With Angelo’s agreement that I can return to The Three Cs with my son, I made arrangements to go back to England to pick up Mark. Here we are on our way to meet the group in Rome.
Arriving in Rome, I meet up with The Three Cs again at the airport. They have just flown in from Spain. The girls, who all know Mimis, make a fuss over Mark, who looks unsure of the new faces. At least he doesn’t cry. The Italian agent meets us all at the airport and, after storing luggage, bags, and costume trunks into the van, drives us all several hours north from Rome to Viareggio on the Italian coast, where we are scheduled to perform our first shows.
Thankfully, no performance is scheduled for tonight, allowing us to recover from a long day of travel, which for me spanned several countries and involved a dramatic departure from London, a long drive in the crammed confines of a van, and a baby whose demeanor fluctuated from cranky to petrified. Poor little soul. My on-the-job-training as a mother had no respite as I tried to focus on my responsibilities to my employer and fellow castmates, while making sure Mark had everything he needed, including hugs from me, someone who garnered strange stares from him as he looked at me with questioning big brown eyes. An intangible but heavy weight lands on my shoulders; I want to cry. I dare not; I may never stop.
We arrive in Viareggio, a pretty seaside town and find the pensione where we are to stay for a couple of weeks at least. Despite the length of the day, the sun is still up, but I want nothing more than to sleep and absorb this new life I have unwittingly chosen— and to evaluate how I am going to make it all work.
With Mark in my arms and my bags and suitcase dragging and bumping up the wooden stairs behind me, I find the room we are assigned. I make a mental note that no one offered to help carry Mark or my luggage up the stairs; my “friends” were not interested in my situation, but why should they be? They are young people, responsible for leading their own lives, not mine. I realize I cannot expect their help at any time.
I open the door and walk into the room with Mark still in my arms, my luggage abandoned outside in the hallway. I walk around the room, taking in the tableau of austerity. This is the most barren room I have ever seen. The room is sparse with a wooden, unvarnished floor. There is a full bed in one corner, with clean white linens, and a sink with cold running water in another. The one window has no curtains or blinds, allowing the evening sun to offer its illumination on the otherwise dismal space. A wire hangs from the middle of the ceiling, dangling a light bulb, but no lampshade. There is nothing else in the room, no closet, no chair, no table. Nothing. I lie down on the bed with Mark still in my arms, his little body trembling against me, still not certain of who I am, and uncomprehending of the strange environment. I hug him tight, engulfing him in my arms against my chest, saying soothing words and stroking his forehead. I want him to feel my love, the security I will offer him. I will take care of him. His big brown eyes stare up at me with a mixture of fear and inquiry. His little petted lip quivers, but he is not crying.
What have I done? I ask myself. Why did I come here? Why did I bring my son to this foreign place? I should have stayed in England. I chastise myself. It is too late for regrets. I cannot change my life back to how it was. My only option is for me—I look into Mark’s brown eyes and correct my thoughts—for us to be strong in going forward and facing the challenges coming our way.
Outside the room in the hallway, I hear the clopping of shoes on the wooden floor and the excited chatter of my fellow performers as they make their way out to celebrate their first night in Italy. I recognize that my nights of celebration are over for a while. As a mother I have other responsibilities, another focus. Life is no longer about me, about what I want, or about my dreams, my goals. My life is about being the best mother I can be for my son, and giving him the only things that I have: a promise of security, that I will always be there for him and take care of him, and, above all, that he has my love.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
“You are dancing like shit!” Angelo shouts at me, his frustration evident from the scowl thrown at me before he turns his back and walks away.
The other dancers look embarrassed for me and also step away, as if avoiding contamination with my less than stellar performance. We are rehearsing a new number to offer the regular patrons of the nightclub something new to see. I don’t respond to the admonition. I will not tell him that I am giving one hundred percent of what I have to give even though I am tired and hungry. Angelo, like the other dancers, only focuses on himself, what he needs, what he wants. Like the others, his awareness doesn’t extend to recognizing the struggle in others.
