The Tumbling Turner Sisters

by Juliette Fay

  I grabbed up the front of my costume, teetering wildly, and Kit groaned with the effort of keeping us all upright. My sisters had no idea of the reason for the audience’s wildly opposing reactions, and I had to yell, “Get me down, get me down!” above the wall of noise before they understood that something had gone terribly wrong.

  I leapt to the boards, holding up my costume, and ran for the wings. Standing squarely in my way was Joe, his face wide with surprise. I tried to bolt past him, but he whipped off his suit jacket and caught me in it. He wrapped it around me like a blanket and hustled me back toward the dressing room, past the smirking stagehands, his arm tight around my shoulders.

  Once we got there, of course, we had no idea what to do. He stood there, fist bunched around the front of the jacket, holding it closed. We looked at each other. His face went red and he looked away. But then his eyes came back to mine, a sheepish grin blooming on his face. “That was some showstopper,” he chuckled.

  “It’s not funny!” I said, but I had already begun to laugh, too.

  In another moment, my sisters and mother were upon us, and Gert said, “Thanks, Joe. We’ll take it from here.” They crowded around me, the jacket was slipped from my shoulders, and when the door closed, he was no longer in the room.

  During intermission, Kit ran back to get Mother’s sewing basket and a skirt and shirtwaist for me to wear. After I was properly attired, Nell and I took Harry for a walk to the park and let him scramble about in the grass. He was almost nine months old now and loved hanging on to the park bench where we sat, working his way from one end to the other, our hands at the ready to catch him if he fell.

  “He’ll be walking before we know it!” I said, and testing the strength of our newfound willingness to say his name, I added, “Wish Harry could see him.”

  I watched carefully, but Nell’s breath didn’t catch in her chest. “I like to think he can,” she said. “I like to think he’s helping me.” Her soft brown eyes pierced my own. “I’m beginning to see that the love’s still there, Winnie. Even when everything else is gone.”

  She glanced past my shoulder, a little smile crossed her lips, and she patted my hand.

  A shadow passed over us and I looked up to see curly hair in silhouette.

  “Hello, Joe,” said Nell. “That was a nice bit of swashbuckling you did, saving Winnie from the gaping masses. Douglas Fairbanks would’ve been impressed.” She stood and pulled the baby up into her arms. “Nap time for you, my little traveler.”

  My heart pounded as she walked away, but then I remembered Gert’s words: Unsettled is good. And I tried to imagine that perhaps Joe was even more nervous than I was.

  “Uh, mind if I . . .” He gestured to the empty end of the bench.

  “Go right ahead.” I tried to affect an offhanded, yet not entirely inhospitable tone.

  “So.” He kneaded the palm of one hand with the thumb of the other. “Last night . . .”

  “I can’t be held responsible for who my sister cares for!” I blurted out.

  He blinked at me, startled. “She cares for him?”

  “Of course she cares for him. Why else would she be out in a forest in the middle of night with him?”

  “Well, I . . .” His thumb dug deep into that palm, mining for understanding. “But he’s . . .”

  “Colored. Yes, I’m aware.”

  “Winnie,” he said slowly. “They can’t be together. It’s not even legal in a lot of places. Do you have any idea of what will happen to him if—”

  “Of course I do. But what can you do when you can’t stop caring for someone, even if you know there’s no future in it—not even next week?”

  That brought us both up short.

  He stopped his palm-kneading, and his hands dropped between his knees. I bit the inside of my cheek, the pain distracting me from the anguish of my own words.

  Not even next week.

  “I guess you make the best of the time you have,” he said quietly. “And try not to get killed.”

  The warm nights had given confined spaces no time to air out or cool off, and performers were less inclined to remain in the claustrophobic little dressing rooms. Mother and Mr. O’Sullivan started taking walks, as she said the intensifying smell of orangutans made her woozy. Even Mr. Grayson, the tenor, had thrown caution to the balmy breeze, returning with only minutes to spare before his last performance of the night. A silly little half smile had replaced his usual sour expression. I was sitting with Joe backstage and we glanced to each other.

