Trouble—how quickly it can strike, Ella reflected as the three walked out into the night. Just a few short hours ago, everything at home had been serene. And now this sudden calamity! She choked back her tears. Thank heaven the show has not gone on the road yet. Right now I must be with the family.
Days and nights of anxiety held each other by the tail.
There seemed no change in Charlie’s condition. The girls tiptoed around the house, fearful of shattering the silence into which Mama and Papa had retreated. Like them, they too were holding at bay a constant dread of what might happen.
At rehearsals, Mr. Trent was driving his performers. “Snap it up! Keep it gay!”
How can I go skipping about and singing at such a time? Ella thought. I guess this is what they mean when they say “The show must go on!” I must learn to make myself perform in spite of anything.
Late one evening Mama and Papa and Ella returned from the hospital. As the others gathered round, Mama informed them, “They’ve moved Charlie into the isolation building.”
“Does that mean Charlie’s going to die?” Gertie whimpered.
Henny shook her little sister. “Don’t say that! Don’t even think it!”
“No Gertie,” Mama assured her, “it’s just that Charlie was disturbing the other patients in the room.”
At least that’s what the nurse had said, Ella told herself. In her mind’s eye she saw again the grim, forbidding building set apart from the rest of the hospital where Charlie now lay. Had the doctor despaired of Charlie? Was this his way of preparing us for the dreaded possibility? Please God, she prayed silently, let it not be!
Henny broke into her thoughts. “Mama, maybe they could put Charlie in a private room.”
Papa shook his head. “We couldn’t afford that. Besides, the nurse says it wouldn’t make any difference. Charlie doesn’t know where he is. He just keeps calling out and mumbling things that make no sense.”
“Sometimes he catches on to something you say and he repeats it over and over,” Mama added. “It’s awful!” She put her hands to her ears as if to shut out the sound.
There was nothing else anyone could say. An all-encompassing gloom, like some thick vapor, was closing in on them with each tick of the clock. Mama regarded the sad faces around her. Then quietly she said, “It’s getting late. Time you children got to sleep.”
The girls all went off to bed, save Ella, who followed Mama and Papa into the kitchen.
“Shall I make some coffee, Mama?” Ella asked.
Mama nodded.
“Uncle Hyman came to see me again today,” Papa remarked. “He keeps begging me to speak to the rabbi about changing Charlie’s name.”
“Changing Charlie’s name?” repeated Ella.
“Yes. It’s an old, old Jewish ritual that goes back hundreds of years. It is done at a time like this, when a person is very sick.”
“I’ve heard something about it somewhere, Papa. But why is it done? What’s its purpose?”
“I have a book which explains better than I can.”
Papa looked questioningly at Mama. “Will it upset you if I read to Ella about it?”
Mama shook her head. So Papa went to his room and came back with an old volume in his hand. He rifled through the yellowed pages. “Here it is. It’s written in Hebrew but I’ll translate it for you.” Adjusting his glasses, he began to read.
“ ‘It is believed that when the Angel of Death comes for a person, he calls him by name. To confuse the Angel, the dying one is given a new name. When they do this, the loved ones are saying, Go away, Angel of Death. The one lying here is not the one you seek. He is someone else bearing a different name. Whatever fate you may have in store for that other one, you cannot apply to this one.
“ ‘Sometimes the new name is chosen by opening a Bible at random and picking out a name which may appear on that page. But more often, one is chosen which has a meaning. For example, Haim or Haya, which means life—or Hezekiah, meaning May God give strength—or Raphael, meaning May God heal. This new name is added to the sick one’s name.
“ ‘The change is then discussed with the rabbi, who announces it in the synagogue. A special prayer is recited, part of which reads, Just as his name has been changed, so may the evil decree passed on him be changed—from justice to mercy—from sickness to complete recovery.’ ”
“The whole thing sounds so strange, Papa. It’s like something out of the Middle Ages.”
“It is a ceremony that still goes on, Ella. Of course we know that our fate lies in the hands of the Almighty—not in ours. But it is a last desperate hope—like a prayer we offer up to God. Surely, Ella, prayer can never hurt, can it?”
