Our Puppets, Ourselves

The assignment was puppets. Oh god. I read over the ditto sheet again, my palms moist and my stomach thick with a feeling of dread. It was seventh grade, a Spanish-class assignment. Making puppets was supposed to be a fun way for students to learn Spanish by interacting and conversing with them, one for each hand. A way to learn the language beyond boring flash cards and chalk shrieking against the board.

Again, I read the directions, making sure I wasn’t just missing something. No, it really said puppets, a boy and girl. Dress them in Spanish-styled clothing. Give them names. Use household items and a little creativity! Get artistic!

Oh god.

Ms. Albert was just the kind of Spanish teacher that would do this. Lady was crazy—or as the kids today would say, “cray.” And Ms. Albert was seriously cray. She was a small woman with a long, shrew-like nose, darting brown eyes, and a flowing mass of curly hair that billowed and detoured severely off her head. She spoke as though the tip of her tongue was always touching her teeth. Vamos! Vamos!

Lady ran on caffeine and the fumes of seventh-grader insecurities. Lady could smell blood in the water. She didn’t teach a love of the Spanish language. She taught a fear of it.

Sitting in her class was like a pack of nervous gazelle grazing in the open plains, sensing the lion was somewhere watching. Waiting.

Choosing.

We’d nervously eye the floor, the walls, the ceiling, the clock, the door, anything but eye contact. You never make eye contact. Ms. Albert waltzed slowly around the room, beguiled.

Then, the poor kid, the poor bastard. Like a lion exploding into the gazelle, she ordered him to the front of the class. Always the front. Lady was sick. He was singled out from the pack. He was alone now.

“Que estudia Usted en la escuela?” Ms. Albert spit out rapid-fire, waiting for an appropriate response in Spanish.

“I’m, uhh—estoy…”

“Espanol, por favor!” she shouted, slapping a ruler she used as a pointing stick down on the desk in front of her. That was some straight-up old-school Catholic nun shit. Sisters of Mercy had it in their textbook on the first page.

We couldn’t watch. It was too much. The poor kid, the poor bastard was still stuttering, trying to fight the English words out of his head and fumbling for a Spanish word—any Spanish word. But the English words were most natural thing to his brain, and they slipped to the tongue like small pats of butter, sliding all over the place. We watched the floor, the walls, the ceiling, the clock, the door. The clock again.

The stuttering only made Ms. Albert stronger and more powerful. She zipped across the room, waving her hands wildly, demonstrating the words through a bizarre sort of ritualistic dance, or flailing, or seizure. Or something.

And it was always something. Last week, it had been singing. We had to stand in front of the class and sing La Bamba. We were allowed to sing it in groups, but each kid had to do a solo. Ms. Albert didn’t believe in teaching the Spanish language. She believed in forever burning it into our minds through complete and utter humiliation.

Now this. We had to make puppets. I felt so sick I couldn’t even enjoy lunch, which was the period right after Spanish class. Not even the tater tots. I wanted to puke. But that could have just been the gristly nuggets.

I’ve never had an artistic flair. Not even a little bit. My old art class projects? They aren’t being stored nostalgically right now somewhere in my parents’ basement. Nope. Even my parents threw that stuff out.

Most kids have something to scrape by on, a modicum of natural drawing ability. But I painted pictures like I had a fundamental misunderstanding of the color wheel. I was one of those kids that enjoyed fervently mixing all the paints together just to see it turn that gloppy shade of brownish-black. That never gets old.

How the hell was I going to make puppets?

Suddenly, the solution came to me. It came effortlessly and simply, like solutions always do, as though it had always been there and perhaps always was. I’d assign it to my mother.

But I’d have to get my game straight. She had to understand what the school was asking of me. She had to understand the stakes here. She knew how crazy Ms. Albert was. She had heard my horror stories. These couldn’t just be any old puppets—surely not puppets I would be capable of making on my own. I needed some fancy stuff going on. I’m talking felt-fancy, people. Oh yeah, I went there. I needed good puppets. Mom, WE needed good puppets.