I close my eyes and halt my churlish thoughts. These people have no obligation to think of me. My circumstances are of my creation, and I alone am responsible for the life I have created for myself and for Mark. They have given me work. In return I owe them my best performance. I take a deep breath.
“From the top!” Angelo’s instructions set the cast and crew in motion. I take my place in the wings, ready to give the number everything I have.
My contract in Italy is for six months. The group travels from city to city to perform at the direction of our Italian agent, who is purportedly a member of a mafia family. We’re working in nightclubs and gaming venues, and it makes sense that these establishments might be under a certain control. We travel with the “son” and his bodyguard, who drive us around the country from town to town, venue to venue. The other members of the cast and I enjoy the dramatic circumstances of working for a supposed mafia family. It adds to the stories we can tell those back home. But, the drama is tempered with humor. The DJ in the Caprice nightclub in Viareggio is the antithesis of what one expects. An enormous block of a man, he stands stoically behind his turntable while undeftly changing records on the player and sending the occasional glare out over the dance floor. We learn he is not a real DJ, but another “bodyguard” placed in a position to watch over the club and its personnel.
My room and a daily meal are provided as part of my contract, but I have to pay for board and meals for Mark, even though he sleeps in the same small bed as me. Some places charge me as if Mark is an adult. I find that unfair. Won’t anyone give me a break?
For each new town we perform in, the first thing is always to check the showroom, get the dance numbers and costumes in order, then worry about rooms and food. I have the additional worry of finding a babysitter, an almost impossible task considering I know no one in any of the towns we travel to and I do not speak the language well. Occasionally I get lucky and find someone associated with the nightclub who helps me find a babysitter. The majority of my wages go to paying some strange woman to sit with my son during the night. Mark often panics and cries at the sight of the strange face, so I always try to have him asleep before the babysitter arrives. Every night after I feed my son, I put him to bed and rub his forehead and sing him songs. “The Gypsy Rover,” an old English folk song, is his favorite, and he asks me to sing it for him over and over.
But in most towns I cannot find a babysitter and have to risk leaving Mark locked alone in our room, hoping if he wakes up he will not get out of bed, or will not cry because I am not there. It is a risk. It is always forefront in my mind. Every night, during every show, and as soon as the show is over, and the costumes put away, I run through the Italian streets and alleyways back to the hotel, always with a sense of panic and foreboding that someone or something will hurt my baby, and with the guilty knowledge that what I am doing is so very wrong, but I have no alternative. I am thankful that someone is watching over us. My baby is always okay. We manage.
I become a different person in Italy. I am a single parent, working long hours, for little pay, making sure my son doesn’t go without, even to the extent of going without and going hungry myself in order to give Mark my one meal of the day.
It’s okay, I tell myself. I am strong. I can manage. But trying to take care of a baby, feeding him, giving him everything he needs, finding babysitters, or not
, the worry about whether he is okay while I am miles away working all hours of the night, the panic as I run back to the guesthouse every night after the show, all while never being able to make my money last to the next payday—it all takes its toll. I feel physically and mentally battered.
There are times I have to ask Angelo if he can advance my wages, or spare a little extra because I need to feed my son, and my money has been spent on babysitters or the extra room payment for Mark. I’m not proud of the circumstances making me beg for extra money. But it is what I have to do. There are times I am so tired because I am working long hours as a dancer at night and then trying to stay awake with my son during the day and keeping him occupied, taking him to the beach or to the park.
Today, Mark and I are walking to the beach across the street from the guesthouse. Each pensione has its own private stretch of beach and its own distinctively colored beach chairs and umbrellas for its guests uniformly lined along the sand, down to the water’s edge. But because Angelo got a reduced rate on our rooms, I am not considered a real guest, so I have to find an area of sand away from the chairs and umbrellas where I can lie down without harassment from the overzealous beach attendants. I sit Mark on the sand with his bucket and spade, hoping it keeps him occupied at least for a while. I lay out my towel, kick off my sandals, and lie down. My muscles relax; my body sinks into the sand. I feel the solar warmth on my face, hear the white noise of the waves, and . . .
