by Juliette Fay
NELL: “Did you hear our brother broke both his legs yesterday?”
ME: “Oh no! How did it happen?”
NELL: “On the job.”
ME: “But he’s a window washer. How could he break his legs?”
NELL: “He stepped back to admire his work!”
But instead, Nell said, “He . . . um . . . he likes his work!”
It made no sense at all, and the audience knew it.
“Boo!” from the cheap seats up in the gallery. “Go back to the farm!” Even worse, “Moo!” We’d absolutely lost them.
We bumbled through the rest of the act, and Winnie got dropped a lot. At the end, the applause was so feeble it was a mercy that it only lasted a few seconds. Nat and Benny were on after us, and they gave us quick little shoulder pats as they rushed by to the stage. Kit burst into tears, holding her coat to her face to muffle the sound. Nell just stared.
We’re going to get fired, I thought as I watched the stage, trying to absorb their skill through my eyeballs. Winnie hobbled over, bruises no doubt rising on her backside. Kit and Nell came to stand with us, too. It was Nat and Benny we waited for, after all, like children at their front gates, waiting for daddies to return from work. Nat and Benny, our vaudeville fathers.
The applause was deafening compared to the limp patting of palms we’d suffered. As they skip-walked offstage, their eyes were on us, calculating the damage.
“Vey ist mir!” said Benny. “Such faces! Have you never been booed before?”
“Of course not!” I nearly shouted.
A strange smile passed between the two men. “Never booed,” said Benny, shaking his head. “Natty, these poor children.”
“It’s okay,” Nat replied. “That’s all fixed now.”
Winnie said, “You act like it’s a good thing!”
“Of course it is, Winneleh,” said Nat. “How else will you become true vaudevillians, if you don’t have practice in handling all the misery this life has to offer? Next time will be easier.”
“It will be easier,” Benny said with a sly smile, “because you’ll know how to boo back!” He took off his coat and draped it across his stool. “Now, for instance, the mooing? That’s so old it’s boring. And easy to handle. You say, “I see the cows have gotten up into the gallery again. Could someone please hit them with a stick? They’re too senseless to find their own way out.’ ”
Nat flicked Benny with the back of his hand. “The last time I saw a mouth like yours, it had a hook in it!” He stuck his pinky inside his cheek and pulled like a hooked fish.
It was probably the most useful education I’ve ever had. Nat and Benny made it fun, and I half wished we’d get booed again so we could try it out. They also helped us practice our sketches, so our next turn on the boards was much less humiliating.
Afterward, Benny insisted on getting the sandwiches, and refused to take a nickel. “If you eat every bite,” he said as he handed out the thick parcels, “that will be my repayment.”
Then he turned to Winnie. “Winneleh, the girl of a thousand bruises, I remember what it’s like to get knocked around, and it almost made me quit the business. So I brought you a little present.” He reached into the pocket of his frayed overcoat and took out a blue rubber pouch with a wide metal screw cap. “An ice bag,” he said. “To heal all the bumps this life hands out.”
Her eyes went so wide the thing could have been a diamond. Suddenly she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. When she finally let go, he put his thick old hands to her cheeks. “Zei gezunt,” he whispered. “Be well, little Winneleh. And try not to need it so much!”
On Friday, we got a letter from Dad, posted to the Fredonia Opera House. It was dated March 31, so that snotty Barnes had obviously let it sit in his office for a couple of days before he’d bothered to give it to us. Mother was still at the hotel with little Harry, so I opened it myself. Dad’s penmanship was shaky, and we knew right away his hand was no better than when we’d left him. For a quiet man, he wrote pages and pages, describing the changing seasons, and how the crocuses were peeking up through the few patches of dirt that had no snow. He must have been awfully bored to write such a rambling letter. I felt sorry for him.
I also missed him! A girl shouldn’t be so surprised at missing the man who’d loved and provided for her all her life, but I was. Maybe it was because I was now with Mother all day long, with no calming influence to temper her. Dad was a little bit like a lump of coal, I realized. You don’t really take much notice of it until your house is cold.
