go to her grave
to tell a nice story.
What could we bring to her grave?
We need to show some respect.
Don’t you have any ideas about this?
Did you consider a flower?
We must use plastic flowers
in deep winter.
A gaudy flash of
Disney-colored
plastic.
Somehow, that is unsuitable
for this day.
What does Natalia need today?
Answer me that, Gussaq.
The crusted snow is very hard to cross.
Our boots break through
and plunge us deep.
The surface ice is hard enough
to scratch and cut at our knees.
First blown by wind, it has gone
solid into sea waves.
We stick to the shallows.
All these crosses,
it is hard to find her.
They are all wooden,
weathered.
Almost the same.
White Orthodox crosses.

She is here somewhere.
Trust me.
Why should I tell you her story anyway?
I do not like this.
It makes me nervous.
You are not looking at me.
Do you dislike tales of violence
and despair?
Look around you, Gussaq.
See babies burned up in house fires
when their parents were out drinking.
See the child who was sent
to his parents’ bed to sleep and who,
reaching under his father’s pillow, found the handgun
and pulled the trigger, piercing his lower gut.
It took him days to die.
This girl, a suicide
but that is not the whole story.
Age five, falls out of a pickup truck in the village.
Brain-damaged.
Now, not so smart.
She is used in a sexual way by
her cousins and her uncle.
She is used
when they are drunk or sober.
She is pregnant at 14?
Whose child? Try to guess.
No one knew.
No one would own up.
Forced abortion.
A few years later,
suicide.
By shotgun.
So often they use these big guns.
It is quite a struggle for them to use
these long rifles and shotguns,
reaching with a toe to press the trigger.
They do it to rule out rescue.
Not long ago,
in one village,
seven young people
took their own lives
one after another.
Not more than
three months
passed between the
first and the
last.
The people still grieve.
Each blames someone else.
Hope died and
now they turn against
each other.
And Natalia,
she had a child.
She raised the boy alone.
His daddy was never seen.
Must have been Gussaq, though.
He was tall
and his hair was light like yours.
He was Wassillie
after her father
and his father also.
Her boy is here now, too. Somewhere, here.

This is the story of Natalia.
We worked the fish line
one summer.
We were slimers,
working with salmon.
Wassillie was ten by then.
He could take care of himself when his mother
was working with the fish.
She said he spent too much time at the video arcade
but he was a good boy
never any trouble.

One night the fisherman
had to give away all the king salmon by-catch.
They were fishing for silvers because there
was a limit on how many kings
the processors would buy.
You can’t really control what the net will catch.
Once a fish has been netted,
you can’t just throw it back
because it’s damaged and probably
won’t make it.
So this giveaway was set so the big kings would not be
wasted.
The people gathered
on the beach.
Mostly Gussaqs because Native Yup’iks
had all the fish they needed from
subsistence fishing.
But some Natives joined in the fun.
A celebration of free fish.
A bright fire burned on the beach.
Someone would wade out
and get the fish from the men
in the open skiffs
for distribution.
People brought
plastic shopping bags.
The kind you are given
when they say “paper or plastic”
and you say “plastic.”
These were barely big
enough for
a single fish
but worked okay
hanging from the handlebars
of a four-wheeler.
We were dead tired, Natalia and myself.
Our bodies ached for
sleep after 18 hours of working fish.
Natalia rode on the back
of my four-wheeler.
Her boyfriend was
not there.
She thought he would give her a ride home.
He must have missed her.
She complained.
She said he thought we
were lovers.
This might have been
but was not.
After long hours of sliming fish
we were too tired and stinky
to fool around.
She was ready to leave this guy, though.
Too jealous.
Too often drunk.
And too violent.
She said he had held up her pup
with a knife at its throat
because he was drunk
and angry at her for
working all night.
She told me she stood up to him that time.
Made him settle down that time.

Drove her home
across Brown Slough.
It never gets dark
in summer
and at midnight the low sun burned our eyes.
She had a place to herself.
I dropped her off.
She went inside
and pushed the door shut.
I wasn’t waiting there, really,
just hesitating a minute
to switch one of my dangling fish
to the other handlebar
after she grabbed her fish
and ran in.
Then I heard her scream.
“What the hell?” I froze . . . “What?”
She ran out.
She screamed.
“No, no, no, no.” No shift. No softening.
She screamed each word as the first. “No, no, no.”
She grabbed at me, her eyes showing white.
Then the pleading aching sound.
“He killed him,”
screamed to tear lungs.
Her boyfriend appeared in the doorway.
A shadow.
I did not see him raise the gun
but I saw a flash
and she fell against me
as her face was destroyed in an
explosion of
Disney brightness.
“No!” It was my voice. And
I touched her flesh, patting at the salmon shards,
trying to find a place
to press my mouth
to help her breathe.
Her ruined child was dumped beside us
as she struggled to die and
I, to stay alive.
Maybe he shot me as well.
I do not know.
I seem dead in a lot of ways.
I have no interest in the world you bring.
I do not want your opinion.
I am not nice.
All I am sure of is this:
You people keep pretending
to listen to what I have to say.
You ask me to say it different or to say it pretty.
You don’t like my language or my attitude.
I say this is my story.
Take it as warning.
There are places you should not go.
There are places where the night
dawns black,
where dark creatures
grab and pinch and tear.
And where the breast you would show me can
no more be touched.
Where the cursed and sacred mingle
corrupted and corrupting
redeeming and redeemed
for one long night
and there is nothing you can do for us.
You can’t even say good-bye.

Your mouth is swollen with hot bile
and something else.
Don’t tell me what it is.

Go back, now,
to wherever it is you came from.
Find a cure for your illness and your pain.
And then listen . . .

You will hear me when I ask,
“What did you bring to my people?”

You won’t get off scot-free.
You can’t just come and go.
Once you are netted you are
too damaged to
be let go.

And I know who you are.
My own mouth can shape your name
and you will hear me
calling all night long.
Your departure is a problem to me.
I am not going to let you
run off . . .
Wherever you go,
you will hear me
calling you.
My spirit hand will lace through your entrails.
I will squeeze and whisper,
“Do you remember me now?”
I will whisper the secrets you would like
to forget,
stroking your cheek
tenderly.
I will reach for those places
touched by my stories when
you stood shivering in dark rooms,
your heart as pliant as grass.
I will reclaim the parts of you
that belong now to us.
I will touch your pale breast
and all the hidden
tender places.
I will find the mark I left on you.
And you will welcome my bold intrusion.
You will listen
to me.
You will hear
and you will
understand.

I think you will find a way to answer.
You talk all the time.
Every word in the world has
found its way to your mouth.
You are so smart.
You have all the answers.
You will figure something out.

A day will come when you and I meet again.

             Your hand will reach
toward me and
I will see in your palm
what you have to offer.
I will see what you are holding back.
And I will know
if you have learned
anything at all.

---

Sandra Kleven is the author of The Right Touch: A Read-Aloud Story to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse. The Right Touch has won three national awards. Her screenplay for the documentary The Touching Problem (with KVOS television) won an area Emmy Award.

Holy Land was performed by Thomas Spitzer at the Edward Albee Theatre Conference, Valdez, Alaska, in 1997.