Cassandra and cato
Two of the few characters I’ve written that I just can’t stand.
Cassandra gave me a lot of trouble. Cato at some point was just vibing and minding his business, but Cass fought me the entire time. The play itself- f i n i t e, was a headache. I could not figure this thing out. At the time I was struggling immensely with structure, how to care for my characters in a way that hadn’t already been prescribed. The tried and true conventions and standards of playwriting aren’t always my sort of thing- it took me a very long time to find playwrights such as María Irene Fornés, or Ntozake Shange. f i n i t e was a wholehearted effort to establish a style that was distinctly my own. I can’t say the attempt was successful, though, which is why you’ve never heard of it before now.
I left f i n i t e confused and afraid, feeling as if I was marooned in tumultuous and foreign waters. All I had were questions, and a lot of anger and loss. Not unlike how Cassandra felt, at the end of this play. I took everything I didn’t understand about myself, my craft, and the things happening to me, and wrote alchemy, and then Passage a year later. I hope Cass was also able to transmute her grief into something delicate and open. Somewhere, in somebody’s play. Not mine, cause I’m done with her ass.
Below is the first piece I ever wrote for Cassandra (maybe for the play as a whole?), followed by a deleted monologue of Cato’s.
CASS
I have this dream, where. The world is empty, except for me, I’m the only one, the first one. I’m the first one there, and any mistake I make isn’t a mistake at all.
It’s creation.
And I move from place to place, making any spot of earth my home for the night only to leave it in the morning. I like it. Having nothing but everything, all at once.
But one day. I get up and I pack up, I get ready to move again, I take a single step forwards, and my foot sinks into the earth. It’s like something’s grabbed hold of my ankle, and I’m pulled further and further down, my other foot is sinking, and I reach up and out but there’s no one there, I call for help and can only look up at the clouds, at a sky I don’t think I’ll get to see again, then the dirt is to my neck, and I choke on it as it falls into my mouth, and I can’t breathe because my nose is under, and then eventually I’m buried underneath the earth.
And I twist and turn but can’t move all that much, my fingers curl into the dirt and I look around but can’t see anything, the sky is gone and I try and try to pull or push myself out or to the side or down or
Then something grabs my hand, and then my other hand, my ankles, my shoulders, my waist. I realize there’s something grabbing me anywhere it can, and it’s like hands clutching and holding me, and at first I panic and struggle more but they just hold on tighter, so I stop trying to move and I listen instead.
And I understand everything, I know where all the people went, what I’ve been walking and sleeping on this whole time. I lay there and let myself be held and hear footsteps above me.
CATO
Here’s what I saw.
There was a man. He was well traveled and educated, having seen many places and known many people. He married a woman, as well traveled and educated as himself; maybe even more so. They talked long into the night, discussing anything within their reach and excited for what was beyond them.
One day, the man was called home by his father. The crops are dying, his father said, there is no food. Your siblings are starving, your mother has passed and I’m not far behind her. We have no money, no help. Our elders have said to call you home, that you will save us.
So he went backwards instead of forwards for the first time in a long time, taking his wife with him. Back to his home, a house with a foundation his ancestors had laid long ago, the wood never having been replaced, never repaired unless absolutely necessary. He went back, and laid flowers at his mother’s grave, he looked at the land and saw that it was barren, he looked in his father’s face and saw the glazed over look in his eyes, he hugged his siblings and felt their bones pushing up against their skin, as if reaching for him.
And his wife was beside him, seeing these same things. They got to work.
The two used their knowledge of the outside world and it’s methods and worked the land. They went into town, raising money for the supplies and tools they’d need. Eventually, a year or two into their struggle, the fruits of their labor were known. Their crops began to flourish, their fruit trees began to grow. They could make a living off the land. The man’s father grew healthier, his siblings’ bellies were full, and he felt pride settle deep within him. They lived like this, prospering, for a long time.
But then. One night, an uncontrollable fire laid waste to his land. It ruined his crops, killed his animals, and reduced his tools and supplies to ashes. The only thing that was spared, inexplicably, was the house that held them all, in it’s already broken and sorry state. By morning, the fire had calmed enough to be put out, but it was too late. In one night, they had lost what years of work had given them.
The man and his wife began again, but this time, nothing worked. The land would not give. Their methods were of no use, their knowledge insufficient. His sibling’s hunger could not be satisfied. His father grew weaker, and weaker, until he passed. The man buried him next to his mother, and looked at his siblings, fearing they’d soon join their parents.
The clever woman she was, his wife suggested visiting the elders, the same ones who’d called him home. And so he went, kneeling at their feet. But once he was given an answer, he pleaded for a different one. The elders refused, insisting this was the way to save his family, his ancestral home, the way to allow his parents peace in the afterlife. They warned of a long winter to come, one whose end was so far off that even they couldn’t see it. If he did not act now, they said, it would be the end of his lineage.
So he went home, and he thought for many days and nights, only stopping when the hunger got to be so bad it felt like his body had begun to consume itself, and when his siblings started looking as they had before. He dug a hole in the center of his field.
On the decided day, he woke up before his wife and carried her outside. He laid her down, still sleeping. And he began to work, shoveling and shoveling dirt until the hole was filled, the same way he’d done when burying his father not so long ago. He went back inside to their bed alone and felt the absence of her. He closed his eyes and thought he could hear her breathing beside him, but knew if he turned and looked she wouldn’t be there. He hoped she would somehow forever stay sleeping where he’d left her, and not wake up and realize what he’d done.
He went outside the next day and saw his seeds had begun to sprout.
That’s all I saw.
