The Tumbling Turner Sisters

by Juliette Fay

  “Pardon me,” said the generally taciturn Benny, “but I would consider it a favor if you would allow me to procure the evening’s meal.”

  “Oh no, that’s all right . . . thank you, but . . . ,” we all chimed in. We were well aware of his distaste for the drugstore’s offerings, and we couldn’t afford those meaty deli sandwiches.

  “Now, let’s see.” He tapped his chin. “Five sandwiches and a bottle of aspirin. You’ll give me eighty cents, and I’ll do the legwork.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be eating,” Mother murmured weakly. “A cup of tea perhaps . . .”

  “Sixty-five cents, then.” Benny got up to leave. Mother turned away in modesty to tug the little black satin grouch bag from out of the neck of her shirtwaist, but he kept walking.

  “Mr. Weisberg!” I called after him, but he appeared not to hear me.

  “I guess it’s our treat,” said Nat, with an overly innocent shrug.

  Gert narrowed her eyes at me, a see-what-I-told-you look. “ ‘My treat,’ ” she murmured into my ear. “That’s when you know you’re in trouble.”

  But Nell beamed at Nat with an openness I hadn’t seen in months. She seemed simply happy for his kindness, without a worry for what it might mean, or what he might want in return.

  When Benny came back, he had a bulging brown paper sack with sandwiches on thick bread, and we had to hold them with napkins to keep the juice from dripping onto our costumes. Gert took a dollar from the grouch purse on Mother’s lap and held it out to Benny. “These sandwiches must have cost much more than fifteen cents each,” she said.

  “I negotiated a deal,” he said, waving her off. “A volume discount. Believe me, all those sandwiches on one order is a lot for that little shop. He was happy to do it.”

  “Nevertheless,” insisted Gert, still holding out the money.

  Benny’s face went firm. “You’re a smart girl,” he said. “I can see that. Very shrewd. But you haven’t been in this business long. Natty and me, we’ve been in it for lifetimes. It’s like a war. A soldier helps another soldier because that’s the way of war, not because he’ll get a payback. He may not even live to see a payback.

  “You may never see us again. Maybe you’ll quit the business. Maybe we will. Maybe we’ll both be so successful that we’ll headline wherever we go and never be on the same bill. It doesn’t matter. Vaudevillians help other vaudevillians because it’s the only way we can get by sometimes. And besides, whether you’re in the business or not, it’s the only way to live.”

  He nodded as if there was now an understanding between them. “Eat your sandwich,” he said, and went back to his stool. He hadn’t shamed her, merely corrected her, and she accepted it. For the moment it seemed to calm the turmoil she’d been fighting since Wellsville.

  Our calm did not last long, however. Mother’s headache and fever worsened, and she went back to the Rus Urban to try and get some sleep.

  “Would you mind keeping an eye on the baby while we’re onstage?” Nell asked Nat. “If he gets noisy, just give him his red horse. That always makes him quiet down.”

  “Of course! The little boychik and I will get along just fine.” He gave the baby a big, wide-mouthed smile. “Won’t we, bubeleh?” Harry grinned back up at him from the play yard.

  Nell and Gert spun onto the stage in their cartwheels and handsprings, and Kit followed with me in the suitcase. Invariably, audiences loved the surprise of seeing me tumble out onto the boards. Nat called it our “insurance”—a part of the act that always went over. But as the audience clapped and cheered, I heard another noise from the wings, a baby’s irritable squawk.

  Harry’s cries escalated, and we were all distracted. In our second-to-last stunt Kit vaulted over Nell, Gert, and me, all of us pretending fear at the prospect. As Kit flew through the air, Gert put her hands to her cheeks in wide-blue-eyed fright, and I was to jump into Nell’s arms and stick my thumb in my mouth. Audiences always loved the silliness of it.

  But this time, as Kit flew through the air, Harry let out a wail. Nell turned instinctively toward him, and I leapt into . . . nothing. Her arms weren’t there to catch me so I went sprawling.

  After our finale, Nell bolted offstage. Nat was dancing little Harry around singing a foreign-sounding lullaby. Nell took him into her arms and asked, “What happened?”

