Diary of a Stage Mother's Daughter

by Melissa Francis

  When we arrived on set, they let Tiffany and me play behind the counter, using the register and running around the kitchen, even touching the stove. No one moved a muscle to stop us. There was something thrillingly wrong about being let loose in what seemed to be a real McDonald’s. I felt like an indulged criminal.

  They shot one scene of us ordering at the counter, then one of us sitting with our fake mom in the main restaurant. The latter was much more challenging than I had anticipated. Not only was I supposed to eat a cheeseburger, which I didn’t normally like, but the burger was ice cold and doctored with food coloring to look perfect. It wasn’t exactly toxic, but it wasn’t completely edible either. A grip held a bucket off camera so we could spit out the painted rubbery food after each take. They had stand-by burgers for the rehearsals, and a more realistic “hero” burger for the actual filming

  The first time I lifted a hero to my mouth, I grimaced.

  “Cut.” The director looked nonplussed. Mom called me over.

  “You have to smile and look like you can’t wait to eat the cheeseburger,” Mom said.

  “But I don’t want to eat it. I hate cheeseburgers.” Tiffany stepped up to my side, as if she couldn’t wait to see how I was going to get out of this.

  “That’s why it’s called acting,” Mom said. I didn’t care that much about acting.

  “You have to eat it,” she said forcefully, with an edge of panic in her voice. The crew and even the wardrobe girl took turns nervously glancing in our direction.

  Then she softened and whispered, “Eat it with a big smile and I will take you to Creative Playthings on the way home and buy you anything you want. Anything.”

  SOLD.

  A long tradition of barter was born that day. An extended series of negotiations during which, at exactly the right moment, Mom would promise something irresistible in exchange for my doing something that, ironically, I would usually be willing to do otherwise. But now that I knew there was a potential payment floating nearby, I would extract it. My childish blackmail started with toys and ended with a pony. Naturally. Though by the end, I couldn’t help feeling bought and sold myself.

  CHAPTER TWO

  By the time I got to kindergarten, I was an old soul. That’s not to say I was joyless; far from it. I had just been around the block many more times than my peers. I was barely five years old, but I was comfortable working with adults and had the self-assurance of a child twice my age. When a director says, “Action!” and you’re the only one allowed to move or make noise, you get a heightened sense of your own importance. Even Mom wasn’t allowed to make a peep while I did my thing for the camera. And if you did your bit right, the seas parted when you walked off the set.

  I was the last person to arrive at my fifth birthday party that year. Kentucky Fried Chicken, it turned out, was more important. I knew my party was taking place that afternoon, so I was suspicious when Mom announced that we were going to squeeze in a quick callback after school. As Tiffany and I settled ourselves in the back of the brown station wagon, I began to wonder how this would work. I had a sense that interviews, as a rule, were really far away, and generally involved a car trip long enough to make me nauseous.

  This happened to be a callback for a national commercial, so it had the potential to run like crazy. Mom was particularly excited because they only called back the kids they were serious about hiring. Tiffany and I stood next to her as we all waited for the casting director to call my name. Mom talked into the receiver of a payphone, whispering orders to my aunt Marilyn, her sister. Marilyn didn’t have children of her own, and spent most of her time with us.

  “Just let everyone in. We will be there in fifteen minutes. Get them started.”

  Tiffany sighed and rolled her eyes. She knew we were getting hosed somehow, as were the party guests. But I was more optimistic. Today was my birthday, and birthdays were full of surprises, so this interview had to be part of the plan. Maybe they were giving me the commercial for my birthday! Maybe we would get special chicken to bring to the party. I did know we could not possibly get home in fifteen minutes.

  When we finally arrived home, my party guests, including my friends’ parents, were huddled on our porch. Piles of children slumped in their parents’ laps, jammed together on the stoop. Marilyn frantically explained that she hadn’t been able to find the keys. Everyone was very quiet. No one said “happy birthday.”

  One of the moms broke the silence. “Abby and some of the others left after an hour. Marilyn kept saying you were five minutes away . . .”

