I am a puppet. I’m not proud of it; in fact, I hate it. How can one live their life when one feels someone is controlling the strings? It started with my mother; my mother and her controlling friends.
My mother was a pretty rich woman. She owned a large house on one of the nicer streets in the city. She’s an heiress; never worked a day in her life. My father was never around; somehow he got out of this little play. I guess my mother cut off his strings and discarded him. He was never mentioned in her house. Anyway, to show how much of a ‘great’ mother she was to her friends, she presented me to them like I was some kind of doll. Hair had to be curled in just the right way, not a crease in my clothing, still, emotionless face. What scares me is that I can still make that face. It’s now part of my most used expressions collection; right there before happy.
My mother never had true friends. They came over to her house almost every week with their painted- on expressions. I hated those women. They were my first audience as a puppet; cheering, clapping, shouting words of praise. ‘Dance, puppet dance!’ they used to shout. And I would dance for them.
My mother liked these compliments, making me dance more and more for them, to please them. I was never allowed to speak at these gatherings my mother held. ‘It’s not proper for a young lady to speak out in such a way; bad manners.’ This was when I first realized I was a puppet. My mother controlled my face, my mouth, and every expression I could make. Ever see a puppet’s expression? Blank. When it looks happy? Blank. When it looks sad? Blank. When it looks angry? Blank.
After five years of plays, I was sent to boarding school. A boarding school for girls naturally. When I met the headmistress, I almost had the urge to say ‘mother.’ Her demeanor, everything about her, resembled my mother in some way. It was horrifying; absolutely horrifying. I didn’t want to be a doll again! I decided to go to boarding school for that reason. I needed to get away; I needed to find myself. But despite my optimistic thoughts about it, boarding school was another hell.
The headmistress seemed to pick on me the most. Correcting everything I did; using me as the example everyone should strive not to be. Didn’t this woman have other important matters to attend to?
She was a rigid figure, barely ever moved her arms. Her hair was always in a tidy little knot in the back of her head and her nose protruded from her face so much that it looked like it didn’t belong there; her only imperfection among her strait- laced perfection. She had a raspy voice too; sounded as if she had smoke in her lungs all the time or it was her first time speaking. But whenever we heard that voice, every student’s blood ran cold including my own; I hated this woman.
You almost couldn’t do anything unless she told you to. You had to check in with her to make sure it was okay; sometimes she would deny you of that privilege with her cold look. Her eyes would become almost black with anger, like a demon was hiding inside her. When she became this person, blinking was a forgotten function; and this woman controlled my functions the most. ‘Keep your hands behind your back when talking to an adult; let them know even though you’re speaking, their opinion matters more. Stand up straighter; you walk like a elephant; put one foot in front of the other; don’t swing your arms so much, you shouldn’t be so carefree; why are you blinking so much?...Tears? Well, limit your tears to avoid blinking so frequently. There is no crying in this school!’ I became tired of hearing this woman call out my name every day. She was my next puppeteer after my mother. She controlled all of my movements.
I wasn’t the only one in the school who was a puppet. Sometimes, depending on the class, I would look and see my whole row of classmates connected by strings. We were one mass production. It was rare when a student left and had her strings cut. Whenever it did happen though, we were all so envious. The resonating snip of the scissors on those strings would stab us in the heart; unbearable pain. Being stabbed by those scissors would be better than dealing with the depression that comes with hearing someone being freed. The headmistress knew how we all felt, but she did nothing to calm our nerves. She fed off of our sadness just the way my mother fed off of mine.
Once, she came into my class to see how the lesson was going. I would have said she visited, but this woman never visits; she comes in and watches you. That’s all. So during this one ‘visit,’ she spotted one of the girls in my class. ‘Magdalene, come here’ she had said that day. I’ll never forget it too; for that was the day a puppet left the show. Magdalene’s mother had sent her to the school on a temporary basis. Magdalene, like every other girl in the school, hated it here. She was quiet and sad most times, but if you looked closely, you could see the underlying anger in her eyes. As far as the headmistress was concerned, no amount of anger from these students would be enough to agitate her. So on this particular day, the headmistress told Magdalene that her mother would not be taking her out of the school. She would have to stay there to complete her education. Of course the headmistress broadcasted this to all of us in the class using the raspiest voice she could manage. She looked like a chimney with all that smoke coming out. ‘Do you see, girls? Our school is gaining such a reputation that parents who send their girls to this school on a temporary basis decide to keep them here to further their education!’ This was one of the very few things that actually made her happy. Magdalene, whose eyes were now brimming with tears, ran out of the room. The headmistress watched her go.
The next day, we found out Magdalene ran away in the middle of the night. I don’t think anyone has found her to this day. She probably got her strings snipped. Good for her.
Well, I remained at that school for another eight years. My strings tightened with each and every day. I thought my wrists would bleed from all of the pressure. The day I was leaving the school, the headmistress didn’t say a word to me. I didn’t want her to anyway. I was finally leaving that woman and her prison. I was still a puppet, but I was finally free. I could go find a way to snip the strings on my own.
Both my mother and my headmistress have died by now. It has been ten years since I left the school and I had never returned home. My mother died friendless and the boarding school went bankrupt. The puppeteers have died and I am born anew. Let the show begin…