Pause.

Marigold, I am the Ombudsperson for Human Resources for the Southwestern Region. I take your case to them. If necessary in order to demonstrate my contempt for this statement of facts I will douse myself with gasoline and set myself afire in their offices. You and I—we are an emotional aristocracy. Everything that is being done here is beneath us. I support you in signing this statement as a gesture underlining its complete absurdity.

Pause. Just as MARIGOLD leans forward and takes a breath to speak…

Since the jam fiasco you’ve been placed under Katherine Wendell, who transferred temporarily from District Five. You understand the purpose of Kate Wendell’s temporary assignment.

MARIGOLD: Kate Wendell is among us to collect scalps.

MRS. MAY: Precisely. That is what she does. She is now in the process of sawing yours from your skull. She’s brought a series of flagrantly silly actions against you in the last eighteen months. This is the latest, putting you up for suspension while Human Resources rejuvenates this ancient allegation. As if they understood the atmosphere of that night, the way it felt to be you, a million miles from the people judging all this, who know nothing of how it feels, how it tastes in your mouth, the chaos of a night like the one you endured at Kernwood Farms. Do you mind if I say something that might be misinterpreted outside this room?…You are lovely, and alone.

Pause. MARIGOLD shrugs helplessly.

So very much like—that night, that young girl, the black factory girl, wasn’t she lovely?

MARIGOLD: Yes.

MRS. MAY: So lovely and so alone. When she sang the National Anthem.

MARIGOLD: I know. Of course, I know, believe me.

MRS. MAY: There are some things that make you understand history is being made. I mean that every moment is history. That is what I meant by steam rising off the corpses in the rain. Even it if never happened, do you see…

MARIGOLD: I’m—no. I’m not sure I—but of course I remember Tanya Cruz in her lab-coat thing singing “The Star Spangled Banner.” Believe me—with her hair net—

MRS. MAY: A sixteen-year old black child sings “O say can you see!” in a jam factory, and the United States Department of Agrigulture trembles to its roots—

MARIGOLD (overlapping):—I knew things would never be the same in my little life…I could feel a dozen United States Senators scrambling for position to ream us all in the name of Tanya Cruz. She was cute as a bug, and she could sing. Is that history?

MRS. MAY (overlapping):—history. Whether it happened or not.

MARIGOLD: Oh, it happened.

MRS. MAY: But it had the tenor of emotion. It vibrated with life, it didn’t lie there deceased, Marigold, like fact, do you see, it was “nothing” and it meant “something.”

Pause.

Where were you at that moment? In Washington? For the hearings?

MARIGOLD: No. I was there that night. I didn’t see the tape till later, like everybody else.

MRS. MAY: Could you hear her singing?