by Alex Severin
Belladonna rose from her bed and crept along the hall deliberately, slowly, expertly avoiding the floorboards she knew creaked and cracked under foot - just in case.
She hoped she did not bump into her big step-brother on his way in. He would surely make so much noise upon seeing her sneaking out so late that the whole household would be roused from their beds. Father would be standing there with his gun trained on them, mother would be fretting in case he shot one of the children by accident, Quita, little sister, would be sleepily rubbing her eyes wondering what all the commotion was about. And then, inevitably, her secret would be discovered – her plan to sneak off to Portland to see a stage production of 'Dracula' - and everybody would try to talk her out of it. Belladonna couldn't let that happen; she knew that this was the beginning of her destiny. No one, nothing, could be allowed to stand in her way.
She’d encountered Cal in the middle of the night before, on her way to the kitchen for a glass of water. He grabbed her and tried to dance with her, singing a bawdy, inappropriate song about a milk maid and a bull. He twirled her around and around until she was laughing and giddy. Unfortunately, Cal then lost his balance and plowed into his mother’s small, but prized collection of miniature teapots. The loss of her collection devastated her - only three pieces had remained intact. Since that day, each birthday, Christmas, and anniversary, she received several miniature teapots from every family member and now had a respectable collection. They weren’t worth much but she loved them. His mother would never allow Cal to forget he was the murderer of the teapots and reminded him often.
Belladonna shut the door behind her and stood still, waiting for Cal’s staggering footfalls in the dirt. All was quiet. The only thing stirring was the country night life – the snort of the horses in the barn, the solitary moo from a cow in a far off pasture, the hoot of an owl, the distant scream of a coyote, and the incessant chorus of singing crickets.
She chose each step carefully, walking lightly over the stony dirt track, holding her breath. She expected to hear someone call her name and ask her where she thought she was going at this time of night.
Once she cleared the property line, she took off at speed. She knew she would have to walk at a steady pace to make it to the next town in time for the afternoon bus to Portland. She could not leave from here - too few people and somebody, perhaps even somebody she had never met, would probably try to take her home and put an end to what everybody would call foolishness.
But she didn’t care who thought her foolish. This was something she had to do. This was her rite of passage, the step that she knew would take her from her prolonged girlhood and into being a woman.
She had to swallow her fears, silence them. She needed to prove to everybody she knew that she was no longer a little girl and that she had long since become the woman they did not want her to be. She had to show them that she did not need mom or pops or Cal by her side to hold her hand anymore. She needed to show them that she was all grown up, that she was not the same age as little Quita, and that she was no longer 'Lil' Bell.'
~
The bus ride to Portland was uneventful most of the way there. But the closer it got to Portland, the more people crammed on. By the time they were almost there, Belladonna had given up her seat for a little old lady and was now being jostled and shoved by the other travelers standing in the aisle. As people got off the bus, she was pushed aside by people with no manners, people who did not say excuse me or sorry or beggin' your pardon. Belladonna thought these people very rude. She hoped that the people in Portland would be a little more friendly than the passengers on the bus.
As she stepped off the bus Belladonna felt like Jonah being swallowed up into the great whale's belly. She felt so small. So insignificant. Again, pushed around, this time by people on the street, Belladonna had never felt more like a little girl than she did now. She felt tiny in this great big city, overwhelmed by its size.
There there were so many people, people all around her pushing her out of the way. She wished that mom or dad or Cal was beside her to hold her hand at this moment. She was vulnerable and she looked the part too. Her huge dark eyes were full of moist innocence and her naturally rouge-colored lips - lips that had never been kissed – quivered with emotion as the sights and sounds of the big city threatened to swallow her whole.
Portland was fast. People walked fast, they talked fast. Everything was big and loud. Everything was frightening. Belladonna was giddy with anticipation, nauseous with apprehension and excitement both churning around together in her stomach. She felt sick as she thought about her mom and how she would probably still be crying, blaming herself for her daughter running away to the city. She was so afraid her family would disown her, cast her aside, look at her differently now that she had made a decision for herself and left home, even if only for a short time. She only hoped that they would allow her to come back. She hoped they would not think differently of her, that they would not treat her with any less love and affection than they had. She didn’t want to stay in the city, she just wanted to visit, just wanted to see what it was she came here to see.
She was here with a purpose, on a mission - Belladonna was in Portland, the great big city, to see him. She was there to see Bela Lugosi perform as Count Dracula on stage. She had listened to him play the part of the Transylvanian vampire on radio and had held on to the thrill he made her feel. She would curl up by the fire with a crocheted blanket around her shoulders, made by her grandmother’s twisted, arthritic fingers which always looked to Belladonna like knotted, gnarled tree branches in winter. She would listen to his velvet voice, her eyes wide and dreaming of what his face would look like. She was sure his eyes would be red as rubies, his hair black as night sky, his skin paler than moonlight. Belladonna was madly in love with the man who played Dracula, even although she had never laid eyes on him.
