Saturday's Child (11 page)

Love
,

Robin

Dear Diary
,

Mommie says I shouldn't have told you about Miss Monet. I'm sorry. Mommie says I should tell you about The Stork Club. Benton & Bowles, the ad agency for our show's sponsors, had a party for the cast there. I wrote this poem about it.

Everyone's sitting and laughing and drinking,

talking and talking

but nobody's thinking.

Anyway, Mommie says I should tell you The Stork Club named a drink after me. That's because Mr. Sherman Billingsley who owns it his little girl Shermane is a fan of mine. They already have a Shirley Temple drink that is ginger ale and cherries and sweet red stuff. So mine is 7-Up but with all the rest the same and also a pineapple chunk. And other restaurants like
Sardi's and The Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station and The Stage Deli and maybe Trader Vic's are going to have the Robin Morgan drink too, for when kids come, Mommie says. I knew I could be anything anybody wanted me to be, Diary, but I sure never thought I would be a drink!

Love
,

Robin (gulp gulp
)

Dear Diary
,

I haven't written in you for a whole week. I'm so sorry. It wasn't my fault. Well, it was, but not because I didn't care about you. I
love
writing in you even if somebody will read it because you never know. I didn't just not pay attention to you for a whole week because I didn't care. I couldn't
find
you.

You see, I did a terrible thing or it turned out terrible and I should have known better. So I had a big privilege taken away and that was you. I couldn't write in you for a whole week. A whole week missed out of my life that you'll never know about because I can't remember all of it but I'll try.

It started with the terrible thing. On Wednesday, because it's sort of an easy day after school with only homework and the script Aunt Sally let me go to the library for a half hour till Mommie got home from work. And I really did go. I am reading Lamb's
Tales of Shakespeare
because in only a few years I will be old enough to play Juliet in
Romeo and Juliet
she was really only 14 did you know that, Diary? I didn't. That's what reading gets you. And I asked Mrs. Izzard to please come and tell me when half an hour was up because when I start reading I forget about everything else. So she did and I left when I was supposed to leave. I was trying for my second Perfect Week with stars but now I've gone and ruined everything for the whole year. Even if every other week is perfect the whole year won't be.

So I looked both ways and was crossing the street all by myself. (I love that part.) Then I saw a little bit ahead up the block by our building this awful thing. It was a fight. It was Benjy and Roger who are these two boys from upstairs in 4-A and Benjy is also 8 and Roger is 10 and their father is not dead but him and their mother Liz are divorced. That means they don't live together anymore and probably hate each other. Miss Wood has been divorced I think lots and I heard she is on her 4th husband but that's a rumor. Still, she says when will she ever learn and that must mean a lot of hating. Anyway, sometimes Mommie and Aunt Sally and Liz from 4-A
have coffee together and talk upstairs or down here and when they do the kid or kids in whichever place is sent up or down to the other place. Us kids are supposed to play together whichever place we are. But I hate Benjy and even more Roger who is a bully. If we play up in 4-A they have only airplanes and guns and boring stuff and never want to play house or doctor or
Hamlet
. (I read
Hamlet
in Lamb's
Tales
I told you about and I thought we could act a play on it, with the ghost and everything.) They are very very stupid dumb boys. Roger likes to twist my dolls' arms around and once he broke one. They do not even know how to play poker and you can't teach them anything they are too dumb. Benjy likes to bang on our upright piano and he can't even play Chopsticks. I tried to teach him it was no use. I despair of both of them. So we just watch TV but I think cartoons are boring because I've seen how they do them on these big drawing boards and now it's never the same. But there's nothing else to do with these boys. The only good thing is when it's my turn to go upstairs I can have a Coke because they always have lots of Coke in the icebox. Liz says “Honey (she calls everybody Honey) I'm from Mississippi (spell?) and we just
live
on Coke and cigarettes!” I'm not allowed Coke except on special occassions (spell?) and we never have it in our icebox because Aunt Sally says it will rot my teeth. But I can have a Coke when I go upstairs and that's the only good thing I can think of about Benjy or Roger. And it's no good saying what can you expect from kids who don't have a father around (Hazel says this to herself real low whenever she passes them on the stairs) because after all look at me I'm not dumb and a bully. I know I'm lucky to be me and not everybody especially not boys can be me but still they could be better than they are.

