Saint Mazie Read online

  Anyway, he’d be walking down the steps when Mazie’d be walking up hers. She’d wave, he’d nod. Now she was an adult, so all the grown men were scared of her too. No men in the neighborhood would be caught dead talking to her while she roamed the streets like she did. The mothers didn’t like her, the fathers didn’t want to talk to her. But once upon a time she used to be a little girl they all loved. It was not hypocrisy, but it felt something like it.

  Mazie’s Diary, June 14, 1916

  I sat on the front stairs before I went home. I knew what was coming. Oh boy did I know. I could be standing across the East River and know when that woman opens her mouth. So I waited for a minute. I wanted to see the daylight hit the stairs. I like watching it spread across the street and then the sidewalk. I smoked. I closed my eyes. I let the sun hit me. The sun’s some kind of gift. Another day we’re all alive. I wish she could understand. I’m just happy to be alive.

  She was asleep on the couch when I came in, tucked into a quilt. When she’s quiet, she looks like a girl again, with that pudge around her chin. Louis was in the kitchen like always. He had a plate of hot eggs and leftover steak in front of him. He was peppering the steak. He just gave me a nod. He wants nothing to do with the arguing. Poor Louis. He’d give us every cent he has just to keep the peace.

  I stumbled into my room. I knocked into a wall. All right I was drunk I guess. So it was my fault I woke her up. My fault, my fault. Everything’s my fault. A minute passed, then there’s Rosie in my room. Didn’t even knock! Just walked right in. Started talking about the neighbors knowing too much, worrying about them being in Louis’s business. Nobody wants anybody’s nose in anything. I couldn’t argue so I didn’t. I just shushed her for Jeanie’s sake.

  But then Jeanie was up. She had slept in one of her ballerina outfits again. No one could sleep then so it was into the kitchen with all of us. Rosie got back on the couch, stuffed in her quilt. I braided Jeanie’s hair while Louis made us eggs. Jeanie told us jokes and made us laugh. Louis went to work and I did the dishes while Rosie stared at me from the couch. She looked mean.

  Rosie said: One day that door won’t be open.

  I told her I’d crawl through the window. I told her she’d never ever get rid of me.

  Jeanie danced in circles around the room. Fast, spinning. Jeanie’s braids came out. Rosie was wishing ill on me. I wasn’t going to change a thing.

  Rosie said: Enough, Jeanie.

  But you can’t stop that girl from dancing.

  Lydia Wallach, great-granddaughter of Rudy Wallach, manager of the Venice Theater (1916–1938)

  First of all, obviously this is all secondhand information. I’m certainly fine with speaking on the record, but most of this was told to me by my mother and by my grandmother, and a lot of this information came, I believe, from my great-grandmother, whom in fact I never met, or if I did I don’t recall it. There’s a chance she held me when I was just a baby. I vaguely recall having heard that she did once from my mother.

  But anyway, essentially, this is all rumor and gossip, family lore, I suppose you could call it, although I don’t know how interesting any of it is. I guess we take what we can get for family lore. And Mazie was the closest thing to a celebrity any of them knew. She was a celebrity because she was written about, and was sort of known about town as this downtown fixture, but beyond that she was a celebrity in my family because she was charismatic and generous, and led a very big life for someone who barely left a twenty-block radius.

  One little thing I can tell you for a fact is that Louis Gordon bought the Venice Theater in 1915, and my great-grandfather became the manager of it the following year. For the first few years Louis’s wife, Rosie, worked the ticket booth. There were some other employees here and there, but Rosie was the one who ran the show.

  George Flicker

  After Louis bought the movie theater, the girls really started running around on the streets. Rosie was too busy working the ticket booth to keep an eye on them. Always Jeanie had been a good girl. But then she became a handful too, in her own way. Sometimes you’d see her dancing on the streets, hustling for change. Bella Barker sang, Jeanie danced. We all clapped and threw a penny or two at them.

