Authors: Rakesh Satyal
The night of the show.
This morning, I told my mother that I had another impromptu rehearsal after school. To further solidify the lie, I told her that we’re working on a holiday ballet for my dance class and that I’m playing the Little Drummer Boy. My mother’s eyebrows rose excitedly, and I think somewhere deep inside of her she interpreted that as meaning I was undertaking
tabla
lessons at last! But then she recognized the words as a holiday song and nodded once. Had my story not been so interesting, she might have told me the ballet was as forbidden as the talent show. But I’ve gotten too good at lying.
I stuffed my costume in my bag again, not taking any books with me this time. Yesterday, I had to skip my study session with Mrs. Goldberg in order to go to the dress rehearsal, and I feel as detached from my schoolwork as I’ve ever been. Normally, I would find this upsetting, but I find it liberating today. Everything is in service of this performance, and if my schoolwork has to suffer, so be it.
How did I get here?
I ask myself again. How did everything come down to this one measly performance in a measly little wannabe-gym in a measly little brick edifice in a measly little Ohio town? How, of all places, did Krishna decide to set his circus down here? I guess for the same reason that my parents decided to set their circus down in Ohio. Some migrations have no logical explanation.
Mrs. Nevins and her crew have transformed the gymnacafetorium into a veritable auditorium. The special red velvet curtain that they save for special occasions like this has been installed. The lights in the room, normally gold with fluorescence, have been turned off entirely, and instead, there are two full moons of spotlight projected onto the red curtain, as if we’re at a movie premiere. Instead of the usual cafeteria tables that fill the space, there are several rows of black folding chairs arranged so neatly that they resemble metal ears of corn.
This year, there’s a disco ball hanging from the ceiling. Mrs. Nevins is a lunatic.
When I get to the theater—rather early, considering that I did not go home between the end of school and the 7 p.m. cast call time—Mrs. Nevins is already in a turquoise sequined dress, her hair very big and unmoving due to hairspray. (Now I know why she didn’t attempt the earphones; they would never have fit over her hair volcano.) She is wearing a ton of makeup, and her nails look like shiny red beetles eating her fingers. She is visibly nervous. Part of me warms to her, thinking how noble it is of her to give up so much of her time for one night of talent. She gets no incentive for doing this show aside from seeing us students have our fifteen minutes—or, rather, five minutes—of fame, and she is so excited for us that she has dressed herself up nicely. She even tries to be polite when she sees me saunter in. She looks up at me and smiles briefly before bending back down over her sound-board and making sure everything is in place.
The other acts gradually come in. Some of them move with cool anticipation, some of them are crazed. The Rhythm Nation still hasn’t quelled its civil unrest, and the girls are still trying to figure out how to fill up their routine with cheerleading-style moves. Without pom-poms in their hands, however, their “rah rahs” are basically Hitler salutes. The Smurfs are all here, too, even scarier now that all of them are in full costume.
Then I see Mrs. Buchanan make her way into the dimness of the room.
She is so obviously saddened by what has happened to her room that it freezes me in my tracks. She is dressed in even more layers than usual, wearing a puffy winter coat that looks like someone donated it to her via Goodwill. She is wearing galoshes that track in dirty trails of water, and even in this relative darkness, the pallor of her face is even lighter than usual. The art room wasn’t just a classroom but her place of work for over two decades, a place where she had supervised the beloved, if often demented, art projects of countless little children. Perhaps before she became such a smarmy schoolmarm she was a buoyant and loveable figure.
Then I hear her growl hello to Mrs. Nevins and my feelings of pity instantly disappear. She’s Gargamel to these rambunctious Smurf-demons.
I am very nervous, but not in the way that I have been in the past. Right before my other talent show performances, regardless of whatever humiliation the previous year’s act might have brought, I have normally felt a productive anxiety that turns my jitters into magic. This year, I feel no such heartening force.
