A Lotus Grows in the Mud

by Goldie Hawn

  The prince and the Capulets and Montagues flood onto the stage, united in their grief. As they stand around in shock, the prince declares: “For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

  There is nothing but silence. It seems interminable. Opening an eye, I see that some of the children on the lawn in front of me are weeping.

  One by one, the members of the audience stand until nobody is left sitting. Their applause increases in volume and intensity until Willy Hicks lifts me by the hand and leads me to the front of the stage to take our bows.

  I am experiencing my first standing ovation. I never want it to end. The experience feels so pure, so perfect. Something magical is happening.

  Out of the corner of my mouth, I say to Willy, “I didn’t know whether to go on when it started to rain.”

  “Goldie,” he replies, his eyes bright, “I don’t think anyone would have noticed if the sky had fallen in.”

  Out in the audience, I spot my father walking straight toward me. A few paces behind him are my mother and Patti, both beaming. Daddy’s eyes are fixed on mine, an expression on his face I don’t recognize, and he weaves his way through the departing crowd and walks, backlit, right up onto the stage.

  Staring at me as if he has never seen me before, his piercing blue eyes burn right through me. “Go,” he says finally, “where in the world did you learn to do that?”

  The last word lodged in his throat, he turns his head away quickly, spinning away from me so that I won’t see his tears. Throwing my arms around his waist from behind, I rest my head on his back. “Oh, Daddy, I don’t know.”

  It was never my intention to become an actress, least of all a comedic one. That wasn’t what I lived for. I wanted to be a prima ballerina or a Broadway chorus girl but never the goofy, crazy Goldie Hawn most people think of today. That comedy just happened, unintentionally, and I think it all began with a desire to be liked and to fit in.

  Well, that and the fact that some people just seem to look at my face and laugh. In one of my earliest dramatic roles, a high school production of Bye Bye Birdie, I played the mayor’s wife but it wasn’t really acting. My character had to keep fainting over a handsome young man, and each time they picked her up she had to faint again. Using my dance training, knowing what a funny move was and what wasn’t, I made my body loose like the cartoon character Olive Oyl, and it worked.

  That was the first time I knew I could make people laugh, really laugh, and the reputation followed me throughout high school. Kids used to say, “Remember the time when you brought the house down?”

  Later, when I was in a comic play called Shot in the Dark in Maryland, every time I came onto the stage and opened my mouth the audience began to howl. My mother saw the show, and she came backstage afterward and stared at me in a curious way.

  “You know, Goldie,” she said, cocking her head to one side, “I don’t think you’re funny.”

  “I know,” I said, so relieved that someone finally agreed with me. “I don’t either! I mean, what are all those people laughing at?”

  It was many years before I realized that much of what made people laugh was my own physicality—my big smile, my giggle, the way I rolled my eyes and all the things I hated about myself as a young girl that combined to create something infectious.

  I learned at Williamsburg that I could act in the toughest Shakespearean dramas if I wanted to, but I also learned that I didn’t have to—there were plenty of other people who could do it far better than me. It was a long time before I really understood that what I ended up doing actually had its own value.

  We are all in service. Making people laugh is what we do. We’re jesters; we help people forget their troubles. We’re there to depict certain aspects of humanity, to mirror some truths. This was a lesson for me in authenticity, about finding my strengths and honoring them.

  There have been times in my life when I have longed for Juliet and all that she meant to me. I have wanted to go back to her simplicity, to the beauty and value of what she gave me. There was an alchemy about that special night; a mysterious blending of people and place and time that led all of us who were there to drink from it deeply. I know I have never forgotten how it felt to have my father stand there and look at me for the first time as an adult.

  The key is to look at our gifts, understand their power and modulate them realistically. Understand how important it is to honor them. Accept responsibility for them.

