by Juliette Fay
“Mother!” snapped Gert. She turned on the Peppers. “You! You got him fired!”
They only lifted their shoulders innocently, as if they couldn’t understand her.
“I know you speak English, so don’t pretend—”
“Gert,” said Nell quietly. “It won’t bring him back.”
She knew all too well that no amount of fury or sorrow could magically return a man to where he ought to be, once he’d been lost.
Onstage our smiles never dimmed. But when I vaulted from the springboard Tip had made with his own hands, I felt terrible. From our friendship with him, we had gained a wonderful new skill that would improve our chances of success. As a direct result of that very same friendship, he had been fired.
When we finished, the Peppers took the stage with their stinky pigeons, and the pecking of that insipid “You Made Me Love You” made me want to scream.
“I’m going for a walk,” I told the others, and strode quickly for the stage door. North Main was busy with afternoon shoppers, and I suddenly felt as if I might cry. The pure unfairness of it; the vicious use of a person’s position in life—a circumstance of birth he had no control over—to make a failure of him; a good, kind, talented man laid low by lies.
I turned down a side street as furious tears began to roll. Between the garish makeup and the tears, two women who passed me on the sidewalk stared, and I ducked into an alley that led to the back of the theatre and had myself a good sob. When the back door to the theatre opened, I shrank up against the building, hoping no one would notice me in my disheveled state.
It was Mr. Pepper, hauling the birdcage out to clean it. As he reached in, the birds began to peck at him, and he muttered threateningly at them in a language I never could discern. I wondered if the birds were ever allowed out of their cage when they weren’t performing. No, I thought. They’re just captives to those horrible Peppers, or whatever their real name is.
Suddenly, Mr. Pepper cried out and wrenched his arm from the cage; blood welled from his hand. He hurried back into the theatre, I suppose to get a cloth to stop the bleeding.
The cage door was unlatched, but the pigeons didn’t seem to realize that all they had to do was nudge it open. Come on! I thought hard at them. Just give it a push!
I am not proud of what I did next. But neither am I sufficiently sorry.
I merely gave the door the nudge that the pigeons would have given, had they known; had they not been captives for so long that they failed to recognize freedom when it beckoned.
Still, they stayed in that cage. Dumb birds, I thought. Now you’ll never be free.
I went back out to the street and entered the theatre through the stage door. When I arrived backstage, my sisters saw the state of my face, and they gathered round, giving pats and kind words. Mother sighed and sat me down to fix my makeup. From the corner of my eye, I saw Mrs. Pepper wrap a cloth around Mr. Pepper’s hand; she gave him a stern directive and he left.
In a moment he was back, face as pale as fog. He held the cage in his arms, and now it contained just one lone pigeon.
Dumb bird.
Saturday was our last performance in Wellsville, and we felt no sorrow at parting. Mother collected our earnings of a hundred dollars. Between the money we owed Mr. Birnbaum, train fare, our hotel rooms, and meals, we were down to about forty dollars, which Mother stashed in some mysterious place. I wondered when, if ever, I’d be able to claim my part of our earnings for my college fund.
On Sunday morning, on our way to the train station, I mailed a postcard home.
Dear Dad: We are having a fine time. The audiences are appreciative and we have added a springboard to our act! Thinking of you.
No use worrying him with the low points, I figured. He had enough of his own.
The ride to Cuba was quiet and subdued, and I opened the battered copy of Little Women I’d found wedged under a coil of old curtain rope back in Wellsville. The stagehands had assured me that whoever had stashed it there was long gone by now. I’d read it before, but it hadn’t caught my imagination enough for multiple readings.
Beggars can’t be choosers, I told myself now, though I needed no reminding.
It’s about four sisters and their mother fending for themselves while their father is off at war. The March girls: all different, but all so full of “moral steadfastness” (as Mr. Kress would say) that in the first chapter alone, they give away their Christmas breakfast and spend their last pennies on gifts for their mother. It was too sweet for my sour mood, and I closed it up again.
