Saturday's Child (8 page)

I was perhaps all of five years old when I turned insubordinate. One of the questions, we'd been told, was from a child complaining that when he was naughty, his mother reported it to his father, who then spanked him
too hard; what did the Juvenile Jurors think the child should do? We had been duly assigned our replies. One Juror had been told to advise the letter writer, “Just don't be naughty anymore” (certain to evoke a laugh from the studio audience); another was told to counsel him to beg his mother to do the spanking instead, on the assumption she would wield a more compassionate hand; still another answer was that he should ask if his mother and father could take turns doing the spanking. My assigned reply was that he should beg his father very nicely please maybe not to spank so
hard
(sure to get another laugh) or else to sneak some padding under his pants (
big
laugh). Not one of the assigned answers challenged the concept of corporal punishment.

But once we were live on air and my turn came, I said something different.

I don't know why. I can't remember the thought processes or emotional valences that kindled this act, although I do remember the fear and what I now know was the adrenaline surge that overrode the fear. I leaned forward toward my table mike and said it out loud.

“I don't think you should be spanked at all.”

Instantly, I felt the Ehrenreich vise on my right shoulder.

I went on. “I don't think it's good that children get hit.”

He clamped down harder. I could feel his fingernails through my starched organdy dress.

But I went on—about how maybe if the letter writer asked his parents to make up some other punishments for him when he was naughty, they might.

Ehrenreich reached in front of me and turned my mike around, facing it away from me.

On I recklessly went, giddy with it now, suggesting alternate punishments—“… like losing a privilege, maybe, or being sent to your room without supper.” That, I admitted, was what happened to me when I was bad, because my mother didn't think I should be hit.

Finally, so enraged that I could feel his bodily anger through his grip, Ehrenreich clapped his free hand (the other one was still embedded in my shoulder) in a muzzle over my mouth. Behind his sweaty fingers that stank of the nonfiltered Camels he was never without, I mumbled on intrepidly.

That got a laugh. And we went rapidly to a commercial.

Afterward, both Ehrenreich and Barry administered a stinging verbal dressing-down in front of all the other kids and their mothers, meant to humiliate me and serve as a warning to anyone else so inspired. Although I can't recall any previous revolts on my part, there must have been at least one other, because Ehrenreich shouted that this wasn't the first time I'd disobeyed on air but it had goddamned well better be the last. Aunt Sally was crying, her mascara all runny. She was stuttering, reassuring him, whereas I was engaged in a serious examination of the suddenly fascinating toe-tips on my black patent-leather Mary Janes. I was scared, but somehow intuited even at that age that I was too valuable a commodity to be dismissed. While that didn't translate into any sense of personal power or security, it did feel vaguely protective, and the idea settled into my ego like an oysterous grain of sand. I knew, narcissistically, my worth in their terms—but not in my own. I knew I was the only Juvenile Juror with her own show on the side, and the one who received the most fan mail. I'd paid sufficiently for both by enduring gibes, pranks, and pinches from the other Jurors. I wished that Aunt Sally had stood up for me and said as much about my value, there, in front of everybody, and I wondered what reply Barry or Ehrenreich might have made if she had. I was confused by the lack of support from her and, later, from my mother, because after all I'd learned my position about no hitting from them, so shouldn't they be proud of me? I didn't understand that their rejection of corporal punishment, while partly a matter of principle, was also based on anxiety about my ever appearing bruised or being in any way incapacitated for work.

But Aunt Sally's groveling to Ehreneich and silence in defending me didn't alter my own perceptions. Nor were they changed by the fear I'd experienced while rebelling, the physical pain (my shoulder turned black-and-blue), or the subsequent public embarrassment in front of the whole group, enabling the other kids to giggle with pleasure and their mothers to beam with satisfaction. I distinctly recall that I was busy feeling something utterly new, something fragile but strong enough to weigh in at a balance with all the negative results of my insurrection.

