Sudie and Simpson

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
Lord, Sudie seen Lem Coker kissing Elsie McDonald on the bridge and you know they're married but not to each other so I guess you better do something about it.

[Sudie knocks on Mary Agnes's window]

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
Sudie?

Sudie Harrigan:
For Pete's sake Mary Agnes, I wish you wouldn't be telling God all that stuff I tell you.

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
What are you doing here?

Sudie Harrigan:
It's time, come on. The moon is plum full, now get dressed.

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
Sudie, I changed my mind. I ain't going.

Sudie Harrigan:
But we made a pact. And a pact is a pact. Friends don't back down on pacts. Now are you my friend or not?

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
Yeah, but I ain't going. I made up my mind, Sudie Harrigan, and you can't change it.

Sudie Harrigan:
Mary Agnes, you ever touched a grown man?

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
What do you mean, have I ever touched a grown man? What kind of question is that?

Sudie Harrigan:
Just answer it.

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
Of course, silly. Everybody touches their daddy.

Sudie Harrigan:
I don't mean just when you bump into each other or when he switches ya.

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
I don't either. 'Course I touch him.

Sudie Harrigan:
Like nice touching? Like does he hold your hand and pat you on the back?

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
Sure, all daddy's does that. Why are you asking?

Sudie Harrigan:
Got a wife?

Simpson:
She died.

Sudie Harrigan:
Where'd you live when she died?

Simpson:
Alabama. I was from Texas. She's from Alabama. Wanted to live in Alabama. She was a teacher. Helped me to get my high school diploma. At night she was getting ready to have our baby. Put her in the car took her to the hospital. They wouldn't accept no colored folks. So, had the baby in the back of the car. And she died birthing our baby. Three days later, little girl died too.

Sudie Harrigan:
You had a baby?

Simpson:
Yeah. Life can be hard sometimes.

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
How come you think you ain't saved?

Sudie Harrigan:
I can't tell you that part.

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
Why not?

Sudie Harrigan:
Because it's a bad sin.

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
Well, I won't tell. Honest. Cross my heart and hope to die!

Sudie Harrigan:
Well, I ain't saved 'cause... well, just 'cause.

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
'Cause what?

Sudie Harrigan:
'Cause I use my thing to get nickels.

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
Your what?

Sudie Harrigan:
My thing.

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
What thing?

Sudie Harrigan:
My thing! Like your thing stupid. My thing 'tween my legs!

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
You mean that thing?

Sudie Harrigan:
Yeah.

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
Lord have mercy! How'd you get nickels with that thing?

Sudie Harrigan:
Earl Rice gives them to me.

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
Mr. Rice! You mean he gives you a nickel to see your thing?

Sudie Harrigan:
He don't see my thing, I see his thing. Then he gives me a nickel to wiggle it.

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
A nickel? Just to wiggle his thing? Is it hard to wiggle?

Sudie Harrigan:
Oh good grief, Mary Agnes. I don't wanna talk about it no more.

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
Momma's said I've turn into a woman.

Sudie Harrigan:
Well, what'd she say that for?

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
'Cause I started menstruation.

Sudie Harrigan:
What's that?

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
Bleeding. Women does it once a month. Can you believe it? Once a month for four or five days for the rest of your life. I could just puke!

Sudie Harrigan:
Once a month for the rest of your life? I ain't doing it!

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
All women does it. It's another one of them curses on account of Eve giving Adam that apple.

Sudie Harrigan:
I hate Eve's guts!

Sudie Harrigan:
Preacher Miller, does negroes go to hell even if they's nice?

Preacher Clifford Miller:
Sudie, people who have been saved do not go to hell.

Lem Coker, Linlow Ga. Townsman:
Yeah, but it's hell saving a n*gger, ain't it preacher?

[Sudie leaves]

Lem Coker, Linlow Ga. Townsman:
Why she asking about n*ggers? She never even seen one.