  “Hello there, children,” Grayson said, and gave a jaunty two-fingered salute.

  “There you are!” said Albert, the stage manager. “Two minutes, Mr. Grayson.”

  Grayson gave his shirt cuffs a tug, then placed his fingers to his throat. “La-la-la, lo-lo-lo, lu-lu-luuuuuu. Ha!” he chortled. “That’s a lulu!”

  “Is he . . . ?” I murmured to Joe.

  “He’s definitely had a few.” We went to hide behind one of the leg curtains to watch Grayson’s performance. He stood a little closer to the footlights than was entirely safe, and belted out his first few songs with less technique and more volume than usual. The audience, however, seemed to appreciate the sheer muscularity of his voice, and he got more applause than he had all week. This caused him to sing with even greater abandon, arms flung wide and high.

  His last song was “I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now,” and in prior performances he’d enunciated the words far too crisply to convey any believable sadness that the girl he loved was canoodling with another. That night, however, you might have believed that she’d been kidnapped and beaten into performing unspeakable acts. Grayson clenched his hands in front of his chest and sang with a cry in his voice we’d never heard before.

  I wonder who’s kissing her now, I wonder who’s teaching her how,

  Wonder who’s looking into her eyes, breathing sighs, telling lies;

  I wonder who’s buying the wine, for lips that I used to call mine.

  I wonder if she ever tells him of me, I wonder who’s kissing her now.

  As the song went on, we noticed that the guillotine curtain behind him was billowing erratically. “What is that?” I said, and we took a few steps toward the back to peek behind it.

  To our dismay, Mike and Mary, the orangutans, were the cause of the disturbance! Mike had on his little shirt, but no pants, and Mary’s dress hung from one shoulder. She’d evidently gotten into the tasty lipstick she liked so well, because her mouth was smeared with it.

  “We’d better round them up,” said Joe.

  It was precisely the wrong thing to do. As soon as we approached, they ran, skittering around the far end of the curtain and right out onstage. Grayson had no idea why the audience gasped in surprise, as the apes began to toddle around behind him. Joe and I whispered their names from stage left, and of course they headed away from us, making for the front of the stage.

  Grayson’s eyes were closed as he strained to project up into the farthest rafters. “I wonder who’s kissing her now. I wonder who’s teaching her how!” Mary sat down next to him, dress askew, and proceeded to lick hungrily at her lipstick, pink tongue lapping around her protruding reddened mouth. It looked like a lecherous enactment of the song, and the howls of laughter from the audience were nearly deafening.

  Mike stood on Grayson’s other side waving his long, hairy arms around, which seemed to mimic Grayson’s grand gesturing, and the audience screamed even louder with hilarity. Joe and I could hardly keep from laughing ourselves, and the stagehands were completely doubled over.

  “I wonder who’s kissing her—” Grayson sucked in a bellyful of air for the last note, and flung his arms wide, hitting Mike squarely in the face with the back of his hand. The orangutan let out an aggrieved yell and batted at Grayson, who finally opened his eyes and realized that he was sharing the stage with two half-clothed apes.

  Grayson let out a shriek that could have shattered glass. Mr. O’Sullivan, just back from a
stroll with Mother, ran onstage to corral his animals, causing them to jump off the stage into the orchestra pit, knock over music stands, and head for the theatre aisles. Patrons began to hurry for the doors, leaving them open for Mike and Mary’s final escape.

  Grayson, meanwhile, had collapsed onstage in a half-drunken faint, and Joe and I ran to his aid. “Turn him on his side!” I yelled above the commotion that continued around us.

  “What? Why?” Joe yelled back.

  Assume command of the situation, my first aid book had said in the section titled “The First Thing to Do.” There can be only one chief.

  “Just do it!” I said.