As Mrs. Nevins herds us into the nearby classroom that acts as our dressing room, I can see tons of students and their parents arriving and seating themselves in the black folding chairs. Unbelievably enough, Sarah and Melissa both show up with their parents—the Turners and Jenkinses, respectively—and I see that their parents are just as ostentatious as they are. Their mothers look like the grande dames from
Designing Women
, and their fathers—with their long, brushed hair and sport coats—look like a cross between the cops on
Miami Vice
and suave car salesmen. Maybe that’s because they
are
car salesmen, although Mr. Turner sells new Pontiacs and Mr. Jenkins sells used Hondas. Sarah and Melissa look downtrodden in the same way that Mrs. Buchanan does, and when I notice my fellow performers pointing at them and making fun of their punishment, I instantly feel a little better.
I also see Cody and Donny show up, although neither of them is with his parents. It would take Cody breaking the world cigarette-smoking record to pull Beverly away from her TV set, I’d wager. They steer clear of Sarah and Melissa, which is a shame because I’m sure Sarah’s and Melissa’s fathers would love to toss them in a used car’s trunk before pushing it into the Ohio River.
Next I see Mrs. Goldberg. She appears with a man at her side, and for the first few seconds, I don’t register who he is. It’s her husband. He is very large, the type of man who must shop at “big and tall” stores, and his hair is dark and curly. He is wearing a teal sweater with a white shirt underneath, and his feet are so big that I can’t tell if he’s wearing boots or just large black shoes. When they seat themselves—in the front row near the middle—he puts his hand around her waist protectively. Somewhat surprisingly to me, she follows his hand’s lead, moving down into the chair as if guided by it.
What will Mrs. Goldberg think when she sees me in my costume, a real-life depiction of the drawings she so thoroughly enjoyed? What will she—and Mrs. Buchanan—think when they see me defying them and putting that art on stage instead of tacked up on a bulletin board? I am manipulating Mrs. Goldberg in my head the way I would any other expectation or idea. I focus on the act of her watching me. I wonder what it would be like to shock her with my act, to make her thrilled with fright. It might feel so amazing to scare her into seeing why I am even more brilliant than she thinks. Regardless of the pivotal and pleasant role she has played in my life until this point, Mrs. Goldberg’s function this evening is to bear witness to my bizarre uniqueness just like everyone else. Tonight, the people out there are not so much an
audience
—something that hears—than they are an
experience
—something that senses and feels.
I’m still not in my real costume. I can’t put it on yet because if Mrs. Nevins sees me in it, she will immediately recognize it as too religious—or as too Indian, which amounts to the same thing—and will become suspicious of my act. So I am still dressed in my bright “street clothes.” The kids around me are starting to become suspicious of my getup, especially because they know I’ve dressed in a blazer and clip-on tie in past years (with the exception of Sebastian, of course). They all look at me as I look at the audience, and I cannot help but wonder why they should pay any attention to me when they have their own acts to tend to. I guess it’s because they know that usually I sit in a corner and concentrate on what I’m going to be performing instead of walking around all antsy. Nothing gets past them when it could possibly lead to my degradation.
My mind-set is not so uneasy, though. I don’t even care anymore if this act is graceful. I want it to be fierce in its message. I want it to be as warlike and in-your-face as Krishna’s daredevil stunts. I want it to show these closed-minded people what true Indian panache is. Perhaps Hanuman the Guinness Book Wonder was onto something: perhaps we do have to dance the hell out of time and space to make a mark on the world. Perhaps true beauty is not prim and reverent but messy and a little bit ugly. Look at all these addled amateurs around me—the Rhythm Nation, the Smurfs, the cheerleaders and lip synchers and
dear God, is that a hopscotch act
? Let them have their innocent wandering. I, meanwhile, will get tangled in my sari-suit and do something that has never been done before. Or that hasn’t been done in thousands of years.
