The Women Who Raised Me

by Victoria Rowell

  That memory was part of the motivation for going to Maine with David in the hopes of seeing Dorothy before she succumbed to her illness. Again, I was toughened up by my outrage that her sister Lillian wouldn’t permit me see my mother, even on her deathbed, so that I could give her the acknowledgment and love she so richly deserved. When David alerted me those few months later that Dorothy had died, I was once more grateful for my indignation and determination to claim my right to be present at her viewing.

  Upon my departure from Maine, I had made the decision to never again be denied permission to visit Dorothy, deciding I could visit her any time that I pleased at the cemetery.

  The Collins family unwittingly gave me the gift of something to hold on to in the rough days ahead, in the form of the verse one of Dorothy’s sisters selected for inclusion on the printed programs that were prepared for her funeral service. Those words were very important for me to read some weeks later, when, in a fit of exhaustion, sorrow, and loneliness, in grand dame fashion, I would dress up in my most elegant vintage ball gown with a hoopskirt, pin up my hair under a black antique funeral hat, and apply the reddest lipstick I owned. My would-be poison, in the form of some aspirin and lots of beer, knocked me out good, leaving me with a royal headache and very much alive the next morning. In preparing to return to the art of living, that passage from Dorothy’s funeral program was appropos:

  God hath not promised

  Skies always blue,

  Flower strewn pathways

  All our lives through;

  God hath not promised

  Sun without rain,

  Joy without sorrow,

  Peace without pain.

  But God hath promised

  Strength for the day,

  Rest for the labor,

  Light for the way.

  Grace for the trials,

  Help from above,

  Unfailing sympathy

  Undying love…

  In the weeks and months after Dorothy died, almost a year after Agatha’s death the previous Christmas, I thought about the rites of passage, and what a privilege it had been, even as I watched her decline, helping her rise and meet the day, assisting her in whatever small ways she would allow me, remembering how she tended me and my sisters in our vulnerable states of life, thankful to reciprocate for as long as I was given. It was Agatha who had taught me that death was not an end but a transition, preparing me from an early age as a daughter of Maine to respect the stages of life. In theory, I had understood the loss that was pending, but even so I still had to learn that Agatha was mortal. Weak and tiny, spending more hours in her bed than out of it, Ma remained positive, continuing to offer up her tribulations, promising to rally any day—just going through a bad spell.

  I hated seeing her in pain, and I cherished every second, not knowing if it would be the last, not wanting to leave anything unsaid.

  Then there was that one morning before Christmas, when Agatha couldn’t get out of bed. I called the ambulance and rode with her to the hospital. The family gathered around her, knowing as I did that we would never see the likes of her again. After everyone left, I lifted up the blanket and kissed one of her feet, and then tucked her back in for the sleep she had prayed for, for a whole lifetime.

  If I can take any solace from the loss of these two women in so short a breadth of time, it is that the happenings of my life allowed me the privilege of attending their departures—whether it was being able to see Dorothy one last time at her viewing or to be at Agatha’s hospital bedside when she finally closed her eyes.

  It was a privilege to have been the daughter of both my mothers.

  PART THREE

  SISTERS

  (1983–PRESENT)

  There is no royal flower-strewn path to success. And if there is, I have not found it for if I have accomplished anything in life it is because I have been willing to work hard.

  MADAM C. J. WALKER

  NINE

  MILLIE SPENCER & IRENE KEARNEY

  New York City doesn’t give many contenders a second chance.

  That was something I didn’t need to be told as I returned to Manhattan in the passenger seat of a rented VW hippie van, minus the curtains, driven by a hired mover.

  It occurred to me en route that unlike my first foray almost a decade earlier, my reasons for wanting to make my pilgrimage back to New York City were entirely different. There was the necessity of physically removing myself from an entanglement with a man who fed, clothed, and housed me—like so many young girls who continue to enter compromising relationships after emancipation from foster care. We need to eat, and to have someone to hold, even if it’s dangerous. This one had become life threatening. After years of reading signs that had been consistently pointing to opportunities for me to pursue a career as an actress, I had decided to take the major risk required of me to make a real go of it.

  A sense of urgency filled me. Though I had been officially on my own for almost eight years, the finality of burying two mothers made that reality all the more apparent. Gone were the days of Ma’s extras to tide me over—five-, ten-, and twenty-dollar bills safely kept between rib and dish towel. During this very ride, I made a pledge that I would not relive the embarrassment of being kicked out more frequently than I wanted to admit for not having the rent. With each of those incidents, something turned inside of me every time I found myself with no place to call home.

  At twenty-six years old the single most important driving force I had was the quest to be the proprietor of my own home, for permanence. I made a silent pact with myself as we cruised closer to New York City—that if it was the last thing I would ever do, I would one day have to pay property taxes.