A week went by and then came joyous news! Charlie had been transferred back to the ward.
“The doctor says Charlie’s going to be all right,” Ella cried.
“You mean Charles-Irving. Remember? He has a new name,” reminded Sarah.
“Oh Papa! Oh Mama! Isn’t it wonderful?” the other children joined in.
“Yes,” agreed Papa. “It’s a miracle. A miracle from God!” His eyes held the suspicion of tears.
Charlotte sidled up to Papa and took his hand. “Papa, I guess the Angel of Death really got fooled, didn’t he?”
“Yes, my child.” Papa smiled. “It happened. It really happened.”
Long after the others had finally gone to bed, Ella sat in the kitchen talking things over with Mama.
“Ella,” Mama said after a pause in the conversation, “there’s something I want to tell you.”
“What is it, Mama?” Ella asked, instantly alarmed.
“Don’t worry. It’s a different kind of news this time.” She hesitated. “I had wanted to tell you sooner, but with this terrible thing hanging over us—” She waited a moment, then said quickly, “Ella, I’m going to have another child.”
“Mama! Oh what a surprise! I just can’t believe it!”
“I wasn’t sure how you’d take the news.” Mama looked away. She seemed to be talking to the wall. “Here Ella is, a grown woman, practically engaged to be married, and her mother’s going to have a baby! Will she be embarrassed?”
“Embarrassed! Oh Mama! I’ll be so happy and proud!”
Mama blew a sigh and turned back to face Ella. “Well, my eldest, I’m very much relieved. Papa and I, we knew it meant another mouth to feed, and that we were not young anymore. But when Charlie was so sick, when we were afraid we might lose him, how very precious each child seemed to us then. I wondered all along, was this God’s way of granting me another child? If God in his infinite wisdom saw fit to take our son away from us, was he perhaps giving us another son in his stead?”
“There hasn’t been a baby around the house for such a long time, Mama, everyone will be delighted. How could you even dream we wouldn’t want it? But Mama, I just thought of something. Suppose it’s another girl?”
“Would we love her any the less for being a girl?”
11
Onstage
“Okay everyone, gather around,” Mr. Trent announced after a particularly grueling workout. Snapping his fingers for attention, he suddenly went into a series of tricky dance steps winding up with a high kick way over his head.
“This,” he stretched his arms out dramatically, “is our final rehearsal!”
General merriment and applause burst forth from the company.
Sally grinned at Ella’s astonishment. “He used to be quite a hoofer way back when,” she whispered.
When the hubbub had quieted down, Mr. Trent continued. “And now I’ve got some good news. We’ve already got enough bookings around New York and New Jersey to keep us working in this area all summer. So it looks like we won’t be heading elsewhere till sometime after Labor Day.”
Ella’s heart skipped a beat. This was it. No turning back now. But she was glad they weren’t leaving just yet. She’d be able to be with Jules.
At suppertime, Ella spilled the exciting news to the
family. “Our first performance will be given at the DeKalb Theatre in Brooklyn.”
“Isn’t it lucky!” Sarah exclaimed. “We’ll be able to come and see your act.”
“I just can’t wait to find out what it’s all about,” Henny cried. “You’ve never let any of us come down to watch even one rehearsal. You’ve kept the whole thing such a mystery, we’re all dying of curiosity.”
Ella tried to make light of the whole thing. “Oh, don’t make such a fuss. After all, it’s just a vaudeville skit.”
“But I like vaudeville,” Henny declared. “Seeing real people on a stage with an orchestra. When the acts are over and the movie comes on, everything seems so flat by comparison.”
“But it’s such a long ride out to Brooklyn. Why should you bother?” Even as she said this, Ella realized she was trying to discourage them from coming, but she wasn’t quite sure why.
“A bother!” Papa cried. “To see our daughter make her first appearance on a professional stage!”
“We gotta go too,” Gertie and Charlotte insisted.
“Don’t worry, Ella,” Mama assured her, “we won’t come for the very first show. We’ll give you a chance to get used to it.”