Cuba, New York, was even smaller than Wellsville. “I had to put some fillers in,” Birnbaum had told us. “Otherwise you’d be cooling your heels for a week, paying for a hotel and meals and not making any dough.” He’d warned us that the theatres would be “more or less small-time. Some are medium-time, some are more like small-small-time.” Cuba was clearly in the latter category.
We stepped down off the train and waited for the porter to unload our trunks. I watched with envy as several passengers received warm greetings from those who’d come to collect them. “Safely home!” cried an older woman as she clutched a young man whom I guessed to be her son, and I couldn’t help but think of Harry’s mother. There had been no live child to hug and fuss over when his train had pulled into Binghamton.
Off to the side I saw a little girl standing with a man who didn’t seem old enough to be her father. A brother perhaps, gauging from their similar features: dark hair that snuck out from under his tweed cap and the soft brim of her green felt hat; dark brown eyes gazing at the train they now waited to board. He stood straight as a streetlamp, hand firmly grasping hers.
I noticed a little smudge of orange pancake makeup by his ear, and eyeliner clinging to her lids. Performers, I thought, and took a step toward them to ask if they’d just played the Palmer Opera House, as we were about to do. His gaze took me in, and an unexpected jolt of anticipation hit me when those large brown eyes lit on mine.
“Joe, they’re boarding,” said the little girl suddenly, and tugged at his hand.
“Winnie, don’t dawdle!” said Mother at almost exactly the same time.
He turned toward the huffing train; I turned to see my family heading up the street without me. I looked back and watched the two of them climb the steps. The whistle blew, and the great metal wheels groaned forward, leaving me unaccountably sad for the loss.
12
GERT
Many a bum show has been saved by the flag.
—George M. Cohan, singer, dancer, and songwriter
I did not want to think about Tip.
He wasn’t thinking about me, I told myself, so why should I bother?
If I did think about him (and I couldn’t seem to stop), I only allowed myself to stew on the way he’d been treated. I daydreamed that he’d soon be a star, headlining at The Palace, like Bill Bojangles Robinson, and that idiot Kress would be shown up for firing him. Maybe Kress himself would be fired, and he’d end up penniless, shivering in a pig barn like a fugitive.
I imagined the Babcock Theatre going up in flames. I tried to imagine that there were no people in it when it burned to the ground, but occasionally the Peppers were there, locked in their own birdcage and unable to save themselves. Tragedies do happen.
The Palmer Opera House in Cuba should’ve been called the Palmer Spare Bedroom—it was up an entire flight of stairs, above some stores. But that wasn’t the only surprise.
“Where are the seats?” Mother demanded to know as we groaned, hoisting our trunks up the stairwell behind her.
“Well now, that’s an ingenious thing,” said Mr. Keller, the theatre manager, a man with a permanent grin on his face. “The Opera House doubles as a dance hall, rec hall, even a basketball court! I bet you never played in a basketball court, now have you?”
“No,” said Mother dryly. “I can assure you we never have.”
“Where do the musicians sit?” Kit asked.
“We’ve g
ot a three-piece orchestra—a piano player, a piano, and a stool!” He guffawed as if this were a hilarious joke, and pointed to the upright piano in front of the small stage. None of us laughed.
If there was any doubt about Cuba’s small-small-time-ness, the other performers made it crystal clear. They were all pleased as punch to find themselves in such a grand “opera house.” While we’d been shocked that the seats weren’t bolted to the floor, the man with the iron-jaw act said it was the first place he’d played with real chairs instead of wooden benches.
With only seven acts, rehearsal didn’t take long. Mr. Keller found every last one, even the painfully off-tempo clog dancers, to be just delightful. “What a wonderful show we’ll give them, won’t we? Now let me see about the lineup. Hmm . . .” He took a pad of paper from his vest pocket and a pencil from behind his ear. “Okay, we’ll go contortionist, clog dancers, magician, iron jaw, then intermission, then the Tumbling Turners, Sissy Salloway and her banjo man, and we’ll close with Billy the Cowboy Yodeler. How’s that? Everyone okay with that?”
