Onion Songs

THE MASK CHILD

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).]

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.

Did I tell you we have learned? Oh, certainly, certainly we have. Life would be almost intolerable if we hadn’t.

THE MASK CHILD disappeared some time after the TUTOR’s death. Some say he passed away from exposure. Others say he simply blended in with every other mask. They say his parents went looking for him. They say his parents never found him.

[Fade out the NARRATOR. The PARENTS come back on stage. They find THE MASK CHILD sleeping on the bench.]

PARENTS: Just look at him! Didn’t we say he would not understand? Just a boy, he cannot understand. How could he know how people are? How could he know what must be done?

[They go to THE MASK CHILD and begin tampering with his mask.]

He always wanted to be. A real boy. How could he know what must be done?

[They remove the mask and toss it away. There is no head underneath it.]

In the night, when no one is listening, where no one can hear.

[They begin removing his clothing/drape. Again there is nothing underneath.]

PARENTS: In the night, dear child, in the night. We always wanted. A real boy.

[They toss the drape completely aside. There is no MASK CHILD. Fade to black.]