But soon she would. Soon she would be sitting in the audience looking up at the stage, looking up at him, gazing into the eyes she just knew would hypnotize her.
She would hear, in the very same room as she sat, the voice that made her sigh, the voice that made her dream of things she had never even imagined before.
She would be in the same room as the man who had taught her how it felt to be a woman, and helped her shake off the last vestiges of being 'Lil' Bell.'
~
CHAPTER THREE : WIDE-EYED IN THE DARK
Belladonna stood in line, clutching her ticket with both hands held out in front of her. She looked at it as if she was unsure of what it was. Her hands trembled as she listened to the excited whispers of the other theater goers, mostly young girls and older ladies, chatter amongst themselves about how many times they had seen the stage production of Dracula, and how many cities they had visited to see Bela Lugosi play the immortal Count.
One girl flushed ruby red as she told her friend about sneaking in to Bela Lugosi's dressing room in Los Angeles – she stole a kiss from him. She also stole a lit cigar, perched precariously on the edge of his dressing table as she ran for the door.
And there were more stories Belladonna overheard, each one more elaborate than the last. One told how she knew a theater manager on the east coast and was introduced to Bela after a performance. Another claimed her father was a top Hollywood producer and had been taken to dinner by Lugosi. And one, a beautiful city sophisticate told the whole crowd -
“Hah! That's nothing – he asked me to marry him!”
The crowd giggled, some nervously, some embarrassed by their own tall tales, knowing that everybody knew they were telling little white lies.
The doors opened and a collective gasp ran through the crowd of Dracula's disciples.
There were beautiful young girls all around her, their faces painted like china dolls and wearing the latest fashionable clothes. Although her beauty surpassed all the other girls in line, Belladonna felt inferior beside these city sophisticates. Her simple dress, hand-made by herself, felt awkward and shabby in comparison. S
he felt naked; she wore no make-up on her face, no jewelry dangled from her ears, nor clung to her neck or her wrists. She felt every inch the rube from the country and suddenly despised who she was. Now, standing in line with these beautiful, fashionable young women, she felt like nothing more than a country bumpkin.
But she took note of what the young girls were wearing, paid close attention to the way they styled their hair and how they made up their faces.
Some girls ahead of Belladonna in the line snickered about her behind palm-shrouded lips, laughed about the dress she wore, the way her hair was styled, screwed up their faces at her ample breasts.
such a wheat!
so unsophisticated!
doesn't even wrap her chest!
She wasn't sure what the term wheat meant but she figured it was something like country bumpkin. But Belladonna didn’t really care what they thought - she was just here to see Bela Lugosi, and she knew she would never see any of these people again.
But the next time she visited a big city - and she knew there would be a next time - she would not look like a girl who stepped straight off a bus from the country.
~
INSIDE THE THEATER
Belladonna sat rigid in her seat, tapping her foot on the floor. Her gut was knotted with nerves, her mouth dry, tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth. She let out a tiny squeak as the house lights went down and the murmurs of conversation in the audience ceased. The room was silent. Then the quiet was broken by the sound footsteps on the stage behind the blood-red velvet curtain.
Belladonna trembled with anticipation. Only moments ago her breathing had been rapid but was now stuck in her lungs making them burn. She let out the trapped air and gasped for more; those around her glanced sideways at her, raising eyebrows, looking at each other with slanted smiles. The air was charged with excitement and several young girls in the audience also gasped as the curtains parted slowly. A young girl, no more than sixteen years old fell into a dead faint and was carried off by two burly ambulance men. They waited at the back of the theater each performance for the inevitable fainters.
The media hyped it all up as being caused by Lugosi's performance that made women pass out. But the medics knew otherwise. They knew it was not terror that made these women – young and old – flushed at the cheeks and tremble. It was simple lust. It was overwhelming desire. Crippling need.
She waited patiently, her eyes scouring every inch of the stage, oblivious to the other characters, the other actors, waiting, waiting, for that moment when he stepped on to the stage…And then – there he was. Right there in front of her.
Another three females fell limp to the floor with heavy sighs.
Belladonna thought she was going to die. Her heart felt like it had stopped in her chest. Her breath froze in her throat. Her eyes were wide, drinking in the sight of him for the very first time. Belladonna was entranced by him. His eyes.
Oh, my God, his eyes…
They were even more fierce than she had imagined them, they were more hypnotic than she had dreamed they would be. And in that very instant of breathless awe, Belladonna was in love. Truly in love.
And then he spoke…
“I bid you welcome…”
And she caught his eye. Lugosi looked straight at her, a look that seemed to see inside her. She made a little fearful noise in her throat, her eyes growing ever wider with disbelief that he was looking at her. Lugosi grinned at her, a knowing, confident grin that told her he knew what she was thinking about him as she sat there in the darkened theater staring up at him on the stage. He knew what they were all thinking. He could feel their desire filtering through the ether to him. He could hear their sighs and gasps. He felt invincible when he was on stage. He felt as if he could take on the world, as if nothing on earth could touch him. And while he was on stage, sweating under the lights and feeling the waves of adoration reaching him from the audience, he could forget the pain. Even if only for a while.
