The Show Must Go On

words by Melanie, art by Yi Cheng

Beth has always enjoyed the way applause starts with one crisp clap, then smooths out as others join in one by one until the sound fills the room with a contagious warmth that teases her lips into a proud smile.

Today, however, each clap stabs her eardrums, one after another, as she forces herself to bare a toothy grin. As she bows, she tilts her marionette’s cross brace out of habit, but Earnestine the Opera Prima Donna does not curtsy with her. Looking down on the miniature stage, Beth gulps at the sight of Earnestine’s crumpled body on the plastic flooring, her wooden joints casting her limbs and their respective snapped strings out of her baby blue dress in odd directions. 

The audience peels away, and finally, Beth can breathe. Even though the sweat on her brow feels like praise for her final show at the Arora Heights Community Center, she cannot shake the uneasy chills running down her spine. She collapses the mini stage and collects Earnestine from the ruins, locking eyes with Earnestine’s painted ones that always seem to know what Beth is thinking. 

“Stop looking at me like that,” Beth chastises the puppet.

You could always do one more show… Earnestine seems to suggest.

Now with the conclusion of Beth’s puppeteering career, Earnestine will take her place next to Erin’s eighth grade graduation portrait. 

Beth shakes her head. “This is for the best, Ernie,” she says firmly, knowing that the open space at the bottom of her living room shelf awaits her. The six-foot shelf is a family heirloom, made of the same dark cherrywood from which Beth’s grandfather carved his wedding gift to his wife: two Mandarin ducks, one red and one blue. Beth had always hated those ducks’ eyes, the menacingly stark white sclera against the ducks’ deep brown feathers, but her younger sister Erin had loved them. 

Despite their parents’ reprimands and Beth’s parroted warnings, Erin was constantly reaching for that top shelf as a toddler, advancing from tiptoes to one foot on the bottom shelf to her little bottom on the top shelf, hugging the ducks with a mischievous smile. When Beth was not attempting to catch her sister from the top shelf before her parents could notice and scold her for allowing her baby sister to risk her safety, she remembers admiring the shelves closer to the ground. 

Each level chronicles the family’s greatest joys, from Beth’s father’s college basketball trophies to Beth’s mother’s souvenir snowglobe collection to Beth and Erin’s prophetic first birthday doljabi trinkets—the microphone for Beth and the yarn for Erin. Now with the conclusion of Beth’s puppeteering career, Earnestine will take her place next to Erin’s eighth grade graduation portrait. 

Beth remembers the ear like a single brown pigtail.

Remember all the spectacular shows we performed together? Earnestine’s piercing caramel brown eyes ask enticingly. We have always shown off our pipes in those operettas, but golly, those stories we told—that is where we truly shined, my love.

Remember that show that started it all, the one in which I played a haughty crocodile, singing cheerfully as I chased my prey? All along the river, I chased that rabbit up and down until SNAP! I finally caught that pesky rabbit by the ears! Beth winces, hearing the snap in her head like the snip of a pair of safety scissors in her childhood living room. 

That little rodent tried to weasel its way out of my strong crocodile jaws, but I held firm. Sure, the rabbit lost an ear… Beth remembers the ear like a single brown pigtail.

And then another… Beth can almost feel those two pigtails in her chubby five-year-old fists. 

But finally, the hunter cut open my paper mache stomach to free the rabbit.

But us crocodiles go for the meat anyways, so I gobbled it up! Then, the hunter came and chased ME around. Beth remembers her mother and grandmother dashing into the room at the sound of her sobs, gasping and scolding Beth for letting Little Erin ruin Beth’s beautiful hair. 

And of course, I put up a fight. As her mother and grandmother fussed over her older sister and retrieved their at-home haircutting chair to straighten Beth’s uneven locks, Erin screamed and kicked around, throwing her red safety scissors to the ground.

But finally, the hunter cut open my paper mache stomach to free the rabbit. Beth remembers Erin rising from the haircut chair, wiping the tears from her eyes as their grandmother swept two pairs of pigtails into a dustpan. Little Erin giggled and hugged her bewildered sister, telling Beth she loved her and their matching pixie cuts. 

Erin says she needs an escape route, an insurance policy…

Or remember our abridged rendition of L’Orfeo, oh, how I love a mythology-inspired opera! Any soprano would have killed to be Euridice, but you used your musical genius to rewrite Orfeo’s part in our register. I was the hero, triumphantly leading my love out of the Underworld… Earnestine’s vibrato as Orfeo reminds Beth of a ringing phone.

