Teachers for my sister June and me were Mother’s greatest problem when we were touring the country as a child vaudeville act. It was important that they look the part, and they had to have papers proving they were registered teachers and letters showing they had taught before. Mother didn’t care where they had taught so long as it sounded impressive. Above all they had to be, as Mother said, troupers. The act had been running into child-labor trouble and we had even been arrested in Rochester. If it hadn’t been for Grandpa, who was a Shriner, and the fact that the judge was a Shriner, too, we probably wouldn’t have been allowed to finish the week. As it was, June and I missed two performances.
From then on, every time we opened in a new city, stern-faced policewomen would come backstage and question my sister and me. The questions were hard. For example, when were we born? They always wanted the year. Months and days were easy, but we had so many years to keep track of. Actually, June was eight and I was a few years older. But on trains my sister was under five and I was under ten. In Rochester we both had to be twelve, in San Francisco fourteen. We couldn’t play New York at all, because the age limit there was sixteen, and even with lifts in our shoes we couldn’t look sixteen.
Once a policewoman asked us to name the Vice-President under Wilson. June and I had never heard of Wilson. Another policewoman asked us who killed Cain. It went on like that until it became plain that, much as Mother hated to spend the money, a schoolteacher had become a necessity. The first one, Miss Hamilton, had the face for it and she had the papers, too, but she was no trouper. She thought living in hotels was barbaric. Eating in a dining wagon gave her indigestion. She couldn’t sleep in an upper berth; she was afraid she’d roll out. After a couple of weeks she broke down completely and took a day coach back home. I don’t remember the second teacher too well. She was only with us for three days. Mother and she had some slight difference about salary.
Then when we were playing in Minneapolis, Miss Tomkins joined the act. She had just graduated from the Minnesota State Normal School and we—the six boys in the act, my sister, and I—were her first pupils.
We liked Miss Tomkins immediately. She was delighted with the prospect of travelling with a show troupe. She thought living in hotels and eating in restaurants was a thrilling adventure. She couldn’t wait to sleep in an upper. The admiring glances of the stagehands and the musicians pleased her. She liked it when Mother called her our tutor.
Mother had one misgiving about the new teacher; she was too pretty. Mother would have preferred an older woman, a more genuine type. Miss Tomkins was blond, with blue eyes and very pale eyelashes. Her figure was full. She wore high-heeled patent-leather pumps. Mother made her buy a pair of sturdy Ground Grippers at once. Then she tactfully suggested that Miss Tomkins wear her hair straight—marcels were a nuisance on the road, anyway—and put on horn-rimmed glasses. “Not real lenses, of course,” Mother said gaily. “Just glass in the horn rims, for the effect.” Miss Tomkins agreed.
Mother also toyed with the idea of a uniform. Gray serge with a long cape for street wear, the cape to be lined with red flannel. Very English-governess-like, Mother said. She and Miss Tomkins settled for plain black with white piqué collar and cuffs.
One morning, a few days after Miss Tomkins was hired, Mother invited reporters and photographers to attend our first class. Miss Tomkins’ black dress looked quite drab and Mother was hopeful that, for all her prettiness, she would photograph badly. That day we had real school desks in our dressing room. A large blackboard hid the makeup shelf and Miss Tomkins had a desk with a globe of the world on it. The globe was a prop from another act. Miss Tomkins became very friendly with the photographers. While they set up their tripods she said, “Oh, you don’t want ugly me in the picture.” They laughed and told her she was far from ugly, and one of the cameramen told her to wet her lips so they would photograph more alluringly. Miss Tomkins’ mouth was quite chapped by the time the pictures were finished.
While the pictures were being taken, a reporter asked Miss Tomkins what she thought about stage kiddies in general. “I find them above the average pupil in public schools,” she answered quickly. “Little June has been on the stage since she was two and a half years old. She has never been to school. But actions speak louder than words. June, dear, how much is four times four?”
June stared at Miss Tomkins for what seemed a very long time. There was something almost hostile in the stare, something Miss Tomkins couldn’t account for. I felt sorry for her and decided to be helpful.
“We haven’t got to our foursies yet,” I said.
“We haven’t got to our foursies yet,” June said. “We start from two times one is two, two times two is four, two times three is six, and so on.”
The reporter was satisfied and so was Miss Tomkins. Neither of them suspected that we learned our multiplication tables the way we learned a new song lyric. Skipping around was taboo.
When the pictures appeared in the evening paper, the caption of one said, “When is a school not a school? When it’s backstage at the Hennepin-Orpheum.” Mother wasn’t at all sure she liked the sound of it. She preferred the one that said, “Dainty June and her newsboy songsters at school. From nine until noon they study their readin’, ’ritin’, and ’rithmetic—just like children leading normal lives.”
At exactly noon the following day, June and I slipped into our coats and started to leave the schoolroom. We were at the door before June turned to Miss Tomkins and said, “We’re going to the ten-cent store. Do you want to come with us?” June and I always took our noon exercise in the aisles of the local ten-cent stores—such nice smells of hot dogs and roasted peanuts, so many colorful things piled up on the counters, so many careless salesgirls. We usually wore coats with big pockets.
