Water by the Spoonful is a 2011 stage play by Quiara Alegría Hudes.
It is the second play in Hudes's "Elliot Trilogy". The story unfolds in two narrative tracks. Elliot, who came home from the Iraq War seven years before with a lame leg (in the first play in the trilogy, Elliot, a Soldier's Fugue) is working at a Subway, but contemplating trying to make it as an actor. Early in the story his Aunt Ginny, who is also his adoptive mother, dies of cancer. A grief-stricken Elliot must arrange his funeral, with the support of his cousin and best friend Yazmin.
The second narrative track follows Odessa, an older woman who works as a janitor. Odessa, a crack cocaine addict in recovery, moderates an online chat room for crack addicts under the handle "Haikumom." Two of the regulars in the forum are "Orangutan" (true name Madeline Mays, original name Yoshio Sakai, a young woman of Japanese ethnicity adopted by American white people) and "Chutes & Ladders" (Clayton Wilkie, a black man in his 50s whose drug use estranged him from his family). The two stories are connected: Odessa his Elliot's birth mother, who gave him up for adoption due to her drug addiction.
Meanwhile, Elliot is haunted by the ghost of a man he killed in Iraq. The ghost follows him around, continually repeating the man's last words: "Can I have my passport back?"
Followed by the third play in the Elliot Trilogy, The Happiest Song Plays Last.
Tropes:
- As You Know: Mostly averted, but at one point Orangutan asks Chutes & Ladders, "I've known you for how long?"
- Call-Back: Chutes & Ladders makes a comment about not knowing how to swim, and Haikumom says she'll send him some water wings. Much later, when Clayton is at work, he gets a package in the mail, opens it, and pulls out water wings.
- Death of a Child: In the backstory. When her children were small, Odessa went out to feed her crack habit while they were both down with the flu. Elliot lived, but his sister Mary Lou was dead of dehydration.
- Dramatic Drop: Haikumom aka Odessa drops her newspaper when she reads a funeral notice for her sister—she had not even heard that Ginny had died.
- Drugs Are Bad: They might leave you a stranger to your family (Clayton's grandchildren don't know him) or they may cause your baby to die when you're out trying to score like happened with Odessa's daughter.
- Extra Digits: Chutes & Ladders, who is twice Orangutan's age, starts to think she is developing romantic feelings for him. He tries to burst her bubble, citing among his physical flaws the six toes on his left foot.
- Go into the Light: As Odessa teeters on the edge of death following a crack overdose, a bright light shines down. She briefly considers it, then turns away and comes back to Earth. What's unusual about the scene is that Yazmin, who is there and trying frantically to revive her aunt, also sees the bright light.
- Log Fic: Most of the scenes between Haikumom, Orangutan, Clayton, and John take place in the chat room. This is represented by the actors in different locations, delivering their lines without making eye contact, with screens behind them showing their chat room posts.
- Off the Wagon: After the awful confrontation with her son in which Elliot reminds Odessa of his dead sister, Odessa has a relapse, and nearly dies. At the end a shamefaced Elliot admits to Yazmin that he provoked Odessa's relapse, out of rage and grief after the death of Aunt Ginny.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Elliot is haunted by the ghost of a man he killed in Iraq, who keeps saying the man's last words, "Can I have my passport back?" Near the end it's shown that the man was in fact just trying to get his passport out of Elliot's pocket, but Elliot didn't understand the Arabic, a scuffle broke out, and Elliot killed him.
- Recovered Addict: Orangutan, Haikumom, and Chutes & Ladders are all struggling to stay sober—Orangutan has just reached her three-month limit.
- "Rediscovering Roots" Trip: Orangutan, adopted to America when she was an infant, is actually already in Japan at the start of the play, teaching English—she calls it her "homeland delusions". She winds up getting the address of her birth parents, but she's undecided on whether she should go there and what it might mean for her sobriety.
- Snark-to-Snark Combat: Elliot and Yazmin are both Deadpan Snarkers and best friends forever, so they are continually snarking at each other, like when Yazmin asks Elliot to be the witness as she signs her divorce papers.Elliot: What happened to the trial separation?
Yazmin: There was a verdict. - Title Drop: When recounting a story of how Odessa was told to feed her two little children a spoonful of water at a time, while they were both down with the flu.
- Tropaholics Anonymous: They may be going to meetings in meatspace, but in the play, Haikumom, Oranguton, Chutes & Ladders, and Fountainhead are all "meeting" in an online chat room, where they give each other support.
