Speaker 1: Bandanna Country, Episode two.
Speaker 2: I can't believe y'all won't go to Mary's homegoing.
Speaker 3: You shouldn't either. Rosa and I might survive, but it
could kill you.
Speaker 2: I'm prayed up and keep my offense in order whenever
the Lord calls me.
Speaker 3: Oh fine, but you could get someone else sick. Don't
you care about anybody else?
Speaker 2: I know you didn't just interrupt me with that kind
of talk in your big mama's.
Speaker 3: House, then you're really not gonna like this. I'm locking
this house down. If you go to Mary's homegoing or
anywhere else, you're not welcoming this house.
Speaker 2: M Oh, I'm just happy your big mama Lord rest
her soul ain't here that if something so bold come
out your mouth. Bishobala told us about this plague over
a year ago, and you know I'm a prayer warrior.
I'm ready to fight, and I'm ready to feed my
Jesus in it time he sees fit. But I'm yet
praying on you. Girl. You better hope this thing and
what they say it is. I'd hate to know that
this demon still had hold of you before you could
cast it out and repent.
Speaker 1: Oh babe, are you?
Speaker 3: Are you recording right now, Jesus take the wheel.
Speaker 1: Rosa Solana didn't speak to me or anyone else for
that matter. The rest of the day. She put on
her headphones and poured herself into her work, while her
elders lett an exodus away from the family home. I
watched the grim procession from the sitting room, where I
was plainly visible, but none of them looked at me.
Chen's up just out. I could see that she'd inherited
her righteousness, honestly, and I wish I could tell you
that this had been a trivial spat. But it was
just the beginning of April, and there were already more
than one hundred infected in nearby Kraken County. Remember when
there were only five in New York. No, the coronavirus
spreads tonight, as Governor Cuomo announces five more cases.
Speaker 4: In New York City, just days after the first confirmed
case in New Rochelle. But with the current rate of infection,
authorities advise all New Yorkers to take caution. There could
already be several dozen cases in the Big Apple.
Speaker 1: Then let's backtrack to mid March. New York City was
just about to close its doors Solange, like many of
the executive and upper management class, had been working from
home for well over a week.
Speaker 3: No, I'm not going to hop on a zoom because
you're already on my phone for an issue we can
address over email. And if I'm in my house, I'm
not putting on eyebrows, I'm not coming out of this bonnet,
and I'm not controlling my edges.
Speaker 1: Let's just say tensions were high, and now it's time
for a cliche. You just had to be there, huddling
against dozens of strangers multiple times a day to go
to work, run errands, and go home, all the while
knowing this thing was closing in on you. At first,
you might dismiss it. It's in China, Italy New Rochelle.
By then Solange's bosses told management to prepare to work
from home, but many of us would continue to press
against each other for weeks, knowing this virus was now
amongst us. When she told me she wanted to go
back home, I was all for it. Fuck my job,
fuck our apartment. I felt like she was saving me.
I knew I lucky. Her mail room staff was still
commuting to the office.
Speaker 5: When we left the city.
Speaker 1: We touched down in Nashville and regrouped with a few
of her cousins, sharing one truck for the long ride
into Pandana Country. So where are you all flying in from?
Speaker 5: Lou Allmans Miami del.
Speaker 1: And that was just our truck. All these black millennials
and zoomers reasonably educated, a far cry from the parents, aunts, uncles,
and grandparents they returned to when she hit the fan. Well,
we didn't know then and wouldn't for weeks, is that
coronavirus would cut a swath through the country on the
heels of fleeing city dwellers like Solange, the cousins, and
me an unincorporated stretch of land hugging up on the
border between two counties. Bandana Country is more of a
gentleman's agreement than a town, but it's unofficial population more
than deviled. Between March tenth and thirty first Praise the Lord,
Hi missus Harrison.
Speaker 2: Call me ain't Gert, honey, you're basically.
Speaker 1: Family, Okay, Hi, Unt Gert.
Speaker 2: Is my hard headed, honorary, disrespectful sadity.
Speaker 1: Niece round Yes, ma'am, don't get her Oh no.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, leave that shall be I ain't
got nothing to say to him. Accept this. I'm yet
praying on her and you. It's a shame. Y'all have
so much potential. Let them use you. Thanks for the
mac and cheese, and I left some mac and cheese
on the back porch.
Speaker 1: Ooh, is there dessert? Jesus take the wheel.
Speaker 2: Of course, there's some pecan pie and ice cream and
some monkey bread for breakfast. I know y'all don't eat
all three meals up in that New York which are
high renting five dollars coffee, but I won't have y'all
starving in a Christian home, and it is a Christian home.
Speaker 3: Is that all you wanted to say?
Speaker 2: Angered? Well, I would say thank you for all this nonsense.
You dropped off at my house, but I'm prayed up
and I anointed all my doors and windows, so I
don't need no masks and gloves, but nothing except for
house chores.
Speaker 3: Angered, I'm serious.
Speaker 1: Uncle James just got.
