Sam Weller - Shadow Show

“I said to her once she acted like the movies were real life and that was stupid, and she told me the movies were more real than real life and that I was stupid, so I hit her.”

Marilyn Monroe lies naked and dying.

Respiration: Shallow and irregular.

Blue-fade-to-black above the half-moons of her fingernails.

Eyelids seem to thicken as you watch.

Pasty white drool at the left corner of her mouth.

But if you look very hard, there is an almost imperceptible shimmering. Faint, like a trick of weary eyes.

Not rising from her but settling about her.

Light.

Norma Jeane walks into the theater.

Gladys is taking her to the movies.

Gladys is crazy.

But there are times when the mouse-hole voices whisper softly, softly without threat, almost lulling.

Times when staircase men (they can appear just like that !) do not seek to punish her for badthinkings.

Times like now. Hey, Sport, maybe Gladys seems a bit dingy but in a cute kind of way. No danger to herself or others.

Gracie Allen, not Lizzie Borden.

Today, Gladys and Norma Jeane go to the New Electric Theater. One o’clock show. The New Electric was new back when Tillie’s Romance got punctured. It’s a ten-cent, third-run, stale-popcorn movie house.

Fair number of people at the show.

No late checks here. A dime can buy shelter for a good part of the day. Gladys and Norma Jeane sit as far as possible from everyone else.

You have to be careful. Not just careful, but extra careful when you are crazy.

Gladys offers popcorn to Norma Jeane.

No butter. Too easy for them to put secret chemicals in melted butter.

Norma Jeane does not want popcorn.

Gladys leans toward her. Her eyes glitter. —You should take the popcorn. I want you to be happy.

Norma Jeane smells the lie and craziness on her mother’s breath. She takes popcorn. She wishes she were away from here. Wishes she were safe.

She will wish this many more times in her life.

On the screen… Cartoon. Dancing hippos, elephants, bears. Dots inside circles for belly buttons. Screechy chorus and xylophone.

Norma Jeane cranes her neck way back. Presses the crown of her head into the seat.

Above, projector beams. Columns and cones and fingers of light, yellow-white-clear, crisscrossing, splitting and uniting.

Pathways in the darkness.

Light.

It is beautiful.

On-screen: man with stiff arm out. Looks silly. Silly name: Doo-chee. DOO-Chee.

Makes Norma Jeane think of poop.

Norma Jeane laughs.

Gladys sinks fingernails into Norma Jeane’s neck. —You must not laugh so loud. They will hear you. Learn to laugh a secret laugh. Inside.

On the screen: a beautiful woman. She is a radiance. She is a luminosity.

Oh! Norma Jeane can hardly breathe, she is so beautiful.

The radiance of the beautiful woman fills her eyes.

She wants to laugh and to cry.

—Laugh on the inside. Cry on the inside.

Gladys tells her: —That is Jean Harlow.

Gladys tells her: —She is the most beautiful woman in the world.

Norma Jeane thinks: Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful…

Gladys whispers: — Her name is Jean Harlow. Your name is Norma Jeane.

Gladys whispers: —Jean Harlow, Norma Jeane. Your momma knows what she’s doing. Your momma has a plan .

Norma Jeane hears crazy. Looks at Jean Harlow, the most beautiful woman in the world. Looks only at Jean Harlow.

—Look at her.

Gladys says it crazy.

Gladys takes her ear and twists it.

Norma Jeane says a secret Ow! inside herself.

—Look at her! A command and threat.

Norma Jeane cranks back her neck.

—You can be her. You will be her.

Pain.

Stares upward.

Above, edge-melding beams of light. Of light.

The light goes to the screen.

The light becomes Jean Harlow.

Norma Jeane did not know her father. Gladys did not know him, either. Not for certain.

Growing up, Norma Jeane fantasized: Clark Gable was her father. Later, Howard Hughes. Later, Ernest Hemingway. Papa.

(When she became Marilyn Monroe, a world-renowned psychiatrist told her many of her problems stemmed from a lifelong search for a father.

(—Well, she said, I was wondering. Guess that takes care of that.)

Norma Jeane had a dog. Tippy. Tippy barked. A neighbor did not like the noise. He was a round-faced man with a tattoo. He chopped Tippy in half with a hoe.

Norma Jeane is staying with Aunt Grace. (Gladys is… sick . Your mother is in the hospital because she is sick… Cuu-koo! Cuu-koo!)

Aunt Grace has a boarder. A man.

He gives Norma Jeane a Sen-Sen. She does not like Sen-Sen but she takes it.

The man says he likes her.

She likes it when people like her. She wants everyone to like her.

—Come here. You are beautiful.

She likes being called beautiful.

The man touches her.

—Beautiful little girl.

Norma Jeane does not like his touching.

The man frightens her.

—Beautiful, the man tells her.

—I will tell, Norma Jeane says.

—Who will you tell? the man says.

—A policeman.

—Aunt Grace.

—Jesus in the sky.

The man laughs.

—Then give me some more Sen-Sen, she says.

—And a nickel.

Norma Jeane Baker: To the Los Angeles Orphans Home Society she was Orphan 3463.

—Be good, Aunt Grace told her, and abandoned her.

Norma Jeane could not stop crying. Not inside crying. She told them and she told them… She was not an orphan . She had a mother!

(Her mother was in the crazy house. Her mother was smelling bad smells and listening to the radio without a radio and making plans. And if she did not stop crying, they would think she was crazy like her mother and guess what happens then…)

—Stop crying.

—Now!

She began to change.

She smiled.

She became a good girl.

They would like that. They would like her.

She was acting.

Years later, when she was Marilyn Monroe, she would meet Katharine Hepburn. It was a brief, public meeting. The press was there. She was a starlet becoming a star. She was expected to say something sexy.

She said, —Sex is part of nature. I go along with nature.

Katharine Hepburn said, —Acting is a nice childish profession—pretending you’re someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.

She decided she did not like Katharine Hepburn.

Katharine Hepburn understood her.

Norma Jeane hated Vine Street Elementary School. Had to march there with all the children from the Home on El Centro. It was Orphans on Parade. Everyone looked at you.

Reading was hard then. She mixed up words. She stuttered.

(Muh-muh my nn-name is Nuh-nn-NormaJeane!)

Norma Jeane was in the low reading group. Bluebirds were best. Yellowbirds were next. Then you had Blackbirds. Blackbirds were stupid. Norma Jeane was the only girl Blackbird. The rest were boys. Boys did not mind being Blackbirds. They would not have minded being Buzzards or Turkeys.

(Later, Marilyn Monroe would love reading. She would read Sartre and Joyce and Shaw and Fitzgerald. She would read Hemingway and want very much to meet him. She would read American poets. Carl Sandburg—she did meet him—and Edgar Lee Masters were her favorites.)