  We heaved the rotund man onto his side and turned his cheek to the floor just in time for him to vomit voluminously all over the boards. The stagehands heading toward us stopped in their tracks and sent up a chorus of disgusted groans, while down in the seating area, Mr. Ohmann implored exiting patrons to, “Remain calm! Please take your seats and remain calm!”

  I generally don’t curse, but there’s really no other way this can be adequately expressed: it was one hell of a night.

  “Do you think he’s okay?” I asked Joe. We were back at Minty Millie’s, this time blissfully alone.

  “If being drunk and frightened were a medical condition, they’d run out of hospital beds in no time at all. Geneva General’s just keeping an eye on him for a few days.”

  “I wish he were nearby so I could check on him.”

  Joe smiled and took a sip of his beer.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “You act like he’s your patient.”

  “Well, I did keep him from suffocating in his own vomit.”

  “Probably saved his life.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “You know it even better than I do! All I can say is you better make your money and get back to school. The world needs quick-thinking nurses like you.” I had told him about my hopes of going to college only that afternoon.

  “I’m not sure if I want to be a nurse, though.”

  “Whatever you want to be, Winnie, you’ll be swell.” His gaze shifted to the wooden clock over the bar. “Will your mother worry that you’re out this late?”

  After the police had shown up, most of us had headed back to the hotel. Except for Mr. Grayson, of course, who’d begged to be taken straight to Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. And except for Mr. O’Sullivan, who was charged with some sort of crime involving the mishandling of wild and vicious animals. Mother had gone directly to bed with a cool cloth over her eyes. Gert said she was going out. Neither Nell nor I bothered to ask where or with whom.

  “No,” I told Joe, “Mother won’t worry at all.”

  30

  GERT

  It is no disgrace to be a Negro, but it is very inconvenient.

  —Bert Williams, comedian, actor, pantomimist, and singer

  Bert Williams was the funniest man I ever saw and the saddest man I ever knew.

  —W. C. Fields, comedian and actor

  “How old are you?” I asked Tip. We sat in a buggy in an old cart shed we’d happened upon at the edge of town. An almost-full moon shined in through one of the windows.

  Age wasn’t something I generally cared about, because it often didn’t mean anything. Sometimes I felt ageless altogether.

  But it was Thursday—actually it was the wee hours of Friday—and our time was quickly coming to an end. I found myself wanting to know everything I could about him.

  “Twenty-four,” he said. “You?”

  “Eighteen.”

  I could see his eyes trace over me, considering. “You seem older.”

  “I am older,” I said. His cheeks rounded into that slow smile, and he squeezed my hand a little tighter. “When’s your birthday?” Another useless question I needed the answer to.

  “October fourteenth. Least that’s what my aunt says.”

  “You have reason to doubt her?”

  He chuckled. “Oh no. I’d never risk my life by doubting a woman as strong-minded as my aunt.” He shifted and tucked me into the crook of his broad shoulder, and I suddenly felt safer and happier than I could ever remember feeling.

  “My mother died when I was born. They were young, just teenagers, and she was the only girl my father ever loved. It was the worst day of his life, and he didn’t dignify it by wishing me a happy birthday, so I was never quite sure when it was.”

  “But your aunt knew.”

  “I reckon she guessed. Said she was digging peanuts for extra money when she heard, so it woulda been September, October, thereabouts. She picked out the fourteenth herself, so she’d know when to bake a cake.”

  October 14. I tucked this little shred of information away like it might somehow be useful, although I knew it never would be. How could it?

  “How did he die?” I whispered.

  He shook his head. “You don’t want to know ’bout that.”

  “I want to know everything about you.”

  He looked down at me. Put a hand up to my cheek and stroked it with his thumb. “It’s a sad story,” he said. “Too sad.”

  “Tip,” I murmured. “We’re right in the middle of a sad story of our own, aren’t we? If I can handle this, I can handle anything.”

  He pulled in a long breath and let it out.

