Teresa: I won’t do it!
Uncle: It will be a couple minutes.
Teresa: Wearing this outfit? In public? For even a second will destroy everything I’ve done over the past lifetime!
Uncle: This doesn’t matter; when you are my age, you won’t remember today at all.
Teresa: My friends will laugh at me and they will keep laughing for the rest of my life.
Uncle: Perspective. Age is a great one to give a little perspective.
Teresa: How much are they paying you for this party? They ARE paying you.
Uncle: Well, yes, they are renting the space for the day.
Teresa: The mayor is paying you to rent the space for the day, so why do you need me to dance, too?
Uncle: A personal request; someone personally requested that you dance. You dancing is part of the rental.
Teresa: Who would—oh, I know, and now I’m definitely not wearing this outfit up there on that dance floor.
Uncle: If you don’t go dance, we’ll lose the house and garden; I’ll have to sell this house. We have no money.
Teresa: So, you’ll go sell my body to the night?
Uncle: No, no, no, this isn’t anything. You’ll just dance a minute and we’ll pay the bank with the mayor’s money.
Teresa: They know about you and the bank, don’t they?
Uncle: Who?
Teresa: The man who asked me to dance up there on live television today.
Uncle: Who would have thought it: live television here in our little garden, but the mayor thought it would be a great spot for a party, and we can use the money. Just image if other people rent this space, you know “As seen on television,” and we have new income.
Teresa: I’ll work harder in the garden, I promise! Anything but this!
Uncle: No one makes money selling vegetables; we need a tourist rental—that will bring in real money.
Teresa: I won’t do it.
Uncle: You have to do it. It will be just a couple songs. You’ve practiced. You know the dance. It will be fine!
Teresa: I didn’t know about this skimpy horror. I’m showing everything.
Uncle: You look great.
Teresa: Are you drunk; have you been drinking?
Uncle: You do look great; you look great and everyone knows you look great, and you can show off a little and bring in some money for the family farm, okay?
Teresa: I warn you, this is the last time I will ever do–
Uncle: That’s my good girl. I knew you would do it after I explained things to you.
Teresa: I promise you: you will be sorry for this.
Uncle: Yes, yes, yes, just tell my brother when you see him again—oh, and remind him that I raised you all my myself.
Teresa: Haha, you’ve forgotten Maria, Paulo, and Rui already? You will regret this.
Uncle: Uh, what is the line: Hell hath no fury like an angry girl?
Teresa: I’m a woman and you will know it when I leave this cesspool, go to college, and never return here again until you are dead and I visit your funeral but I don’t even put flowers on your grave.
Uncle: As I said, hell hath no fury–
Teresa: No, I will put flowers: I’ll put plastic flowers on your grave so that your grave is the ugliest, most kitsch horror of a representation of your sad little life that no one remembers and everyone visiting turns away from your grave thinking how ugly it is.
Uncle: Kitsch? Where do you learn these words?
Teresa: I’m sixteen; I read books. I’ve read all the books in our library and would have read a lot more if you didn’t spend all the money on beer.
Uncle: Well, a man has to have a social life.
Teresa: That’s what this is about; you get free beer if I dance. Oh, I see it all so clearly now, yes. I’ve been sold for a round of drinks at your bar. Oh, god, this is, wow, this is just…
Uncle: It isn’t a single round, Teresa; they are giving me drinks for free for an entire year! Think of all the money we will save! I can promise you this: I’ll give you half of the money we’ll save.
Teresa: What is half of the money you spend drinking every year?
Uncle: Um…
Teresa: And don’t lie, because I know your passwords and have always respected your privacy, but after you’ve shown my butt off to every drunken friend of yours AND broadcast the showing on live television for all the other drunks in the rest of the country, then, well, I can certainly justify logging in and checking your bank account, can’t I?
Uncle: Um, well, my dear, I think you can probably buy all the books you want for the next year. How does that sound?
Teresa: Let me think.
Uncle: I am sorry; now that I see what moral quandary I’ve put you in. “Selling your body to the night.” I hadn’t thought of it like that before.
Teresa: Oh, you thought, alright, about beer.
Uncle: Yes, I thought about the beer. Beer for a year.
A bell rings.
Teresa: That’s the bell; I have to go on stage now and destroy my reputation.
Uncle: You don’t have to do it.
Teresa: Now you say that? You force me to, convince me, and then in the last moment you say, Wait, you are doing it freely.
Uncle: I didn’t mean it like that; don’t go.
Teresa: Yes, you did; that’s exactly what you did.
Uncle: But–
Teresa: In September, I’m going to college and you won’t see me again.
Uncle: Oh, dear, um.
Teresa exits.
Uncle: You can’t go to college; you have to stay here in this house or your mother’s people will hunt you down and kill you. Oh, dear.
The end.