Speaker 2: Sick, y'all. You know he's a singing Christian.
Speaker 1: See any stands for Christmas, New Year's and Eastern the
implication being that these are the only dates these lackluster
Christians attend church. Apparently, shameful, but a more permissible offense
than being a lesbian. But despite Utgert's dismissal, coronavirus was
changing Bandana Country. As the Laune puttered around town in
her grandmother's old truck, thanklessly delivering masks, cough medicine, and
gloves to her family members, I stared out the passenger
window and watched a town once ruled by joyful praise
morphed into something of a waiting room, in which the
young hovered at a distance from one another and ran errands,
all in a vain attempt to keep their loved ones
at home. But through mid April, one gathering place remained
defiantly open.
Speaker 6: The scientists want to ship me down. The state wants
to shut me down. But I tell you this Bandetta Country,
the deal was too scared to come into the sanctuary.
These saints are preyed up, Their walls are anointed, and
I'm buying the devil right qu right now, through the
radio waves and out into the streets. Get out, devil,
and you can take your play with you.
Speaker 1: The order to close churches had officially come down weeks ago,
but Bishop Ballard had kept the upper Room Apostolic Church
open in April, as local cases began to creep upward,
his defiance attracted more attention. But no sooner than he
took his fight to the airwaves did Bandana Country's first
saint succumb to COVID nineteen.
Speaker 2: I know, Sister Esta is so joyful to be in
the glory of the Lord.
Speaker 1: It didn't exactly have a chastening effect, but that Sunday,
the Upper Room Apostolic Church's door remained closed, and a
few days later they held their first outdoor homegoing or
funeral of the year. Much of the next few weeks
continued in similar fashion. Aunt Gert would leave meals in
the back porch, which I seem to be increasingly capable
of digesting. Every couple of weeks the Upper Room would
hold abbreviated homegoing services in the church gardens. Inevitably, every
family would be affected, and eventually the Harrison's time came.
Speaker 5: Your uncle's with the Lord now James passed away last night.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, thanks for letting me know.
Speaker 1: I think it was the first time they didn't fight
since Solange banned the family from her grandmother's house.
Speaker 3: Babe, are you I don't want to talk about it.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I didn't know she was going to say that.
Let me turn off the recorder.
Speaker 3: Whatever, Rosa, keep working if you want. I'm just going
to sit here.
Speaker 5: She did.
Speaker 1: I went over and held her. I didn't know her
uncle James very well, and to be honest, what little
I knew of him, I didn't like. As far as
I know, he never considered me anything more than his
grand niece's roommate. I thought he was backward and abrasive,
nearrow minded, and homophobic, unnecessarily brusque. I think that about
a lot of her family. I mean, at least unc
Kirk can cook, but the rest of them limit their
kindness to evangelizing and passive aggression beneath their smiles, and yes,
even the mac and cheese. They're cruel.
Speaker 3: Rosa, you don't have to sit with me.
Speaker 1: You didn't like him anyway. You don't like any of them.
For a moment, I wondered if she read my mind.
You never have, and then I remembered that I've never
been subtle. It's not that I dislike them, it's just
I can see how much they hurt you. I see
how it affects you when they look down on you
and shame you. They treat you like you don't even
deserve to be in your grandmother's house.
Speaker 3: Because it would break her heart.
Speaker 5: Rosa.
Speaker 3: She didn't have anything to give me except a beat
up old house, a beat up old car, and a
handful of lucky rocks. All that mattered to her was
being right with the Lord. And that might sound backwards
and narrow minded and uncultured to you, but everyone here
has to survive by faith. It's as real to them
as anything you and I have back home, more real.
She loved me enough to want to save my soul
and I just can't believe in it. And because of that,
she died afraid, sobbing and begging me to come back
to the church, and.
Speaker 1: It was the only thing on her mind.
Speaker 3: People don't die like that because they're hateful. Now, her
last brothers died the same way, and the whole town
knows it.
Speaker 5: She's right.
Speaker 1: It was in Mary's attempts to convert me. Her cousins
whispered jokes, every passerby's disdainful frown. The whole town knows
about the prodigal daughter who dared return with her girlfriend
in toe and the whole town mourns the family that
grieves her immortal soul, and now the whole town just grieves.
The deaths hit everyone hard. Everyone knows the ailing, everyone
knows the dying. Everyone mourns the dead, until.
Speaker 5: Chaos and terror today in Minneapolis as police and rioters
clash in response to video footage revealing the death of
George Floyd while being detained by police.
Speaker 1: Next time on Bandana Country, you.
Speaker 7: Were listening to Bandana Country Written and directed by H. Harvey,
Line produced by Tim Craig. Audio produced by Max Adey,
starring Nakogavia as Rosa, Jasmine Boone as Solange, and featuring
Tim Craig and Brittany Michelle as chorus, including Ain't Gert, Mary, Bishop, Ballard, Uncles, aunts,
and newscasters. Produced and presented by Black Revolutionary Theater Workshop,
twenty twenty five. All rights reserved.