…dreaming of the prosperous life I will live with my Euridice. Beth picks up the phone—she always picks up. 

“But while I sing, alas,” I lamented, “who can assure me that she follows me?” Beth remembers Erin’s cries and spluttered words on the other end.

Because the Underworld King Plutone can never be trusted. Erin says she needs an escape route, an insurance policy—the pencil sharpener blade taped under her bed, the shards of plastic broken off from the corner of an innocent container that she collects in her pockets.

“How do I know for sure that it will all be okay?”

So what’s his game? Where’s the trap? He’s setting me up.

“They’re setting me up,” Erin says. 

That spiteful god— 

“Those people in my house—” 

—he’s doing this out of spite.

“—they want to see me fail, Unni, you don’t know how it is.” 

How do I know if Euridice is still there? 

“How do I know for sure that it will all be okay?”

I just need to see her. 

“I need to take control of my life for once, just need to be seen for once.” 

I’ve been doing so well, it’s all about self-control.

“It’s about how long I can go without while the temptation is still there.” 

But maybe I’ll just take a peek. 

“Maybe I just need a release—”

Beth remembers the clatter on the ground as the Euridice puppet falls back into the Underworld and recalls the red lines on Erin’s hip as she emerges from the bathroom. Beth’s head is swirling, yet her hands freeze by her sides with her grip on her puppet choking its fragile neck—but Earnestine is persistent. 

Whether scissors against marionette string or blade against skin, all it takes is one slice.

Or even today’s show, what a beautiful show it was, Beth! I was a criminal mastermind, hatching my greatest plan yet… Beth remembers Erin briefing her on all the steps, what was to be done today and what was to be left for tomorrow.

…with my little henchman by my side—Erin dictates the invitees, the rejects, and her passwords for Beth to scribble down frantically. 

—that useless little stooge was always foiling my plans… Beth cries, “Why, why today?”

…always delivering messages to the wrong people… “I won’t tell anyone, just please don’t leave me,” Beth pleads. 

…always tripping over the wires powering my grand inventions… Beth grabs Erin’s striped wrist, but Erin shakes her sister off without looking back, as if casting her back into the Underworld.

…it was all too much, really. So I did what any evil genius would do—Erin slams her door in Beth’s face, and the echo seems to ring out forever—the click of her lock could barely be heard above it.

—I disappeared. You brandished your scissors, Beth, and SNIP! I was gone. Whether scissors against marionette string or blade against skin, all it takes is one slice. One thought has lingered in Beth’s mind since the conclusion of her last show just minutes ago: maybe the release she had felt with that snip onstage was the calm that Erin had chased her entire life.

She feels the puppet’s eyes on her as she leaves, but she tries to ignore the creaking of a single wooden elbow joint. 

Beth feels Earnestine’s pleading eyes on her the entire car ride home. Once Beth finally displays Earnestine in her final resting place, she can almost hear her whisper, Beth, just one more show, the puppet’s eyes sparkling with their painted luster. Beth cannot help but glance at Erin’s memorial portrait next to Earnestine, two pairs of caramel brown eyes staring back at her with permanent longing.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Ernie,” Beth whispers before kissing the puppet on her chestnut curls. She tries not to stare at her beloved friend for too long before retiring to her room for the night. She feels the puppet’s eyes on her as she leaves, but she tries to ignore the creaking of a single wooden elbow joint. 

—

In the morning before Beth’s eyes can open, a throbbing pain pounds in her fingertips. As Beth’s eyelids slowly peel apart, she tries to prop herself up on her hands but finds that her arms are connected at her hands like a ballerina’s graceful yet stiff posture in first position.

Confused, she holds her hands up in front of her eyes and gulps, her stomach curling at the sight of her hands, a cross brace of human flesh with puppet strings pierced into her fingertips as if sewn in with a needle, crimson blood crusted around the small stab wounds. Her eyes trace the strings looped into her purpling fingers down to Earnestine’s wooden body, swinging between her two hands as if awaiting her next stage direction. Despite the Prima Donna’s usual prim and particular demeanor, Earnestine seems to beam in her red-stained hair and dress. 

Beth heaves, unable to find enough air to voice her horror or enough strength to lift herself from bed as she peers down into Earnestine’s now sinister stare.

“One more show, Beth,” Earnestine sings, eager for the show of a lifetime.