Night, Mother

“It’s plenty safe! As long as you don’t go up there.”

Thelma is referring to the attic, which has a dangerously unstable floor. It’s full of the relics of family history, hidden and packed away. Thelma’s statement foreshadows the rest of the play, in which Thelma and Jessie unpack the metaphorical attic of their family and relationship, deconstructing the safety of the secrets they’ve been keeping. Additionally, Jessie’s choice to ignore her mother’s warnings and go into the attic is how she procures the gun that she uses to kill herself.

“We don’t have anything anybody’d want, Jessie. I mean, I don’t even want what we got, Jessie.”

Thelma is making a joke because Jessie said that she needs a gun for protection. In reality, however, Thelma is desperate to hang on to what they have, and Jessie is the one determined to escape it.

“How would you know if I didn’t say it? You want it to be a surprise? You’re lying there in your bed or maybe you’re just brushing your teeth and you hear this . . . noise down the hall?”

Jessie is describing the shock that most people experience when a loved one commits suicide. There is often no warning. Jessie seems to believe that she can prepare her mother and mitigate her stunned horror when she kills herself, but Thelma sees this only as a chance to change her daughter’s mind.