The Colored Museum

The lights come up on Normal Jean Reynolds, a Southern/country girl wearing a simple, faded dress and plaited hair. Her dress covers a large oval object. She begins by saying that her mother told her she was created as a result of God’s boredom. She goes on to say that her mother doesn’t say much now, ever since Normal Jean laid an egg. She lifts her dress to reveal a large, white egg laying between her legs.

She tells us that it started when she had sexual relations with the garbage man. She liked him because he “stank of all the good things that folks never should have thrown away; cantaloupe juice, ripe strawberries and juicy-juicy grapes” (47). She compares him to a fruit salad except that she kept the seeds. Once her mother discovered she was pregnant, she locked Normal Jean away out of shame. Normal cried at first but eventually got used to being locked up.

One day she began bleeding a lot, then screamed in pain, before eventually passing out. When she came to, she found the big white egg between her legs and realized that she had given birth to it. Her mother tried to take the egg from her, but Normal Jean hugged it and held it. Several days later, in the bathtub, she heard a heartbeat coming from within the egg. She says she knows she is special as she is the only person to have ever laid an egg. She explains how she cares for the egg by counting to it and singing to it.

She suddenly stops and puts her ear to the egg. She hears not one but two heartbeats inside the egg, then three, four, five, six—more than she can count.

She claims that any day the egg is going to crack open and bring her babies out in the world. She says they will be all kinds of shades and that she knows they will be special because other babies do not come from white eggs: “Yes, any day now this shell’s gonna crack and they will fly...fly...fly (49). She stops on the word “fly.” The lights go to blackout.