Free Baby Doll & Tiger Tail by Tennessee Williams

to slop around here in a slip?
    [
She gives a faint indifferent shrug which enrages him; he senses something openly contemptuous, a change in her attitude towards him. He grabs her bare shoulder
.]
    What’s the matter with your skin? It looks all broke out.
    [
Inspects the inflamed welts
.]
    What’s this?
    BABY DOLL : What’s what?
    ARCHIE : These marks on you?
    BABY DOLL : Mosquito bites, I scratched them. . . . Lemme go.
    ARCHIE [
bellowing
]: Ain’t I told you not to slop around here in a slip???!!!
    [
Aunt Rose Comfort, alarmed by the shout, appears in door to kitchen, crying out thin and high
.]
    AUNT ROSE : Almost ready, now, folks, almost ready!!
    [
She rushes back into the kitchen with her frightened cackle. There is a crash of china from the kitchen
.]
    ARCHIE : The breakage alone in that kitchen would ruin a well-to-do man! Now you go up and git some decent clo’se on yuh an’ come back down. Y’know they got a new bureau in Washington, D.C. It’s called the U.W. Bureau. Y’know what U.W. stands for? It stands fo’ useless women. They’s secret plans on foot to round ’em all up and shoot ’em. Hahahaha!
    BABY DOLL : How about men that’s destructive? Don’t they have secret plans to round up men that’s destructive and shoot them too?
    ARCHIE : What destructive men you talkin’ about?
    BABY DOLL : Men that blow things up and burn things down because they’re too evil and stupid to git along otherwise. Because fair competition is too much for ’em. So they turn criminal. Do things like arson. Willful destruction of property by fire. . . .
    [
She steps out on the porch. Night sounds. A cool breeze tosses her damp curls. She sniffs the night air like a young horse. . . .
    [
The porch light, a milky globe patterned with dead insects, turns on directly over her head and Archie Lee comes up behind her and grips her bare shoulders, his face anxious, cunning
.]
    ARCHIE : Who said that to you? Where’d you git that from??
    BABY DOLL : Turn that porch light off. There’s men on the road can see me.
    ARCHIE : Who said
arson
to you? Who spoke of willful destruction of. . . YOU never knew them words. Who SAID ’em to yuh?
    BABY DOLL : Sometimes, Big Shot, you don’t seem t’ give me credit for much intelligence! I’ve been to school, in my life, and I’m a—magazine reader!
    [
She shakes off his grip and starts down porch steps. There is a group of men on Tiger Tail Road. One of them gives a wolf-whistle. At once, Archie Lee charges down the steps and across the yard towards the road—crying out
—]
    ARCHIE :
Who gave that whistle??
Which of you give a wolf-whistle at my wife?
    [
The group ignores him except for a light mocking laugh as they continue down the road. The camera returns to Baby Doll blandly smiling
.
    [
We hear the rattle of the cistern pump being vigorously exercised in the side yard. Archie Lee stalks back up to the porch, winded, like an old hound
. . . .]
    ARCHIE : Men from the Syndicate
Plantation! White an’ black
mixed! Headed fo’ Tiger Tail Bayou with frog gigs and rubber boots on! I just hope they turn downstream and trespass across my property! I just hope they dast to! I’ll blast them out of the Bayou with a shotgun!
    BABY DOLL : Small dogs have a loud bark.
    ARCHIE : Nobody’s gonna insult no woman of
mine!!
    BABY DOLL : You take a lot for granted when you say
mine
. This afternoon I come to you for protection. What did I
git? Slapped!
And told to go home. . . . I, for one, have got no sympathy for you, now or ever. An’ the rasslin’ match between us is
over
so let me
go!
    ARCHIE : You’re darn tootin’ it’s over. In just three hours the terms of the agreement will be settled for good.
    BABY DOLL : Don’t count on it. That agreement is canceled. Because it takes two sides to make an agreement, like an argument, and both sides got to live up to it completely. You didn’t live up to yours. Stuck me in a house which is haunted and five complete