  “He was happy!” said Nat. “Then he just puckered up his little face and cried.”

  “What is it, Harry?” She wiped the baby’s teary cheeks. “Oh, he’s so warm!”

  “Take him to the hotel,” said Gert. “We can’t have him crying during performances.”

  Nell tucked the baby into her coat and left through the stage door.

  “There are stunts we can only do with all four of us,” said Kit. “The act will run short!”

  Nat and Benny looked at each other. “They could—” said Benny.

  “We don’t even use half of—”

  They turned to us. “We can help you fill out the act,” said Nat. “Piece of cake.”

  “I have a big problem,” I said, nodding emphatically to the audience during our next performance.

  “You do?” Gert put a hand to her face in surprise.

  “What’s the problem?” Kit leaned toward me with exaggerated concern.

  “Well, I went to the doctor yesterday.”

  “You weren’t feeling well?” prompted Kit.

  “I was feeling terrible, but the doctor diagnosed my problem right away.”

  Gert held her hands palm up before her. “What did he say?”

  “He said I have a bad case of snew.”

  “A bad case of snew?” said Kit, scratching her head.

  “Yes, it’s terrible.”

  Kit and Gert exchanged puzzled looks, then said in unison, “What’s snew?”

  My face lit up with a toothy smile. “Nothing! What’s new with you?”

  The audience ate it up. Our stunts were decidedly less exciting, but the combination of tumbling and joke telling seemed to please everyone.

  “I could kvell!” crowed Nat after we hustled offstage to the enthusiastic applause. “I’m bursting with pride for you girls!”

  “Are you sure it’s okay that we stole your bit?” I asked.

  “If it’s not okay,” said Benny, “we have a big problem, because we stole it from someone else, who stole it from someone before that. Stealing is like breathing in vaudeville. You could hold your breath . . . but then you’d die.”

  “And then you’d have to go dig ditches for a living!” Nat said, and everyone laughed.

  Everyone, that is, except the bespectacled Mr. Barnes. After the show, he condescended to join us backstage. “Where is the fourth Turner sister?” he asked with deceptive calm.

  “Mother is ill,” said Gert. “Our sister went back to the hotel to take care of her.” I had to admire her quick thinking. Most theatre managers barely tolerated having a baby backstage.

  “I contracted for four Turner sisters,” Mr. Barnes said pointedly. “It appears I’m being cheated out of twenty-five percent of the contract.”

  “The audience didn’t feel cheated,” said Nat. “The girls slayed them with the patter!”

  “I’ll thank you to keep your hooked nose out of this,” Mr. Barnes snapped. “You two has-beens can be replaced anytime.”

  Nat’s kind face went murderous. “Why, you—”

  “Nathan,” Benny interjected. “A word, please.”

  Nat stood his ground, eyeing Mr. Barnes for another beat. Benny murmured something in Yiddish, and Nat turned away. Mr. Barnes turned his gaze back to the three of us. “Four Tumbling Turners,” he said with reptilian coolness. “Four. Or I’ll reduce your pay accordingly.”

  “Dirty gonif,” muttered Nat as we plodded back to the Rus Urban Hotel.

  I looked at Benny. “Thief,” he translated.

  “Who’s your agent?” Nat asked. “He should know about this.”

  “Morton Birnbaum,” I sa
id.

  Benny and Nat exchanged glances. “Nice man,” said Benny with a little shrug.

  “But what?” said Gert.

  “But he’s no fool. He’s not going to put his reputation on the line for a break-in act.”

  When we said good night and went upstairs, we found Mother coughing in one room, and Nell walking the wailing baby back and forth across the other. She barely seemed to hear him, her face disturbingly blank. Her sadness had been worrisome enough. Now I feared for her sanity.

  “Where are we going to sleep?” murmured Kit.

  “What are you worried about?” snapped Gert. “You could sleep on your head in a hailstorm.”

  “All right, then where are you going to sleep?” Kit retorted.

  “Another room will only be a dollar,” I said, “and it’ll be worth it to get a little rest.”

  Kit was dispatched to see if there was one available. Thanks to all the gods of vaudeville, there was. Gert said she would take the next three hours with the baby, while the rest of us slept.