Finally he got around to why he was writing in the first place.
Tomorrow it will be April 1, April Fool’s Day as it is called. I hope there will be no pranks played on you. In fact, I wonder if you’re playing a prank on me by not sending the rent money until the last minute.
It was now April 4. In all the distraction of the past few days, we’d forgotten why we’d gotten into vaudeville in the first place: rent money.
After our next performance, I went to the drugstore to call him. There was a pay phone in a small wooden booth at the back. I lifted the candlestick receiver from the hook and waited for the Hello Girl to come on the line. “How may I connect your call?” she asked.
“Long distance, please.”
She asked for the number and I gave her our neighbor Mrs. Califano’s and said, “I have an urgent call for Mr. Frank Turner.”
There was some clicking followed by silence. Then I heard Mrs. Califano’s voice. “Yes, hello!” she screamed into the phone, as if the sound had to carry to Fredonia on the wind.
“Urgent call for Mr. Frank Turner.” The operator sounded bored. I suppose she heard people using the word urgent and screaming through the phone lines all day long.
“Frank Turner!” screeched Mrs. Califano. “He lives next door! Urgent you say? It’ll take me just a moment!”
“Please deposit thirty-five cents for three minutes,” the operator said. I put coins into the slots at the top of the pay phone, hoping old Mrs. Califano didn’t use up my three minutes just tottering across the lawn to our house. Impatient, my eyes lit on the shelf closest to me: there was a line of hair tonics in fancy bottles named for Nazimova, the sultry Russian silent film star. On the shelf below were the less glamorous products: Walnutta the Hair Stain, and a product “for promoting the growth of hair” called Baldine, which is a terrible name. What balding person would want that mocking him from the bathroom shelf?
There were jars of Compound Honey and Tar for bronchial afflictions, Milk of Magnesia laxative, and Carter’s Little Liver Pills for dizziness, biliousness, torpid liver, constipation, and sallow skin. For a mere nineteen cents a bottle, it practically claimed to save you from drowning.
On the end of the shelf was a stack of Johnson’s first aid manuals. It had small type at the bottom: With the Compliments of the Roemer Drug Company. It was free, so I took it.
“Hello?” Finally!
“Dad, it’s Gert.”
“Is everything all right?”
“Yes, but—”
“Oh, that’s a relief! I was so worried. I didn’t know if—”
“Dad, I don’t have much time left on the call. We got your letter, and we don’t have the rent money yet. We were robbed back in Cuba—”
“Robbed!”
“Yes, but not at gunpoint or anything. Someone snuck into our hotel room while we were out. Anyway, Dad, we won’t have any money until we get paid on Saturday, and then it will be Monday before the banks open and Mother can wire it.”
“The rent will be a week late by then. Ah, nuts!” It was the only time I ever remember hearing my father saying anything remotely like a curse.
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
“No, no, Gert. Don’t you worry, I’ll come up with something to tell the landlord. How are you girls? Everything going all right?”
The Hello Girl broke in. “Please deposit thirty-five cents for the next three minutes.”
“I
have to run, Dad.” Actually, our next performance wasn’t for another half hour; I just didn’t have any more money.
“All right—give everyone my regards!”
“Okay, Dad. Take care of your—” The crackling on the wire stopped, and I knew we’d been cut off. I stayed in the little wooden booth for a moment longer, holding the candlestick receiver to my ear, imagining he was still on the other end. Our dear lump of coal.
Back at the theatre, I handed Winnie the first aid manual. She asked more questions than a homicide detective. Where’d you get it, how much was it, why are you giving it to me?
“It was free, and you like all that medical nonsense,” I said. “You don’t expect me to read it, do you?” You’d think I’d never done anything for her simply out of the goodness of my heart.
