Almost a Woman : A Memoir (9780306821110) (27 page)

During the program, many of my classmates were called up to receive special honors or prizes. My name wasn't called, but it didn't matter. I knew what I'd accomplished. Neither my mother nor my father had studied beyond elementary school. And here I was, in a foreign country, in a foreign language, graduating from a school for dreamers.

Had I stopped to think about my future, I would have been afraid. But what I felt on that bright June day was the thrill of achievement. I'd managed to get through high school without getting pregnant, without dropping out, without
algo
happening to me. I had a job as an actress in a movie, not a starring role, but at least I'd be paid, and who knew, I might be discovered.

But first I had to go home to Brooklyn with my mother and stepfather to celebrate with my sister the clerk at Woolworth's; my brother the pizza cook; my other six sisters and brothers; my grandmother and her boyfriend; my cousins the deaf mute, the wrestler, and the Americanized sisters; with my alcoholic uncle. That world in Brooklyn from which I derived both comfort and anxiety was home, as was the other world, across the ocean, where my father still wrote poems. As was the other world, the one across the river, where I intended to make my life. I'd have to learn to straddle all of them, a rider on three horses, each headed in a different direction.

A week after graduating from Performing Arts, I stood in the middle of an elementary school playground in El Barrio, surrounded by other hopefuls on the first day of filming for
Up the Down Staircase
. Mr. Mulligan's assistant told us that we could expect work every day for a couple of weeks. The playground was to be our base while the crew filmed exteriors in front of the school and across the street.

Most of the other teenagers in the movie were from local schools, but a few were professionals with commercial and film credits. They'd been around sets and came prepared with books, knitting, cards, and board games to pass the time between takes.

The story line for
Up the Down Staircase
followed a young teacher, Miss Barrett, at her first job in a New York City school filled with underachievers. There was the class clown (Jewish), the ugly fat girl (white), her best friend (the part I didn't get because I didn't look Puerto Rican enough), the future young Republican (also white, also fat), the sensitive, doomed boy (Puerto Rican Negro), the Italian rebel with no cause, the slut. Sandy Dennis played the idealistic teacher. A supporting cast portrayed an assortment of other types: “Committed Teacher,” “Frustrated Spinster,” “Fascist Principal,” “Alcoholic Poet.”

Every time I learned the name of someone associated with the movie, I went to the library to look the person up. The director, Robert Mulligan, had won an Academy Award for
To Kill a Mockingbird,
produced by Alan Pakula. Tad Mosel, a respected playwright, wrote the screenplay. And the character actors—Roy Poole, Eileen Heckart, Maureen Stapleton, Ruth White, and Vin-nette Carroll (who was a teacher at Performing Arts)—were legitimate theater actors, as was the star, Sandy Dennis, who'd just costarred with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
I was proud to be in the midst of so much talent.

Most of the exteriors were filmed in El Barrio, outside the elementary school and the streets around it. We were called to the location early in the morning and were often there until late afternoon. We did a scene several times and then waited for the lights, camera, and sound to be ready for another take from a different direction. It was tedious work, but it did give me a lot of time to read, to learn to play Monopoly and Scrabble, to chat with the other extras. Like me, they hoped to make such an impression in the movie that they'd be discovered, go to Hollywood and become stars. We did everything we could to gain the attention of the director, producer, and crew. We massaged sore shoulders, carried coffee, flirted, listened attentively to dumb jokes. It paid off. After the exteriors were shot, some of us were chosen to be featured in the classroom, which meant more work and higher pay.

The production moved to a high school near Lincoln Center, where the hall, stairway, and some of the classroom and office scenes were filmed. Then we were called to a sound stage in the West 20s, where the classroom was recreated complete with a giant transparency of the view outside the windows of the school we'd just left. The walls moved out of the way for the cameras, lights, and technicians who ran around between takes to adjust lights or microphones or to powder Sandy Dennis's face or spray her hair.

When she wasn't needed on the set, Miss Dennis went to her dressing room or sat in a director's chair, where she was approached for autographs by kids brave enough to risk being shooed
away. She was friendly, seemed to enjoy it when one of us talked to her as if she were a normal person and not a movie star. Sometimes she did things that we didn't know how to interpret. Once, we came back from lunch to film a scene that required deep emotion and concentration on everyone's part. We rehearsed the scene numerous times, having been warned before the break that the scene was difficult to shoot, that we should listen, concentrate, follow directions carefully to make it easier for the featured actors. We were nervous, and when Miss Dennis came in, we focused and prepared for the moment. Mr. Mulligan called “Action!” in a soft voice. Sandy Dennis's face twitched, she opened her mouth, and out came a long, ripe, thunderous burp. Everyone froze in place, Mr. Mulligan called “Cut!”