  I feel so fortunate to have been put in the limelight and allowed to shine. I don’t own this thing I do. It’s not mine. It’s what I was given. I try to hold this gift lightly and thank God for it.

  postcard

  Before that Williamsburg summer is over, Willy Hicks and I become lovers. He is my first love, and he gives me a blessed entrance to womanhood.

  Willy takes care of me. He explains what is happening. He doesn’t leave me, and he is so very tender. I waited and waited for this to happen, and, when it does, he is so kind and loving that he makes everything all right.

  He makes me understand that sex is beautiful; that it is now part of my life. I am fortunate enough to have had such a nurturing environment in which to learn that.

  My new plan, apart from to be happy, and to build on the weekend dancing school I began at seventeen, now includes marrying Willy Hicks and having his children. I can clearly see myself as a housewife, mother and dance teacher, living in a lovely little house with a white picket fence somewhere in Virginia.

  I imagine us continuing to do summer stock together year after year, with all our friends in the cast, growing old and raising children together. I am head over heels in love, and nothing would make me happier than to be Mrs. Willy Hicks.

  But Willy is a lot smarter than that. Much as he enjoys every day of our love affair that first summer, much as he enjoys resuming it the following year when I return to Williamsburg for another languid semester, he understands much better than I do that we have no future together.

  Leaving Williamsburg after that second summer of love breaks my heart. I cry and cry for the friends I’ll miss, for the good times we had, the shows we did, the sweaters we knitted, the people we laughed with, fought with and loved. I feel as lost and sad as I have ever felt.

  When I return home reluctantly and arrange to meet Willy again, eager to introduce him to my parents and Jean Lynn and to show him where we shall be married, he doesn’t show as much enthusiasm as I had hoped. Then, when I do pin him down to a rendezvous, he stands me up.

  Calling him long-distance, I burst into tears when he answers the telephone.

  “Willy,” I cry, my mind full of unquiet thoughts, “you weren’t there where we said. I waited and waited. What happened?”

  There is a long silence, which he eventually breaks with a sigh. “Goldie,” he says, in a voice that sends slivers of ice into my heart, “I can’t see you anymore.”

  “Don’t talk crazy, Willy, of course you can. What are you saying?”

  “You’re too young.”

  “I’m almost nineteen.”

  “And I’m almost thirty-one.”

  “That doesn’t matter. You know it doesn’t, not to me.”

  “Well, it does to me.”

  Tears slipping silently from my eyes, I try to speak but can only make a strange choking sound in the back of my throat.

  “Listen to me, Goldie Hawn,” he says tenderly. “You have a big life to lead, and all I will do is put a box around you. I can’t do that. Not to you.”

  “But you are my big life,” I plead. “You’re the only big life I want.”

  “No, Goldie,” he tells me firmly. “There’s a whole world waiting out there for you, and you have to go and find it. You’ll understand one day, and you will thank me.”

  Dear Willy Hicks. He broke my heart and left me in mourning. For months, I carried around a little lump of clay that I had sculpted into a bust of his head.

  I went back to Williamsburg a few years l
ater to find him, and he was happily married with a baby. He didn’t seem at all surprised, it seemed, by what had happened to me. He lived contentedly there with his family for many years, playing at the summer stock theater and, I feel sure, continuing to inspire others.

  I heard recently from some old friends that he had died. His family lost him way too soon. I hope he knew how much I once loved him and what an important person he was in my life.

  And, Willy, if you can hear me up there in heaven, thank you. Thank you very much for being so wise and loving and tender. I will never forget you.

  integrity

  The wonder of this life is that people, even the worst kind of people, can surprise you.

  A cockroach scuttles across my arm. In my sleep, I find myself standing in the middle of a room I don’t recognize. Where am I? Oh yes, I remember. As my brain begins to focus, I realize I am in my one-room apartment in New York City. Opening my eyes, I watch the cockroach scurry across the floor and disappear through a crack in the wall. It is May 1965, and I am in my first apartment on West Seventieth Street, an area known locally as “Needle Park.”

  Cringing at the cockroach and wondering how many others share his space beneath the floor, I feel homesickness flooding my heart. On the dirty white walls I summon a comforting image of my old bedroom on Cleveland Avenue, my street of hopes and dreams. In my waking dream, I can see the oak tree that stands tall outside my window, the azaleas, dogwoods and hydrangeas in the yard that my mother planted. Catching sight of myself now in a cracked mirror that hangs on the wall, I look no better than a long-necked baby bird fallen from the nest, waiting for its mother to rescue it.

  My mother. The image swirls and I can see her warm brown eyes cradling pools of tears as she waves good-bye to me in front of our redbrick home just one month ago. My throat tightens and I choke back a sob inching its way up my gullet.

  “Mommy, please don’t cry,” I tell her. “New York City is only five hours away.”

  For a moment, she looks more like a child than I do. Is she crying for me or for herself? For the mother she lost as a child? Or her first child, a baby boy who died in his crib? She sheds tears so rarely, but, when she does, her face is etched with the hidden pain of her life. When Laura Hawn weeps, so does the world. Or maybe just my world. I don’t know.

  Daddy’s comic appearance slinking through the front door saves the day. Determined to be upbeat, he gives me the wide grin that always lifts my heart. Sharing the special little dance we do that makes us both giggle, he glide-steps, dip-steps and whirls me around. Leaning against the hood of his old black Cadillac, he offers me some lofty pearls of wisdom.

  “Hey, Kink. Whatever you do, stay real in the big city,” he advises. His arm is draped loosely over Mom’s shoulders in a rare show of affection that steadies them both. “Show business is a fake business, so don’t let it fool you. Don’t walk around looking up at all the buildings, people will know you’re a newcomer. Always look like you know where you’re going even if you don’t.”

  “Anything else?” I laugh.

  “Yes. Don’t pick your nose in public.”

  He and Mom couldn’t be more different. But standing side by side, they are a monolith of strength. By uniting their own amazing proteins of life, they have manufactured their own petri dish of creation in which Patti and I have grown.

  The cab pulls away from the sidewalk on our dead-end street with me sitting in the backseat. Twisted round, never taking my eyes off them, I wave and wave at the two people I love more than anything in the world, and who love me back more than anyone ever will again. I only turn away when the cab rounds the corner and they are lost from my sight, severing the invisible umbilical cord that holds me so close.

  If I knew then that I would never live with my parents again, I don’t think I would ever have left.

  The school bell rings across the street, shattering the image on my wall and dispelling the nostalgic postcard from my past. This was the reason I took this crummy apartment in the first place: the school. The sound of the children playing makes me feel a little easier about being a stranger in a strange town.

  Realizing the time, I rush around the room, pick out a dress for my first modeling audition, stuff my big white vinyl dance bag with swimsuits and hope I won’t be late. Poking a tongue out at myself in the mirror before I tackle the four heavy locks on my front door, I think to myself, I wish I didn’t look so much like a parakeet.

  Come on now, Goldie Jeanne, I tell myself sternly as I dash out the door and run down the stairs. This could be your lucky day.

  But I am stopped at the entranceway to my building. Blocking it is a woman who has passed out.

  “Excuse me, miss!” I cry. “Excuse me. I’m sorry, but you can’t sleep here.”

  She looks up at me, her eyes rolling inside her head. Mumbling something unintelligible, she dribbles saliva down her chin before slumping back to the floor.

  Hearing the creak of a hinge, I turn to see the door to the basement apartment opening. Inside sits a bald man in a grubby, darkened room. He is half dressed, sitting in dirty old shorts with his legs apart. He glares at me so ferociously when I meet his gaze that I gasp. Where the hell am I living? I ask myself. Under my breath, I close my eyes and repeat, There’s no place like home. There is no place like home.

  But no magic spell transports me back to Takoma Park, and I realize that this is the reality Daddy spoke about. Looking up, I spot a uniformed police officer strolling past the entrance to our building. Leaping over the woman at my feet, I run outside.

  “Excuse me, officer!” I call. “Please, can you help me?”

  “Sure,” he says with a twisted grin. “What can I do for you?”

  “There’s a woman passed out in my hallway and she doesn’t belong there. Could you help me? I’m a little scared.”

  “Not a problem, ma’am,” he says, and follows me inside.

  “Come on, Deidre, let’s go,” he yells, reaching down and picking her up by the scruff of her neck.

  “You know her?” I ask.

  “Yeah, she’s harmless enough. She’s a junkie. Come on, Deidre. I said, Let’s go!”

  He drags her through the front door and out onto the street. “Her dealer lives in that apartment.” He points to a door that is still ajar. The man inside, watching everything that is going on through the gap, looks perversely pleased as he slams the door shut.

  The police officer hurls Deidre unceremoniously into the street, and we both watch as she ricochets from car to wall, stoop to railing, toward Central Park. He dusts off his hands and bids me farewell.

  Feeling sticky and icky and wanting desperately to be away from this place, I rush down the street away from my apartment building and try to clear my mind.

  This is just a little glitch, I tell myself. You won’t have to live here forever. I listen to the sound of my shoes tap tapping along the sidewalk, and I allow the brightness of the sunny New York day to lift my spirits. The air is warm and yellow, and the birds are chirping so loud I can actually hear them above the din of the city.

  As I approach the corner of Seventy-first Street and Broadway, where I have to mount my chariot—the subway—I spot a handsome young man in his mid-twenties. He is wearing white pants and a sky blue shirt. He appears to be backlit with divine light. He flashes me a smile, and, involuntarily, I smile back.

  “My, don’t you look nice today!” he says as I walk past.

  “Thank you.” I blush coyly.

  “That bag is bigger than you are,” he says, getting into step with me. “Can I carry it for you?”

  “No, thank you, I’m fine,” I say, flattered. “It’s my dance bag. I carry it all the time.”

  “You’re a dancer? With legs like that, I should have guessed.”

  We reach the corner and he stops. “Listen,” he says, “my name is Bobby.”

  “And I’m Goldie.”

  “Oh, I have an aunt named Goldie!”

  “R
eally? That’s an old Jewish name.”

  “I know. I am Jewish.”

  Perfect. Mom would approve. “You wouldn’t by any chance be a dentist, would you?” I laugh.

  “No.” He laughs.

  As it turns out, he wants to introduce me to a man he knows—a famous cartoonist named Al Capp.

  “Have you ever heard of him?” he asks.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Mr. Capp is a national institution. He created the cartoon character Li’l Abner, the most popular comic strip of all time.”

  “I know!” I reply, putting down my bag. “Of course I know L’il Abner. I danced in the chorus of the school play.”

  Bobby hesitates. “Listen,” he says, “I’m really not trying to put the make on you. In fact, here, look at this, I have a girlfriend, she gave me this gold watch.” He peels off his watch and shows me the inscription: I LOVE YOU. DOLLY. He adds, “You can trust me.”

  “Oh, I do,” I reply, when all I can think is, Lucky Dolly.

  “Good, Goldie. Now listen. Al Capp’s created a new character for a TV series for NBC. She’s called Tenderlief Ericsson. She is not classically pretty, but she’s interesting-looking. You’d be just perfect for the part.”

  Interesting-looking? Yes! Now he has my attention. If he had said I was pretty or sexy or beautiful, he would have lost me.

  “Hey, my car’s just around the corner. Let me give you a lift to wherever you’re going and we can talk about it some more. I have a script for the show on the backseat.”

  Before I know it, I am scooped up in Bobby’s green 1965 Cadillac convertible, the top down, being chauffeured to my audition. It all seems too good to be true. Here I am, living my dream: being discovered on the street by the cutest guy I’ve ever met, just a month after arriving in the Big Apple. I flop back, stare unashamedly at the giant skyscrapers towering above me and melt into the soft leather seats.