Well, Diary, on that day they were specially horrible. It was Roger I saw up ahead on the street, and he was hitting and kicking at something and then I saw that the something was Roberta! Benjy was helping him and dancing around them and singing yaa yaa niggerbaby and
terrible
words like that that Mommie and me would never ever use (but sometimes if I want to wear new shoes or something right away Aunt Sally says “nigger-rich”). And Roberta was fighting and hitting back and shouting and I was proud of her because she would have licked Roger except it wasn't fair because there was Benjy to help hit her when Roger went down so they took turns but she never got to rest in between. So before I could think
about it and I know now I should have thought I ran up and hit Roger hard on the back of his head with the Lamb's
Tales of Shakespeare
Mrs. Izzard let me take out now I have my junior library card and then when he turned around (and was he surprised, Diary!) I kicked him in the shins.

Benjy just stood there. But it gave Roberta time to reach out and sock Roger biff bam wham like in the comic books right on the side of his turned around surprised face. Roger hit me and pushed me and I fell down in the gutter where it's all dirty and my coat I heard it rip and then Roger jumped on me with his knees and he was very heavy because by this time Roberta had jumped on his back and was strangling him around the neck but the two of them together were very heavy on my stomach. And so I reached up to get Roger off me because there was murder in his eyes (I read that somewhere maybe about Othello who really did kill someone or maybe about Macbeth who killed lots of people) so I was worried. Maybe his eyes were just bulging because Roberta was holding on so tight from behind his neck but I didn't want to take any chances and besides the two of them were making me not breathe almost. So I started to bang and bang at Roger's face with my book and his nose started to bleed and the cover got bloody and then once I missed Roger and hit Roberta's arm by mistake and then she got thrown off him which I didn't like because she fell but at least it wasn't so heavy because I was beginning to worry that Benjy would jump on Roberta who was on Roger who was on me at the bottom in the dirty gutter and I'd get squashed flat and die.

Anyway, so then Benjy started to cry like a baby when he saw Roger's nosebleed and Roger got extra mad because not only was he getting beat but Benjy was seeing it. So he picked up this dumb stupid part of one of his airplanes he must have dropped in the fight that was laying on the ground beside me in the gutter and he started to hit me in the face with it like I had hit him with the book. And then there was yelling and grownups and I heard Aunt Sally screaming My God Where Where and her voice was coming closer and then Roger was getting pulled off me and Benjy was crying louder and the snot running down out of his stupid nose and the blood running down out of his brother's stupid nose and Mommie calling from down the street What What on her way home from work and Aunt Sally screaming and bending over me and Liz yelling at Roberta and I turned my head and I saw the front of my coat torn bad and also bloody.
But I didn't know if that was Roger bleeding onto me or me bleeding onto me because what I really paid attention to was Roberta running away. She was running like the wind, faster than Atalanta in my big
Greek Myths
book and she was getting smaller and smaller and she ran even past the Negro houses and kept on running and disappeared around the corner down by the railroad tracks where kids sometimes hid or played you could see them when you waited for the train to go to rehearsal.

And then I started to cry too. Because all of a sudden I wasn't sure if Roberta thought I was joining Benjy and Roger against her or if she knew that the two of us, her and me, were on the same side just us against the world. How could she be sure, because she always smiled at me but I never asked her to play and she never got one of my organdy dresses, and maybe she knew I did play with Roger and Benjy even though I hated to but how could
she
know that? I thought as she got smaller and smaller like the wind and then disappeared that now I'd never get to learn how she was so good at throwing and catching balls. Maybe she just wasn't scared when things got thrown at her so she threw them right back. But she was scared of the grownups that day and none of the grownups were Negro people. They were Mommie and Aunt Sally and Liz and even Mrs. Izzard ran out and she took back the book before I could say I apologize about the blood on it. And there was Hazel out of nowhere talking to herself and Mr. Tompkins saying “These people it's just not right this used to be a good block.”