Mrs. Nevins eventually rushes into the classroom and commands us to line up in order of stage appearance. I am stuck between Tiffany Myers—the girl, as you might recall, whose father works in “produce” at the local grocery store—and Stevie Olson, a tow-headed box of a boy who smells like a mixture of onions and cologne. Tiffany is dressed in a purple leotard and is holding a purple hula hoop that she plans to swing around herself while bopping to “Jimmy Jimmy” by Madonna (for a change). Stevie is dressed like a cowboy and holds a cardboard guitar for his Garth Brooks lip-synch number. Mrs. Nevins is a veritable shepherd as she waves us into the gymnacafetorium. We line up along the wall as we practiced during the dress rehearsal, each of us trying to act oblivious to the crowd but not able to help ourselves as the people in the audience point at or whisper about us. I walk delicately, nervously, thinking not about the people as much as I do about my act.
All of my frantic preparation has come down to this. Somewhere above me, through the concrete ceiling of this room, through the thin smog that hangs over this suburb, through the deep blue darkness of the sky and perhaps through the watery sheet of a firmament, Krishna is looking down and grinning.
The show starts with the usual speech by Principal Taylor, who is wearing the same sort of power suit she would wear during the school day. She seems to be playing a version of herself, and her speech is as stiff as her collar. The audience claps timidly after her curt welcome, unsure whether it deserves applause while restless to see us children strut our stuff. Mrs. Nevins gets behind her table, and the sound of her pressing “Play” on the tape deck for the first song makes a loud click. It is the gunshot at the beginning of the race.
The temporary curtain pulls back—the result of heavy pulling by Wilford, a hefty guy with a black baseball cap and ponytail who helps us out every year but never utters a single word. Onstage is last year’s toast of the town, Kevin Bartlett, with the same cardboard guitar he used then strapped to his hip. The music gears up, and it’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” by Def Leppard. The audience loses its mind. Half of them are on their feet before ten seconds are up. The kids in line with me, along with the audience, start clapping in time to the music—something they do with almost every act regardless of its tempo. An appearance by “Eternal Flame” a couple of years ago was so laced with clapping that it sounded like the Bangles were being spanked into oblivion. The crowd, kids and adults alike, is never able to maintain the same level of enthusiasm throughout an act—especially when it’s a boring lip-synch deal like Kevin’s—so the clapping tapers off midway, leaving the performer in a worried state. The sonic fireworks of Def Leppard’s screeching sound almost cruel as he strums silently and finishes with a half smile.
The shitstorms keep on coming, one right after the other. The Rhythm Nation finally takes the stage, with two of the girls colliding at one point and the other trying to tend to them. One of the girls—I can’t even tell them apart at this point—ends up breaking down in tears again and gives the audience a fierce grimace. They are followed by Tommy Wilkins doing a few “magic” tricks in a cape and top hat. From what I can tell, he basically plays a game of solitaire with himself and takes a bow. He does this to a soundtrack of “The Entertainer” by Scott Joplin; the audience claps, of course, and somewhere Scott Joplin turns in his grave and wishes he were capable of dying again. When Frank Martin follows up this act by playing the very same song on the out-of-tune upright piano by the stage, I start to wonder if Mrs. Nevins has an actual brain, let alone any idea how to plan an artistic event.
When I see that there are five acts ahead of me, I make my stealthy exit. While Holly Tyler is lip-synching to “End of the Road” by Boyz II Men, I stand up and walk briskly out of the gymnacafetorium. I get a few quizzical looks from the kids on the wall but am unnoticed by Mrs. Nevins and her nonbrain. I walk to the classroom and pick up my bookbag, then head down a hall to the farthest bathroom I can find. An air of intense concentration surrounds my bathroom visit, not just because it is the night of the talent show but because I need to make sure no one comes into this bathroom while I’m in it. I lock the door.
I open my bookbag, ever aware that this is to be the most important makeup job I have ever done. Making myself up may have been play in the past, but this time my beauty must be worthy of a god. I pull out my mother’s eyeshadow and rouge compacts, along with some
kajol
and Magenta.