Onion Songs (26 page)

THE MASK CHILD
: I had to write this essay for school, “The Nicest Person I Ever Met.” A lot of the kids wrote about their parents. Maybe a few more than that wrote about their grandparents. Every kid’s grandparents are nice. They have grandmothers who bake them these miniature cakes with their names on them, and grandfathers who take them fishing and teach them about the different kinds of trees. My grandparents have never seen me, as far as I know. Certainly I have never seen them. But I hear they are very nice, just like other kids’ grandparents.

I
’m sure my parents are very nice too. Most kids’ parents are nice, if you believe what the kids say. Nice is like another word for mother, another word for father. It’s like you can’t separate the two. They’re nice because they’re your parents. They’re nice because they gave birth to you, which is a very nice thing. They didn’t have to give birth to you, you know.

My parents and I don
’t talk very much, but I’m quite sure they’re nice, just like real kids’ parents.

But the nicest person I ever met was an old lady who lives at the end of our street, there where the pavement ends and the trees and the fields begin. I
’ve heard some of the other kids in the neighborhood say she is a witch, just like in the fairytale books, and that she does awful things to people—kids especially—in those woods, at night, in the dark, when everyone else is at home in bed thinking they are safe.

Once they looked at me when they were telling that story and I knew exactly what they were thinking. They were thinking that was what happened to me. That old witch lady happened to me.

Of course I didn’t tell them I had already met that lady and talked to her a number of times. I used to walk down our street but I always walked toward the woods because there weren’t any people in that direction. And that’s how I met her. She was sitting up on her porch and she said to me, “Nice mask!” I don’t remember what mask I was wearing that day but I guess that doesn’t matter.

I went up to her porch then and she gave me a little piece of cake and I went up to her porch again every day after that. But the nicest thing she did for me was that every day she asked me this same question.

She asked me, “What do you do with your day?”

She didn
’t ask me how was or how is your day. Or what I did the day before. She asked me what did I do with my day. That was the nice thing.

[Pause. The GIRLS begin drifting into the stage area. They have small heads and large dresses, which they occasionally twirl. They resemble flowers. They move quietly around the stage in a kind of slow-motion dance during the following speech.]

So what do I do with my day? I had to think about it. School takes a large bite out of my week, of course. I sit in classes for hours, mostly aware of how hot and itchy my face is under the mask. I get terrible rashes, and sometimes I’m afraid things are getting worse under there, in the damp and heat, in the dark where no one but I can see. The itching feels like skin disintegrating, my face slowly dissolving so that someday there won’t be a face at all, and I will have nothing left to support my mask and then where will I be?

Sometimes I am aware that the other children stare at me during class. Most are so used to my presence and the five different masks I wear to school
that they pay little attention to me, but there are always a few who wait for the tiniest slip of the mask, like voyeurs waiting for the smallest revelation of flesh.

Occasionally I am aware of the subjects the teacher discusses, and try to remember them generally so that I can read up on them when I am at home in my room alone.

After school I walk the long way home and look for animals I have never seen before. Sometimes I find one, but most of the time not.

And of course I work on new masks every day. If I could, I would have a different one for each day of the year. I feel lucky that I have as many as I do.

I make up lists of things I would do if I only had the courage. Such as give each of my classmates their own mask and encourage them to wear them for a day.

I don
’t always wear a mask in my own room. In my own room the room becomes a mask and I am the small face that lives and plays inside.

When I leave my room—for dinner, for play, for my chores—I wear a plain white mask with large eyeholes. That mask has no expression. My parents could stare at it all day long without knowing what I am thinking.

[THE MASK CHILD stands up, wearing the white mask with the large eyeholes. He is quite tall now, rock-star thin and angular. The GIRLS slowly gather around him, swaying back and forth.]

GIRLS
(chorus): See him? You cannot really see him. But I bet he’s so. You know he has to be so. You know he must be so.

THE MASK CHILD
: Real boy. You know I’m just a. Real boy. Just like all the. Others. This is the game, this is the play, this is the life.

GIRLS
: Real boy! You know he’s such a real. Boy. Not like all these. Others. This is the game, this is the play, this is the life.

[THE MASK CHILD has raised himself to his full height. He towers over the GIRLS, and looks threatening, colored stage lights reflecting off his white mask: bright reds, blues. His clothing billows, wraps itself around the GIRLS, and turns red.]

THE MASK CHILD
(louder): Real boy! Now you tell me that I’m a. Real boy! Where were you when I. Needed you. Needed someone to. Talk to. Where were you! Don’t you know that this is no game. Don’t you know that this is no life. This is the. Darkness. This is the. Nightmare. This is the dream, this is the terror, this is the death that hides under the mask.

[The GIRLS disappear completely under THE MASK CHILD’s voluminous red clothing. Fade out. After a pause, fade in the NARRATOR.]

