Onion Songs (25 page)

DECEMBER

The snow accumulated slowly over several weeks. No more than an inch fell in any one evening, but the best efforts of those in charge were ineffective at removing the snow the following day. The best efforts of a brilliant and uncompromising December sun were equally useless. Each night while the city slept the snow drifted down, almost imperceptibly, like a slow fall of white dust, the powder of a dream shoved against the saw blade of consciousness. And it was so cold, despite that bright sun, that the powder stayed, collected, and grew to a phenomenal depth of numbing whiteness.

Once they realized what was happening to their city, the people became alarmed, of course.
Those who remained in charge were chastised for faulty preparation. Plans and strategies were devised and adopted. Promises were made. Programs were implemented. And still the slow snow accumulated. With no end in sight.

As those who pretended still to be in charge talked and studied, shouted and divided, the people of that city
—singly, then collectively—eventually accepted both the cold and the depth of this December snow. Businesses closed as employees stopped showing up for work. Downed power and phone lines went unrepaired. Families gathered around and smashed their TVs. People whispered to each other in the dark at their dinner tables. Parents made up new and startling tales to reveal to their children at bedtime.

It was during this time that those who used to be in charge
—out wandering the empty streets with shovels in their hands—began discovering the bodies.

The bodies were cold and well
preserved. Further investigation demonstrated that they had been dead for a very long time. The bodies were those of men and women, parents and grandparents, but outnumbering all of these by a vast quantity were the bodies of the children. Thousands of children, faces immobilized, thoughts frozen in mid-formulation. Stuck behind trees, cradled in frosted bushes, stacked along the streets like earth-filled sacks damming a flood. No attempt had been made to hide their bodies. Their small still forms lay scattered like indecision.

Those who hoped one day to be in charge again searched their records carefully: none of the families of these parents and grandparents, none of the mothers and fathers of these countless sweet-faced dead children had reported them missing.

All out of procedures, those who were again in charge (if only of a few thousand unreported dead) refrigerated the bodies until the issue could be studied further.

During the next month the temperature rose almost imperceptibly, a degree or so each day.
The snow melted. The people of the city gradually grew less inclined to sleep and dream.

In the high offices of those again comfortably in charge
, the officials waited for the phone calls of alarmed citizens seeking their loved ones. No phone calls ever came.

Life in the city returned to normal.
Businesses reopened. Voices rose above a whisper.

And all over the city they were again being murdered: the dozens, the hundreds, the thousands.
Those in charge never found any bodies, and, even if they had, they would have discovered no wounds.

THE MASK CHILD

A Play
for Puppets

The Puppets
: Tall, thin, stylized: think Japanese Noh, think Greek tragedy. The tallest of these figures is THE MASK CHILD. Either use two versions for child and adult or construct a puppet that grows. Through the progress of the play the Mask Child wears a bewildering succession of masks over the puppet head. The masks he wears as a child are much larger than the ones he wears as an adult, with the exception of the Baby Mask which is small-featured, delicate. A few of these masks are described in the text—have fun with the rest. His drapery (clothing) suggests that the body hidden beneath is “different.” It consists of uneven stripes with odd corners, lines that do not meet, clashing colors. The PARENTS behave as one unit, a chorus. In fact, one puppet will do: two heads and two torsos, draped in complementary clothing, joined at the hip. The NARRATOR has a long face and beard. He wears a robe similar to that which a judge might wear. The BOYS is a chorus of adolescent boys—see their introduction into the play for more description. The GIRLS is a similar chorus of adolescent girls. The TUTOR has long hair, dark robes, and a wizard’s pointed cap.

The Setting
: Consistent with the classical Japanese Noh/Greek tragic feel.

Performance Note
: Play around as you wish with the delivery, but most of these lines were meant to be half-chanted, half-sung.

NARRATOR
: It is a strange thing, responsibility. It is that thing we all demand but few would acknowledge owing. We all know we have certain duties, but few of us truly understand the ramifications of those duties. We all know that our fathers and mothers, and their fathers and mothers before them, have behaved in ill-considered ways—in fact, at certain times in our lives we glory in their inadequacies, which lead us to believe that we are so much more.

