Soap Opera Scenes Unpub)

      The Players
 
I. Assa Aatte (1904-70), ethnic Lugbara, herbalist and mother of Idi Amin

II. Phyllis Newman (1933-2019), actress and third wife of lyricist Adolph Green

III. Dancer, actress and famous lifelong atheist Butterfly McQueen (1911-1995)

IV. Maria van Egmont (? - ?) second wife of Dutch painter Jan Steen

 
     Scene I
 
"You're an idiot, Idi," moan’d Mrs. Amin
(which remark bent her bustle and bruis’d her baleen). 
She'd confronted her son near the Stage Door Canteen 
where she'd track’d down her lad with intent to demean, 
after viewing, on telly, "My Sister Eileen," 
an occurrence which none but yours truly'd foreseen.

     Scene II 
 
“You're a madman, mon Adolph," mou’d mean Mrs. Green
(this was early one morn in the Late Holocene).
She had promis’d her husband she'd not intervene
in affairs he conducted with gals named Joline.*
"Let me own up, my dear, why I wax none too keen:
your Swede sweeties are shiksas...and painfully lean."
 
     * In 2014, the 70th most popular name for a girl
in Sweden was Joline.
 
     Scene III
 
"I'm call’d Butterfly," mutter’d the maid (Ms. McQueen).
"I'm no butternut squash -- nor I'm no nectarine.
I'm not orange: more sepia, dipp’d in ondine.
And, though capital dancer and actress pristine,
it's the queen's upstairs maid I play – never the queen.
Shall I ever be free from such racist routine...?"
 
     Scene IV
 
"Janny paints a great scene," pronounced proud Mme Steen. 
"Janny did in his twenties and did as a teen.
Not a few of Jan's paintings are, these days, unseen – 
like the one of an early Dutch bathing machine.
Janny painted in Haarlem but never in Wien.
(As his solvent Jan always selected xylene.)"

 
     Series Finales, Composited 
 
Will this quartet of scenes, cast with soap-op’ra queens,
prove sufficient to fill up celebrity 'zines…?