American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee (15 page)

It was the surest advertising paradigm, which Gordon knew by trade and Rose by instinct: discover what could make you famous, and then proclaim that it already has. In Rose’s opinion, her own image was just as crucial to the act, and with that in mind she began inserting herself into the newspaper stories, telling reporters
she once taught acting to the members of “Our Gang.” She bought a beaver fur coat and insisted there was no other in the country like it.
She had designed it herself, selecting the skins and taking just a few at a time to the furrier. As a further guarantee that the furrier wouldn’t switch skins, each one had Rose’s name written on it, in indelible pencil.

Advertisement for Dainty June and Her Newsboy Songsters.
(photo credit 12.2)

“
You know I wouldn’t pay that much money for a coat,” she reasoned, “unless it was to put up a front.” A stack of new diamond baubles adorned one finger, complements to her engagement rings. The rings could be pawned if they ever ran out of money, and besides, she said, “they do impress the managers.” No objections, no arguments—Gordon wouldn’t want her asthma to act up, now, would he? She also took to carrying money in a
grouch bag, a gray suede pouch worn around her waist that bulged oddly under her dress, although she often insisted that there wasn’t much hidden inside.

The most crucial change, however, was to her name; the public would know her, from now on, as “Madame Rose.” Still not satisfied, she tagged on a suffix: “
The Developer of Children.”

D
ainty June and Her Newsboy Songsters traveled for months at a time, performing at theaters across the country, Chicago to Minneapolis, Pittsburgh to Detroit, Indiana to Salt Lake City, three cities a week, two shows per day, more on weekends. Louise and June split the burden of packing a cretonne bedspread, a trunk cover, a coffeepot, and a lampshade for every trip. As soon as they checked into their hotel, Louise said, “
We started fixing our room to make it look homey.” Every Christmas, Louise lugged a half-dead, needle-deprived tree aboard the train that dwindled to skeletal by the time they retrimmed it for her January 9 birthday. Musty green curtains enclosed the sleeping cars, each one a dank, gloomy cave. June slept alone in the lower bunk, her neck smeared with Vicks VapoRub and sheathed in a stocking, while Louise shared the upper with two of the younger boys. Sometimes she cried at night, uncertain of her age but certain enough to know she should no longer be bunking with the opposite sex. With her heavy rubber boots, tweed cap (which doubled as a bed for her guinea pig), and bluntly cut dark hair, Louise couldn’t blame the porter for thinking she was one of them.

“
I just can’t stand it any longer,” she confided to her guinea pig, wiping her tears on his fur. “Not if I never sleep again. I can’t. I can’t.”

She mostly kept to herself during layoffs and lulls, reading and rereading Gordon’s birthday gift, a book titled
Dreams: What They Mean
. She studied the various interpretations and incorporated her own occult visions. “You can charge a nickel a dream,” Gordon said, but Rose shushed him. “Don’t go putting ideas into her head,” she muttered. “People will think she’s a Gypsy.”

Louise also devoured every book supplied by their tutor, Olive Thompson:
Painted Veils, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
, Honoré de Balzac’s
Droll Stories
. Miss Thompson, no relation to the family, had joined the troupe at the reluctant behest of Rose. She hated to spend the money, but frequent inquiries from the police and child welfare agencies didn’t leave much choice. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, called the “Gerry Society” after its founder, Elbridge Gerry, was especially zealous in monitoring child performers under the age of sixteen. “
These child slaves of the stage,” Gerry wrote, “[are] subjected to a bondage more terrible and oppressive than the children of Israel ever endured at the hands of Pharaoh or the descendents of Ham have ever experienced in the way of African slavery.”

Officers kept slinking backstage and cornering the girls, asking them all sorts of ridiculous questions: Who was the vice president under Woodrow Wilson? Under Warren G. Harding? Who killed Cain? Louise and June could no sooner answer such inquiries than they could recall, without hesitation, all the years in which they might have been born. Most of the time the officers nodded grimly, scratched some notes on a pad, and warned that they’d be back, but in January 1923, on a bitter Saturday afternoon in Rochester, New York, they kept their word.

Dainty June and Her Newsboy Songsters were in the middle of the matinee finale, a military number featuring a gun drill, when a whistle pierced the orchestra’s cheery tune. No questions this time, just two officers marching down the aisle, motioning for everyone to exit the stage. They wrapped Louise and June in coats and herded all eight members of the company into the back of a police van. Through the windows, Louise watched her mother in the taxi behind them, weeping on Gordon’s shoulder.

“
They won’t make me talk,” Sonny whispered, squeezed between the girls. “My father talked once, and the gang busted two of his ribs and almost poked his eye out.”

The other children at the station were all cases of neglect or abuse and June noticed she stood out even among them, with her prop badges of honor and face painted like a watercolor. What a relief, she thought, that the officers did nothing more than lock them in a stuffy room that smelled of bleach. But Louise hoped they would fingerprint or interrogate or at least throw them in a cell—something exciting to make for a good story. She hushed the others and listened to Rose plead with the officers. Would they please let the children go? They had another show scheduled for that night, and the contract … fine. Well, would they at least let her contact her father in Seattle? He could straighten out this whole mess right away.

