Ethelrida Pearl Smutny quotes from Fargo

Ethelrida Pearl Smutny

Frederick Douglass once intoned, "I stand before you as a thief and a robber. I stole this head, these limbs, this body from my master and I ran off with them." My point being, the moment our feet touched American soil, we were already criminals.

Ethelrida Pearl Smutny

Webster's defines "assimilation" as "the process of becoming similar to something". But imbibing these words, dear reader, we are forced to ask, similar to what? If America is a nation of immigrants, then how does one become American?

Ethelrida Pearl Smutny

History is a form of memory. But what does it mean to remember? We think naturally of our own past, our lives day by day, and through them we see the events of our times. We are black and white, rich and poor, foreign-born and domestic. And yet, if our pasts are separate, then aren't our histories separate, too? Segregated? Ask yourself, who writes the books? Who chooses what we remember and what gets forgotten? My name is Ethelrida Pearl Smutny. This is my history report.

Oraetta Mayflower

Oh, oh, apologies.

Ethelrida Pearl Smutny

What?

Oraetta Mayflower

Oh, I was simply excusing myself. I’m not normally this out of sorts.

Ethelrida Pearl Smutny

It’s a funeral. People cry at funerals.

Oraetta Mayflower

Ah, amen. Those are wise words for a person of your complexion. But then I’ve noticed your people are often more in touch with your spiritual side and emotional side.

Ethelrida Pearl Smutny

My people?

Oraetta Mayflower

The Negro. It’s a Baptist fervor, I’d wager, what causes them to hoot and tumble to the floor, aflush with the Holy Spirit.

Miss Mayflower, I see you’ve met my daughter, Ethelrida.

Oraetta Mayflower

Your daughter?

The one and only. Ethelrida, this is Miss Mayflower. She’s a nurse at St. Bartholomew.

Oraetta Mayflower

Oh yeah. Huh! Yes, now I see it. This child is certainly the product of miscegentation.

Uh, if by that you mean she’s the spitting image of her father, then I take that as a compliment.

Oraetta Mayflower

Your mother must be quite dark-skinned. As I’ve noticed in my study of the human animal, that in the combination of races, it is de rigueur for the more extreme coloration to prevail.

Zelmare Roulette

Looks like you done well for yourself these years I've been away.

You ain't getting no handout.

Zelmare Roulette

Listen at you, acting like the big sister. Wasn't asking for money. Swanee and I got prospects.

Ethelrida Pearl Smutny

What kind of prospects?

Bank robbing. [Swanee makes a finger gun gesture] Pa-choo, pa-choo.

Ethelrida Pearl Smutny

Aunt Zelmare, what would you do if you saw something wrong? Something you could fix?

Nothing.

Ethelrida Pearl Smutny

What do you mean?

I mean nothing.

Ethelrida Pearl Smutny

Because you're a criminal?

I ain't a criminal.

Ethelrida Pearl Smutny

You're innocent, you're saying?

Girl, I ain't been innocent since Uncle Charlie cornered me in the shed when I was nine.

Ethelrida Pearl Smutny

Then I don't understand.

She's saying we ain't criminals. We're outlaws.

See, criminals play the game.

Ethelrida Pearl Smutny

What game?

Life. The earth.

Society, right? They got their rules. Banking and family. An honest dollar for an honest day's work. Politics and voting. And the criminal, he on the other side of that, but still he play the game. And if he plays it long enough, he even starts to talk about going legit.

The outlaw, on the other hand...

The outlaw, on the other hand, well, we reject the game. Society. Ain't nothing organized about our crime 'cause our crime is freedom.

No rules.

And nothing's ever broke and there ain't nothing to fix.

All we want is to live while we're alive and die with a gun in our hands.

You a bit of an outlaw.

Ethelrida Pearl Smutny

Me?

Yeah. Your mama sees it, too. In the eyes. That's why she say, "Keep away."

Ethelrida Pearl Smutny

I'm not an outlaw.

Then which are you - a convict or a square?

Ethelrida Pearl Smutny

I'm not either one of those things.

What are you then?

Ethelrida Pearl Smutny

I'm Ethelrida Pearl Smutny. One of a kind.