Jami Attenberg - Saint Mazie

We went to the porch. Rosie slammed the door behind her. I felt bad for Louis, that he’d be getting it later from her. He must have thought it was worth it. Every once in a while it must be.

The sky was that brilliant early-morning violet I’ve only seen since we moved to Coney Island. I swear the ocean has a different sky than the rest of the world.

I said: Could we look at the sky for just one moment, sister?

Rosie said: Why won’t you do as I wish?

I said: Look at the sky. Look at it.

Rosie said: It’s your safety I’m worried about more than anything.

She started to say something else, but then suddenly the fanciest car I’ve ever seen pulled up in front of the house. I don’t give a rat’s ass about cars, but this was something special. It was a Rolls-Royce, silver. The air changed around it. For a moment I believed Louis had bought me this car. I pictured myself being driven to and from the Venice in it. What kind of ticket taker has a car like that? Me, that’s who. I felt this stir of arrogance. Even writing this now is making me laugh out loud. A-ha, I thought. My ride is here.

But it wasn’t my ride at all. A driver got out of the car, a proper one, wearing a special cap and gloves. He opened the rear door of the car and leaned inside. Someone slid an arm around his neck. Finally he stood, a body in his arms. I saw the casted leg first, and then I saw her face.

Jeanie’s back.

Some of these bums are singers — every morning outside my cage I could hear them singing their Irish folk songs, or even a sea shanty or two. There were others who liked to draw, sketches of the park where they’re sleeping, that filthy noisy train overhead, or pictures of the other bums, just being bums. I’ve got hundreds of them, swapped for a nickel, swapped for a drink. There’s real artistic souls out there on the streets. A passion for something vivid and beautiful, not everyone has that. The bottle dims the passion, though, ruins the talent, too. If you let it. But I think you have to want to ruin it in the first place.

Jeanie Phillips, October 21, 1920

Mazie said to write my story down, it’s too long for her to tell, and that it’ll be good for me, it’ll clear my head, and I’m the one who lived it, not her, anyway. Then she said start at the beginning until you get to the end, tell the truth, no point in lying to the page, to the diary, to yourself, and then she handed me this diary and this pen, and away we go.

I skipped town a year and a half ago because I wanted to make my own fate, choose my future myself, rather than accept what Louis & Rosie wanted for me, what Ethan wanted for me, too. I would have been married by now, I would have been working at the candy shop or at the track or at Luna Park, or cooking and cleaning like Rosie, or making babies with Ethan. And it’s not that I’m too good for any of that, or even that there’s anything wrong with that. Only I wanted to dance, I wanted to use these legs, these arms, my body, my gifts, my weapons. I didn’t want to waste them on sitting still, at least not yet.

So I started dancing with the Folsom brothers, Skip & Felix, two white-blond-haired boys from Pennsylvania, escaped from a milk farm, no teat squeezing for them, just throwing me around in the air instead. A better fate, they said, more fun to throw the pretty girls in the air than touch the cow’s titties. They were tall and strong, strong enough to toss me and catch me, and make me feel like I could disappear forever. If they just kept spinning me, I’d turn into a whisper and I’d be gone.

Felix is the elder brother, older by a year, and he still reads the Bible every night, but says it’s only a habit, and the stories put him to sleep. He’s married to Belle’s girl Elizabeth, who does all her hair and makeup and sits by her side. She’s a cherub from Philly, round cheeks, big eyes, and a real pleaser, yes’s rather than no’s any day of the week. And Skip’s the dreamboat that everyone else falls in love with, and so I did, too.

I didn’t fall in love with Skip until we were out on the road together. I swear on my life, on the air that I breathe, I wouldn’t treat Ethan like that, never lied to him, never cheated, only loved and respected that boy, him being my first sweetheart and all. But Belle says tour love’s as common as the flu, highly contagious, and I caught it, sleepless nights and dizzy daydreams and all the rest. I fell in love with the world we built together, the nerves before the curtain opens and Skip squeezing my hand for luck, the applause at the end taking my breath away every single time, whiskey & wine after the show, me on Skip’s knee, Elizabeth with her hands in Felix’s hair, Belle barking at all of us to do as she bid. Belle’s always telling me she’s the one who gave me a shot, like she’s twenty years older than me instead of two, and didn’t grow up three streets away from me. I let her say what she wants though, because she’s more right than wrong. Without her I’d have been nowhere at all, or at least in the same place as always.

We started our tour in Philly, where Belle’s husband’s from, and where his father has a theater of his own. We stayed there for a month, reworking our act for the road, testing it out on those audiences that already loved Belle, she could do no wrong. Then we went to Cleveland to see what they thought, and they liked us there, they liked us a lot, and we liked them too, Cleveland was a gas. The theater was brand new, and we had crowds every night, on and on, all the applause thrilling me, until suddenly it seemed like everyone in town had already seen us once, and once was enough. Belle said it was time to move on, and what Belle says goes, because Belle runs the show, because Belle is the show.

There was more money to be made in Chicago, bigger crowds, more Jews, Jews who wanted all the Yiddish songs as much as the English songs, more than the English songs, never tired of them, and they were always Belle’s favorites too. Belle’s husband left us there, back to Philly, back for the spring, a relief for Belle because the only one who barks more than Belle is her husband. She told us she got us to Chicago but now we were on our own. So we did two shows a night with her on the weekends but nothing during the week, and we were worried we’d go broke, but Skip, my baby, my talker, my charmer, got us work at White City. I loved White City, with its twinkling lights all over the place, crowds of jolly Chicagoans, clean streets, wide skies. Three nights a week there, plus two with Belle and we were set.

Oh, everything was such a laugh! Rushing to the theater, hustling in a cab, breathless, tumbling out the door, but never tripping, never falling, we were dancers and we would never fall. I could have kept going across America, I liked the driving, I liked the road life, I liked setting up house for a spell in a hotel or a boardinghouse and then taking everything apart again. I could have looped and looped around this great country of ours forever. I liked these people, these performers, and I liked being buddies on the road. Skip & Felix & Elizabeth & Belle & Jeanie, that’s me, the girl in the air.

But if I had to stay in just one place, Chicago was as good as anywhere else. They got a mayor there who’s a real hoot, puts on a good show, even if he’s bad news. He makes his own rules, doesn’t give a damn about Prohibition, lines his own pocket from booze money. I read the papers, and I spent enough time there to know, Chicago is one wild town.

I never met that mayor, but I met a lot of people who worked for him. It seemed like half the town was either coming or going from his office. One of his special assistants came backstage once, a man named Paul, a gentleman in a fine suit, tall and meaty but with long sweet eyelashes and enormous, plush lips. Paul was an American but the child of Italians, so he was Paulo once, he told me, that very moment we met, sharing a new secret between friends, we shook hands on it, and the minute we touched I thought only one word: Yes.