sadness after something dies.
“Your mask comes from a feeling inspired by death?” Melvyn asked. “That’s very serious, Lizbett. A mourning mask. Are you sure?”
“It’s my deepest feeling,” she replied. “It’s a mask of tears.”
Tears are water, she decided. So she fashioned the saddest face she could imagine, borrowing a little from some carved wooden masks from Switzerland in the exhibit whose furrowed brows and sloping eyebrows and eyes spoke of real sorrow. Using papier mâché, fashioning eyebrows, eyes and mouth in a deep downturn, skin dripping, she painted the mask a pale blue and again used an overlay, but this time in silver. She drizzled clear silicone from the eye sockets. And she found in the trinket box, much to her delight, several little tear-shaped mirrors that she glued down one cheek. And this time she made elaborate, long, drapey hair from strips of blue fabric and silver paper. When she put the finished mask over her face and looked at herself, she actually felt sad. She could feel her whole body droop.
Then Melvyn talked about this week’s mask. “We’re going to do a special mask that is an exact representation of who we are. Now, how can a mask say who we are, as others actually see us not as we see ourselves? Anyone? Carla?”
“Well, we can make masks of how we think we look to other people.”
“Not how we think we look, how we really look. How do we get a mask to be exactly us?”
“Couldn’t we get a photograph of ourselves and model a mask of that?” offered Laurie.
Melvyn said, “Wouldn’t that still be just an interpretation of what you see? The same goes for modelling a mask of yourself from a mirror. How do you get a mask of how others see you?”
“I know!” volunteered Teddy. “You get someone else to make a mask of you by looking at you.”
“But,” replied Melvyn, “That would still be his or her interpretation, wouldn’t it? We want a mask of the real you, as you really are.”
The class was stymied. “Has anyone ever heard of a death mask?” Melvyn asked. No one responded. “Before cameras, people made death masks of their loved ones or someone famous at the exact moment of death by putting plaster over the face and molding it to the person’s features. That way they had a perfect representation of the person to remember him or her by. Why would that mean more than a photograph?”
“Because it’s the real person,” Lizbett said. “Not something fake. And it’s you know … full.”
“That’s right. It’s three-dimensional. So is a sculpture, but, as Lizbett says, this is the real thing, not an interpretation. When we put on a mask, we put on another face, a second face. And that mask blocks out the face people know us by and puts in another. But a death mask does not hide, it reveals, it records. So that’s our next mask, only it’s going to be a life mask. We’re going to put wet plaster gauze over our faces. If you’ve ever had a broken bone, you’ve seen a doctor mould it on your arm or leg. We’re going to mould it to the shapes of our faces, our noses, cheekbones, lips, chin, and so on and let it harden. And very carefully remove it. And there you will have an exact you. It will be more than a likeness of you. It will be you because when you remove the plaster, you remove something of yourself.”
“How long will it take?” Teddy asked.
“It takes fifteen or twenty minutes to make the mask, to prepare the face, then wrap the wet plaster gauze all over the face and smooth it into shape. And then it takes about twenty minutes to dry. That’s a long time to sit still, I know. If there’s anyone who feels uncomfortable about doing it, they can make a self-portrait mask out of clay. Is there anyone who doesn’t want to do it? We don’t cover the nostrils so you can breathe.”
Lizbett said, “Do we have to have our eyes covered? I really don’t like my eyes being covered. I hate blindfolds. I’ve hated them ever since I was little and we played ‘Pin the Tail on the Donkey.’”
“Of course, leave the eyes open if you wish. Afterwards, you can fill them in, the way the Egyptians did, and paint them if you choose. Now, let’s see, we’re how many? Twelve? Pick a partner and decide who gets the mask on first. Then you’ll trade.”
Lizbett and Carla paired up. And Teddy and Laurie, and Jesse and another boy. The rest found partners except for one girl, Kristin, who didn’t want to do it. Melvyn will do the mask on the odd person out as a demonstration.
Lizbett and Carla decided Carla will have the mask put on her that morning and then Carla will do Lizbett in the afternoon.
Coming back from lunch, Lizbett is a little apprehensive about having the plaster covering her whole face. This morning while she was smoothing the plaster gauze onto Carla’s face, Melvyn had asked them to think about the geography of the face. “Remember how we said a mask was a map of the face. Well, the face itself is like terrain, with hills and valleys and crevasses and gullies. Feel all that, not only as you apply the plaster, but as you are having it applied. Imagine your face as a landscape and what that landscape reveals.”
At lunch, the three who had had the plaster smoothed on them had mixed opinions about how it felt. One said it was warm. Another said it was squishy and weird. The third said it was sort of scary. All agreed it was a long time to stay still and that was boring but then seeing yourself in plaster was so neat!
Lizbett sits in a chair and lays her head back on a small pad on the table. She has tucked her mass of curls into the plastic bag and sealed it with Vaseline. And Carla has also carefully put it on her eyebrows and lips. She will leave the eyes opened, as planned. Melvyn has put on some soothing music … men singing in a low, chanting way. He says they are monks and the music is called Gregorian chants. Lizbett likes it, but her heart is still thudding a bit. How will it feel to have her face all covered for such a long time? Carla covers Lizbett’s face with flannel and then begins to apply strips of the wet gauze which warm as they sit on her face. But the gauze falls off and gets tangled.
Melvyn says, “Here, Carla, let me help.” Melvyn gently lays the gauze all over Lizbett’s face. She can feel Melvyn’s careful pressure as he smooths his fingertips across her forehead, over her eyebrows, across her cheeks and down both sides of her nose. With one finger he meticulously follows the contours of her lips and the groove of her chin and then tucks the gauze under it. The sensation is as pleasurable as having her hair washed at the hairdresser, but Lizbett is aware of something unsettling, something more personal. Melvyn is not the hairwasher. He is familiar to her. She realizes she has never been touched with such tender care by a grown-up other than her parents.
“Good girl,” says Melvyn. “Great stillness. You’re done, Lizbett. Are you comfortable? You have about twenty minutes to wait. You’ll feel the plaster begin to harden. Sit up if you want to.”
But Lizbett keeps her head back. She has been feeling a bit sleepy with the face massage. Melvyn was very gentle. She thinks again of the fact that all through the history of masks, they were only worn by men. Lizbett read that the Greeks believed that since men’s private parts were external, they belonged to the outer world and since women’s were internal, they were meant to live inside. And because of childbearing, women were considered closer to nature and needed to be controlled. Men would never allow them to go on display. They themselves played the women. Men wore women’s masks to be them, to create them as they wanted them to look and behave. And as women, men could act in ways real women were not allowed. They could break the rules they made for women. Some mask ceremonies were aggressive and violent. Women weren’t considered powerful enough to be in them. Men also used masks to make
