It's dark in the theater, and the stage is covered with ladders and steps, to make the job easier.
They're replacing the curtain.
Thirty years that curtain's been up there. There's black thread all over the place where we, where I tried to sew it up to preserve it, and then duct tape behind the thread when we realized sewing it wasn't gonna hold forever.
We walked in with two pairs of scissors, a whole group of us. "I want a cape!" one of the boys says, the lead of last fall's play, and he starts cutting away, then ripping away, at the old curtain. The rest of us hold it.
When he's done, I cut my piece, another cape. I wrap it around me and look like a nun. Another girl cuts her piece and the center gets ripped, but not to be discouraged, she wears it anyway like a poncho.
The teacher laughs at us. "It's like watching a bunch of kids who've gotten bored with their toys and start playing dress-up with their parents' clothing," he says. We scoff and tell him to try it out as we run around, playing superhero, playing priest, playing gangster. He picks up a scrap of fabric and ties it around his forehead, and another piece and holds it up as a moustache.
It's the first boy who decides to do something with the chain, so we all pick it up and carry it back to the teacher's workshop, where he uses pliers to take it apart. The first boy uses the chain to secure his cape. One girl uses it as a belt. I get a choker.
We run back into class and laugh and play, and it seems so brutal, cutting up this curtain into pieces, destroying something so precious, but I like to think it was a sign of respect.
"If I were a curtain," I said, "this is what I would want."
Times are a'changing.