  And what a pair they were. Jeanie had a smile as long as Broadway. And Bella, even when she was a little girl, had these dark, heavy, sexy eyes that made her look older than she was, and of course that wise woman’s voice. She was born ready for something big. Her voice made everyone stop and listen to her.

  Of course Bella was always more of a solo act. She left the neighborhood for a while when she was a teenager. She was off to Pennsylvania for a year or two, working the vaudeville circuit out there. When she came back she was married to a man named Lew, her manager, who seemed like an old man next to her. And she has a new name, a grown-up name. So she’s Belle Baker now, and that’s when she started to get famous. But Jeanie was still just playing at dancing. Nobody believed for a second she had the same hunger in her as Belle did.

  Mazie’s Diary, September 12, 1916

  On the way home from work who did I see but our little Jeanie twirling around on a street corner. I stood off to the side and watched her for a while in her candy-colored tutu. Our little sweetheart. Her cheeks were flushed pink from the sun. Our father loved to dance, is what I was thinking. You can’t dance on the street forever, is also what I was thinking. But I want her to anyway.

  Mazie’s Diary, September 23, 1916

  Tonight I met two sailors from California. San Francisco seems so far away, how can it even be real? One was tall and one was short and that’s all I can remember. Names, I don’t know. I got so many names in my head all the time.

  They said New York reminded them of home, it being so close to the water. But in San Francisco the mist and the fog come off the ocean so thick you can’t see one foot in front of you, that’s what they told me.

  I said they were lying, and they laughed.

  I said: What’s so funny?

  But then they never answered.

  I danced with the tall one while the short one watched us, smiling hard. He looked like he was burning up. When the tall one dipped me, the tie from his uniform tickled my face. I love a man in uniform. Any kind. I think they walk taller when they got something formal to wear. When they got a place to go. The tall one asked me how old I was.

  I said: Old enough.

  He said: Old enough for what?

  Then they both laughed at me some more. But I’m old enough for anything. They don’t know but I know.

  The tall one tasted salty when I kissed him but later I saw him holding hands with the short one. They were so slim and pretty in their uniforms. Sometimes I just want a uniform of my own.

  George Flicker

  She was unapologetic about who she was and haughty to those who questioned her, even if they didn’t say anything out loud. Like my mother for example. The two of them did not like each other at all. People sometimes think “chutzpah” is a compliment but not the way my mother said it. Sometimes she would cross to the other side of the street when she saw Mazie coming, and she did not do it quietly. She coughed and she stomped. My mother was a tremendous noisemaker. If Mazie cared she didn’t show it. Once I heard her shout, “More room for me,” after my mother had sashayed her way across the street.

  Mazie’s Diary, November 1, 1916

  Jeanie bought me a birthday present, a pretty dark purple bow, nearly the color of the night sky. I asked her where she got the money, and she told me she saved every penny from dancing next to Bella.

  She said: She lets me keep a penny for every ten we make.

  I said: That doesn’t seem fair.

  She said: It was her idea to have the show in the first place. Bella says people with the brains make the money.

  I said: You got brains.

  She said: I just love to dance.

  I asked her how much change she had and she told me it was a lot. I told her I’d show her where I hid you if
she’d show me where she hid her change.

  I said: We could trade secrets.

  Jeanie showed me all the change she had, a few bills at least. Hidden in her suitcase in the closet, the same suitcase we used when we came to town from Boston. I asked her if she was saving for anything. She didn’t say anything. I told her she could tell me anything, that she was my sweetheart, my little girl. Finally she got very close to my ear.

  She said: I wouldn’t want to go forever, but I’d like to join the circus.

  I told her I’d come with. I’d ride on top of a horse with a crown on my head and she’d be an acrobat and fly high up above me. The Phillips Sisters, the stars of the show. All the men would swoon at our feet. That part I liked the best but I didn’t tell her that.

  Jeanie said: But what would Rosie say?

  I said: She wouldn’t say anything. She’d just be in the audience clapping like everyone else.