On Saturday, Mother insisted on getting out of bed. We begged her to stay at the hotel, but she marched herself and little Harry to the theatre just before our first performance. “I’d be fit as a fiddle by now if I’d gotten more rest,” she said, handing Harry off to Nell. “A baby can sleep any damned time he pleases, but I couldn’t doze off when he was awake, now could I?”
It hit Nell like a slap, and we all sent her sympathy looks, though I can’t say any of us were too surprised. It was just Mother sounding off as she always did, especially without Dad around to tone her down. She’d been bored to death sitting in that cramped hotel room, missing out on the excitement of a busy vaudeville show.
But Nat got protective of his “darling girl,” pulled himself to his full height, and said, “The baby’s poor mother was working hard, making money for the family!”
Mother knew this, of course, but she sure wasn’t going to let a stranger tell her what she could and couldn’t say to her own daughters. “Taking care of a sick baby is the hardest work there is,” she snapped. “It’s certainly harder than parading around in silly costumes and telling tired old jokes. But I don’t expect an ancient bachelor like you to understand. ”
“Mother, please!” said Nell. “Nat and Benny have been such a help to us.”
“And who was a help to me, while I lay coughing myself blue, soothing a squalling baby, tell me that? No one, that’s who.”
“Pardon my frankness, Mrs. Turner—” Benny began.
“I will not pardon it! You two has-beens should mind your own business.”
Benny took a breath that filled him like a beach ball, and it was obvious that a lecture was about to gust from his lungs.
“Benny,” Kit suddenly whispered. “Don’t ask for tsuris!”
Benny blinked at her, taken off guard. Then he let out a slow, angry breath.
Mother shot us a confused look. Winnie gave the translation. “Trouble.”
It was Nat’s face that caught my notice. He did his best to keep his face stern, but I could see the pride that crinkled around his eyes at our new language skills.
Nat and Benny, the best childless fathers I ever met.
While Mother fussed about finishing the new costumes, and Nat and Benny hid behind their newspapers, we girls practiced harder than ever. And when we tumbled onstage like tornados, the audience loved every bit of it, laughing like a pack of crazy people at the snew sketch. When I asked Nell how a window washer could break his legs, I felt my pulse pause.
“He stepped back to admire his work!” she called out, her voice stronger than we’d heard in weeks. The audience laughed and clapped, and we had to hold our positions to keep from stepping on the applause, as Benny taught us.
“Timing,” he’d said. “It’s everything.”
And it is.
When we finally got offstage to the sound of booming applause, Mother was standing there in the wings with the baby in her arms, face wide with surprise. “Well, my goodness,” she murmured. Our mother isn’t one for grand gestures of approval. (In fact, she isn’t even one for small gestures of the kind.) But the look on her face.
Kit was the first to reach her and throw her long arms around Mother’s neck, practically suffocating the poor woman. Then Nell and Winnie got in on it, and what was I going to do, stand there twiddling my thumbs?
After the last show that week, Mr. Barnes came backstage to hand out the pay. As he gave Mother our envelope he said stiffly, “I’ve deducted ten dollars for the night you shorted me on performers.”
Mother stepped up very close to him like she was just about to bite his chin. “Oh, no you don’t,” she snarled. “I’ve had this flimflam pulled on me before, and it is never going to happen again. The Tumbling Turner Sisters tumbled every single time we were contracted for. In fact,” she said, poking him in the breastbone, “with the new comedy skits, the act you got by the end was even better than the act you hired. So, you hand over that ten dollars right this goddamned minute, or I will make it my life’s work to make sure you never get another decent act in this fancy hellhole again!”
I saw Nat and Benny exchange a glance, eyebrows raised in admiration.
Sweat broke out on Barnes’s upper lip, and the pince-nez fell right off his nose. It was all I could do not to break out laughing. Maybe Mother could have been a vaudevillian after all, if she’d set her sights on acting instead of dancing.
Barnes took a ten-dollar bill off the wad in his pocket and held it out for her. She took it with a dainty smile and tucked it right into her grouch bag.