  I’d never seen party guests so angry with the birthday girl. Luckily, goodwill can be bought with a halfway decent party favor and none of the kids appeared to hold a grudge. I can’t imagine the same could be said of the parents.

  By the next day, my friends and I were back to playing my favorite schoolyard game, Star Wars. The main appeal of Star Wars was that there was only one female character. As a result, I could play with all the boys at once, and none of the girls, which was ideal.

  If I thought it felt like a Star Wars kind of morning, Mom made two braids on either side of my head and coiled them up into round balls so I would look like Princess Leia. What the hairdo lacked in beauty and style, it made up for in its sheer declarative spirit. When I stepped out of my family’s station wagon and walked onto the playground, the “Leia Do” served as a beacon announcing to my classmates which game we’d be playing at recess.

  I jumped and climbed and flew around the jungle gym while Thomas and Mike and Scott sliced the air with imaginary light sabers and shielded me from impending doom. It was glorious. Gloria Steinem would not have approved, but she wasn’t there and I didn’t care.

  While I basked in the glow of my favorite Jedi knights, most of the girls made mud pies in the sandbox, an activity that held zero appeal for me. As far as I could tell, sand was hideous. Make it into as many pies as you like, you still can’t eat it, and you still can’t get every grain out of your shoes or out from underneath your fingernails after you play with it. Who was going to buy all these inedible pies? Why put so much time into patting them down tightly into their dish, if no one wanted the finished product? It made no sense to me.

  The one girl I respected was Abby. She was as fast and tough as any boy I ran with, and she had a perfect head of shiny blonde hair that looked like her mom had put a salad bowl over her head and snipped around the edge. Except for being shorter than me, she could have been Brian. And if I pushed or shoved her a little, or had to have my way, she held her own like a boy instead of crying like a girl.

  My only other female friend was Christy. She was my spy inside the girly world. She loved to bake pies and organize elaborate games that involved dolls. And even though I’d sooner die than join in, we could usually find common ground around the edge somewhere. She didn’t mind my allergy to dolls. Hers was the first phone number I memorized after my own.

  Of course, the one girl I really relied on early in life was my sister. Because Tiffany was three and a half years older, she was more often cast in the role of caretaker and protector. That summer, I’d refused to learn to swim at camp. I was five now but still terrified of the water. Once I reached the point where my toes couldn’t feel the smooth concrete bottom of the pool, my breath would become jagged and panicked. I couldn’t regain my composure long enough to even float.

  Mom had paid extra for swimming lessons, and one diligent swim counselor after another would try to coax me into deeper water day after day, even though I’d cry and refuse. Eventually I would cry so hard and loud, the ill-equipped teen counselors would have to go find Tiffany in her group all the way across camp, and bring her to the pool to calm me down.

  Day after hot summer day, Tiffany was forced to leave her friends and whatever craft or archery lesson she was involved in, and come quiet my hysteria. The poor counselors never did teach me to swim that summer, and Tiffany never stopped dropping whatever activity she was enjoying to come save me. Exhausted
from the battle, I’d lie in her lap and fall asleep the whole way home on the bus. She’d roll her eyes at my theatrics, but she never let me drown.

  Despite my hatred of dolls, I was cast in a Barbie commercial around that time. This was a bit of a chore since Barbie made about as much sense to me as mud pies. Her body was hard and oddly deformed. When you stripped her down, which I always did whenever I encountered a Barbie, she had pointy mounds on her chest and weird joints where her disproportionately long legs connected with the trunk of her body. You couldn’t hug her, but I did like to style her hair, since that was the only part of Barbie that was malleable.

  This commercial was a big event for me since Tiffany was generally the Team Barbie favorite. They liked beautiful girls to do the Barbie commercials. Tiffany had started to do more print, though, which meant they took still photos of her and another girl playing, and the photos later showed up in catalogs or the newspaper. It was thrilling to have the newspaper come to the front door with a black-and-white photo of one of us inside.