  I would never forget that promise, even to the point that I would henceforth always go to the bank to make my own deposits and often-times personally pay my property taxes. This commitment would bear out some years later when I was able to hand over a large down payment toward the purchase of my first and only house; I would respond to a banker who would advise me of the tax advantages of doing it differently. Not wanting to tell my life story or why I preferred to handle my business my way, I insisted on showing up regularly to do my banking. To the question, “Don’t you have someone to do that for you?” I would respond, “Whether I do or don’t is beside the point. It gives me great pleasure making my own deposits simply because I can.”

  Of course, going to the bank was a practice originally inspired by Agatha who started me with my own savings account at the Rochester Trust Bank in New Hampshire at the age of six. So no matter how busy I might become, how many alternate methods there would be of sending payments, or whether or not someone else was available to do it for me, the act of doing it myself would be my way of honoring how I was raised and the home I would eventually create, for my children, foster and adopted children I mentored, and the child in me.

  That day loomed far into the future with this move back to New York. I had spent all of my savings on first and last months’ rent and a security deposit for an East Side fifth-floor walk-up apartment on Eighty-ninth Street, leaving to my name three hundred dollars for the driver/mover and an apple. Knowing that the apple represented dinner later that night and breakfast the next day, I took careful small bites, relishing the excitement of where I was headed and the true wealth of experience and love carrying me forward. Remembering how I had worried that the last movers had taken my things from me, this trip was validation of how miraculously, even after evictions and the threatened loss of my belongings, every cherished treasure and the ephemera of my life were still with me.

  Those same boxes, along with many others, were in the back of the VW van returning to New York, absorbing every pothole along the way. Also in tow was a vermillion love seat, purchased at the Salvation Army, and a tin-top table with four chairs.

  Gingerly taking my fifth small bite of apple, I couldn’t help smiling as the eternally glorious, indomitable New York skyline came into view. Before I knew it,
night had fallen and we were rolling to a stop in front of the apartment building. Wasting no time, we began the chore of unloading items that required heavy lifting to go up five flights of stairs and down the hall to my apartment, only to discover on the first trip that the key didn’t work. I panicked.

  The weight of every previous eviction washed over me. I pounded the door so hard the key cut my palm.

  A disgruntled neighbor in curlers peeked out through a door with the chain still attached. In a distinctive Polish accent she said, “Quiet! It’s late.”

  To which I replied in my best Polish, picked up from living in the East Village years earlier, “Dobrow naughts,” as a way of wishing her goodnight and I’m sorry. Inconvenienced and confused, she shut the door.

  That would be the extent of our neighborly relationship with the exception of one day later on when we passed in the hall and she said with in her deep Eastern European cadence, “You work hard like me, must remember, buy one piece good jewelry each year so you not forget.”

  The mover and I continued to rattle the key. Finally, it worked and I opened the door to another adventure. After multiple trips up and down the stairs late into the night I thanked the mover and gave him his payment in cash. The second I closed the door, I realized that I’d forgotten my apple in the van. With lightning speed I flew down the stairs and caught the mover. “Wait, wait…my apple!”

  “You didn’t want that old thing. I tossed it.”

  I trudged back up the stairs. By this point in my life I had learned to acclimate to different sleeping surfaces and scents held in someone else’s couch pillow or bedding. I would begin my search for a mattress in the morning. Still, in the empty silence of 2:00 a.m., interrupted by the sound of someone using the communal lavatory down the hall, I needed to eat in the worst way. Tentatively, I opened the old refrigerator in the apartment, which reminded me of Agatha’s pink Kelvinator she painted yellow to match her curtains. Inside I discovered a half-eaten bag of walnuts of unknown vintage and in the freezer a near-empty carton of frost-encrusted strawberry ice cream. The lesson learned was to leave something behind, no matter how small, no matter how old, by accident or on purpose—something for the cleaning lady at the hotel, something for the powder-room attendant, something for the next hopeful anybody.

  Delirious with hunger I closed my eyes, depending on Stanislavsky’s sensory recall that came very easily to me. I dug into the hard dessert conjuring up the flavor of homemade ice cream Agatha used to make from wild strawberries in Maine. I recalled the rich nutty taste of walnuts that I helped her crack for Toll-House cookies lifetimes ago as I crunched down on the stale ones that were in my mouth. That was wealth, all of that, permeating my senses as I sat atop a piece of plywood that covered my bathtub on four metal lions’ feet in the kitchenette. Exhausted, I reflected upon the fact that my life would never be a linear one.