The officers consented, and Rose sent a Western Union wire to Charlie Thompson:

Twenty-six hundred miles away, Grandpa Thompson read his daughter’s plea. He sighed and did as Rose asked. The lodge master hurried with a response:

The judge, an active and honorable Shriner, dismissed the case with the stipulation that Rose hire a tutor immediately.

A graduate of the Minnesota State Normal School, Miss Thompson was formally certified to possess the “
character, skill, and experience required by law.” The girls liked their tutor immediately, but Rose thought her too pretty. To dowdy her up a bit, she suggested that Miss Thompson wear horn-rimmed glasses, flat, sensible shoes instead of black patent pumps, and a black dress with white piqué collar and cuffs—proper attire for a governess. Newspapers were intrigued by this insight into troupers’ lives, the strange logistics of a migratory classroom. Rose arranged real school desks in the dressing room, hid the makeup mirror behind a large blackboard, and stole a prop globe from another act on the bill. Gordon encouraged the press to come see for themselves how stars were educated on the Orpheum Circuit, a vaudeville act in its own right.

Math and spelling made June nervous. Between acts, the stagehands taught her the alphabet and how to sound out words phonetically.
They listened as she read vaudeville advertisements aloud and corrected her pronunciation. Slowly she was learning, although she much preferred the “
See for Yourself” field trips Miss Thompson organized in each city, tours through carpet plants and steel mills and salt mines. But Louise, for all her trouble memorizing dance steps, remembered everything her teacher said. She tried on new words as if they were her mother’s gleaming rings, recoiling at June’s “
hideously” thin arms and proclaiming her sister “
gauche.” June couldn’t tell if she should be flattered or offended, but she envied Louise’s brilliant, facile mind, the way it left nothing unexamined or unclaimed.

B
y now Rose’s grouch bag held
at least $25,000 and swung pendulously between her legs. She did not believe in banks. Once, June watched while her mother fanned piles of bills across the floor, counting them one by one.

“
It’s a trillion dollars, I bet,” June whispered to Louise that night.
They had made a pretend tent, pulling the bedspread taut over the foot posts. “Even more than a trillion, maybe. So I don’t see why I can’t have a doll that goes ‘Mama’ wiff a buggy to match. I could even have a live pony if I wanted it, and a stove wiff a real oven—”

“I want a boat,” Louise interrupted. “A boat that’s big enough for me to sit in with a sail and oars.”

“What is the meaning of this?” Rose said, standing in the doorway that connected their two rooms. She threw on the light and whisked up the bedspread, ruining the tent. “We’re taking an early train tomorrow, and here you are talking all night. What are you talking about?”

Louise kept quiet. This was June’s game, and she was obligated to explain herself.

“We were saying what we’d do wiff the money in the belt,” June said.

A pause. Rose stepped closer and calibrated her words.

“Who told you about any money?” she asked.

“Nobody,” June replied, quick and adamant. “I seen—I mean I saw it.”

Rose sat down on the foot of the bed. The windows were open, and the wind gusted her flannel nightgown around her hips. Her cheek bore deep creases from her pillow.

“Remember the story about the poor little match girl?” she asked.

Louise and June nodded, waiting.

“Well,” their mother said, “her mother was a very foolish woman. She gave all her money to a bad wolf and the wolf left her alone with her little girl to starve. Remember how hungry she was? And how cold? And how they found her dead one morning, all frozen?”

June began to sob. “Please don’t tell any more,” she whimpered. “It’s too sad.”

Rose patted June’s foot. “Mother doesn’t want that to happen to
her
babies,” she said. “That’s why she hides the money away so no one can find it. That money belongs to the three of us. You mustn’t tell a soul that we have it.”

June studied her mother. “Not even Uncle Gordon?” she asked.

Rose yanked the bedspread up tight, pulling the top around her daughters’ necks. She kissed them both, and the room went dark again.

“Not even Uncle Gordon,” she said, closing the door gently.

It was quiet until June rustled and turned. Louise felt her sister’s breath soft against her cheek.

“That wasn’t the story about the poor little match girl at all,” June said. “There was no wolf in that story.”

Neither girl questioned Rose about the grouch bag again.

E
ach afternoon during break, Louise and June took one dollar apiece from Rose, a sum expected to stretch for all three meals. They strolled to the local Woolworth’s, by now used to stares from the civilians. Look at the little blonde dressed cap-à-pie in dirty white rabbit fur, the pumpkin-sized muff encasing her hands, the missing buttons, the tattered hems, how precious and peculiar she was, all at once. And the taller one, with knickers tucked into boots and—could that be?—a
monkey
perched on her (or was it his?) shoulder. It was easy for June to distract the clerk with her blond curls and eager little face and talk of how she loved “Woolworff’s,” while Louise skulked up and down the aisles, grabbing here and there, nothing she wanted or needed. A tin spectacles case, a compass, a jar of pomade, a can opener, a tea strainer. Then they switched places and, once safe outside, compared their booty to see who won. After one such trip a pair of flat, sensible shoes appeared next to their pile, and they looked up to see Miss Thompson glaring down.