It was something akin to feeling proud of myself—but it was a new kind of pride. It was not a reflective pride, because no one else had praised me. It was from someplace inside
me
. I knew I was right. I knew kids shouldn't
get hit. I'd got that
said
, aloud, live and on air, and I'd refused to let them stop me.

My vocabulary was large, even for a precocious five-year-old, but not so large as to embrace such words or concepts as righteous action or self-determination. Learning those would take years. And it would be decades until the memory of that mutinous act would be resurrected by an unwitting Robert Redford, to whom I'm grateful. But from the moment I remembered it, I realized that I loved and respected that child who fought back in what was the first political act I recall ever daring to make.

How intensely she longed to speak in her real voice, that child!

How I wish there were a way of giving her back her own voice, her own truths, even if only by some literary conceit.

She did keep a diary, on and off, for years.

Let her speak for herself, then.

FOUR

Possession Game

…
that wild, unknown being, the child
,

who is both bottomless pit and impregnable fortress …

—C
OLETTE

Dear Diary
,

These are the first words I'll ever write in a diary. Mommie gave you to me, the best of all the presents I got on yesterday, my 8th birthday. I will never have another 8th birthday in my life. Mommie and me had lunch just us two at the Plaza Hotel and we were given tickets to go to the opera last night to see Carmen who had a rose between her teeth and got killed.

But you are best of all, Diary, because I wanted you and Mommie knew that and here you are. I love your shiny blue leather cover with the strip that has a lock in it and the tiny golden key that can shut you. Mommie is going to keep the key because she says I'll just lose it and also she wants to check and be sure I write in you every single day and also so she can correct my spelling mistakes. Because she says a person never knows who else might look. I'm a pretty good speller and I think nobody would look if I had the key but then you never know and they could always just cut the strip I guess. It's a wonderful feeling to write in you because your paper is
smooth and slippery and the color of the cream I lick off the milk bottle's round cardboard top. You are very important to me even if anybody else can look into you because a person never knows.

Your friend
,

with love
,

Robin Morgan

Dear Diary
,

Mommie says she is glad I wrote down all the good things we did on my birthday. She says it will be a treasure for me to look back on when I grow up and remember how happy these years were. I'm sure Mommie is right because otherwise a person might forget these things when they get old.

Today we got up and had breakfast. Mommie always has coffee and a muffin which is also one of her names for me, Muffin not coffee. So our joke is Mommie always has coffee and me for breakfast. Aunt Sally loves bagels a
lot
. I had hot cereal that I always hate. I hate cold cereal too. Anyway, then we got dressed and I wore the pink organdy with white butterflies aplikayed (spelling? Help Mommie!) on it that Mommie sewed for me (Mommie makes all my clothes, Diary, and she's wonderful at it) and my black patenleather (spelling?) maryjane shoes with the straps I hate. Then Aunt Sally and me took the train into New York City (we live in Mount Vernon, Diary, which is called a suburb sort of) and went to rehearsal and then I had an interview which is why the pink organdy today and then we took the train back. Then there was school and afterwards ballet and tap classes with Mrs. Liccione and then I did my homework and practiced piano and studied my lines for tomorrow's rehearsal. I should write more but I'm too sleepy. I almost didn't write in you tonight but I want to every single night so I did.

Your friend
,

with love
,

Robin Morgan

Dear Diary
,

I'll tell you about me. I'll tell it the way I'm supposed to in an interview.