  Unlike ballet, which was the dream that I had sought, acting was a profession that actually found me. The suggestion that I act had come in August of 1978 during a period marked by a social whirl that brought me into contact with none other than Sammy Davis Jr., a black man who proudly embraced Judaism and who became one of the most important entertainers to set foot on any stage or in front of any camera. The ultimate icon, there was no one like him. Sammy was transcendent, human yet not earthbound. He could sing, dance, act, make you laugh or cry, and hold you captive effortlessly. In one of those flash-bulb moments between seconds, I was invited by a member of Sammy’s entourage to see him in Sammy Stops the World, a musical revival of Anthony Newley’s Stop the World, I Want to Get Off at Lincoln Center. I was ecstatic! It surpassed every expectation. I attended an after-party, where I met the incomparable “Mr. Entertainment” himself. Also in the room was a prominent photographer formerly with Life magazine who asked me, “Are you an actress?”

  “Not in a movie star kind of way…it’s a long story,” I replied.

  “Well, you should get yourself an agent. You could work.”

  Not bothering to explain, the next day he proceeded to arrange an appointment for me to meet Millie Spencer and Irene Kearney, a topflight management duo whose office was in the Ed Sullivan Building on Broadway.

  Somewhat nervous and a tad dubious, I waited for the rickety elevator to clang down to the bottom floor. Before pushing back the metal accordion door and stepping inside, I took a deep breath, remembering what the retired Life magazine photographer, whom I only knew as George, said, “I vouch for them as two of the most honest women I have ever met. They are truly respected for their integrity and tenacity on behalf of their clients.” As the elevator climbed slowly toward the seventh floor, I felt the presence of Agatha and the June Taylor Dancers with me. I felt their strength and spirit.

  Inside the dimly lit suite, a cloud of cigarette smoke diffused what little light there was. I walked into a small vestibule before entering into an even smaller office that consisted mainly of two desks and a tiny refrigerator.

  Two seasoned professionals were in evidence, both talking on telephones, as they gestured for me to sit down on a folding chair. As they continued their dueling conversations, using terms that were foreign to me, I noted the walls, covered with framed, miniaturesized posters of Broadway shows, and painted no descriptive color other than drab, and file cabinets on the verge of explosion.

  The women both wore oversized 1970s glasses and polyester leisure suits. Both talked at lightning speed into heavy black telephones that looked to be as old as the elevator I rode up on. One of them, who turned out to be Millie Spencer, had a kind, motherly persona, like Mrs. Claus. The other was Irene Kearney, who looked tough as nails, with a malleable face on the verge of imploding over some theatrical production mishap. She took an emphatic drag on her cigarette. With each new piece of information, showing tremendous focus, she suddenly erupted into laughter that turned into coughing that became serious. Finally she was done.

  “Hello,” Irene said in sync with her gesture of hanging up the phone and stubbing out her cigarette in the ashtray. She welcomed me with a brief smile, advising, “We’ll wait until Millie gets off the phone.”

  Clearly, this meant that Millie was in charge.

  Indeed, the moment Millie clunked down the receiver, she rose from her ’60s Sealy swivel chair and came around her desk to give me a hug. The warmth of her genuine greeting was all the more appreciated by me because she hadn’t tried to shake my hand.

  Dizzy from Irene’s secondhand smoke and chilly from the blast of an old air conditioner, I could see that these two women could finish each other’s sentences. They were a team and that was obviously what made them tick. Irene drew up contracts and balanced the books. Millie was the purveyor of contacts and ever the mentor to Irene.

  I liked them at once. They appeared to be interested in me. When they asked about a headshot and resume, I stammered something to the effect that I was in Fiddler on the Roof and Yankee Doodle Dandy. They were impressed until I told them the producers were nuns at St. Patrick’s School in Boston.

  MILLIE: Do you sing, dear?

  ME: No.

  IRENE: Have you been on Broadway?

  ME: No.

  MILLIE: Off-off Broadway?

  After I said no again, Millie asked as nicely as she could, “Well, can you at least dance?” to which I answered, “Yes!”

  Millie and Irene exchanged glances, showing relief that finally we were getting somewhere. Irene asked, “Where did you hoff?”

  “Hoff,” I asked.

  “Tap,” an impatient Irene stated.

  “Oh, I don’t tap; I’m a ballet dancer.”

  “A belly dancer, how interesting.” Irene remarked.

  With fierce pride, I said, “Not belly, ballet.”

  They simultaneously dropped their pens and stared at me. All that could be heard was the wheezing of the old air conditioner.

  With that, Spencer & Kearney decided to take me on, patiently encouraging me every step of the way, literally feedi
ng me at times, as well. Occasionally, I asked Irene for an advance, but rarely got a different response than “Can’t do that, sweetie, but go into the fridge and help yourself to half of my bologna sandwich.”

  Born in New Jersey, they both were blue-collar, working-class Irish American women. Millie had learned the ropes of career management for her son, John Spencer, who had been a child star on Broadway and became a recognizable name in television. Millie got her feet wet as a stage mother to protect her son and in the process discovered she was terrific at protecting talent in general. Irene, on the other hand, had a son whom she struggled with, often giving him office work to keep him occupied and out of trouble. Rarely did either of them speak of their personal lives outside of the business at hand.