I handed my mother the ditto with a grim look on my face as though I had just heard the “it’s cancer” diagnosis.

“What does this mean, “household items?” she asked, reading the words with disdain.

I shrugged.

“What kinds of things does this woman think we just have lying around the house to make puppets?”

“Ms. Albert’s crazy, Mom.”

“Doesn’t she know parents have jobs, too? And I have to make dinner.”

I shook my head resignedly.

My mother looked over the ditto again, furrowed and frowning. She cracked open the tab on a can of Diet Coke and it fizzed and she took a sip. She sat up in her seat and placed the paper down squarely between us. At that moment, I noticed a change in her, a light bulb going off. Like solutions always do.

“I’ve got an idea,” she said.

Maybe I should be ashamed to admit I’d pawned off more than a fair share of school assignments on my mother. But in this I learned one of life’s most valuable lessons: delegating. It was never stuff like writing or math—I could do those well enough on my own. But she wasn’t above helping me make up some of the research for science fair projects just to get them done. And she made one hell of a hamburger pillow that I had to sew for the Home Economics class.

However, the puppets were perhaps my mother’s finest moment, one in which she truly rose to the occasion of tortured middle-school assignments.

Oh god.

My mother always fancied herself somewhat of utilitarian sewer. She knew she was no Martha Stewart, but she could patch up a hole in our jeans, damn it. She went rooting in the closets for her old sewing kit, a few pieces of yarn, and some tattered old t-shirts.

She started with two pairs of my father’s rolled up socks. The balled socks would be the heads. For hair, she used the yarn, snipping it and sewing a strand at a time, one by one, onto the bald sock head. The boy puppet had short curly brown yarn for hair. For the girl puppet, my mother showed a bit of flair and chose a thick lemony-blonde yarn.

Next, she found old t-shirts, and cut out little clumps to fashion into clothes for the puppets. A shirt and pants for the boy, a dress for the girl. Around the waists, she tied on little yarn belts.

She sewed and sewed. Through her evening shows, through her morning coffee, through the weekend. She fretted over them and fixed their outfits, until the dress looked just so and the hair sat just way. She decided to name them after her parents, my grandparents, honoring them in namesake through sock puppets. Frank and Margaret. Francisco and Margarita in Spanish.

And then, when she was finished, and because it was my project, she gave them to me for the finishing touches. I grabbed a Sharpie marker and crudely drew a simple stick-figure face on each puppet. Done. Or as the kids today would say, “donezo.”

My mother looked at me skeptically. “I just did all that work, and that’s all you’re going to do?”

I shrugged.

Then we looked at them together, these puppets. These things. These creations. Francisco and Margarita. My stomach began to feel thick with dread again. I had been excited about the puppets, but suddenly it began to feel all so completely wrong. The lumpish Dad-sock heads, the raggy little bodies hanging down off the socks by a few desperately-sewn threads, their kindergarten-level Sharpie faces. The individually-sewn strands of yarn hair.

Especially the yarn hair.

The next morning was their grand unveiling in class. I threw them in the dark recesses of my backpack, where they limply looked out at me, gently awkward and slightly bizarre, in the way that handmade things always are. They were so sincere. Too sincere.

That was the day that I learned sincerity has no place in middle school.

Other kids took out normal puppets made from brown bags and popsicle sticks and construction paper—maybe one or two kids got fancy with some pom pom balls and pipe cleaners—but nothing more than that. What had I been thinking? How had I let it go this far?

I deserved it. I deserved it.

Ms. Albert waltzed over to my desk, taking a special interest in my puppets. She picked Francisco up, his floppy body hanging off the sock ball.

“Que lindo,” she said, her eyes flashing.

Lady could smell blood. To the front of the room I was about to go, to talk in Spanish to my hands that were wearing my father’s socks. My face burned bright red. I looked away. You never make eye contact.

But then Ms. Albert actually smiled at me—a tight-lipped, empathetic smile. Lady actually took pity on me. She placed Francisco gently back on my desk, careful not to muss a single yarn curl. With that she waltzed over to another student to claim as her victim.

The poor kid, the poor bastard.