Previous
Intro
Late on a brilliant moonlit night, trolleybus driver Ephraim comes home from work. He lives in a single room that opens onto a yard he shares with his neighbors: Mavis, a young woman who is engaged in sex work to make a living; Rosa, an 18-year-old who works in the café owned by their landlord, Old Mack; and Sophia Adams, her husband Charlie, their daughter Esther, and their baby. As he leaves the street, Ephraim compliments Ketch, a street musician, on his song. Hearing the baby crying, he knocks on the Adams’ door to see if he can help. Charlie is out and Sophia has gone to look for him, leaving Esther, their middle-school-aged daughter, home alone with the baby.
During the long moonlit evening, Ephraim calms the fussy baby and congratulates Esther on the scholarship she’s just won to attend high school. She tells him she’s afraid her dream of a good education will evaporate if her family can’t find the money to pay for her uniform. She asks if Ephraim and Rosa, his sweetheart, will take her to the upcoming band concert, but Ephraim won’t commit. He goes inside. Sophia comes home from work, followed shortly by Rosa escorted by Old Mack. When Old Mack’s romantic overtures toward Rosa become too insistent, Sophia—who has become a mother figure to the orphaned girl—sends him away.
The next morning, Esther asks for permission to play with Jeanette and the other neighborhood children, but Sophia sends her inside to finish her needlework project instead. Rosa comes home from the café with the news that someone broke in and stole more than $70 from the cash register. Ephraim and Sophia are discussing the robbery when Mavis’s boyfriend Prince comes to pick her up for a date. After they leave, Sophia (who clearly despises both) tells Ephraim how badly she wants to escape the yard to a better life, and he replies that they’re all trapped. Their conversation is interrupted when a drunk and disheveled Charlie returns from a night of carousing at a reception for servicemen returning form WWII. Sophia alternates between chiding Charlie for his actions and solicitously making him breakfast.
Late that night, Mavis brings home a new client, an American soldier. When she and Sophia argue loudly, they wake up Rosa, who is sleeping in Ephraim’s room. Ephraim resists Rosa’s amorous advances, and when she asks him if he thinks of his future or about having children, he grows cold. When she tells him that she knows that Charlie burgled the café (he dropped his very recognizable hat), Ephraim erupts in rage, accusing her of failing to protect Charlie despite her influence with Old Mack. To hurt her, he tells her that he’s leaving for England the next day and that he’s no longer planning on sending for her once he gets established. This news shocks Rosa. She tells him that she’s pregnant by him. He accuses her of lying and manipulating him, and when she insists, he throws her out of his room.
In the morning, Charlie and Sophia find Rosa on the porch in her underwear. Sophia, realizing that something went awry between Rosa and Ephraim, sends Esther to tell Stephen, the café manager, that Rosa is sick. Then she comforts the young woman. Charlie watches with amusement as Prince comes to visit and he discovers the soldier in Mavis’s bed. When the two start brawling, Mavis follows them into the street. Soon afterwards, Sophia gives Esther permission to go play as long as she’s home by 3 p.m., and Ephraim comes home from an early-morning errand.
Charlie and Ephraim talk about how racism and segregation ruined Charlie’s once-promising cricket career. Mavis parades back into the yard to show off her new engagement ring—after winning the fight with the soldier, Prince proposed. Soon after, Mavis and Prince go into Mavis’s room, Ephraim goes out on an errand, and Old Mack arrives to visit Rosa. Barred from her room by Sophia, he and Charlie carry on a stilted conversation, during which Old Mack says he suspects Stephen of the café robbery.
Rosa emerges from her room and agrees to go for a drink with Old Mack. They pass Ephraim on their way to the street. He stalks to his room and slams the door. Prince and Mavis go out for lunch, leaving only Sophia and Charlie in the yard. Sophia wants to tell Charlie what she just learned from Rosa about Ephraim’s departure, but he interrupts to confesses to the robbery. He doesn’t want Stephen to take the blame. Before Sophia can figure out how to fix the situation, a young policeman arrives to arrest Charlie.
At 3 p.m., when Esther comes home, only Mavis and Prince are out in the yard. Esther has just gone to talk with Ephraim when Murray arrives to pick up the cricket bats Charlie repaired for him. Sophia comes back after an unsuccessful attempt to bail Charlie out soon afterwards. When she breaks the news about Charlie’s arrest to Esther, the heartbroken girl runs out into the street.
Later that evening, Prince and Mavis set out for a nightclub, passing a bedraggled Sophia (who has spent hours in the rain looking for Esther) in the gate to the yard. Sophia goes to Ephraim’s room, where the two argue about his plan to abandon Rosa and his unborn child while he finishes packing. Sophia fails to sway him, and he climbs into a taxi and heads for the port. Rosa emerges from her room to watch him drive off. Sophia offers to help take care of the girl and her baby, but Rosa has already provided for herself; she has finally given in and accepted Old Mack’s love. As Sophia reels from this revelation, Esther calls out from the street. She has come home.