Nat and Benny headed to the train station straight from the theatre. They had a sleeper jump to their next show in Van Wert, Ohio. We all walked out together, and Winnie gave Nat our address in case he thought to send a postcard, but I knew it was just as likely that we’d never know what became of them. I was surprised at the pinch of sadness I felt.
“Watch your timing,” Benny reminded us.
“And don’t let the theatre managers push you around,” said Nat.
Benny wagged a finger at us, then pointed to Winnie. “Don’t drop her so much.”
“Eat, little mameleh,” Nat murmured to Nell. “You need your strength for this life.”
“Be generous with the other performers,” said Benny. “The world loves a mensch.”
“We will . . . Thank you . . . Thank you so much . . .”
Nell was teary and she held little Harry tight as they turned and walked toward the train depot, their figures growing smaller as they trudged down the empty sidewalk.
“Zei gezunt!” Kit called out after them. “Be well!”
Nat elbowed Benny, and they turned around, smiles so big we could make them out through the darkness. “Zei gezunt!” Benny called. “Be well, you Tumbling Turners, be well!”
17
WINNIE
Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend.
Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.
—Groucho Marx, comedian and actor
The next morning, the train clattered north beside Lake Erie to Buffalo. The car we rode in was almost full and we had to separate. Kit, Nell, and Mother sat at one end, while Gert and I squeezed into a seat with two other girls at the other end. In fact, the whole car seemed to be filled with young women around the age of twenty.
“Where you headed?” asked one of the two who shared our bench. I could see the remains of heavy black liner around her eyes and dark red lipstick at the edges of her mouth.
“Lyons,” said Gert.
The girl squinted in disgust. “What’s in Lyons, for godsake?”
“The Ohmann Theatre,” I said, and was about to ask if they were in vaudeville, too, but she cut me off.
“Sounds legitimate,” she said suspiciously. Legitimate theatre meant plays, not variety.
“Oh no,” I said. “It’s not that fancy. Just vaudeville. Are you—”
“Oh, vaudeville,” she said and nudged the girl next to her. “They’re vaudeville.”
The other girl rolled her eyes. “Well, ain’t that grand.”
Gert and I cast glances at each other. “What kind of shows do you do?” asked Gert.
“B
urlesque.” She stuck her chin out, daring us to comment. “It’s a twenty-girl revue. Adele’s the featured girl.” She cocked her head toward her neighbor. “Best legs, best shake.”
I didn’t know what to say. Congratulations?
“And we’re not playing Lyons, for godsake,” she added, and the featured girl laughed.
The next stop was Buffalo, and they got up to leave. “Best of luck,” I said.
“Best of luck to you,” she said, and nudged the featured girl. They tittered as they tugged their bags out from under the seat.
When they left, I said to Gert, “What’s with them?”
“Jealous,” she said with a smirk. “They don’t have any talent, so they have to take their clothes off for applause. Just be glad you’re going to Lyons, for godsake.”
With the train car now nearly empty, Mother, Kit, and Nell joined Gert and me. I started reading Johnson’s First Aid Manual, Eighth Edition, which Gert had given me. I was especially fascinated by the section titled “Bleeding from Special Parts.” It had color pictures of how to stanch blood flow in various locations from head to toe.
“What on earth are you reading?” Mother sat next to me and glanced over at the pictures of blood running down arms and legs. “And what happened to Little Women?”
I wanted to love Little Women, I truly did—and not just because it was, until recently, my only option beyond discarded newspapers and the occasional Good Housekeeping magazine. “I don’t know,” I said to Mother. “It’s just . . . well, they never actually go anywhere.” It seemed boring, especially now that I had descriptions of blood stanching, fracture splinting, and burn dressing to occupy me.
Mother leaned close to get a better look at a picture with the caption:
Fig. 15. Flexion of the leg to arrest bleeding of the thigh. A stick or knotted cloth placed in the groin and the leg bent double back upon the abdomen and fastened with a bandage.
“I’m not sure this is appropriate for a young girl, Winnie,” she said, peering at the next page with a map of multiple arterial wounds.