I open my eyes. I hear waves crashing a distance from me, and people shouting in vibrant Italian. Confused, I ask myself, Where am I? I sit up. I look around me. “Oh my God!” I shout out. I must have fallen asleep. My heart races. Where is Mark? I don’t see him. I look at my watch. I must have been asleep a good hour. “Oh my God!”
I scramble to my feet, scanning the scene around me, trying to find my baby. My eyes filter through the beachgoers, looking for a little person in blue shorts and T-shirt. The numerous multicolored chairs and umbrellas interspersed with adults obstruct my view. I don’t see him. I run down to the edge of the water and look back along the sand up toward the road. I don’t see him. Oh my God! Where is Mark? Where is my son? Did he go up to the road? Did someone take him? What have I done?
My eyes scan down the beach, analyzing every object and person until thankfully I see a little blue figure sitting in the sand at the edge of the water about fifty feet away from me. He is quietly playing with his bucket and spade, apparently not bothered by the bustle around him. My knees buckle with relief. “Mark!” I shout to him as I run toward him. “Mark!”
He sees me and smiles. His chubby fingers wiggle at me in his version of a wave. “Mum-mum,” he calls to me.
I kneel beside him on the sand and wrap him in my arms, hugging him tight. “Oh, Marky. I am so sorry!” I am comforted by the feel of his little body next to mine, the salty smell of his hair, the sandy clutch of his fingers around my neck. This is the love of my life and I cannot lose him. I don’t deserve him. I am a terrible, awful mother. I give Mark a big kiss on his cheek.
“Mum-mum.”
I look down at the trusting face of my son and for the first time realize we have made our bond. He hadn’t gone far from me because instinctively he knew he had to stay close to me, his Mum-mum. My life might be impossibly difficult right now, but it is balanced with the love of my son.
Resourcefulness, or dogged determination to succeed despite the odds, can be a burden because with it comes an obligation to at least try to do something when most other people wouldn’t bother. It’s Mark’s second birthday, and I am briskly walking and pushing Mark’s pushchair along the edge of a busy freeway for what might be several miles toward a town. Even though I am in Italy, I am determined to create some semblance of English normalcy and to find a birthday cake for Mark. It is a long walk to and from a strange town where I assume there must be some kind of bakery, or somewhere I can find something to pass off as a birthday cake. And despite the incongruity of the circumstances, that I am traveling with my baby son around Europe from show to show with a small cast of performers, my mind is set that my son’s birthday is going to be properly celebrated as if we were in England.
I must look an odd sight. A young woman with a stroller and child, shopping bag at the ready, long legs striding along the tarmac at the side of the highway or autostrada, ignoring the cars speeding by, focusing only on the rooftops of the village in the distance. Horns toot at me, the fast swoosh of air pushes me sideways as a speeding car passes at close range, taking ownership of the road and ignoring the pedestrian on the shoulder. Mark’s eyes are wide. He hears the toot of the car horns and most times jumps a little, startled at the unexpected interjection into his stroll with Mum. I have pulled the top of the pushchair cover all the way up and over, shielding Mark from the sight of the various colored vehicles passing at speed. Still, I can’t dampen the sound.
