The Mask

It was just starting to kick in. I’d been feeling a euphoric vibe all throughout the treatment. I guess it was because this is my last treatment of methotrexate. The last one. Methotrexate may only have deep significance to me, but it is deep nonetheless. I’ve had to form a ‘marriage of convenience’ with this beast as it has taken over my body and demanded that I accept it. But now, on day four, the nausea—the unbearable nausea—started kicking in. I threw in the towel. Any projects I’d been working on, any enjoyment I’d been having, all were scrapped and my efforts were refocused on the nausea. It’s pretty hard to ignore. I laid down on the bed, resigning myself to an afternoon with the boob tube (my mother’s phrasing) and a packet of peanuts I’d been slowly nibbling on all day, the only things I could stomach. Conra came in my door. Conra has the sweet charm of a cookie-grandma, mixed with the efficiency of your favorite elementary school teacher. She’d popped in to be sure that my central line (the one sticking out of my chest) hadn’t been switched to a port. “No, it hasn’t,” I assured her. “Still looks like I have dreadlocks from the matrix.”

On her way out the door, Conra paused and glanced over at the small mask I always bring with me. She commented that she thought it was a beautiful mask, and I was shocked that I hadn’t told her the story behind it. Come to think of it, I’m shocked that I haven’t told you either. So there was this guy in Rwanda in the small town where we lived, Butare. He was Congolese and made money by collecting masks from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and smuggling them over into Rwanda, where he could make a fine profit and get some income back into the suffering Congolese communities. I knew I wanted a mask, I just needed to assess my funds at the end of the trip. But then one afternoon, as he was showing me his latest collection of masks, my eye caught sight of a beautiful image. The mask was a deep brown rusted color, with small slits for eyes and a smiley face. Immediately, I knew it was the mask I wanted. I asked my friend to tell me more about it. He was always eager to share, as he was passionate about the preservation of the Congolese cultures. He explained to me that the mask was from a region in the Congo called Ituri. It was mostly forests, dense rain forests, with many refugees from Uganda and Rwanda. It is in this region that the now infamous war has been raging on for years, with little sign of ending. My friend told me that this was a healing mask, used in rituals when a person is sick. He put the mask on and started dancing slowly around our front lawn. “Now like that, you see?” I told him to consider it sold.

I carried that mask with me from then on. I travel lightly, a single backpack suiting my needs perfectly. There were no frivolous objects. Each carried significance, and the mask was no exception. Every time I looked at it, I thought about the two days I spent on a hill in Rwanda with a group of deaf children and watched them make theatre. I was slowly understanding that the theatre was just a means to a much more rewarding end.

By the time my travel adventure was coming to a close, I had discovered a new element about the mask. Its smile was not naïve. It didn’t reveal youth, but rather age. The distinct recognition of sorrow was shadowed by the bright smile. There were calloused wrinkles streaking the brown. And yet, the look on the mask was deeply satisfied, joyous and happy, as if to say that it had a secret, the great secret, and wanted to share it with you..

I saw Conra coil ever so slightly at the door. Subtle. We are in a cancer hospital after all, right? But she turns around as she’s leaving and she says, “you know, if I were a slightly braver person, I’d touch that mask.”