Mr. Lester Clark:
Strange kid that Sudie, I'm always telling Charlotte to keep Mary Agnes away from her.

Lem Coker, Linlow Ga. Townsman:
It wouldn't be a bad idea Lester. N*ggers going to heaven? Why, if one just sets foot in this town, I'll make them go the other way and damn fast!

Mr. Lester Clark:
You wouldn't be alone Lem.

Sudie Harrigan:
I bet if I laid out in the sun everyday, I'd turn into a negro.

Simpson:
How long do you think that'll take?

Sudie Harrigan:
[Thinks for a few seconds] About a week.

Simpson:
Do you have any idea what'll happen if they catch a little white girl with a colored man?

Sudie Harrigan:
Wouldn't nobody hurt you, I wouldn't let 'em. And ain't nothing gonna happen to me, 'cept I'd get a whippin'. Whippin' ain't nothing, I get those all the time.

Simpson:
Miss Sudie, you can't come back here no more!

Sudie Harrigan:
You ain't my daddy and you ain't my boss. I'll make up my own mind about coming here.

Simpson:
No you can't!

Sudie Harrigan:
Well, I'm coming back! And if you don't want me to then you'll have to whip me. So either way I'm getting a whipping.

Simpson:
I'm never goin' whip you Miss Sudie, but you're stubborn as a mule!

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
Doggone it Sudie! You always start something and won't finish it. Here I ain't never even seen a grown up thing and you won't even tell me what it looks like. What kind of friend are you?

Sudie Harrigan:
A grown up thing, Mary Agnes, looks just like a little thing. Except it's bigger and uglier and bluer.

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
Bluer? You mean grown up things is blue?

Sudie Harrigan:
No, they ain't blue all over. They just got blue rows.

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
Blue rows? Blue rows of what?

Sudie Harrigan:
Just blue rows of rows. That's all. And sometimes they get sick.

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
What do they get sick from?

Sudie Harrigan:
I recon it's dropsy.

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
Gosh! Mr. Higgins' Dottie died of dropsy.

Sudie Harrigan:
Yeah, well Earl Rice ain't never died of it 'cause he gets it all the time. Anyway, wiggling things is a big sin and it's all my fault.

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
How come?

Sudie Harrigan:
'Cause Eve gived Adam that apple. Don't you listen to nothing that preacher says?

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
Sure I listen to the preacher.

Sudie Harrigan:
Well the big sin is my thing not his. We got these awful things that makes men get some kinda madness. It's like they was crazy. Momma says that they can't help it and we gotta face up to it just 'cause the kinda things that we got. Mary Agnes, we got wicked things.

Sudie Harrigan:
Anyhow, I don't wiggle Earl Rice's thing no more. He's got Betty McMillan's little sister doing it for him now. He brags on all the other girls that wiggle it for him.

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
Clara May? But she's just a kid. She probably ain't ten.

Sudie Harrigan:
She ain't! She's nine.

Mary Agnes Clark, Sudie's best friend:
Shoot. Her hands are itty bitty. When it comes to wiggling big old things, I bet you done it a lot better than her.

Sudie Harrigan:
Oh Mary Agnes, horse dookie!

Sudie Harrigan:
I never knowd I was the color of creek sand.

[Examines the sand for a moment]

Sudie Harrigan:
Simpson I figured it out!

Simpson:
Figured what out?

Sudie Harrigan:
I'm the color of creek sand and you's the color of garden dirt! And the Indians, they's the color of red clay! Doesn't that make you wanna sing out! Everybody's made out of dust. And God didn't make you black to punish you for nothing. He didn't make nobody nothing to punish them for nothing! He made everybody the color they is on account of that just happen to be the color He was standing on.

Simpson:
Well you sure figured that out didn't you? If that ain't it, I sure don't know what he had in mind!

[Both laugh out loud]

Sudie Harrigan:
Wouldn't it be funny if mamma caught God answering her prayers and he turned out to be a negro?

[Both laugh again]