NARRATOR
: Details are sketchy, as they so often are with the embarrassing things that happen in a life. Certainly the parents were embarrassed—we have no record of what THE MASK CHILD felt about this event. None of the girls was seriously injured, but the boy’s parents were told their son could no longer attend the school.

They tried other schools, but word of such behavior has a tendency to spread. Not content to leave him to his own, troublesome, imaginings, they hired a tutor for their child.

This was perhaps the most successful relationship in THE MASK CHILD’s life, lasting into his twenties, until the tutor’s death.

[Lights up on the TUTOR and THE MASK CHILD in an academic setting.]

TUTOR
: What are the numbers, child? What do they add up to, child? No matter the face you show, your numbers are lovely. Your numbers are always beautiful. What are the sums they show? Tell me, child. All you have to do is say. Them. All you have to do is close. Your eyes. And say the lovely numbers. You see with your eyes closed. All the pretty numbers.

THE MASK CHILD
(growing throughout the following, and wearing a succession of progressively more mature masks): But what good are the. Numbers? I cannot even begin. To count the laughter. I cannot number. All their stares.

[He stands up and begins following the TUTOR around the stage. It seems a bit threatening, but we can’t be sure.]

TUTOR
: Just listen and try. The counting. Just begin with one and two and go on until they calm. You. There is nothing wrong. With numbers. They are not here. To harm you. Just count all their lovely. Permutations. Let them add you away. From sadness. Just try to count all the lovely numbers. I promise you’ll be glad if you just try.

THE MASK CHILD
(begins speaking counter to and underneath the TUTOR’s speech, eventually drowning out the TUTOR and shutting him up): I cannot count the times they stared. I cannot subtract all their. Shouting. These numbers do me. No good. This mathematics just creates more. Pain. Could you stop it with all these. Numbers? Could you calculate somewhere else? I get so tired of all your. Excuses. You cannot understand their. Calculations. You cannot figure all my pain!

TUTOR
: Child, you are not the first to stumble in his calculations. You are not the first who has felt this. Pain. Calm down and look at your. Numbers. Please count them. Slowly. It is all we have to keep ourselves. Sane.

THE MASK CHILD
(swaying, dancing as the TUTOR fades away): So it’s one and three, and four who loves seven and more. My ten and my twenty have been lost in all the subtractions that count themselves lucky to be out the door. So please leave all your digits at home. My heart is no longer good at figuring. My poor brain can no longer do the math. What you see is all subtracted. What you see is in a negative state. Just leave me with my solitary. Number. Just leave me with my one.

[THE MASK CHILD settles onto a bench in the middle of the stage, his head down. The lights change to day, to night, to day again. The BOYS and GIRLS appear on stage, all wearing masks. They form one CHORUS, their speech alternating and overlapping with that of THE MASK CHILD. You have a lot of flexibility as to how many times to repeat the speeches until the next one begins. The idea is to create waves of conversation, song, sound. Find the mix that sounds the best.]

THE MASK CHILD
(Toward the end of this speech the CHORUS’ first speech begins. Again, throughout this scene overlap these speeches until it seems appropriate to begin the next one): Real boy. I go to sleep and I’m. A real boy. With dreams just like all the. Others. Playing games just as if I. Belong there. Singing songs just as if I can. Feel them.

CHORUS
: Time to work now. No time for all these games. When we were children we played games. Now we have jobs and all these duties. And no time for all these games.

THE MASK CHILD
: What is this? Why do all of you wear masks? I can see you in your masks. Are you mocking me? Is that why all of you wear your masks? I look at you and I see so many masks.

CHORUS
: We have jobs now! There is no time to be so. Foolish. There is no time to be so. Different. You should be so. Happy! That now we all are wearing masks. We’re your brothers and sisters in our masks!

THE MASK CHILD
: That’s not at all what I ever. Wanted! The mask was just what I. Needed. And not what I ever wanted. You all look so foolish in your masks. Now the whole world’s wearing masks.

CHORUS
: Isn’t it time you finally. Grew up? Isn’t it time we all were. Grown up? It’s so much easier wearing masks. We all look better wearing masks.

THE MASK CHILD
(lying down on the bench, growing sleepy. The CHORUS begins to fade into the shadows): It’s nothing I ever. Wanted. I just needed someone. To talk to. Now the whole world’s wearing masks. I can’t see their hearts for all these masks.

CHORUS
(softly, in the shadows): Can’t you see we’re wearing masks? Growing up demands a mask.

[The NARRATOR drifts quietly on stage as the chorus departs.]

NARRATOR
: As I said before, we have evolved. We are a better race now. Grown-up, civilized folk are so much more accepting than they used to be. We have learned to value the person behind the mask, far more than the mask itself.