Mama figures I’m just nervous about performing. I wonder what she’ll think when she sees me romping around in a kid’s dress singing silly songs? Oh, what does it matter? They’re going to come anyway. If they’re disappointed … well …
“You know what,” Mama suggested, “I think it would be nice for Bill and Grace, and her parents to come along too.”
“And I’ll invite a couple of my friends,” Henny added.
“Sure! Why not?” Ella yelled, suddenly exasperated. “Invite the whole neighborhood.”
Dress rehearsal had been called for 9 A.M. But much before that Ella was already pacing back and forth inside the deserted theatre entrance. She kept reading and rereading the new attractions for the week posted in the glass cases on either side of the lobby. Each time her eyes would stop at the number-four spot announcing the Nine Crazy Kids to make sure that it was really there. How she had dreamed of just this! Someday, maybe, her name would blaze in lights on the theatre marquee.
She looked at her watch. It was time to get backstage.
Just inside the stage door, a little old man was sitting on a chair, head buried in a newspaper. Glancing up he motioned with his thumb. “Upstairs.”
He accepts me. I belong, Ella exulted as she threaded her way up the narrow iron stairs. A babble of voices and laughter issuing through a door was direction enough. She went in.
“Over here, Ella!” Sally’s voice could be heard above the din. “I saved you a spot.” She shoved over her belongings to make room.
Ella looked around. One tiny window, several bare electric bulbs hanging from the ceiling. Along one wall, a wide shelf like a counter in a shop, a large tarnished mirror above it with a glaring light on either side. It was piled high with an assortment of makeup kits. Clothes and costumes were draped helter-skelter over chairs or hung from hooks on the smudged gray walls.
“Spot is right,” Ella observed. “Do we all have to squeeze into one dressing room?”
“Listen to her.” Irene’s voice had an edge of malice. “What’d you expect? A dressing room all for yourself? With a star painted on the door, maybe?”
Ella flushed. “No, of course not. I just didn’t know.”
“This is luxury, kid!” Marian exclaimed with a toss of her pumpkin-colored dyed hair. “Wait till you get a load of some of the dumps out on the road. You’ll be glad if you get as much as a curtain to dress behind.” She burst into laughter. “Say, Irene, remember what happened to that George Stanley?”
Irene giggled. “I sure do. That was a scream.”
“What’s so funny?” the others demanded. “Let us in on it.”
“Well,” Irene began, “it happened in some hick town out west. I forget now just which. Anyway, there was this guy, George Stanley, a real spiffy dresser. Spats, cane, flower in his buttonhole—the works. He was always struttin’ around, showin’ off before us girls. He was sure convinced he was a lady killer.
“Well, there was no dressing room in that theatre. We had to dress behind a screen backstage. George was gettin’ ready for the matinee show. He did a song-and-dance routine—and the screen toppled over. There, right in front of everybody, stood George in long flannel underwear! Red, no less! Boy, you shoulda seen the look on his face! That finished George for us girls. We could never think of him as a lady killer anymore.”
“Well anyway, it’s not so bad here,” Sally remarked to Ella after the laughter had died down. “It’s pretty clean, too. You should see some of the filthy holes they call dressing rooms. You freeze in the winter and melt away in the summer.”
“You can say that again!” A pert-faced girl named Mary emerged from the crush at the mirror to grin goodnaturedly at Sally. “I remember once an act I was with got stuck up north in another small town. They had a regular blizzard. We were stayin’ in some crummy hotel and the pipes froze. So there was no heat. Was it cold! Brr-rr! So six of us girls piled into one bed trying to keep warm. We were packed together like sardines. Nobody got a wink of sleep jabbering away and laughing all night. But we had such a good time we never even minded the cold. Then, just before dawn, the bed collapsed!”
Ella exchanged smiles with the others but she wondered whether she would really find that so funny.
With all the other acts on the bill battling for equal time and attention, final rehearsal was hectic. Down in the pit the musicians sat waiting, indifferent and bored, while the harried house manager tried to arrange things so as to satisfy everyone. When they did play, the conductor rushed them through the music, for the most part ignoring the demands of the exasperated performers. Somehow though, Ella noted, everyone managed to get through. Afterward they all dashed across the street to a lunchroom for a quick bite.