  “I should stay with him,” said Nell weakly.

  “You can’t.” I explained that we needed her to be able to perform the next day, and recounted a much tamer version of Mr. Barnes’s ultimatum.

  Nell, Kit, and I tried to get some sleep in the double bed, but Kit’s sharp elbows kept migrating across her half into Nell’s and my half. “I’m putting her on the floor,” I said. Worn to a frazzle, Nell only said, “Oh, we shouldn’t,” and then helped me lower Kit onto the dusty braided rug beside the bed, covering her with our coats. Finally we slept.

  It felt like moments later that the door was opening. “It’s 3 a.m. ,” whispered Gert. “Your turn.” She handed me the snuffling baby and slipped into bed beside Nell.

  In the other room, he slumped meekly in my arms, tricking me into thinking that I could lie down on the bed with him. But as soon as I sat on the edge, he wailed as if I’d pinched him. We would walk. Harry would have it no other way.

  It seemed like miles. The muscles in my face began to droop, and then almost to melt, and a little voice in my brain said, You could close your eyes for a moment. No one would know.

  Well, Harry and I knew. It became quite clear when I walked into the wall and nearly dropped him. He sent up a fresh scream, and I was chastened into wakefulness by my own folly. Singing helped to steady my sleep-starved brain, and I gave him my mediocre renditions of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” “Baby Face,” and “I’m Just a Bird in a Gilded Cage” over and over until I could no longer stand the sound of them. I started to slump again and decided to talk instead.

  “What are we doing here, Harry?” I murmured. “We should be home with Grandpa, not dragging you around to drafty old theatres. But we wouldn’t have a place to go home to if we didn’t find a way to pay the rent.” Back and forth, back and forth we went. “Also, did I tell you I want to go to college? It isn’t just for boys from hoity-toity families; young ladies go, too. Okay, not many. And mostly they study homemaking or music, and size up the crowd for passable husbands. That’s what I’m told anyway. I’ve never seen for myself.

  “Maybe I could be a teacher like Miss Cartery. Have I told you about her?” Apparently I hadn’t.

  I didn’t like Miss Cartery at first. She had that new teacher’s manic desire to prove that by force of enthusiasm alone she could inspire even the most simpleminded among us to suddenly feel an unquenchable need to devour Chaucer. A month later, when we all still had more or less the same level of holy love for books that we’d started with, she got desperate.

  “She was calling on me too much,” I told Harry as he rubbed his damp face into the soft spot beneath my collarbone. “Don’t you hate it when teachers do that?”

  Of all the names I’d been called in my life—and like any child, there had been many—teacher’s pet was the one that burrowed its horned head under my skin the deepest. I had a strict policy to raise my hand only once per class. Maybe twice if I just couldn’t restrain myself. Miss Cartery would ask a weighty question, and if no hand rose, she’d call on me. Even worse, sometimes she’d call on me when other hands were raised and mine lay firmly in my lap.

  Yet, as annoyed as I was, there was something so admirable about Miss Cartery. I had a feeling she might understand my predicament, so I lingered one day after school and promised to offer one good answer per class if she’d refrain from calling on me unless my hand was raised.

  She laughed and said, “I wish I’d worked out such a wise policy when I was your age.” After that, I stayed after school occasionally, pretending to need extra help, but really just for the purpose of talking with such an educated person.

  Harry quieted, lulled by the murmur of my voice. His eyelids drooped, his breathing slowed. I lowered myself onto the side of the bed to give my throbbing legs a moment of rest . . .

  “Maaaa!” A pitiful little wail. Up I went. Searching for subject matter, I talked about Dr. Lodge from the maternity ward. “She may be the smartest person I’ve ever met. Can you imagine going to four years of college and then medical school, too?” I shifted him for the hundredth time to the opposite hip. “I’d be a fool even to dream of such a thing.”

  At that point I felt a fool to dream that he might ever sleep, but he did. I felt his body slacken into unconsciousness, and soon heard his wet snores. I sat. It was heaven.