  Jeanie said: Do you think that’s true? Wouldn’t she miss us?

  I said: We’re just daydreaming here, Jeanie. Don’t ruin it.

  Jeanie said: All right. I guess she’d be in the front row then.

  I said: She’d be our biggest fan.

  Mazie’s Diary, November 7, 1916

  I have to work in the candy shop again today. Boring. Only little kids coming in there all day long, dirty change, sticky paws. The bell rings on the front door and I look up and it’s the same thing over and over. I feel like a dog when that bell rings. Waiting for someone to feed me with something interesting to look at.

  I’d rather be running errands for Louis at the track. I like the track. There’s grass and trees, blue sky cracking above us, but then everyone’s smoking cigars, too. I like the way it smells clean and dirty at the same time. Plus everyone’s having a nip of something. The flasks those men have, jewels crusted in them. Whatever it takes to hide the money. But they’re generous though with sharing what they got. Makes it so I don’t even mind the horseshit.

  But Louis doesn’t like it when I come. The track’s no place for a woman, that’s what Louis says. Of course he says that. He doesn’t like the way the men there look at me. I thought he wanted me to get married, but Louis doesn’t trust any of those men, at least not with me. But he’s one of those men. I like to kid him.

  I said: Rosie found you at the track. How’d she find you?

  I poke him with my finger.

  I said: Is it cause you’re so tall, Louis?

  He doesn’t answer me.

  I said: Cause you stick out like a giraffe?

  Nothing. Louis keeps his cards so close it’s like there’s no deck at all.

  I think I’ll eat all the chocolates in the shop today. All the chocolate kisses, all the chocolate bars. I’m going to tear off their wrapper with my teeth. And I’ll eat all the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Tootsie Rolls. Chew till my jaw hurts. And all the caramel creams and butterscotch twists and peanut butter nuggets and those sweetie almond treats. I’ll suck on all the hard candies, cherry, strawberry, grape, orange mint. Lick all the lollies till they’re gone.

  I’ll eat and I’ll eat and I’ll eat just so I never have to look at any of those stinking candies ever again.

  Mazie’s Diary, January 3, 1917

  Last night Rosie and I split a bottle of whiskey. This was after I came home, on time for once. I came in to say good night and the bottle was next to her in bed. I couldn’t tell how long she’d been drinking. All I knew was she was already knee-deep in it. She was mourning something, I didn’t know what. Louis was nowhere. Jeanie was sleeping. I got under the covers with Rosie, and she handed me the bottle.

  I said: What are you thinking about?

  She said: Our parents.

  I said: Well that’ll do it.

  She said: Do you remember what happened in Topsfield?

  That story again. She and I had talked about it before, when Jeanie wasn’t around. Topsfield, that was right before she left us behind.

  We were all out together, a real, happy family for the day. Papa holding me with one hand, Jeanie in his other arm, Rosie wedged between him and Mama. Papa was not handsome. His eyes drooped, and his skin was the color of cold, watery soup. And those lines around his mouth and eyes made him always look furious, which he was. Lines don’t lie. But he was tall and young and had so much hair, and I remember him as strong. That day, out in the world, he was our father.

  We walked together like that. A ruddy-cheeked barker called us close and bragged about the world’s skinniest man and his wife, the world’s fattest woman. There was the dark-skinned rubber man, skinny as stretched taffy. His face was so calm, like turning himself inside and out was nothing to him. He was born to bend. I remember the sun was bright, and it was nearly fall, but it was still warm. I was squinting, seeing the world between tiny slits in my eyes. Men with low-slung hats waved hello to Papa. Everyone knew Horvath Phillips, for better or for worse.

  But to Rosie I said: I remember that he left us that day.

  Because I knew that she wanted that to be my only memory.

  He told us to stay put, said he’d be back, sliding that flask from his pocket as he walked away. There were men in white face paint pretending to tug on an imaginary rope. The sun began to set. Jeanie was tired and we found a bench and Mama took her in her lap. My skin stung from the sun, my stomach was sick from sweets.

