NANA PEAZANT
Who’s that? What’re you children up to now? Get on with you, son, or help me clean away these weeds.

ELI PEAZANT
Just because we’re crossing over to the mainland, it doesn’t mean that we don’t love you. It doesn’t mean we’re not going to miss you. And it doesn’t mean we’re not going to come home and visit with you soon.

NANA PEAZANT
Eli Peazant, if you don’t stop grinning at me … It’s not right to tease old folks, especially your great-grandmother. You’re lucky I’ve got breath in me yet. You old goober-head. (teasing him) "Goober Head". We used to call you "goober head." Remember that? Goober means peanut.

(Eli digs into his vest pocket.)

ELI
What’s this? Something seems to be stuck in here.

NANA
You know your granddaddy Shad didn’t like to see a woman chewing tobacco. Ain’t that so? You know that’s so.

ELI
No, Ma’am.

(Eli hands Nana tobacco and she cradles it in her blue-stained hands.)

NANA
I visit with old Peazant every day since the day he died. It’s up to the living to keep in touch with the dead, Eli. Man’s power doesn’t end with death. We just move on to a new place, a place where we watch over our living family … Respect your elders! Respect your family! Respect your ancestors! You’re worried that baby Eula’s carrying isn’t yours because she got forced. Eli, you won’t ever have a baby that wasn’t sent to you. The ancestors and the womb … they’re one, they’re the same. Those in this grave, like those who’re across the sea, they’re with us. They’re all the same. The ancestors and the womb are one. Call on your ancestors, Elli. Let them guide you. You need their strength. Eli, I need you to make the family strong again, like we used to be.

ELI
How can you understand me and the way I feel? This happened to my wife. My wife! I don’t feel like she’s mine anymore. When I look at her, I feel I don’t want her anymore.

NANA
You can’t give back what you never owned. Eula never belonged to you, she married you.

ELI
Why didn’t you protect us, Nana? Did someone put the fix on me? Was it the conjure? Or bad Luck? Or were the old souls too deep in their graves to give a damn about my wife while some stranger was riding her. When we were children, we really believed you could work the good out of evil. We believed in the newsprint on the walls … Your tree of glass jars and bottles … The rice you carried in your pockets. We believed in the frizzled-haired chickens. The coins, the roots and the flowers. We believed they would protect us and every little thing we owned or loved. I wasn’t scared of anything, because I knew …, I knew, my great-grandmother had it all in her pocket, or could work it up.

NANA
Eli, never forget who we are, and how far we’ve come.

ELI
I have to leave here. I don’t have any other choice.

NANA
Eli … Eli! There’s a thought … a recollection … something somebody remembers. We carry these memories inside of us. Do you believe that hundreds and hundreds of Africans brought here on this other side would forget everything they once knew? We don’t know where the recollections come from. Sometimes we dream them. But we carry these memories inside of us.

ELI
What’re we supposed to remember, Nana? How, at one time, we were able to protect those we loved? How, in Africa world, we were kings and queens and built great big cities?

NANA
Eli, … I’m trying to teach you how to touch your won spirit. I’m fighting for my life, Eli, and I’m fighting for yours. Look in my face! I’m trying to give you something to take North with you, along with all your great big dreams.

HAIRBRAIDER
Old people think they have all the answers. (Laughing out loud) Carrying around that tin can … I don’t ever think I saw her without it.

(Haagar holds up Yellow Mary’s tin can of Uneeda Biscuits.)

HAAGAR
We ought to save this can for Eula. She’s about as crazy as Nana Peazant. Sometime, I think that old woman is not in her right mind.

(Haagar and the Hairbraider laugh loudly. The other Peazant women are uneasy. They feel Haagar is being disrespectful to an elder.)

VIOLA
Haagar Peazant, … that’s an old woman you’re laughing at. Just like Eula, you married into this family, but she’s our grandmother. There is nothing wrong or harmful in that tin can she carries, just some old …

HAAGAR AND HAIRBRAIDER (interrupting in unison, they’ve heard this before)
"Scraps of memories…"

VIOLA
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that Nana is carry a lot of old luggage, … she needs to put her soul in the hands of the Lord, but she has built her life around this family. She’s old and she’s frightened. What she know of the world outside? Nothing. Nana was never educated, all she knows are simple things, things that people told her a long time ago.

HAIRBRAIDER (defensively)
That’s why I say Nana Peazant needs to pack her belongings just like the rest of us, and come along. She don’t need to stay here like she’s somebody with no people.

HAAGAR (getting evil)
I might not have been born into this family, but I’m here now. And I say, let Nana Peazant stay behind. That’s what she wants. We’re moving into a new day, she’s too much a part of the past.

(The women react, even the Hairbraider.)

HAIRBRAIDER
Don’t let Daddy Mac hear your mouth!

HAAGAR
I’m a fully grown woman, and I don’t have to mind what I say … I done born five children into the world and put two in the grave alongside their daddy. I worked all my life and ain’t got nothing to show for it, and if I can’t say what’s on my mind, then damn everybody to hell.

VIOLA
Mind, now ... , the Lord is listening.

HAAGAR
I’m an educated person … and I’m tired of Nana’s old stories. Watching her make those root potions … and that Hoo doo she talks about. Washing up in the river with her clothes on, just like those old "Salt Water" folks used to do. My children ain’t gonna be like those old Africans fresh off the boat. My god, I still remember them. Those old people, they pray to the sun, they pray to the moon, … sometimes just to a big star! They ain’t got no religion in them. No! This is a new world we’re moving into and I want my daughters to grow up to be decent "somebodies" … I don’t even want my girls to have to hear about all that mess. I’ll lock horns against anybody, anything that tries to hold me back. Now I say, if Nana Peazant wants to live and die in Ibo Landing, then God Bless her old soul.