Mother and the girls and I looked at one another. We had the opening spot after intermission—a promotion. At least there was one small upside to small-small time.
The cowboy yodeler in the closing spot looked stunned. “I’m in it? I made the show?”
“Yes, son, you did!” said Mr. Keller. “I think you may be the best chaser we ever had!”
The boy let out a whoop, and we hid our smirks behind our hands.
The basketball court layout had one advantage: before the chairs were set up each day we could practice our springboard stunts without crashing into the ceiling or walls. “Can’t we do something about that tired old leapfrog stunt?” said Kit. So we worked it out that Nell would jump over me, then we’d put our hands on our knees and Kit would jump over us, then Winnie would use the springboard to vault over all three. It was a big improvement.
The audience seemed to agree, but it was hard to know if they were actually impressed or just relieved to have something better to watch than the clumsy cloggers and the contortionist who couldn’t do much more than a few backbends and put one leg up behind his neck, which was damned unsightly. That’s a view no one wants.
Sissy Salloway was the headliner, and her voice had a whine like metal on metal. Her partner, Clay, was a stone-faced old guy who played the banjo as if he were pulling weeds, a chore he’d gotten so used to he didn’t even seem to notice he was doing it. Miss Sissy’s face made up for it, though—she had a whole brass band of expressions, mouth stretching wide as a bucket as she massacred “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” What’s worse, she strode around the stage in a funny little walk-skip that made her flesh jiggle under her calico blouse.
“Is she wearing a corset?” Winnie whispered to me as we watched.
“With everything flying around loose like that? What do you think?”
We gossiped about Miss Sissy’s underwear for the duration of her act, and came to the conclusion that she wore only a brassiere and drawers, and that while a thinner, smaller-busted woman might have been able to pull it off, she was definitely not in that category.
“You’d be fine without a corset, though,” I told Winnie. “Why bother with all those laces and hooks if you don’t have to?” After that Winnie stuck her nose in her book, but with that scowl on her face, I can’t imagine she was enjoying it much.
Little Harry was eight months old and starting to pull himself up on the sides of his cardboard box-bassinet. If you didn’t catch him, he’d spill himself over and land squalling face-first on the floor.
“Why, he’s ready for a good crawl,” said Miss Sissy of the underperforming undergarments. She and Mother liked to sit backstage and lie to each other about their younger years. If Miss Sissy’s stories were even half as spit-shined as Mother’s, the two of them could’ve written an entire book of fairy tales together.
“All my girls were early crawlers,” said Mother. “You can see that from their natural physical grace. My Kit crawled at two months! Of course she was born the size of a toddler, so if she’d come out tap dancing, it should’ve been no surprise.”
“My Darnell was not an ounce shy of fourteen pounds when he was born, and I let him have a few tiny bites of meat from my supper plate that very day!” Miss Sissy cackled.
They could’ve fed the hungry for miles around with those fish stories. But I suppose listening to them was better than wondering about Tip and where he was now. God, the place was just so boring, and I needed distraction. It came soon enough, care of Sissy Salloway, of course.
On Wednesday, the afternoon show was full of mothers passing a rainy few hours with their fidgety children. We did our second-half opener and headed for the wings. Miss Sissy took the stage as we went off, but this time she had a prop in her fleshy arms: baby Harry.
“What on earth?” Nell said.
“Just you wait,” Mother said, grinning.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen—but mostly ladies,” Sissy bellowed. “I’m sure you loved the last act just as much as I did. What you don’t know is that the oldest girl, Mrs. Nell Turner Herkimer, lost her husband in the Great War.”
A sigh went up, an “ohhhh” of sympathy, and I heard the air go out of Nell, like a bike tire hitting a nail. She had never wanted pity, I’ll give her that. But bored mothers and tired old ladies do love a sad story, and Sissy had put Nell’s squarely on the menu.