Miss Tomkins did want to come with us. She removed her horn-rimmed glasses before we started out—Mother had told her it was all right now that the publicity pictures had been taken—but she still wore the Ground Grippers and they made her walk strangely, almost as though she had snowshoes on. When people looked at June, with her blond curls and her animated little face, Miss Tomkins smiled proudly.
The dime store was down the street from the theatre. We forgot Miss Tomkins as soon as we got inside. We were too busy. June engaged a shopgirl in conversation and I clipped. Then it was my turn to talk to the shopgirl while June clipped. There was nothing systematic about it. We didn’t take things we needed and we seldom took anything we wanted. Quantity was what we were after.
That day we didn’t wait until we got to the theatre to compare our booty but began emptying our pockets as soon as we left the store. June won. She had a tin spectacle case, two compasses, a jar of pomade, a patent can-opener, and a tea-strainer. I had two articles more, but mine were small, compact things; June’s were bulky. We were trading vigorously when all at once we heard Miss Tomkins gasp. It was almost like Mother’s asthma gasp. June and I gave Miss Tomkins a sympathetic glance and went back to our bartering.
“Where did you children get those?” Miss Tomkins asked, her voice cracking on the last word.
June and I stared, first at Miss Tomkins, then at each other. “Woolworff’s,” June said. She had trouble with her “th”s and Mother encouraged it because she thought it made June sound babylike. Usually Miss Tomkins, like most other people, smiled when June lisped, but she didn’t smile this time. She seized our arms firmly and marched us back into the store. We didn’t realize what she intended to do until we found ourselves standing before the cosmetics counter.
“Tell the lady you stole the jar of pomade,” Miss Tomkins said to June. I was stunned and apparently June was too. As though in a trance she took the jar of pomade from her pocket and handed it to the open-mouthed clerk. Miss Tomkins forced her chapped lips into a righteous grin. “Now ask her to forgive you,” she said “Tell her you will never steal again.”
June’s mouth began working. For a moment no sound came forth, then she managed to mumble, “I’m sowwy, and I’ll never steal again.” The last words came very fast, and June shut her mouth with a snap.
Miss Tomkins herded us to the next counter. Combs, brushes, and spectacle cases were disgorged. I heard myself repeating June’s speech and it didn’t sound like my voice at all. It was more like a voice coming from the bottom of a deep well.
An hour later we were all in the dressing room. Mother was curling June’s hair. She tested the hot iron on a sheet of newspaper that served as a covering for the makeup shelf. Then she placed a second iron on the flame of a Sterno can. When the stage electrician knocked and asked Mother for the light cues, Miss Tomkins offered to finish June’s hair and took the iron from Mother.
June had been silent from the time we left the ten-cent store. Now, when she heard Miss Tomkins’ voice, she banged her head on the makeup shelf with such violence that the thud made me look up from tying my shoe. June shoved her thin hands through her straggly blond hair and shrieked. Then she jumped up from her chair and backed into a corner of the dressing room. Her shrieks became louder and louder. Miss Tomkins, holding the smoking curling iron in her hand, stared at her. I thought she had burned my sister and Mother thought so too. She rushed over to June and fell on her knees in front of her.
“There, there, she didn’t burn my little angel on purpose,” Mother said, over and over. “She didn’t burn my little angel on purpose.”
Then it all came out—garbled, disjointed, but true: how we had apologized to ten clerks, how we had returned fourteen articles. June didn’t say stolen articles; she said “fings we got.”
Mother picked her up and held her close. “Don’t cry, angel. Mommy is here. Don’t cry.” Mother began crying too, so I started—good loud bellows for the dignity I had left at the spectacle counter at Woolworth’s. I threw myself at Mother and buried my face in her chest. June’s knee hit me on the nose as Mother rocked her back and forth, but I didn’t care. We were together. We were safe from outsiders who didn’t understand us. Mother felt warm and smelled good. I cried louder.
Then, in a rush, Mother’s mood changed. She put June on an army cot and pushed me aside. “How dare you?” Mother shouted at Miss Tomkins. June and I stopped crying and looked on, serene and confident. “How dare you subject that little bundle of nerves to such a strain?”
The little bundle of nerves sniffed loudly.
“How can that baby do her matinée in that condition?” Mother went on, her voice rising higher and higher. Miss Tomkins didn’t even try to answer. In her very brief association with the troupe she had learned that much. She put the curling iron on the shelf and walked toward the door.
“Get out!” Mother screamed. “You’re fired!”
I was too scared to look, but I heard something heavy hit the door after it closed and I think it was a chair. When I opened my eyes, Mother was reheating the curling iron. June had stopped trembling. She dragged the upturned chair to the shelf and seated herself in front of the cracked, wavy mirror.
“She isn’t really fired, is she, Mommy?” June asked.
Mother tested the curling iron with a wet finger before she answered. “Certainly not,” she said. “Now sit still while Mommy does the bangs.”
“Look, Mommy,” June said a moment later. “I got three eyes.”
Mother smiled. “No, precious. That’s just a defect in the mirror.”
I jumped up to look. Sure enough, my sister did have three eyes. ♦
No comments:
Post a Comment