Scene VI – The Kid on the Set

Now I was a blonde boy, around ten years old. I had a teddy bear in my hand and was looking down in the backyard of the set. Someone told me Mom had a surprise for me. I got excited. A dark-skinned girl, a bit older than me, asked why I was so happy. I told her about the surprise. We walked together toward the set, passing through dark tubes like factory pipes, then hallways between walls. She started talking about how sexist the channel where my mom worked was. She seemed like a radical feminist, so I didn’t argue.

Before entering the set, we turned down an L-shaped hallway and were stopped by a guard. More kids were waiting. A boy and a girl were playing or fighting. He had white paint on his hands; she had black. During a shove, she hit the older girl, and I caught her so she wouldn’t fall. I told her it was the little girl because the black paint on her hand had stained the older girl’s face. But she, with an incredulous look, said: “No, I know it was him,” implying that a woman would never hurt another woman. I just rolled my eyes.