  By the time the door opened, I had crept my way by inches until I was propped against the headboard. I had expected Kit—her turn was next—but Nell came instead, brown curls matted, narrow form stooped by fatigue and worry. “How is he?” she whispered.

  “Cooler,” I mouthed, apprehensive that even a whisper would wake him.

  Slowly Nell lowered herself onto the bed so as not to jostle us. “I can take him,” she said.

  “Not on your life.” I gave her a teasing smile, but her face remained pinched in anxiety.

  “I feel terrible putting you all through this.”

  “Nell . . .” My weary brain could barely assemble the words to make my point. “We love him. He’s a gift you’ve given us. Of course we want to comfort him when he’s sick or sad.”

  My words brought tears to her eyes, and at first I thought they might be from relief, even happiness. But what she said frightened me.

  “I don’t think I’m a very good mother.”

  “How can you say that?” The baby startled and almost woke at my harsh whisper.

  “I . . . I take care of him.” Tears rolled in a sudden burst down her face. “But I don’t . . . feel anything. It’s as if I’m just watching after him until his real mother arrives.”

  “Oh, Nell.” Sadness clutched at my chest, and I hoped the baby wouldn’t sense it.

  “Sometimes I think . . . I think I should give him to someone who can truly love him, not just feed and clothe and bathe him.”

  “No!”

  “He should know love, Winnie. I’ve known love, and it was the most wonderful thing. I want him to have that, too. He deserves a mother who can feel and give all the love in her heart.”

  “It’s just that you’re still sad,” I said weakly.

  “Yes,” she said. “And I don’t know . . . I can’t be sure . . . if that will ever change.”

  As devastating as it had been when Harry died, this was worse. This was his death rippled into an endless ocean of sorrow. I reached for her hand and squeezed it. “We’re all here, Nell. We love you and the baby, and we can hold you together until you feel better.”

  The harsh lines of suffering around her eyes loosened just a little. “That’s what Natty says. He says our family is the soft ground I’ve fallen onto. “You fell off a cliff,’ he says, “but you haven’t fallen onto rocks.’ ”

  “That’s exactly right,” I whispered.

  “He says joy will find me again.” She pressed the back of her hand against her cheek to dab at the wetness. “I can’t quite believe that, but Natty seems certain.”

  “He’s old!” I
said. “He knows about these things!”

  “Winnie, he’s fifty-two.”

  “See!”

  In the comforting light of Nat’s prediction, a tentative calm settled over us. “Nell, is being on the road too much?” I asked. “Would you be happier at home with Dad?”

  “And give up the act?” she said, startled.

  “We could manage, if it would be better for you.”

  I could never have predicted her answer. “Oh no,” she said. “I love the act. For those few moments when I’m performing, my life is just me—no before, when I was a wife; no after, now that I’m a widow. It’s just me and my muscles and what I can do with them. There’s something to that, Winnie. What you have when you’re just you.”

  16

  GERT

  It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.

  —Charlie Chaplin, actor, comedian, and filmmaker

  Leave him here with me.” The next morning, Mother’s voice was as weak as a teabag that’s been dunked in too many cups of hot water.

  “I couldn’t,” insisted Nell. “You’re so sick yourself.”

  “And how do you suppose I managed when you four were little and I took ill?” Mother snapped. “Do you think the fairies came and cared for you?”

  Bone-tired and stumbling against the wind, we barely made it to the theatre on time.

  “How is he?” Nat asked, dropping his newspaper to the floor.

  “Still warm,” said Nell. “But he’s sleeping. Mother’s looking after him.”

  “Good,” said Benny. “Now let’s get to work.”

  They’d lost some sleep themselves, as it turned out, up late adding parts for Nell into the joke sketches, and the last of my suspicions sank beneath a wave of gratitude. People don’t give you something for nothing. Except occasionally when, for no apparent reason, they just do.

  Actually, with Nell back, I thought we should just do the act like we had before, but when I said as much, Kit nearly bit my head off! “The act’s a million times better with the comedy,” she insisted. “Can’t you see that?”

  We didn’t have much time before the show, and we were so tired, memorizing lines didn’t come easy. Benny and Nat gave Nell and me a new sketch. It was supposed to go like this: