Almost a Woman : A Memoir (9780306821110) (21 page)

I knew I'd never be a ballerina; that wasn't my intention. At Performing Arts we learned that if actors had to wait ten years to make a living at their art, dancers were lucky if they could get that many years out of theirs. For me, dance was not to be shared but to bring me to a place nothing else did. I danced for myself, even when being led across a shiny floor by a skillful partner. It didn't matter if no one saw me dance. It only mattered that I could.

At the Yiddish theater, I ushered two shows every Sunday, for which I was paid at the end of the day in wrinkled bills. The company worked in repertory, alternating comedies with tragedies. When they were in rehearsals, I was laid off. When there was a performance, an actor staffed the ticket window, making me wonder if Mr. Rosenberg only chose plays in which one of the characters always made his first entrance in the second act.

I came to know the regular audience members by name. Mr. and Mrs. Karinsky took the same two seats in row C, center. Mrs. Shapiro and her sister Miss Levine liked front row, center, because Miss Levine was hard of hearing. Mrs. Mlynarski always brought a coffee cake for the actors, which she handed to me with ceremony,
and which I was supposed to take backstage immediately while she stood at the door, a huge, immovable bulk, blocking anyone from entering until I returned and conveyed profuse thanks from the cast. Almost all the regulars knew where their seats were, and I wondered why Mr. Rosenberg paid me to usher, until the day Mr. Aronson had a fit of loud, hacking coughs. I came down the aisle with the flashlight to help him out of the theater and into the hallway, followed by a distraught and embarrassed Mrs. Aronson and another man who told me to get a glass of water.

“Don't worry,” the man said as he bent over Mr. Aronson, who was turning blue, “I'm a doctor.”

I couldn't find a glass anywhere, so I ran to the deli down the street and told the counterman that there was an emergency at the theater and could I please, please, please have a glass of water. When I returned, the play was in intermission and Mr. Aronson was sitting on the floor with the doctor on his knees at his side. He'd regained some color, and his coughs had subsided. He drank the water in little sips as the audience watched and hovered and commented on what was happening.

“You're looking better, Morey,” Miss Levine said.

“It's his gallbladder,” Mr. Klein diagnosed.

“Move away, he needs fresh air,” Mrs. Mlynarski ordered everyone.

As the lights for the second act flashed, his wife and the doctor helped Mr. Aronson down the stairs and out of the building.

When everyone was seated and the play resumed, I broke into a sweat and shivers, imagining that one of the elderly people might some day have a heart attack or stroke during a performance, and there wouldn't be a doctor to help. Later, when Mr. Rosenberg was paying me and I expressed my fears, he reassured me.

“Don't worry,” he said, waving his hand, “there's always a doctor in
this
house.” He laughed, but I didn't get the joke.

Mami decided we needed an apartment that would allow everyone more privacy. She found one on the second floor of a two-story house, on a tree-lined street of identical houses, the stoop separated from the sidewalk by a cement yard behind a wrought-iron fence. She and Don Carlos took the bedroom in the back, Tata and we kids scattered our belongings in three rooms, one of which, the living room, faced the sunny street. The other rooms didn't offer much light, because their windows faced an air vent. When I was arranging my things in the middle room with Delsa and Norma, I noticed that a hallway off the kitchen was wide enough to hold a fold-out cot.

“Mami, can I take this room?”

“This isn't a room, it's a hall.”

“If I close these doors,” I shut the ones to the outside hall and to her room, “it still leaves me with a door to the kitchen, and I can put a cot in here, and a table, and have my own room.”

Mami stepped into the room I'd created. “It's so dark.”

“It's got a light. See?” I pulled the chain of an overhead bulb. “The room is useless. We don't need another entrance.”

“Umm,” Mami considered for a few minutes, then agreed. At the secondhand store we found a gold metal and glass vanity table with an oval mirror and matching chair covered in white vinyl. I dragged the folding cot into the hallway, where it hugged the walls tight enough so that the only way I could get into bed was by climbing over the foot toward the head against the door to Mami's room. The vanity table fit against the other entrance door. I screwed hooks into the wall for my clothes and stuffed my underwear into a basket that went under the bed. It was like living in a long box, but it was private, my own room, where I could keep my things and where I slept alone, even if every time I turned over I hit a wall with a leg or a foot.

“It sounds like you're fighting in there,” Tata complained one
morning when I emerged from my room, elbows and knees bruised. “And you don't get any fresh air. You'll get sick.”

“Maybe that room isn't such a good idea,” Mami warned.

“I had a nightmare,” I lied, “and there's plenty of air.”

That night I began to train myself to sleep on my back, perfectly still: Cleopatra, surrounded by her belongings, in her sarcophagus.

As soon as school was out, I answered a classified ad for a summer job at a photographic developing company. I was interviewed by Mr. Murphy, a high-strung man who asked questions but never let me finish the answer.

He reviewed the job application. “You go to Performing Arts, right?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, unable to hide the pride in my voice.

“What'd they teach you there?” He had an exquisite Brooklyn accent.

I turned on my standard speech. “I'm in the drama department, so we study acting, voice, and. . . .”

“What? You wanna be a movie star?”

“It's an academic school, too.”

“Oh, yeah? Did you see
West Side Story?
You look like that girl there, what's her name, Mareer. You could play her.”

“I can't sing. . . .”

“Not too many parts for Puerto Ricans,” he broke in again.

“We're trained to play anything. . . .”

“What's this? Yiddish theater? D'you talk Yiddish?”

“I was an usher. . . .”

“What? They fire you 'cause you couldn't talk it?”

“No. They don't perform in the summer. . . .”

“That was some movie,” he mused, and it took me a while to realize we were back to
West Side Story.
“What's her name won an academy award, didn't she?”

“Rita Moreno. She's Puerto Rican.”

“Can you start on Monday?”

“Sure!”

“Eight in the morning. I'll have a card for you by the clock where you punch in.” He stood up and led me to the door, “Yeah, Reeter, that's her name.” He showed me out.

I was happy I had found a job but annoyed that it should have been because the boss loved
West Side Story.
I despised that movie, and it didn't help that every time I told someone I was a drama student, they expected me to lift my skirts and break into “I feel pretty, oh so pretty . . .”

Although I hadn't seen a stage performance of West Side Story, I'd read that the original Maria was played by an American actress, Carol Lawrence, while Anita was played by Chita Rivera. In the movie, Natalie Wood played Maria, and Rita Moreno was Anita. It was subtle, but it wasn't lost on me that the only virgin in the entire movie—sweet, innocent Maria—was always played by an American, while the sexy spitfire was Puerto Rican. And that wasn't all.

The Jets had a nice, clean, warm place to hang out, reminiscent of the malt shop where Archie hung out with Betty, Veronica, and Jughead. It was owned by a kindly old man who put up with all sorts of
pocavergüenzas,
including the near rape of Anita. The Sharks had a rooftop, and what did they do there? They argued over whether “America” was better than Puerto Rico.

“It's just a movie,” Laura Figueroa reminded me once, when I was on a rant about
West Side Story.

“It's not
just
a movie,” I argued, “it's the only movie about Puerto Ricans anyone has seen. And what's the message? White Puerto Rican girls dangle from fire escapes singing sweet tunes to Italian guys, while dark-skinned Puerto Rican girls sleep with their boyfriends,. Dark too, I might add.”

“You're reading too much into it,” she insisted.

When we read
Romeo and Juliet
in English class and Mrs. Simmons said
West Side Story
was based on the Shakespeare play,
I was disappointed. I thought the Bard could have done better. The death scene at the end of the play and the movie was the dumbest thing I'd seen. During the discussion, my classmates tried to help me see it differently.

“But don't you understand?” Brenda said. “They died for love.”

“What kind of stupid reason is that?” I wondered.

“They couldn't live without each other,” Ardyce explained.

“Oh, please! That's the most ridiculous reason over which to commit suicide.”

“Obviously, you've never been in love,” Myra sniffed.

“If I had, I'd still never kill myself over a guy.”

“Even if he looked like Richard Beymer?” Roger asked.

“Especially if he looked like Richard Beymer.”

“Cleopatra killed herself over Marc Antony,” Jay reminded me.

“Not exactly. She thought Antony was dead and she'd lost her most important ally. With him gone, the Romans would strip her of her dignity.” No one could invoke Cleopatra around me and hope I didn't have my facts straight.

Mrs. Simmons held up her hand to stop the discussion. “
Romeo and Juliet
is one of the great love stories of all time,” she concluded, “but apparently, it's not for everybody.” The bell rang. “Next week, we begin
Hamlet
.” She smiled in my direction. “I think you'll like that one better,” she said as I left the classroom.