  There was something about commercials that Tiffany didn’t like, even at an early age. When the director said “Action,” she shrank into her shell like the turtle on my school playground. Mom initially tried to coax her into being more playful, but as Tiffany grimaced and recoiled, Mom got increasingly annoyed and angry. I couldn’t understand why my sister didn’t embrace the attention. One thing was clear: the more Mom tried to tug some enthusiasm out of her, the more she resisted.

  Commercials turned out to be my specialty, and the Barbie formula always dictated that one brunette girl and one blonde girl, both the same age, sit and play with the latest version of the doll. This time I was paired with another girl who was also about five years old. Her name was Lisa and she had whitish blonde hair that hung all the way to her waist.

  “Can you sit on your hair?” I asked.

  “Only if I put my face up to the sky, like this.” She tilted her head back and sat on the very end of her blond mane.

  Lisa’s mom wore one of those red knit sweaters with a Christmas scene on the front, even though Christmas was still months away. It had ornaments on it that jingled when she walked. I thought the sweater was delightful, but Mom said it was beyond tacky. I had seen Lisa at a bunch of auditions, and her mom never let the time of year stop her from celebrating the holidays.

  The on-set stylists took forever to do our hair and makeup, and when they finally finished, we looked like child Barbies, minus the plastic mounds in front. A pitiless woman with strong hands had even filed my nails and cut my cuticles with a terrifyingly sharp clipper. I cried, and then got scolded by Mom for making my eyes red. I felt like a dog after a particularly grueling trip to the groomers.

  Next, Lisa and I sat together on a fake living room set to play. But even that turned out to be torture. We had to hold the dolls a certain way, so the camera could see their best parts, and move them exactly as we’d rehearsed. There was no grabbing, no spontaneous play, and definitely no undressing of Barbie.

  For any five-year-old, this would be tedious. Lisa was nervous and a little too loud. Her voice had a nasal quality to it, and she’d come back from a series of talks with her mom looking slightly paler and more frightened than when she’d left. Acting was going to be too stressful for this kid, I thought.

  “Action!” the director said.

  It was my turn first. “I love new Disco Party Barbie!”

  I held my breath. It was Lisa’s turn, and she’d blown her line half a dozen times already.

  “Look at her skates!” she shouted in a singsong voice.

  “Cut.” The crew let out a collective sigh.

  Lisa’s mom rushed in from the sidelines. “Look at her ROLLER skates, sweetie!” Her mom’s voice was shrill as she gripped Lisa’s wrist. Lisa winced. “Roller skates. Don’t forget ROLLER.”

  Eventually, the director gave both lines to me, and just had Lisa say “Yeah!” She was clearly relieved, but her Christmas Loving Mom was devastated. I wondered if she’d send Lisa to bed without dinner later. I wanted to warn Lisa to eat what she could before she got in the car to go home.

  Still, the atmosphere during commercial work was every man for himself, and I’d done well. It wasn’t my fault that Lisa wasn’t very bright. I’d tried to help her by eyeing Barbie’s roller skates during my lines, but she was hopeless.

  We changed back into the clothes we’d arrived in and got ready to go home. Usually this was when they gave me the toy I’d been playing with as a present to take home. I was ready to look thrilled and surprised.

  The director smiled broadly as she ushered Lisa and me toward the door. “Honey, you did such a great job! Both of you.” Lisa smiled dimly. “I wish we could give each of you a Disco Barbie, but we don’t want anyone seeing her and copying her before she hits the shelves. You understand. I’m sure your moms will take you to the store when she comes out and get you your very own.”

  What a rip-off.

  On the way home in the car, I felt exhausted but happy. “You did a nice job today. Much better than poor Lisa. She was horrible, poor girl,” Mom said.

  I beamed. I loved it when my mom was proud of me. I knew I’d been the better child that day.

  “You’re my special girl. I love you so much. You’re such a star.” She held my hand and all at once, I was so tired and proud, I wanted to cry. A tear fell down my cheek and I wiped it quickly before she saw it, because I couldn’t really explain why I was crying. I leaned across the front seat of the station wagon and rested my head on her arm.