  Mama said: Should we try to find him? I don’t know.

  She was talking to Rosie, who was the only one of us old enough to understand that the question was not a simple one. But I can’t remember her saying anything. She was just simmering.

  Mama said: Yes, we’ll wait.

  Then it was dark and the mimes were gone, most of the families too. Just young people floating around, also some lonely-looking men. Mama still kept turning her head around, thinking he’d come back.

  Rosie said: If you don’t go find him, I will.

  They argued about Rosie wandering around at night by herself. Rosie started fighting for us to just go home already. Mama didn’t want to walk the roads by herself. She was still scared of this country, had been since the day she got here. Found the most terrifying man in town to marry, that couldn’t have helped much either.

  Mama finally gave in to Rosie, and agreed we should try to find him. I remember this sigh of her shoulder, and then Jeanie nearly rolled off her lap.

  She wasn’t pretty anymore then, Mama. Her hair was thin. She pulled clumps of it out, and so did he, when he was mad. She still had the knockout hips though. I walked behind her as we went to find him and I remember those hips, because I have those hips too. A little girl with her arms around her mama, her face sunk in her hips.

  Rosie had known where he was all night. Mama did, too. Those two had just been playing a game with each other for hours. Because back behind the big top was an open field lit up with lanterns and white candles, and filled with people dancing in a frenzy. There was a small stage in the middle of it, packed with men playing all kinds of instruments, accordians, fiddles, guitars, a washboard and spoons. A man sang in a deep growl, French, now I know, but I didn’t then. There was a sign at the front of the stage, the Cajun Dancers is what they were called.

  The audience was so caught up in the moment, moving faster and faster, laughing and grinning, they were almost hysterical. I could feel the heat coming off their bodies, and then I was nearly hysterical too. The lust of those people is a lust that I hold in my heart. They were gorgeous and free.

  Mama put Jeanie down next to me, and we held hands, and then we looked at each other. While Rosie and Mama scanned the crowd, we began to dance our own dance. We were never going to sit still, Jeanie and me. Not like good girls did. I twirled her around until she fell, dizzy, and then I fell, too. The grass tickled the backs of my legs.

  I looked up and there was Rosie, pulling away from Mama, and working her way through the crowd. She had found Papa. He looked happy, is what I remember thinking. His eyes were closed, bliss, and his face was re
laxed, the lines erased for the moment. He embraced a young, plump, black-haired woman in a long green gown. The dress rose and crashed while they danced. I don’t know if he knew the woman or not, if she was the reason why he was so content, or if it was just the dancing. Maybe he just loved the freedom. More than once I have wondered if it would have been easier to forgive him for all that he did if he had just up and left our home, rather than stayed put and laid his cruelty upon us.

  I said: I remember you grabbing his arm, and I remember you pointing to us. You shamed him. You were so bold.

  Papa bowed to the woman he had been dancing with, and then walked with Rosie back through the crowd, which somehow managed to keep moving and part for them at the same time. Or at least that’s how I remember it: Everything faded into the background except for Rosie and Papa.

  I said: It was a long ride home.

  Rosie said: I felt like I aged ten years in that time.

  I said: She tucked us in so quietly that night. She kissed every part of our face.

  Rosie said: I didn’t get to go to sleep. He took me out back.

  I said: I know.

  Rosie said: Until I passed out from the pain.

  I said: Oh, Rosie.

  Rosie said: Was I wrong that day? Did I deserve it?

  She was too drunk. She sounded confused.

  I said: You were right, and he was wrong.

  Rosie said: I’m sorry I left you there.

  I said: We didn’t blame you for leaving us. I didn’t, anyway. Jeanie didn’t even know what was happening.

  Rosie said: And I came back for you didn’t I?

  I said: You did.

  Rosie said: I was always trying to do the right thing by us even if she wouldn’t.