Miss Dennis giggled. “I shouldn't have beer at lunch.” We cracked up. It took us a while to settle down because the minute Mr. Mulligan called action, someone laughed, and pretty soon the entire cast and crew were giggling.

Usually, a stand-in Sandy Dennis's height and coloring took her place while lights and cameras were adjusted. But sometimes Miss Dennis did it. One day she sat at her desk while technicians worked around her. My desk was directly in front of hers, and every once in a while she looked up and smiled. Then, out of nowhere, she asked if I had any sisters or brothers.

“Yes, I'm the oldest of nine children,” I said.

“Nine!”

“Five girls and four boys.”

“Hasn't your mother heard about birth control?”

Someone behind me snickered. “She doesn't believe in it,” I mumbled, because I didn't know what else to say. Miss Dennis nodded, no longer interested, and began a conversation with Liz, who sat next to me.

Birth control was in the news because of the recently developed pill to prevent pregnancy. Whenever we discussed it at home, it was agreed by the adults around the kitchen table that “the Pill” was nothing more than a license for young women to have sex
without getting married. The fact that my mother, grandmother, and almost every other female relative of ours had sex without marriage was not mentioned. If I pointed that out to them, I was scolded for being disrespectful. In any case, I would never suggest that Mami avoid having babies. While being in a large family was hard for all of us, there was not a single sister or brother I'd rather not have.

For myself, however, I'd decided that I'd changed enough diapers for a lifetime and planned to sign up for the pill as soon as there was any possibility I'd need it.

Sometimes, when we were dismissed from the set of
Up the Down Staircase
early, I window-shopped on Fifth Avenue or spent hours at the Lincoln Center Library listening to Broadway musicals. From time to time, men approached me.

“Excuse me, is this seat taken?” They pointed to the empty chair next to me, and I felt like saying, “Yes, my invisible cousin is there,” but never dared. Next thing I knew, I was carrying on a conversation with Dan or Fred or Matt or Kevin. Sometimes they invited me for a cup of coffee. We sat across from each other discussing theater, since most of the men I met in the middle of the day on weekdays in Manhattan were unemployed actors. As I listened to them expound on whether the Method was passe, or whether legitimate theater actors were selling out if they did commercials, I tried to determine if this qualified as a date. I didn't know what the rules were for dating, never having done it. And I felt pretty stupid asking people who did know about it, like the girl who played the slut in
Up the Down Staircase,
or Liz, my seat mate on the set. I read
Sex and the Single Girl,
Mary McCarthy's
The Group,
some Harold Robbins, trying to figure out what one did on dates, should I ever have one. But my encounters at the library never went further than coffee, and there were no other candidates.

Delsa had a boyfriend, Norma had a boyfriend, Hector had a girlfriend. But none of them dated. My sisters' boyfriends came to our house on Sunday, had dinner with us, sat in front of the television with the younger kids, then left at a respectable hour. Hector's girlfriend came with her mother, or Hector went to her house and did what Delsa's and Norma's boyfriends did at ours. They were not permitted to go anywhere as couples without a chaperone, most frequently one of the younger kids because they had to be looked after, couldn't be ditched, and snitched if anything untoward took place.

Because I had the most freedom, I could get away with a solo clandestine date in the city. I hadn't tested it, since no one asked, but I began to plan for the day when I'd have to do it. Every day toward the end of summer, as
Up the Down Staircase
wound down, I stayed out later, giving one excuse or another for coming home long after expected. Most of the time Mami scrunched her brow, narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips, any of the familiar grimaces I understood meant she had misgivings but was not about to give into them yet. In the interest of not raising suspicions for what I wasn't doing, I didn't take advantage. I slowly raised the threshold of her permissiveness, and when she complained I was late too many days in a row, I didn't go out if there was no filming the next day. I played with my sisters and brothers or went shopping with Mami or hung around the house reading, my hair in curlers in an attempt at a new hairdo, and tried to act as if I had nothing to hide, which I didn't, certain that someday I would.

Although I'd worked hard to be discovered on the set of
Up the Down Staircase,
when the movie wrapped there were no offers from Hollywood, so I had to figure out what to do next. I gave myself a month to be cast in another movie, a play, or as a dancer with a company. I bought
Backstage
and
Variety
every week, made a list of the auditions for which I might qualify, called casting
agents, appeared at rehearsal studios where try-outs were announced. But there were no parts for a Puerto Rican ingenue/ Cleopatra/Indian classical dancer.

Late summer and early fall was a rough time for Mami because of the enormous expense of getting the kids ready for school and another winter. I'd made a lot of money over the summer but had spent most of it on dance classes and a wardrobe appropriate for an actress/dancer who needed to make a good impression at auditions. I gave Mami a portion of each paycheck, and Don Carlos also helped, especially now that Mami was pregnant again. But it wasn't enough, so we moved from our house to a smaller, third-floor apartment where the rent included utilities.