My Life as a Furry Red Monster - Kevin Clash [61]
We took our lead from her and made it our mission to connect with as many kids as possible, often with a touch or a hug. As always, some children craved the contact while others hung back and watched from the sidelines, but this was different from any other live appearance. It was hard not to wonder if the reluctant children were holding back because of what they’d been through; at the same time, it seemed as if the kids who wanted to throw their arms around us were looking for extra reassurance and love after the trauma of the storm.
A number of children were especially difficult to reach, with their blank expressions and their empty gazes. Still, we persisted, working hard for every smile and laugh, forgetting the forty-five-minute structure we’d decided on and taking as much time as we needed to get through to the kids.
There were moments, though, when my optimism wavered. At one Head Start program, some of the kids were particularly unresponsive. We tried to make the show as interactive as possible, with sing-alongs and dancing, but the audience was quieter than most. Afterward, a teacher said to me, “They may not show it, but these kids really do appreciate this. In the best of times, they don’t get a lot of attention—their lives have never been easy. They had problems before Katrina. Some of these kids are sleeping in abandoned buildings on concrete floors. Some are sleeping in cars.”
We needed that reminder. The calm, structured moments these children spent in school were a stark contrast to the chaos in the rest of their lives, and now the chaos had been multiplied.
At another show. I asked a little girl of about six to name her favorite book. She smiled and said, “My favorite book is…” Her expression went blank, and she closed her eyes and sighed. “My favorite book was…” That change in tense said it all. I walked over to Lisa Simon, my head spinning, and said, “She lost everything.”
Lisa told me about two little girls who were seated on folding chairs in the auditorium where we were performing. All the other children were sitting on the floor. Lisa had gently encouraged the girls to get up closer to the show. The pair shook their heads, and Lisa asked them why they didn’t want to. The older of the two tugged at the skirt she was wearing and said, “We don’t have any underwear.”
Still, there were reasons to hope.
At one show at a shelter, we were out in front of the building unloading our puppets from the van. A boy of about ten or eleven was there on his own watching us. Suddenly he stepped forward and punched the Leona the Lion puppet. I was startled, as was everybody else. Instead of reprimanding him, though, Pam Arciero took him aside and talked with him. In the middle of the show, she had him up and puppeteering with her. I don’t know where that sullen and angry young boy went, but he wasn’t onstage. And he was nowhere to be seen after the show, when Pam asked the boy to help put Leona in her case. He held that puppet like he was cradling a baby, and instead of taking her straight to the case, he carried her around the room, showing him off to the youngest kids like a proud father.
When we went to perform for kids from the St. John the Baptist Head Start program, we could hear the excited buzz of our young audience before we even saw them, seated in the cafeteria. As we entered the kid-packed space, one voice rose above all the others. “Remember me? Remember me?” A lively young girl in braids and pink corduroy pants and a green Tulane sweatshirt stood in front of us, jumping in place and waving.
It took a second,