  “He had a still, you know, to make liquor. Used to sell it to the local bars and such. He got an order to make a delivery for a party in one of the big houses, which he never done before. He thought it might be the start of a better line of business. That’s what he said to me ’fore he left. “A better line of business.’ ”

  Tip’s voice was thick with bitterness, and he didn’t say anything for a moment or two. I waited, bracing myself.

  “He got there, and it was a bunch of white boys, young bulls, no parents around. And they didn’t have no money, or if they did, they weren’t of a mind to pay. They took the liquor, and he . . . well I guess he wanted his money.”

  “But they didn’t give it to him.”

  “No.”

  I had to know the end. I had to know this about Tip. “What did they do?”

  His breathing was hard, I could feel it by my ear and against my body as he held me.

  “They tied him up to the back of his own cart and drug him through the dirt till he died.”

  “Oh, Tip,” I breathed. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. How did you find out?”

  “They drug him home. Cut the rope and took off in the cart. Laughing. I was eight years old, my father’s body lying in front of me, all broken and bloody. And they were laughing. I heard them.”

  I curled myself into his lap and held him so tight, and I would’ve given myself to him right there in the dusty old carriage if he’d wanted. But I’d reopened the deepest kind of wound with my prying, one he’d likely never spoken of in all the years since it happened, and it was all he could do to just keep breathing.

  After a while, when the worst of it had passed, he surprised me with his own prying question. “Gertie,” he whispered. “What is it you want most in this world?”

  “Everything,” I said, gazing up at him. “I want everything.”

  He chuckled and gave me a little squeeze. “Specifically. You want to be a star? You want to be a rich lady with a big house? What?”

  I didn’t care about stardom, though I’d come to like performing more than I ever thought I would. And fancy things didn’t excite me that much. “I want the same things you want—to be able to go wherever I like, and do whatever it is I’m good at. And I want to meet interesting people, and stay up all night if I feel like it, without anyone telling me it’s time to go to bed. I want the freedom to make my own choices.”

  “Money helps with that.”

  “Money helps with everything.” My gaze shot up to him. “Almost.”

  “Almost.” He smoothed a curl away from my eye.

  “I want to love whoever I want to love,” I whispered.

&nb
sp; His gaze, so sweet and sad, wrapped its tender arms around my soul. “I already do love who I love,” he said. “Just can’t do nothing about it.”

  31

  WINNIE

  I never approved of talkies. Silent movies were well on their way to developing an entirely new art form.

  —Lillian Gish, actress

  The next morning Mr. Ohmann sat in the front row staring up at us, pale and weary. “In all my years in the business,” he said, “I have never seen such a calamitous series of events as were visited upon me yesterday.” He took a puff of his cigar, and we waited to hear if he’d shut down the show and send us all home with half our pay.

  “With the headliner in jail, his act on the way to a zoo, and another act in the hospital, we’re down to about half a show. I’ve decided to put you all in the first half, and run a full-length flicker after intermission.” He shook his head in disgust. “Of course, the only film I have on hand is one I personally find distasteful. But it’s a few years old, and I’d guess most people have already seen it. Damn thing’s over three hours long, so if they haven’t, most won’t stay after the first half. But I have to offer them some reason to pay for a whole show, even if they choose not to partake of all of it.”

  “All I want to know is will we get paid,” said Willie “Watermelon” Lee. “Doesn’t matter to me if’n you fill out the show with the Ziegfeld Follies or a bunch of cross-eyed milkmaids.”

  Mr. Ohmann glared. “You’ll get paid. Whether you’ve earned it or not.”

  The first show was almost empty, as if half the town was terrified to step foot in the place, and the other half was disappointed all the fun was over. It was disheartening to perform for such an empty house, and out of pity, Albert told us we could sneak into the back of the theatre and watch the movie after intermission.

  “I’ve never seen it,” I said to Joe. “Have you?”

  “No. Some places in Boston wouldn’t play it. Said it wasn’t fair to the Negroes.”

  Well, coon shouting didn’t seem fair to the Negroes, either, I thought, but people did it all the time. “Let’s see what it’s like,” I said.