Summary
Suddenly, Zhaboonigan screams because Nanabush has pushed her off her stool. The women laugh, as Emily takes a pencil to calculate the expenses for the trip, which she determines to be $1,400, meaning everyone will need to contribute $200. As a musician begins to play a driving beat, the women begin fundraising. The women sell all of the things in Pelajia's basement at a yard sale, as Emily rings them up. Pelajia hammers at the roof while Emily mans the register.
They continue, with Philomena bringing in baskets full of beer bottles, with two babies attached to her. Marie-Adele strings laundry, as Veronique brings in seven apple pies. In the next beat, Philomena then has three babies attached to her, Annie and Emily sing their song in bad harmony, and Veronique brings in freshly baked bread. In the next beat, Zhaboonigan washes windows and cries, Emily and Philomena fill beer cases, Philomena has four babies attached to her, Annie enters with a black and white television, and Marie-Adele strings more laundry. Philomena eventually hangs a sign advertising "World's Biggest Bottle Drive," with five babies attached to her. Veronique puts up a sign that says "World's Biggest Bake Sale," Annie puts one up for "World's Biggest Garage Sale," and Marie Adele advertises blueberries and laundry for while customers are waiting. The music stops and the women collapse.
Pelajia gives a speech about the money raised, a grand total of $1233.65. Suddenly, we are transported to the Anchor Inn, where Emily and Annie are performing. Emily introduces a song as something she wrote in memory of Rosabella Baez, "a Rez Sister from way back." The song is called "I'm Thinkin' of You" and it's a country song. During the song, the women put their belongings in a van to travel to Toronto and hit the road.
Emily asks how much money she and Annie made from singing, and Pelajia says they brought in $330. Annie drives, and Emily sits next to her listening to a Walkman. Marie-Adele asks Annie if she's ever considered getting married again, and Annie says she hasn't. Marie-Adele tries to tell Annie that she did not steal Eugene, and begins talking about what Annie should do if she dies, but Annie does not want to talk about it.
Pelajia and Philomena talk, and Philomena asks if Pelajia knows the significance of September 8th. Pelajia thinks that maybe it's when their mother died, but Pelajia clarifies that it's the birthday of the child she had to give up after having an affair with a married man while working as a secretary in Toronto. The child would be 28 years old now, and Philomena fantasizes about getting a lawyer and finding the child.
Annie and Emily begin singing, "I'm a little Indian who loves fry bread" and drink whiskey out of Annie's purse. Annie wants to sing at a bar in Toronto, and possibly have sex, as Emily begins to sing Patsy Cline's song "Crazy." Emily talks about Big Joey's body—his large rear end and "a dick that's bigger than a goddamn breadbox," before asking Annie about Fritz the Katz. Annie tells her that Fritz is Jewish and fantasizes about being his wife because "white guys" are "nicer to their women." Emily tells her to keep her eyes on the highway.
Suddenly, they get a flat tire, and the stage is plunged into darkness. Zhaboonigan keeps saying "pee pee," to denote that she has to urinate, and they try and find the spare tire. Marie-Adele and Zhaboonigan go to find a place for Zhaboonigan to urinate, while the others lift the van to replace the tire. Suddenly, Nanabush appears as a nighthawk with dark feathers and begins attacking Marie-Adele. Zhaboonigan tries to help, but the bird knocks her down, and as Marie-Adele screams, Zhaboonigan sobs and counts to herself, until the other women come running to help.
Analysis
Playwright Tomson Highway often creates a theatrical world that goes beyond realism in order to show more atmospheric or spiritual dimensions to scenes. For instance, after the women decide that they need to raise a great deal of money for their trip to Toronto, he stages a flurry of activity to denote their fundraising efforts, with a musician playing an insistent drumbeat to signal the urgency of their activities. The stage direction reads, "The movement of the women covers the entire stage area, and like the music, gets wilder and wilder, until by the end it is as if we are looking at an insane eight-ring circus, eight-ring because through all this, Nanabush, as the seagull, has a holiday, particularly with Marie-Adele's lines of laundry, as Marie-Adele madly strings one line of laundry after another all over the set, from Pelajia's roof to Emily's store, etc."
This theatrical flurry, in which the women are doing all number of activities in anticipation of their trip, lasts a long time. It is an extensive and tightly choreographed series of events, and its length shows us the extent to which the women must work for their money to travel to Toronto. Their movements and tasks become almost mechanized, between hammering and bringing on loads of bottles and stringing laundry, showing the monotony of labor and the ways that the mundane tasks of the women's lives are repetitive and demanding.
In the van to Toronto, the women begin to talk about some of the important things that are going on in their lives, and the more difficult topics of conversation. Marie-Adele tries to talk to her sister Annie both about the fact that she ended up with Annie's husband, and what to do in the event of her illness, but Annie does not want to talk about it. Meanwhile, Pelajia and Philomena talk about the fact that their mother fell ill and died. Philomena discusses the fact that she had a good job in Toronto and had a child with a married man, but had to give up the child and knows nothing about its life. The van ride becomes a suspended place in which the women can talk about their fears and sadness from the past.
The trip seems to be going perfectly until they get a flat tire and the whole stage is plunged into darkness. After a blackout, we can just hear the voices of the women as they strategize and bicker about what to do next. This theatricalization of their difficulty, the fact that they are suddenly literally "in the dark," shows us that the trip to Toronto is not going to be as smooth as planned, and will in fact be even more difficult than they initially thought.
Matters only get worse when Nanabush, having transformed into a nighthawk, begins to attack the already sick Marie-Adele. While she stands there looking calmly at the bird for a moment, it begins to attack her, which only makes Marie-Adele hysterical. Nanabush is a meddling and disruptive presence in the play, an entity that shakes up the characters and brings out their stronger and less organized emotions. Here, Marie-Adele's hysteria builds gradually, crescendoing into complete panic and dismay.
