Station 19
Thursdays 10:00 PM on ABCStation 19 Season 4 Episode 15: "Say Her Name" Quotes
Vic: What is all this?
Lenya: Your accomplishments, your professional accomplishments. Your other stuff is over there.
Vic: It’s like my whole life’s in here. I’ve never even seem some of these.
Lenya: How would you have? You’ve hardly even here anymore. When you are, you just grab your perogies and go. And since your dad and I spend all this time without you, we brought as much as of you as we could here. I watched an interview with Breonna Taylor’s mother. Couldn’t sleep for a week. I know I could never truly understand what it’s like for you to navigate this world as a Black woman, and I would never even pretend I could and I have experienced nothing remotely similar to this, but what I do understand is being the mother of a Black daughter. You don’t think I don’t know you could have been Breonna Taylor? I’m your mother. This is what I’ve always known. I’ve known since you were 5 and a cashier accused you of stealing the candy, the one I just bought you. I’ve known since you were 11 and came home crying because the girls at school wouldn’t stop touching your hair. I’ve since before you were even born when my parents kicked me out of the family for marrying a Black man and refused to meet my perfect little girl.
Reporter: You all must be horrified that a neighborhood mainstay and small family business was destroyed by protesters.
Anthony: Rioters.
Reporter: Rioters, terrorizing our city, costing our taxpayer dollars all in the name of a movement that cares nothing about them. Care to comment?
Lenya: Yeah, our comment is let it burn because justice needs to be served, and if this is what it takes to make people care and make those officers held accountable and any officer who did it and any city who allowed to do it, then let it burn.
Reporter: What about the property that’s been damaged?
Anthony: Property doesn’t equal life. You can rebuild a restaurant, but you can’t bring back someone who’s been killed, so if you’re asking, if you’re positing that society should be more upset about the value of a property than murder, I think you need to reevaluate how you’re walking through this world. Being scandalized by property damage but now the taking of a human life, that’s a problem.
Reporter: You’re simply fine with your business being burned to the ground?
Vic: As my parents said, this isn't about our restaurant. This is about the people whose lives were taken.
Maya: They’re pulling our permit for the medical tent.
Dean: They can do that?
Maya: They just did. Apparently, tensions are too high, and the city wants to present a united front. They don’t want SFD to appear to be on a different side than PD.
Dean: The side of helping people.
Andy: That’s bull. We should go anyway.
Maya: We can’t.
Dean: Can't or won’t?
Maya: Can't.
Vic: Can we just take a second?
Lenya: A second for what?
Vic: To talk about this.
Lenya: To talk about what?
Vic: This, how absurd this is. We should be talking about this. Why do we not talk about anything? Why do we not talk about anything ever? How are we just fricking cleaning up our restaurant that was burned down by rioters who hijacked a protest?
Lenya: Because it has to be done, Victoria.
Anthony: Because it’s our life.
Vic: I know it’s your life. You keep saying that. Dad, your mom died and you went back to work. My fiancé died, and I went back to work because that’s what we do, but is it working? I’m really asking. I know you worked your asses off my entire life, and you didn’t have time for all that touchy-feely stuff, but really for just once, for one second can we just acknowledge that something awful has happened? And all of this was precipitated by the repeated murder of Black people by law enforcement, but we’re not gonna talk about that either. That’s ridiculous. Breonna Taylor was killed. She was a Black female first responder. I’m a Black female first responder. In another world, that could have been me. Tiny circumstantial differences and that could have been me. Do you get that? And news of her death didn’t even break until two months after the fact because clearly no one cared about it. And I have spent the last three weeks trying not to feel my feelings, trying not to center myself, so that Miller and Sullivan and Warren and maybe even you Dad, maybe even you could feel your feelings. But I haven’t been able to sleep through the night since I heard what happened to her. I go to bed with a kitchen knife in my nightstand, which I know it outrageous because a kitchen knife is no match for a bullet, but I need something, just anything to help me feel safe at night. But of course you wouldn’t know that. You’d have to have checked in on me even once in the last, god, I don’t even know how long. But even if you had checked in on me, I probably would have pretended everything was fine because bizarrely that’s what we do in this family. And I just don’t think it’s working for me anymore. I am sick and I am sad, and Dad, I’m scared. And I don’t know how you’re not.
Anthony: We are. I am.
Vic: We have to make sure it’s safe to move around in here.
Anthony: We’re fine.
Vic: I know you want to pretend nothing happened, but we actually do have to make sure it’s safe. It’s not an argument.
Lenya: We hardly pretend nothing happened.
Dean: Shouldn’t you be on crowd control or something, man?
Cop: SFD can handle that on their own now because you apparently don’t need us anymore.
Dean: You really doing that right now? When people’s lives are on fire?
Cop: Well, why don’t you put it out then? You start it?
Dean: What did you say to me, man?
Vic: Where do you want me?
Maya: Nowhere.
Vic: Seriously?
Maya: You ran into a burning building after I told you to stand down. I get it. It’s your parents. That’s why I want you to focus on them. Let us focus on the fire.
Travis: What’s up?
Vic: Nothing. I’ve spent all weekend thinking about what’s up. I just want two seconds to not think about that. I just want to think about shellfish.
Travis: This is our thing, right? This is what we do. We take turns forcing the other person to talk, so rip the scab. Just do it.
Vic: Remember when we used to go out at night back when the world was open? And before you’d head out, you’d say to your friends, text me when you get home, just so you’d know all your people were good. You’d know they’d made it home safe and sound, right? That’s like sacred friend stuff, like humans evolving beyond beast stuff. That is consideration and buddy love you even when you’re too drunk to walk straight.
Travis: Oh my god, remember how hammered you were at Miller’s birthday last year?
Vic: But she was home, Travis. Breonna Taylor was home. She could have texted her best friend, ‘home, xo,’ and that friend would have gone to bed thinking, ‘Great, everyone’s home safe and sound,’ and then she was killed in the middle of the night in her home in her pajamas.
Travis: Vic, I’m sorry.
Vic: I just don’t want to think about any of it, you know. Just one day, Travis. Tomorrow I will pick it all back up again, I promise, but today I just want to put my feelings in the freezer ‘cause I’m spent and I just need one day. I will fight all future battles and I will care as much as I do now, but I’m exhausted. And I just need a day.
Andy: How are you holding up?
Maya: If by holding up, you mean stuffing my face with cookies every chance I get to avoid thinking about the fact that Carina’s heading into the belly of the COVID beast and that the immigration system is as broken as the justice system, then I am holding up incredibly well.
Andy: Which kind of cookies?
Maya: Get out of here.