And being so much more, do we pick up the blame they discarded? Do we take it upon ourselves to cure the past and make amends?

Of course not. We may be many things, but we are not responsible.

The events told here happened a long time ago. The parties involved are all dead, as far as I can determine. Certainly it is our right to say such things could not happen in our neighborhood, in our city, in our country.

We have
evolved
. We are a better race, now.

The bad old times have passed. Huzzah for our brave new age!

I have been a judge for nearly forty years, and am now approaching retirement. This case was before my time. But I could tell you stories. You wouldn’t want to hear them, but they are available if you ever feel the need. Such stories do not go away.

The parents were older. Just how old has gone undocumented. Some have set their age as early sixties, perhaps feeling this would make their story more unsettling, or because it might provide some explanation for what occurred. But some events defy explanation, despite our need for it.

What we do know is that they had waited all of their lives for a child to be born. This child. In fact, they had given up hope, and had adjusted their futures accordingly: their twilight years would be spent in horticulture, and on plane trips to distant cities with other childless couples of their age.

Then pregnancy came like a toe stub in the middle of the night and their child, this child, was born.

But something was terribly wrong with this particular child, her child, his child, this strange little twisted and discolored bit of flesh. Nothing they could have imagined. In fact, if the couple had taken in a movie and this apparition had traversed the screen, they would have gotten up and left.

I must confess that no records have survived describing the specific nature of the child
’s deformity, if indeed there ever were such records. All we have are descriptions of other people’s reactions to the child—most importantly, the parents’. In any case, early on the child developed his own solution for his singular facade.

[Lights up on the PARENTS, moving slowly side to side, rocking.]

PARENTS
(almost a song): What to do when to do it, how does it happen when you hope and dream, the surprise that comes unasked for, the joke of it, the terrible joke of it, these questions of duty, of life so unexpected, these questions they ask of you, all of them asking so much, so much, and much too soon.

[THE MASK CHILD totters in, draped to the neck. We can see nothing about his body, but he appears to move more like an insect or arachnid than any human child (or is this simply a child’s normal awkwardness magnified?). He wears a small Baby Face mask, perfectly formed, doll-like, but empty of character.]

THE MASK CHILD
: Mother, Father, see? Can you see, can you not see? I’m a real boy now. A real boy. [The PARENTS ignore him, so intent are they on their rocking, their swaying. They drift back and forth across the stage—he follows them closely, essentially chasing them.]

PARENTS
(chanted/sung softly and monotonously underneath THE MASK CHILD’S speech): What to say, what to do, our duty, just a boy, he cannot understand, cannot know, how people are, how people really are, what to say, what they’ll do, what to do, what to say, just a boy, how could he, how could he know, our duty, our life, our life, what must be, what must be done.

THE MASK CHILD
: A boy, a real boy, like the other boys, like so many others. Now we can toss the ball, now you can teach me about bikes, like so many others, Mother, Father, we can go to movies together, we can go to plays, we can, we can, I am so alike, I can be so liked.

[He finally crashes into them. They reel—he stares up at them.]

PARENTS
: You cannot know, you cannot understand, how there is no play in this, how there is so much duty, so much to be done, and no one to tell you, no one who understands, what must be done.

THE MASK CHILD
: To play, to sing, to dance, to walk outside in sun and snow, hand in hand like so many others, a boy like so many others, in the morning, with the sun on my face, with the sun.

PARENTS
(more loudly): We never knew there could be, what’s the duty? We did not understand, the shapes, the package, how a life might arrive, so many, so many, how could it be, in the night, when no one is listening, where no one can hear, in the night, dear child, in the night.

THE MASK CHILD
(scrambling back, shouting): But in the sun, so many others, tossing the ball, Father! A real boy, Mother! So real, in the sun, on my face, my face, Mother! In the sun, in the sun.