  “We’ll be home soon. I’ll make you macaroni and cheese for dinner, your favorite.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “You think you’re SO perfect!” Maryjane screamed. “But you look like a bug with those huge weird eyes!”

  I hadn’t said I was perfect. I didn’t even think it. Far from it. So it was impossible to understand why pint-sized yet deceptively strong Maryjane was yelling that at me, her fists flying in my direction.

  Mom had brought me to school that morning and announced loudly in front of the first-grade class that I’d be shooting another commercial the next day, so I needed my assignments for school on the set.

  “I’m sure she can make up whatever she’ll miss. But her agent told us to get used to her missing school because there’s a ton of demand out there for Missy now that she’s six and can work more hours.”

  She jingled the big clump of keys she always carried in her right hand, a signal to the teacher that time was money. I hung next to the leg of her jeans and looked down at the red toenails that peeked out of her tan espadrilles.

  “That’s wonderful, Mrs. Francis,” my teacher, Mrs. Jones, said. “But since she’s here now, she can just take her seat and we’ll keep going. I will put her assignments in her backpack at the end of the day.”

  I noticed then that I was the only student standing at the front of the class with Mrs. Jones and Mom. All the other kids were sitting at their desks, doodling or watching us.

  A group of girls at the back of the classroom whispered to each other. Christy smiled and waved at me. She was always a friendly face in the crowd. Then my view shifted to Maryjane, whose narrow dark eyes shot darts from the fourth row. She and I had an ongoing grudge match to prove who was smarter, since we were both the best readers in the class. Plus she liked Mike Reed, who was really my boyfriend. That bundle of facts made us sworn enemies.

  At recess on the playground, the grudge match got physical. Maryjane’s red braids bounced in the air as she tried to pummel me. I searched her pale freckled face between swings to figure out why she was unleashing such fury on me that particular morning.

  “Stop it!” I shoved her as hard as I could and she flew backward, landing in a heap next to the swings. The skirt of her frilly white dress flew up, exposing her bony legs and ruffled pink underwear.

  “I can see your underwear, Maryjane,” Mike said, laughing from the sidelines.

  The mockery reigni
ted her fire. Now a white patent-leather shoe came flying in my direction. I dodged the kick and took hold of the bib of her dress and tossed her as if she were a rag doll. She flew through the air like Raggedy Ann and landed in the dirt.

  “Girls!” Mrs. Jones shouted.

  Maryjane scrambled to her feet and charged again. Mrs. Jones grabbed her shoulders just as the heel of her shoe made contact with my leg. “What’s going on?”

  “Missy thinks she so perfect! She’s not! She has huge weird bug eyes!”

  “Her eyes do look like a big bug or a frog or something,” her friend Jennifer chimed in helpfully from the sidelines.

  “Enough. Maryjane! March right up to Mrs. Nan’s office! Now. Missy, would you like to go with her?” she scolded.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I want you to go sit on the wall right there and wait for me,” Mrs. Jones instructed.

  I walked over to the small concrete block wall that separated the grass playground from the walkway. I sat down and dusted myself off while she trailed Maryjane to the office, I assumed to await her execution. The scrapes on my knees bled. Christy walked over and took a seat next to me.

  “Boy. She does not like you!” Another master of the obvious. Christy’s blonde curls were cut short and framed her whole head like a lion’s mane.

  “Why? What did I ever do to her?” I asked.

  “Well, you and your mom kinda seem like you think you are better than everyone else because you’re on TV.” She kicked the dirt and looked at the tiny cloud of dust that rose and settled at our feet.

  “That’s not true. I don’t think I’m better than everyone else,” I said.

  “Oh, I know that. I always say that,” Christy responded.

  “And she said I think I’m so perfect? I do not,” I added.

  “I know! I said that. When you came in, we were sitting at our desks. Maryjane said you think you’re so perfect, and I said, ‘No. You’re not perfect! You wear those same pants all the time!’”