Belladonna felt blackness creeping behind her eyes as she willed herself to breathe again before she lost consciousness. But it seemed she had forgotten how. She tried to inhale, tried to open her mouth and gulp in precious air but she could not. Thankfully, a young man sitting next to her nudged her in the ribs and she sucked in a huge gulp of oxygen just in time to banish the blackness. But her eyes were still fixed on him as he played the part of the debonair vampire Count to the hilt.
He kept looking at her all through the performance, his eyes saying more to her than the learned words he was reciting. She thought she knew what he was trying to tell her – that they would meet again at another time, meet again in another place under different circumstances. From that moment forward, Belladonna was forever changed. She was no longer a child. She had felt something stir inside her, felt something spring to life, grow, felt something about to burst into bloom. And as the final curtain closed with a swish of red velvet and the uproarious applause became excited chatter amongst the patrons, she knew that her life would never be the same again. Belladonna knew that this night would transform her life. Nothing would ever be the same.
~
Belladonna did not receive the tongue-lashing she imagined she would get when she returned home from Portland. Everybody told her she was all grown up now and she could leave home if she wanted to, but she would always have a place on the family farm. Their reactions disappointed her a little - she wanted to be a rebel, wanted her parents to try and stop her from leaving the house, to tell her off and yell at her. She wanted, just once, to know how it felt to be the bad girl. She wanted to know how it felt to be chastised for being the errant one, just for a change, instead of Good L'il Bell.
~
Belladonna was different now, changed. She was not the girl who had left home for the big city. Something had happened to her as she sat there in the darkened theater. Her fascination and infatuation for Bela Lugosi had become something more. She watched him as he spoke his black velvet words, entranced by his face, hypnotized by the eyes she had only ever dreamed about seeing. His voice seemed to reach out for her, glide over her skin like an intimate touch.
And now, back home and in her room, radio on and again listening to the sound of his voice, Belladonna could now see his face when she closed her eyes, could see his hypnotic stare. She felt the tide of her blood rise, throbbing inside her like never before, and found the rhythm of her own hips as she sweated in the dark. He had helped her on the arduous journey to being a woman, made her feel things she had never felt, want things she had not experienced, things she knew nothing of before. And now, she wanted much more of him than just his words. She wanted to feel more than the touch of her own hand and the sound of his voice.
She was restless now. Always restless. Had been since the day she got back. Her life on the farm had always been enough before, the farm and her family had always been her life, her whole world, and until that day she had never had more than a fleeting desire to explore the rest of it. But everything changed as she sat there wide-eyed in the dark, listening to that voice, watching that face.
~
1931
Tod Browning's DRACULA – The story of the strangest passion the world has ever known!
Belladonna couldn't believe her eyes as she flicked through the latest issue of Photoplay magazine. There it was in black and white – the announcement of the motion picture Dracula to be directed and produced by Tod Browning, and starring Helen Chandler and Edward Van Sloan, with Bela Lugosi reprising his smash hit stage role as the immortal Count.
Belladonna squealed. She dropped the magazine as if it were on fire and singeing her fingers. She picked it back up, squealed again, then hugged it tight to her
“A Dracula picture! A Dracula picture! Madre de Dios! I don't believe it!”
It was scheduled for release on St. Valentine's Day.
But it would be months later than the February release date that it would finally reach Independence, via the traveling movie theater. If sh
e waited for it to come around.
Belladonna would not be waiting patiently for it to come around eventually. She wanted to see it right away. She wanted to see it as soon as possible. She would be there, in Portland again, this time waiting in line on the day Dracula opened. She had to see it on the first day. Had to.
~
PORTLAND, OR – 14th FEBRUARY 1931
The excitement this time was unbearable. Her stomach churned and her knees were weak as she stood in line once again outside the same Portland theater as before. She couldn't even imagine what the movie would be like, how wonderful it would be, how incredible he would look up there, larger than life on the silver screen.
And this time, none of the girls in the line snickered at her. They looked at her with awe. They looked at her with envy in their eyes and she loved it. This time she was dressed in the latest fashion, her hair perfectly styled and her face exquisitely painted with rouged cheeks and stained lips. She was a vision – like a movie star. They could hardly look at her, but they could not take their eyes off her.
She willed the doors to open so she could get inside, so she could take her seat and wait, in delicious agony, for Bela to walk on to the movie screen, for Dracula to begin. She loved that first shaft of light that shone from the projection booth; it beamed brightly and glittered with sparkling dust. And she loved the noise the movie projector made - the mechanized clicks, the whir of celluloid, and the snap and slap the film stock made when the reel came to an end.
The title card appeared. The music swelled – Tchaikovsky's Andante from Swan Lake. Belladonna could hardly stand the anticipation any longer. But she still read every word in the credits, as always.