“Well, Sally, it seems we’re already a big success,” Ella commented wryly as she munched her sandwich. “We’re appearing on the same bill with an animal act.”
Sally chuckled. “Yeah. An’ they’ll probably get a bigger hand from the audience than we will. Audiences love it,” she went on. “I guess from where they sit, it all looks so cute—the little dogs jumping through hoops an’ prancin’ around the stage, or cats or monkeys all dressed up. Believe me, if they could only see what it’s like for those poor dumb creatures backstage, they wouldn’t think it was so cute.”
She stared moodily into her cup of coffee. “Why am I feelin’ so sorry for the animals? In vaudeville, actors lead a dog’s life too. Always on the move. Never stayin’ long enough to get to see the town or know the people. You leave for the railroad station the minute the curtain drops on the last show, an’ get to the next town with hardly time to slap on your makeup and snap into your place onstage. Why, sometimes to make connections, a day could go by with you never gettin’ near a bed at all. You just sleep sittin’ up on the train. Livin’ off sandwiches, or chocolate bars, or an apple or somethin’. Phew!” She shrugged disgustedly.
Ella’s eyes searched Sally’s face. She’s strong. She can endure this kind of life. Can I? “Then why do you go on, Sally?” she asked.
“It’s because I’ve got greasepaint in my veins, I guess. You go along hopin’ someday maybe you’ll get a break. Make the big time. You know—be on the stage at the Palace, say.” She laughed scornfully. “Fat chance for a nothin’ talent like me.” Her finger jabbed at Ella. “Now if I had a voice like yours …” With a flick of the finger, she tossed away the impossible. “Actually, Ella, it don’t much matter if I never get any further than this. I’m doin’ pretty good. After all, I’m in the theatre, and that’s for me. I’d rather be up there on that stage than doin’ anythin’ else in the whole world!”
More than anything else in the whole world, Ella repeated silently. The very words Mr. Woods had used when she’d first met him. That’s the way I’m supposed to fe
el. But do I? Well, I am excited about the performance today. I can hardly wait. Oh, for heaven’s sake! Will I ever stop this seesawing back and forth? I’ve got a show to put on! Forget about everything else!
Back in the dressing room, Sally helped her with her makeup. I look like a doll, Ella decided as she stared at her reflection in the mirror.
“Ten minutes!” came the warning. There was a last smoothing of hair, a last tug at a costume, a last dab of powder on a painted face.
“Remember now, girls,” Mr. Trent’s hand went up for emphasis, “if you don’t want the act to flop, you gotta grab hold of the audience the minute you step out on that stage. There’s no time for a slow buildup. So snap into it! Fast and furious! And keep it like that till the finish. Get it?”
“Okay,” the girls cried.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Trent,” Jack added, very self-assured. “We’ll knock ’em dead.”
As they waited in the wings, Ella felt herself trembling. Was it stage fright? Just then Sally’s hand touched her shoulder. “Do like we rehearsed and you’ll be swell!”
“Thanks,” Ella whispered gratefully.
Onstage two comics were winding up their act to a smattering of applause. The curtain descended. On either side, a stagehand changed the placards in the racks announcing the new act. And then, the curtain was going up for them!
Their entrance music! Ella forced a smile to her lips, and with the precision born of much practice, led the line of prancing ponies out.
Suddenly, how marvelous it was! The lights—the scenery—the people out there. They had actually paid to see her. Silly though the act might be, nothing mattered now except that she was performing.
The act was going well, she could sense it. Time now for her solo. As she began, Ella could feel an immediate response from the audience. All rustlings, all whisperings ceased. It was as if out there beyond the footlights, people were caught up completely by what she was telling them. The applause at the end was like a bouquet of their appreciation and made Ella glow with happiness and pride.
When the act was over, everybody was hilariously happy. “They liked it!” “We wowed them!” There were hugs and kisses, pats on the back, and impromptu jigs all along the hallway and into the dressing room.
Ella of All-of-a-Kind Family Page 8