Almost a Woman : A Memoir (9780306821110) (39 page)

“You might know the girl who played Soni,” Vera said. “She went to your school. Priscilla López.”

“Yes, she graduated a year before me.” I was thrilled to be playing a part originated by Priscilla, one of the most talented actors at Performing Arts when I was a student there. Vera also told me that, while they liked the fact that I was an Indian classical dancer, my role didn't require dancing.

“There is one scene where a dancer performs,” she said, “but we already have someone to do that.” I was disappointed, but got over it after I had read the entire script, which made it clear that my character, Soni, had a bigger role to play in the story than the dancer who attended the rajah.

The title role of Babu was played by Allan, an actor and singer whose openness and warmth won me over instantly. In the play, he rescued Soni from her prison tower, and it didn't take much acting for me to fall in love with him at each performance, and to remain besotted between shows.

Allan and Bill had known each other for years, had worked together, and were good friends. Both had marvelous, trained voices, and I often asked one or the other a question just to hear them speak.

The other member of the cast I came to know well was Tom. In the first scene of the play, when Soni and Babu met, Tom, in his role as the monkey god, sat in the lotus position in a niche on the set. After Soni was dragged offstage by her evil uncle, Babu prayed for a way to help her escape. The audience screeched when Tom opened his eyes and spoke, because they didn't expect a statue to come to life.

After rehearsals I often joined Bill, Allan, or Tom for a cup of coffee or a late dinner. They'd been in the theater much longer than I and told funny, poignant stories about mishaps and humiliations onstage and off.

Vera lived in Westchester County and commuted to rehearsals. She was like an anxious mother one moment, all business the next. If one of us coughed, she handed out lozenges retrieved from her ample bag, but if we were late, she made sure to let us know that next time we should try harder. She frequently reminded us about our responsibilities as actors. “Just because this is children's theater,” she often said, “doesn't mean we patronize or talk down to our audience.”

We rehearsed evenings and weekends, and each time I left the studio I felt lucky to be among such gifted, committed people. It was fun to improvise with Allan and Tom, then to work from the script with Bill, who worked us hard but made us feel as if we were the most brilliant people he'd ever directed. Over the weeks of rehearsal, the character of Soni evolved as I better understood what Bill expected from my performance.

“Not so stylized,” he scolded, when I tried to introduce Indian dance movements into Soni's actions.

With college in the morning, the Advertising Checking Bureau in the afternoons, and Children's Theater International evenings and weekends, I again spent most of my time away from home. I met Shoshana in classes, and we often had lunch together before I went to work.

We didn't forget Mr. Grunwald. One day we followed him in the subway to his stop at Waverly Place. He was easy to stalk. He was oblivious to his environment, seemed lost in deep mathematical thoughts, and kept his eyes focused on the obstacles in front of him but no further. Once he entered the subway, he immersed himself in a thick book with a parabola and formulas on the cover. From the next car, Shoshana and I watched until he got up from his seat and stood by the doors. As soon as they opened, he got off. We waited, then followed at a distance, trying not to draw attention
to ourselves in spite of the nervous giggles that attacked us every time we realized what we were doing. Mr. Grunwald climbed the station steps, and we lost him in the throng on the street. But soon Shoshana spotted him buying a paper at a newsstand. He dropped some coins in the vendor's hand, turned a corner, and vanished.

“Now that's weird,” said Shoshana, as we peeked around a building to a street of brownstones with neat stoops and flowerpots in the windows. “He must have gone into one of the houses.”

“It must have been the first one,” I pointed out, “he didn't have time to walk too far.” No sooner had I spoken than Mr. Grunwald emerged from the first door on the street, led by a fluffy white dog in a hurry to get to a hydrant.

“What did I tell you?” Shoshana said, triumphant. Whether Mr. Grunwald was homosexual or not, his choice of dog certainly balanced the equation, as he would have said, in the direction of Shoshana's suspicions. “A swishy dog,” she proclaimed, as if I hadn't noticed. “Oh, I'm so sorry,” she pouted, when she noticed my expression.

