The Skin of Our Teeth Read Free Page B

can’t! I’d die on the way, you know I would. It’s worse than January. The dogs are sticking to the sidewalks. I’d die.
    MRS. ANTROBUS:
    Very well, I’ll go.
    SABINA:
    Even more distraught, coming forward and sinking on her knees.
    You’d never come back alive; we’d all perish; if you weren’t here, we’d just perish. How do we know Mr. Antrobus’ll be back? We don’t know. If you go out, I’ll just kill myself.
    MRS. ANTROBUS:
    Get up, Sabina.
    SABINA:
    Every night it’s the same thing. Will he come back safe, or won’t he? Will we starve to death, or freeze to death, or boil to death or will we be killed by burglars? I don’t know why we go on living. I don’t know why we go on living at all. It’s easier being dead.
    She flings her arms on the table and buries her head in them. In each of the succeeding speeches she flings her head up—and sometimes her hands—then quickly buries her head again.
    MRS. ANTROBUS:
    The same thing! Always throwing up the sponge, Sabina. Always announcing your own death. But give you a new hat—or a plate of ice cream—or a ticket to the movies, and you want to live forever.
    SABINA:
    You don’t care whether we live or die; all you care about is those children. If it would be any benefit to them you’d be glad to see us all stretched out dead.
    MRS. ANTROBUS:
    Well, maybe I would.
    SABINA:
    And what do they care about? Themselves—that’s all they care about.
    Shrilly.
    They make fun of you behind your back. Don’t tell me: they’re ashamed of you. Half the time, they pretend they’re someone else’s children. Little thanks you get from them.
    MRS. ANTROBUS:
    I’m not asking for any thanks.
    SABINA:
    And Mr. Antrobus—you don’t understand him. All that work he does—trying to discover the alphabet and the multiplication table. Whenever he tries to learn anything you fight against it.
    MRS. ANTROBUS:
    Oh, Sabina, I know you.
    When Mr. Antrobus raped you home from your Sabine hills, he did it to insult me.
    He did it for your pretty face, and to insult me.
    You were the new wife, weren’t you?
    For a year or two you lay on your bed all day and polished the nails on your hands and feet.
    You made puff-balls of the combings of your hair and you blew them up to the ceiling.
    And I washed your underclothes and I made you chicken broths.
    I bore children and between my very groans I stirred the cream that you’d put on your face.
    But I knew you wouldn’t last.
    You didn’t last.
    SABINA:
    But it was I who encouraged Mr. Antrobus to make the alphabet. I’m sorry to say it, Mrs. Antrobus, but you’re not a beautiful woman, and you can never know what a man could do if he tried. It’s girls like I who inspire the multiplication table.
    I’m sorry to say it, but you’re not a beautiful woman, Mrs. Antrobus, and that’s the God’s truth.
    MRS. ANTROBUS:
    And you didn’t last—you sank to the kitchen. And what do you do there? You let the fire go out!
    No wonder to you it seems easier being dead.
    Reading and writing and counting on your fingers is all very well in their way,—but I keep the home going.
    MRS. ANTROBUS:
    â€”There’s that dinosaur on the front lawn again.—Shoo! Go away. Go away.
    The baby DINOSAUR puts his head in the window.
    DINOSAUR:
    It’s cold.
    MRS. ANTROBUS:
    You go around to the back of the house where you belong.
    DINOSAUR:
    It’s cold.
    The DINOSAUR disappears. MRS. ANTROBUS goes calmly out.
    SABINA slowly raises her head and speaks to the audience. The central portion of the center wall rises, pauses, and disappears into the loft.
    SABINA:
    Now that you audience are listening to this, too, I understand it a little better.
    I wish eleven o’clock were here; I don’t want to be dragged through this whole play again.
    The TELEGRAPH BOY is seen entering along the back