I talk to him cheerily. “It’s your birthday. You’re a big boy now! Two years old today.” We tilt a little sideways as another push of air bowls into us. I straighten the stroller. “We are going to get you a lovely cake for your birthday. There must be somewhere in this village we can get something nice for you.” I keep my focus on my son; I smile at him. Mark looks uncertain, giving me a dubious look. He does not smile back.
author and son Mark celebrating Mark’s second birthday, family photo
For more than an hour I stride on, my sneakers pounding the pavement in a rhythmic “left right, left right.” I want a birthday cake for my son. I am going to get a birthday cake for my son. My determination pays off. Mark gets his cake. Later that afternoon in my room, the other dancers and I sit in a circle on the floor, surrounding the birthday cake now lit with a candle I had borrowed from the manager. We sing “Happy Birthday” as an embarrassed Mark runs and buries his head in my shoulder. I think to myself, Finally I did something right as a mum. I gave my son a nice birthday.
As Mark becomes more accustomed to our nomadic way of life and the more he settles down, the more he turns into a little devil. This is never more apparent than during our stay in Florence. The hotel is near a large two-story indoor market that I visit almost daily to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, which can be easily cooked on the little electric stove in my room. I found the stove a couple of months ago in another town and now discreetly cook as much as I can to avoid the expense of eating out, all while trying not to cause a fire in my room or incur the wrath of the management.
Walking along the streets with Mark is always a delight. The streets are traditional Italian, narrow, cobbled roads aligned with chic boutiques. Once at the market, I walk and Mark toddles along the aisles between the stalls offering cheeses, sliced meats, fruits, candies, bread. In my mind I am deciding what I want to buy today, and practice the Italian words to make the purchase. As much as I always try to keep a hold of Mark’s hand, as soon as I let go to take money out of my purse to pay for my purchase, Mark runs off like a shot. This is his new thing, running around as fast as his little legs can carry him, his face a grin of freedom and delight. He doesn’t care where he goes; he just runs, and expects me to find him when he is ready.
Over time the market people come to know him. I hear messages over the loudspeaker in Italian but roughly translated as, “Would the English lady come to such and such a stall to pick up her son.” I invariably go to the stall and find Mark standing there among the doting stallkeepers, all smiles and always with a handful of candy. The naughty boy knows that if he runs away and makes it to this stall, he will get candy.
I find the Italians very kind to me and my son. The Italians love boys and Mark is a good-looking little charmer. It is not unusual for Mark and me to walk down the street in Viveroni, Montecatini, or Moderno and have strangers thrust candy or an ice-cream cone into Mark’s hand, or have someone tell me my son is “Molto bello.” I am pleased people like Mark. But that doesn’t give him license to be the devil that he is.
Interestingly, perhaps the nicest group of people
I meet in Italy is a colorful and gregarious group of prostitutes. The company is contracted to perform in a nightclub in Moderno for a few weeks. The agent has arranged for us performers to live in a large guesthouse, a multistory brick building in the middle of the town. I soon learn that most of the residents are in fact prostitutes. They don’t work in the building, they work at the various nightclubs around town, but the guesthouse is where they live. Once these ladies hear that a group of dancers are moving in and that one girl is a single parent with a little boy, a couple of them go to the manager and ask that I be given a particular room. It is a room with a large French window opening out onto its own private courtyard. The ladies then commandeer buckets of soap and water from the manager and with no qualms about getting down on their knees, start scrubbing the courtyard so it is clean enough for baby Mark to play in. I stand by with awe and watch the aggressive attacks on the paving stones as the ladies put bristle to stone, refusing to let me help. They are adamant that they want to do this themselves. Mark sits on the floor of the room, staring out the French doors, mesmerized by the voluptuous bottoms and bosoms jiggling as their owners scrub the flagstone beneath them. I am astounded by this gracious act. I learn not to judge a person by their profession.
The ladies and I become good friends. I particularly bond with Sofia, who lives in the room next to mine, and Lena, who has a room one floor above me. They bring Mark toys and candy. They also babysit him so I can get some sleep during the day. This is something the English dancers I work with never offer to do. In the evening as I try to get Mark to sleep before I go to work, I sing the old English folks songs to him and rub his forehead as I sing. I learn that Sofia in the next room lies on her bed listening to the singing because it reminds her of when she was little and her own mother sang to her.
Our Grand Finale Page 18