But most of all Mommie was crying and because she was screaming “Your face! Your face My God My God” I knew it wasn't just Roger's nose bleeding on my ripped front then, so I got scared too.

Well, Diary, Mommie carried me upstairs and everybody was crying and the doctor came and it was just a long scratch from under my eye down to my jaw but the doctor said it wouldn't leave a scar. I wonder if anybody called a doctor for Roberta. After Mommie stopped saying Thank God over and over and hugging me she got mad. She and Aunt Sally had a fight that Aunt Sally let this happen but Aunt Sally said it was all my fault. I had done a terrible thing that could have ruined our whole Future and Mommie had a bad bad case of nerves.

So I had my bath and my coat with the rabbit fur collar was “hopeless” Mommie said and she threw it out. Aunt Sally was “disgusted” with me. I
was America's favorite child and I had been fighting right in the gutter and it just made her disgusted. And then I had to go to bed early and Mommie took you away and there went my privilege of writing in you for a whole week she said. I tried to explain about two against one and not fair but she said she didn't want to hear it. So that was that.

And the rest of the week just got worse. Mr. Nelson swore at Aunt Sally when he saw my face next day at rehearsal, and Miss Quinlan said she thought she'd have a heart attack. They called up Miss Irwin so you knew it was really bad. She came down to the rehearsal hall wearing her mink coat and the sunglasses she always has on so you can never see her eyes even in the dark studio before the set lights get turned on but you can smell her perfume way before she comes in, so she stood there with her head to one side thinking at me. And it was only after she said like some wise judge or king in a play deciding something while everybody waited around, she said “I think by Friday our magician Pietro can fix it with makeup.” And then everyone laughed and said that's what they thought themselves. Mr. Nelson and Miss Quinlan said they were sorry to call her down to rehearsal but they had to be sure.

So then I knew Mr. Nelson and Miss Quinlan were in trouble with Miss Irwin and Aunt Sally was in trouble with Mr. Nelson and Miss Quinlan and I was in trouble with Aunt Sally and Mommie and everybody.

Things didn't get better and by Friday Mr. Nelson said this was the worst week of his directing career dam all of you meaning the whole cast. Miss Wood had three mygraynes (spell?) in one week and Mr. Nelson said I'd probably brought that on because Miss Wood hated violence of any kind (after the husbands and all that hate you can see why). Then it turned out that I had grown a whole inch and one of my costumes didn't fit good and Miss Quinlan said they'd have to start putting bricks on my head and shrinking me like a prune in the bathtub but then she said she was only kidding. Then Dickie (that's Dick Van Patten remember who plays my teenage brother even though he's 23 but looks younger) lost lots of money at the track (which is where they race horses and bet money on them) and wanted his pay in advance but Mr. Nelson said No that's happened too often. I thought poor Dickie. He was once a child actor like me and sometimes he makes me laugh about things but Aunt Sally says what does he know and we have nothing in common but I should always be
polite. I still like him because he can't ride a bike even now at 23. But I don't want to grow up and lose all our Future at the track. I heard Miss Quinlan say to Mr. Nelson that it was an addikshun (spell?) like booze (which gets you drunk). Which reminds me that to make everything worse, Papa (that's not my real father you remember he's dead but this is Jud Laire who I call Papa because he acts it) well, Papa came to rehearsal “drunk as a loon” Miss Wood said right out loud. I don't know what a loon is but it must be drunk, because Papa was very happy and kept throwing me up in the air and I loved him even if his breath did smell like our apartment building hall. And then he threw his arms around Billy Nalle and called him “Wee Willy darling” and Miss Quinlan said sharp to Aunt Sally Get that kid off the set.

So you see it was a terrible week, Diary, even if we are a really happy family on our show. You see why I apologize to you for paying you no attention all this time but I couldn't get to you.