[Fade out, fade in on the NARRATOR]

NARRATOR
: I see it every day. We all make the mistake. We forget what they are. We forget their humanity. The children are so cute, we say. They are so adorable. Like a doll, we say. Just like a monkey. But of course the children are not dolls or monkeys. And they sometimes understand far more than we could ever imagine.

The problem, I would submit, is that our imaginations are so very poor, there are so many things we cannot imagine: how they think, what they feel, the many shapes a life can take, the varied forms still with the power to think, the passion to feel, the imagination to dream such sights and sounds you would be astounded, you would weep from the sheer surprise of it all.

Very little is documented of his adolescent years. But even with our poor imaginations we know. We can see.

[Fade out on the NARRATOR, fade in on a group of adolescent BOYS—all similarly constructed except for their hair colors. As they move about the stage two points beneath their drapery beat rhythmically against the cloth. The motion is somewhat reminiscent of grasshoppers. It becomes clear that these represent knees as their legs are constantly pumping—these boys are all knees and elbows, and their movements about the stage make this kind of awkward, synchronized adolescent dance. In fact these puppets might be constructed ganged two and three together to facilitate control and emphasize this odd, awkward sort of chorus line effect. During their game THE MASK CHILD appears on stage, older now, but still very much out of place. He wears a huge mask, brightly painted, African in style, suggesting some sort of warrior.]

BOYS
(repeating chorus): This is the game we love, every night and every day, we play, this is the life, all the boys say, this is the game, this is the life! This is the time, we say, this is our time, we play, all the day is ours, we rave, this is the game, this is the life!

THE MASK CHILD
: This is the life, oh yes, this really is the life. And I can play. I have the legs, and I have the head for it. See? My big and beautiful face with all its paint and terror? This is the play, this is the life. I can say it, I can say it so well!

BOYS
(still moving constantly, surrounding him aggressively): This is our life, we say, this is our game, these are our heads and these are our knees, out of our way, we say, it’s not your time, we say, out of our way, out of our way!

[The BOYS dance around THE MASK CHILD, who twirls and leaps at their center. THE MASK CHILD’s movements become frantic, and he crashes his great warrior’s mask into the BOYS as they close in on him.]

THE MASK CHILD
: Let me out, I say! I have a life, I pray! Let me out let me out, I have a life!

[Suddenly, his back to us, THE MASK CHILD’s mask comes off and falls to the stage. We cannot see his face. All action stops. The general lighting dims, the tall shadow of THE MASK CHILD is thrown across the backdrop. The BOYS shrink slowly away into the shadows. After a pause a single BOY comes back on stage, gives THE MASK CHILD back his mask and leaves.]

THE MASK CHILD
(softly): Let me out, let me out, I have a life.

[Fade out on THE MASK CHILD. Fade in on the NARRATOR.]

NARRATOR
: It is an unfortunate fact of life that our poor faces can only begin to reflect the light that fills and gives color to the heart. For what is a face but a few scattered knobs of flesh, the odd opening and some strategically placed teeth? A random toss-up of features out of that swirling genetic cesspool that your parents and their parents before them created out of the sweat and leak of their ancient passions.

Is this any better than a mask? In fact I think it is far less. At least when we create a mask for ourselves there is some thought put into it, even if those thoughts
were derived second-hand from the originality of others.

But take it from an old judge, ladies and gentlemen—be careful what mask you decide to put on, because that is your life.

[Lights up on THE MASK CHILD, sitting alone in the middle of the stage. At first, his head appears covered by a huge (several times his body size), stony-faced mask with rough, forbidding features. In fact, his head is covered by a series of masks, one inside the other like nested dolls. These masks come off one at a time throughout the scene that follows, ending with the final mask: plain and white with large eyeholes. The masks should be of a variety of designs and materials, showing a wide range of emotions and effects.
THE MASK CHILD also grows much taller during this scene, so by the time the last mask is removed it appears as if he has grown into young manhood right before our eyes. The correct musical accompaniment would be important here (a lot of discordant violins, for example).]