Almost a Woman : A Memoir (9780306821110) (44 page)

Jurgen left for Los Angeles. He didn't give me a phone number where I could reach him but promised to call daily. I didn't believe him, so it was a surprise when a bouquet of roses arrived, and that evening, when the phone rang, it was Jurgen. “Hello,
liebchen,”
he whispered. “Do you still want to marry me?”

I spent the next week shopping for my wedding dress with Mami. Jurgen's daily phone calls wore away my reluctance, convinced me that we belonged together. He swore that he would no longer steal planes. He'd been considering a job offer in Egypt, piloting the private jet of an Arab prince, which he'd decided to accept. His life had been transformed, Jurgen claimed, by me. Mine was about to be transformed by him. It was a fair exchange. I'd save him from life in prison; he'd save me from life in Brooklyn.

Mami and I picked out a champagne-colored silk moire dress and coat ensemble for me to wear when I met Jurgen's parents. As she had planned for so long, my sisters would be my bridesmaids, my brothers groomsmen. Franky, who was five, was to be the ring bearer; Donny, Jurgen's friend, the best man. I picked La Muda as the maid of honor. Papi would come from Puerto Rico to give me away. Mami found a priest to marry us even though I'd never been to his church. Jurgen kept abreast of the plans through daily phone calls. I worried about the cost of the wedding, especially when we advanced money that wouldn't be refunded. But according to the etiquette books I consulted, the bride's family bore the expense.

When not shopping for my trousseau, I echoed the phrases in the Berlitz “Teach Yourself German” long-playing records I found at the library. On my wall was a map of Egypt with a big red circle around Alexandria, where Jurgen said we would live—
not Cairo, as I had imagined. I didn't believe in karma, astrology, palm reading, handwriting analysis, reincarnation, extrasensory perception, astral projection, transcendental meditation, Nostradamus, “Chariots of the Gods,” or any of the other mumbo jumbo every young person in the United States was supposed to be obsessed with in 1968. But what was I to make of the fact that I, who had spent three years perfecting the role of Cleopatra, was about to move to the city of her birth and untimely death?

Even though it seemed preordained that I should marry Jurgen, doubt niggled at me. He didn't appear to be a violent man, but by his own admission he was a criminal. What if he'd done worse things and hadn't told me about them because I didn't ask the right questions? It frightened me to think that he'd take me to Egypt and then I'd be stuck there with no one to help me if he turned out to be a drunkard or a wife beater.

There was another thing that bothered me: I couldn't convince myself that I loved Jurgen. Was I crazy to expect to love a man I'd met only a few times? It troubled me that although I looked forward to his calls, I had forgotten what he looked like. What shape were his eyes? What shade his hair? If I loved him, his features should be embedded in my memory. How tall was he? Did he write with his left hand or his right? I didn't know whether he had birthmarks, or whether he parted his hair. As the day approached for Jurgen's return, I grew nervous and wished to stretch the time so that it wouldn't happen in two weeks, ten days, five days, three.

“I can't do it,” I cried on the phone two days before his arrival.

“What do you mean?” He knew exactly what I meant.

“It's happening too fast. I'm not ready. . . .”

“Don't you love me?”

I dreaded that question from him. In the two weeks we'd been engaged, no one had asked it, not even Jurgen. It was the silence that confirmed it, the fact that I didn't interrupt him and say, “No, that's not it, that's not it at all.”

“I see,” he said after a while.

“Maybe if we had more time to get to know each other,” I hedged halfheartedly.

Jurgen heard the uncertainty in my voice, didn't attempt to change my mind. Had he tried, I might have wavered, at least for a while. “All the plans we had,” he said sadly, which were Mami's exact words when I told her the wedding was off, though she was angry rather than melancholy.

We lost several hundred dollars in deposits for a wedding dress, the hall, bridesmaids' dresses. I told Mrs. Davis at the Advertising Checking Bureau not to give my job away because I wasn't moving to Egypt. At first, it was embarrassing to explain to people that I'd changed my mind, but after a while, I was proud of it. I saved myself, I thought. I've done something most women don't do until it's too late.

Shoshana had been in Israel all summer. “Are you still a virgin?” she asked the minute we saw each other again, and I had to admit I was, and so did she. “Not that I didn't have plenty of chances,” she amended, which led to my telling her of my adventures with Avery Lee and Jurgen.

“What is it with you and Germans?” she wanted to know.

“I don't pick them,” I defended myself, “they pick me.”

She signed up for courses at Manhattan Community College, but I didn't, because I wanted my days free for Children's Theater International. To supplement my part-time salary at the Advertising Checking Bureau, I found a job distributing flyers in front of a bank on Park Avenue. One day a woman with a neatly trimmed Afro and an African print dress stopped to talk to me. She had an agency for “exotic” models and wondered if I had any interest. We made an appointment for the next day, and I showed up at her office on Sixth Avenue and 40th Street with my portfolio of photographs by Shanti. The door was locked. Every once in a while a phone rang inside, but no one answered. I waited in the hall for half an hour and then gave up, annoyed to have missed an afternoon of work for nothing.

I walked to Woolworth's on Fifth Avenue, where the public
phones were in mahogany cubicles with doors that shut tight for privacy. As I settled into the first booth, a man peered inside, and when I looked up, he moved on. He'll just have to wait, I thought. I called the temporary jobs agency to let them know I was available for the next few days. Then I called Mami to tell her I'd be home early to pack my room, since we were moving again, to a house on Fulton Street in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. Mami was excited, because Titi Ana had agreed to rent an apartment in the house, which meant Mami could afford to buy the building. Our cousins Alma and Corazón would live with us. I came out of the phone booth in a much better mood than I entered it.