“This is her son, Harry Junior. Poor thing never even met his pa, but look at him, happy as a lark.” He was actually bug-eyed with fear at being kidnapped by a stranger. “Little fella needs a safe place to toddle around while his mama puts on a terrific show for you. So if any of you have a baby play yard you’re not using anymore, just drop it on by the theatre here, and we’ll make sure she gets it.” There was a round of applause and heads nodding, taking up their marching orders. Sissy smiled, lapping up every last clap of admiration for her gesture. Then she said, “Nell, honey, could you come take your boy? I’ve got a show to put on.”
Nell froze. Mother gave her a push. “No!” Nell hissed. “I’m not going out there so they can gawk at the poor widow!”
“You go out there right now,” Mother snapped. “Miss Sissy just did you a whopping big favor, and you are not going to disrespect her.”
“I never asked for it!”
“Go!” Mother pushed her again, and she headed for the baby. But Sissy didn’t give him over right away, and Nell had to stand there while the audience rose to their feet, clapping out their hopes for a happier future—and yes, their pity. Nell gave a quick nod, grabbed little Harry, and ran offstage. When she got to the wings, she held the baby out for someone—anyone—to take him. I was closest and got a hand on him. She ran to the darkest corner of the backstage and put a hand over her eyes, her shoulders shaking.
“Mother, that was awful,” Winnie said. “You can’t just surprise her like that.”
“She’ll be grateful when she has a new play yard for that baby,” sniffed Mother.
“And why couldn’t we simply buy one?” I said. “We have money now.”
“Now, you listen to me.” Mother’s glare shot into all of us. “We are not spending one penny we don’t have to. Nine weeks may be all we get, and your father’s hand may never heal up. Do you want to quit school and work menial jobs, or marry any man who’ll put a roof over your head, like . . . like . . .”
Like you? I thought.
“Like some pauper? I’m trying to give you choices and chances. So no, Gert. We cannot just buy anything. Not now, and not anytime soon.” She crossed her arms and stared out at Miss Sissy, crooning like the scrape of a dragging axle, as if it were the most beautiful sound on earth.
Billy the Cowboy Yodeler followed me around till I was about ready to slap him. “Let me hold that sweater for you, Gert,” he’d say, or “Can I run out and get you a soda pop? You must be awful thirsty after all those fantastical stunts!”
He wasn’t bad looking, a
nd back home I would have let him do things for me just for sport. But I was not in a sporting mood. In fact, I don’t even know what kind of mood I was in.
Once he tried to take the springboard from my hands as I carried it up to the stage. “There’s no need,” I insisted, wrenching it away from him.
“Oh, but your hands are so lovely. I wouldn’t want you to get a callus.”
“Well, your hands are lovely, too,” I shot over my shoulder. “Especially for a cowboy.”
“He’s persistent,” I heard Winnie snicker to Kit.
“Like a bad rash,” said Kit, and they giggled into their hands.
I might have giggled, too, if I hadn’t been the one suffering the skin condition.
After our last performance each evening, Mother insisted on waiting for Sissy to walk back to the Bradley Hotel, where all the acts stayed. Sissy would dilly and dally, and before we knew it, Billy had closed the show and he’d hurry up to walk with us, too.
“Beautiful night,” Billy said Thursday as we headed out. His leather chaps were stiff and clean, and they made an annoying flapping sound against his thighs as he walked.
“I hadn’t noticed,” I said.
“Well, that means you need more time to appreciate it. Why don’t we take a little stroll?”
“My legs are tired from performing. Just like your voice must be tired from all that . . . what is that girlish singing called again?”
“Aww, Gert. Let’s take a walk and I’ll explain all about it.”
He nearly wore me out with his cajoling. There’s nothing a boy wants more than a girl he can’t have. I had been that girl so many times for so many boys, it wasn’t even fun anymore.
The Bradley was more like a house than a hotel, and I felt as if I were sleeping in someone’s bedroom rather than a room for rent. There were two twin beds as usual, but the clerk brought in a little cot, which Winnie took without a word of protest. Kit couldn’t have fit, and I was having none of it. She knew it was a battle she would lose.