“He doesn't look like the kind of man to have that type of dog,” was all I could say.

Shoshana walked me to a nearby restaurant, where she ordered a cup of soup and a sandwich to make up for my disappointment. When I was fortified, we talked about how hard it was to find the right man.

“Maybe we're too choosy,” she mused. “We'll end up old maids.”

“He could at least have had a German shepherd,” I said, fixed on the image of the magnificent Mr. Grunwald attached to the fussy dog.

The restaurant window faced a busy intersection near the subway entrance. A mishmash of hippies, businesspeople, ancient men and women, beggars, and street musicians paraded up and down for our entertainment. In the middle of Shoshana's description of her ideal man, she yelped as if pricked and pointed behind me. On the sidewalk, walking in our direction from the train
station, was Mr. Grunwald, still led by the fluffy dog, his arm tight around the waist of a leggy, redheaded woman. Every few steps they stopped and kissed, to the annoyance of people behind, who were forced to circle around them, their faces crimped in displeasure. They passed no more than three feet from us, oblivious to the rest of humanity.

“The dog is hers,” I guessed.

When I told Bill and Allan the story, they laughed.

“Do you like German shepherds?” Allan asked.

“At least they're real dogs, not walking mops.” Bill and Allan looked at each other, then laughed some more. It was weeks before I realized what was so funny. One day Allan had to rush back to his apartment on the Upper West Side. He lived on the second floor at the rear of a brownstone, and as we came up, the deep-throated barking of what could only be a huge dog filled the hallway. “Wait here,” Allan said, as he clicked open the three locks on his door. He slid into the apartment while I waited in the hall. In a few seconds, he opened the door, his left hand on the collar of the biggest German shepherd I had ever seen. “This is Tristan,” he said. The dog's nose dove into my crotch, and Allan had to restrain it to keep it from pushing me further against the wall. “He likes girls,” Allan grinned. He clipped on the dog's leash, and we walked half a block to Central Park, where Allan played with Tristan while I leaned against a tree. It was touching to see the warmth between them, the way the dog followed Allan's every move, stopped if Allan stopped, moved when Allan did. Watching them, I knew that this was the first man outside my family I had felt affection for. I'd fallen in love with several—Neftalí, Otto, Mr. Grunwald—but what I felt for Allan was unlike the romantic fantasies I had created around other men. I didn't daydream about marrying Allan, or even kissing him. I wanted to be with him, to talk and be silly and hear his stories. I loved his laugh, the way his eyes sparkled when he was pleased or proud. Between us, there were no sexual games. Had there been, I would have been disillusioned.

Shoshana didn't understand my relationship with Allan. She and I often discussed whether it was possible for a man and a woman to be friends without being sexual. She didn't think so; I did. Or rather, I hoped it was possible. I couldn't imagine that for the rest of my life, every encounter with a man was to be appraised against a possible sexual tryst. As an example of my ability to have male friends who were not boyfriends, I pointed to my frequent meetings with Shanti.

“He's in love with you,” Shoshana insisted. “You just refuse to admit it.”

Shanti's devotion was flattering. We worked well together and continued our collaboration, in spite of the fact that we were often testy around each other. He constantly criticized my diet, which consisted primarily of street-vendor hot dogs smothered with sauerkraut, washed down with a Yoo-Hoo, or pizza and grape ade, or creamy eclairs and coffee.

“You're a dancer,” Shanti reminded me, “you should eat better.”

“At least,” I retorted with a disdainful look at his cigarette, “I don't smoke.”

On a warm and sunny winter day, we sat on the steps of the Main Library on Fifth Avenue after he took a series of pictures of me atop the lions that guarded the entrance. “You're not the most beautiful girl I've photographed,” he admitted. “But when I look at you through the lens, I see myself.”