“Excuse me,” a voice startled me, and when I turned around, there was the man who'd peeked into the phone booth. I was sure he was about to complain that I had talked for too long, but he smiled and pointed to the portfolio. “Are you model?”

“Trying,” I grinned.

“I am film director,” he said. “I am looking for leading actress for my movie.” He had a heavy accent, hesitated between words as if to make sure of the pronunciation.

“Where are the auditions?” I asked, excited but trying to be businesslike.

“I write down for you.” He tore an edge of paper from a note in his pocket, wrote a name and phone number, handed it to me.

“Ulvi Doḡan,” I read.

“Dawn,” he corrected me. “Like the morning.”

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“Turkey. And you?”

“Puerto Rico.” I introduced myself and promised to call the next day.

“Very good,” he nodded. “In the afternoon, I will be there.”

That evening, I called Shoshana to tell her that a Turkish film director wanted to audition me. “Come with me,” I asked.

“What if there's no part in the movie for me?”

“Just come and keep me company.”

The appointment was on East 58th Street, nowhere near the
theater district or the rehearsal studios used for auditions. “This feels a little weird,” I said to Shoshana as we stood in front of the white brick residential building. She suggested that maybe the film company had rented an apartment for the interviews.

The doorman called up my name, directed us upstairs. We rang the bell directly across the hall from the elevator, as he instructed. It was opened by the man from Woolworth's, whose broad smile dimmed when he saw Shoshana. He asked us in.

“I hope you don't mind,” I apologized, “but my friend is an actress too. In case you need extras . . .” He nodded.

The room we walked into was in black and white. Two black leather armchairs, a matching couch, what looked like a black leather-topped table were arranged around a shag rug with black-and-white squares. On the stark white walls were four enormous posters, grainy black-and-white closeups of the same woman in the throes of sexual ecstasy. Shoshana and I looked at each other.

“Mr. Doḡan,” I began to excuse us and get out of there.

“Call me Ulvi, please. Have a seat, please.” He ushered us to the armchairs. “May I offer you Coca-Cola?”

Shoshana said yes, and I glared at her. As Ulvi opened the refrigerator, spilled ice cubes from a tray, opened and poured the Coke, Shoshana and I whispered to each other. She thought the apartment was tasteful, the pictures as arty as the ones in our portfolios. “She's fondling herself,” I hissed.

Ulvi returned with our Cokes. He sat on the couch, leaned back, crossed his legs. He wore brown leather loafers with no socks. Shoshana noticed too. While we sipped our drinks, he told us that his film was to be shot on Long Island. I asked to see the script, and he placed his hand on a neat pile of papers on the coffee table. “It is not ready yet,” he said. He asked us about our acting experience. Shoshana had been in a couple of high school plays. I listed my credits, which impressed him. Shoshana wondered what he had directed, and Ulvi said his film had won top prize at the Berlin Film Festival. The posters on the wall began to look more artistic.

Ulvi leaned toward me, touched my hand. “I am sure I can use you in my movie,” he said. “But we must do screen test. Yes?”

“Yes, of course,” I said.

He leaned back, his hands fingertip to fingertip, and said he had a part for Shoshana too, but smaller. She beamed with gratitude. I asked when the screen test would be, and he said he had to arrange it but needed my phone number to let me know. He didn't ask for Shoshana's. He led us to the door, stood in the hall until the elevator came.

“You're going to be a star!” Shoshana shrieked, as we walked down the street.

“The screen test might be awful. . . .”

“Did you see how he looked at you? Every movement you made . . . he watched so carefully!”

“I didn't notice.”

“I can say I knew you when . . .” she giggled.

I dared not hope. Ulvi talked like a director, and Shoshana pointed out it was easy to check if he really won in Berlin. We walked to the library, and sure enough, there it was on page 42 of the July 8, 1964,
New York Times.
The audiences were surprised, the paper said, that the award went to
Dry Summer,
a Turkish film. They described Ulvi as its “youthful producer,” and Shoshana and I agreed that he did seem youthful, if not young.

We parted at the subway station, Shoshana still certain that Ulvi represented my big break.

He called to say that the screen test would be that Sunday, so I put on my best outfit and appeared at his door. There were no cameras in the apartment, no lights, no film crew. I wondered if I was too early, but Ulvi said no, the cameraman was late. I asked, “Should I come back?” But he suggested we talk until the crew arrived.

Was the script ready yet? I wanted to know. “My writer is very slow,” he said with an indulgent smile and a shrug of the shoulders.

After five minutes of chitchat about who I was, what I did,
where I lived, the phone rang. He spoke in Turkish, a language I'd never heard. Its sound was soothing, at least, the way he spoke it, in a hushed, intimate voice, a raspy whisper. From time to time, as he listened to the caller, he lifted his hand in a “just one moment” gesture.

He had huge, very dark brown pupils; straight, fine, black hair; a high forehead. Deep lines ran from his nostrils to his lips, which seemed drawn on his face, their shape precise, flat. His nose made a straight line with his forehead, flared to a wide base. In profile, he looked like a museum fresco of an Etruscan horseman or a Mesopotamian king. The majestic air was enhanced by his movements, which were slow, studied, as if he had to be careful or he'd knock something over.

Once he hung up, he asked me about Puerto Rico. He'd never been there but had attended film festivals in Cartagena, Colombia, and in Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Mexico. Along the way, he had picked up a few words of Spanish.
“Señorita,”
he said,
“¿Cómo está?”
I congratulated him on his excellent accent. “It's English I have trouble with,” he grinned.