“Don't scare me that way,” I snapped.

Whenever Shanti went metaphysical on me, I turned nasty. He once said our souls were connected, and I stared at him as if he were crazy. “I have no soul,” I finally spit out.

He was silent for a long time, then spoke in a near whisper. “I see your soul even if you don't.”

It was my turn to be speechless. His faith in something within me that he could see and I couldn't made me feel inadequate and immature. I had to defend myself. “You see what you want to see, not what's there.”

Another time he insisted on reading my hand. “Over here is the life line,” he stroked a curve from between my thumb and index finger to the crease on the inside of my wrist. “It will be a long life,” he assured me. “But these,” he pointed to a series of ragged lines, “indicate illness.”

I pulled my hand away. “That's nonsense,” I said. “I don't believe any of it.” The truth was that it scared me to think he could know anything about me from my hands. If so, were there other signs, in the shape of my lips or eyebrows, the way my hair curled? If there were, I didn't want to know what they meant. What difference did it make if I had ten, twenty, fifty years to live? Or if the next day I'd be run over by a car? Why would I want to know what lay ahead?

“I can't predict what will happen,” he protested, “I can only interpret what has happened already.”

“I can do that,” I retorted.

No matter how mean I was to him, or how much he criticized me, we always found time to be together. We knew that the pictures he took were not commercial, would never end up in a magazine, or be printed by the hundreds as head shots for auditions. Weekends, we still met in Central Park, or Lincoln Center, or the Empire State Building, where he took pictures of me looking as remote and inaccessible as I was to him. Every week, he handed me a few eight-by-ten glossies, which I studied as if they were a puzzle, each feature, shadow, line a piece of a larger, undefined whole. I felt protected by their formality, their solemn stillness. But it unnerved me when he captured another me, whose eyes beseeched the onlooker for something I couldn't define.

As the day neared for my Broadway debut, I settled into my role as Soni. We performed at local schools, which gave me a chance to become familiar with the set and comfortable in my two costumes. Bill and Vera planned several more shows after the New
York run, and a tour out of town. 1 prepared Mami for the possibility that I'd go away for two weeks or more with the cast of
Babu.
Other than occasional overnight stays with my cousins Alma and Corazón and the visits to Margie in Yonkers, I'd never slept away from home. I expected Mami to make a fuss, but she just asked a few questions about where we'd be going and seemed at ease with the possibility.

Even though Mr. Grunwald gave me a C as my final grade in his class, I invited him to the opening. After all, he was responsible for the audition that had won me the part. We both knew a C was generous, considering my negative progress in mathematics or, as he called it, analytical thinking. For the final paper, we were supposed to state a theory and, using logical progression, prove it. I set out to prove that civilization began in Puerto Rico.

“But you said the theory didn't have to be true,” I argued when we discussed my paper. “You just wanted us to make a logical case for it.”

“You didn't do that,” he maintained.

The play was to open for a limited run at the Longacre Theater during the Christmas holidays. Just a few months before, Sandy Dennis had starred in
Daphne in Cottage D
on the same stage. At the first dress rehearsal, I was assigned her dressing room, which featured a star on the door. Every time I pushed the door open, the star right before my eyes filled me with pride, which I had to contain so as not to appear conceited. I wanted to share my happiness with someone without seeming vain or boastful, so I wrote to Papi in Puerto Rico. I sent him a copy of the program, which featured Allan and me in our “crown jewels,” the elaborately sequined and embroidered costumes Robert De Mora had designed for the finale. I described the hours of work it took to put a show together, the people involved, the fanciful plot. I told him about the dressing room, the wall-size mirror surrounded by lights, the private bathroom, the rug, the rundown but comfortable couch in which I took naps between performances. Because he wasn't there to see it with his own eyes, Papi saw it through mine,
and for the first time I was glad he didn't live with us, because now there was someone whose vision of my world depended on my version of it.