I started talking when I was only four months old and really got to talking
when I was eight months old and Aunt Sally says then I never stopped. I won the All American baby medal when I was six months old and was Miss Baby Palm Beach Florida when I was two. I had my own radio program when I was four and also I was on
Juvenile Jury
for two years. Before that I was a model and sometimes I sang and danced and recited, like Portia's speech about mercy from Shakespeare. I like Shakespeare. I do not like singing. But people liked it and clapped when I sang “Mairzy Doats” and “Cement Mixer” and “Alexander's Ragtime Band.” The only song
I
liked to sing was “You Are My Sunshine” because it's Mommie's favorite along with “Besame Mucho” but that's in Spanish and I don't know how to sing in that. Also I acted in a movie called
Citizen Saint
when I was almost seven. I played Mother Cabrini as a child. She became a nun before she got to be a Mother which means a boss of nuns not a Mommie and then she got to be a saint, the first one ever from America. The movie had a big opening at the Bijou Theater on 45th Street and Broadway with lots of publicity and priests. And I also did guest shots on radio shows like
We The People
with Art Linkletter and
Arthur Godfrey's Hour
and once I was a talent judge on Ted Mack's show
Amateur Hour
.

Anyhow, now I'm on television every week in
Mama
(that's the name of the program) and I play a little girl named Dagmar. Our show comes from a book that was called
Mama's Bank Account
by Kathryn Forbes who is the first
real book writer
I ever met! Also there was a play and a movie called
I Remember Mama
from that same book. We wear old-fashioned clothes because we are supposed to be living around 1910 in San Francisco on Steiner Street. Our set is this oldtime house with a parlor and a player piano and stuff that's very awethentik (spelling?) because Mr. Jac Venza who is our set designer cares about things being just perfect. In the cast, there's Mama and Papa who came to America from Norway and there's Nels (my show brother) and Katrin (my show sister) and me. Our show is very popular and has won awards and I am famous I think. But I am not just famous. Mr. Ralph Nelson who is our director says I am a serious actress because I can be anything anyone wants me to be.

Anyway, I live with my Aunt Sally, who takes me to rehearsal and stuff, and my mother, whose name is Faith Morgan and it fits her because she always says she
never
loses faith. We live at 50 South Second Avenue in apartment 3-A, on the third floor (we don't have an elevator but Mommie
thinks someday when I make enough money we can move into the City and live in a fancy elevator building). Aunt Sally sleeps on the livingroom rollout sofabed that is covered by a blanket Mommie bought a long time ago in Mexico. Mommie and I sleep on twin beds in the bedroom. Our building is only one block from the railroad station which is good because we go into the City for rehearsals and shows and stuff every day but not on weekends and sometimes I do a fashion show even on a weekend day (I'm still a model, Diary, but not so much as when I was young).

What is not so good about our apartment house is that on one side of us is a Greek Orthodocks church where on Greek Easter (which is different from ordinary Easter), the priests march around the church carrying a coffin which is scary to look out the window and see, and they sing loud. Mommie says the coffin is empty and not to be scared. What is also not so good about our apartment house is that (on the other side) it is right next door to a place everybody says they should tear down and make into something clean like a parking lot because it has lots of little funny wooden buildings on it, sort of leaning like they could fall down. A lot of Negro people live there and some of the houses don't have electric light and everybody says they are a fire hazard. They are a fire hazard because the Negro people have to use candles to see by and have wood stoves everybody says. But I don't know how you're supposed to see in the dark or keep warm if you don't have electric plugs. They are very poor, Mommie says, and always on Thanksgiving and sometimes on other holidays (but not Jewish holidays because Mommie says none of the Negro people would ever be Jewish) Mommie and I go over to the houses with shopping bags. We bring cans of food we buy at the A&P on special and oranges you can get in sort of wiry bags. And we put some of my clothes I get too big for in the shopping bags. But we never put the organdies in there even when I get too big for them. Mommie thinks we should save them so I can treasure them when I grow up and also she says where would the little girls next door wear such things?

There is one little girl next door who is pretty much the same age as me and her name is Roberta which is sort of like Robin and I think she would look beautiful in one of the organdy dresses because she has a nice smile and seems friendly but Aunt Sally told me it would be an insult to give her one of the organdy dresses and I would never want to insult Roberta. I'd
like to go play with her sometimes but Aunt Sally and I talked about that. She told me everybody was exactly the same and Negroes were just as good as white people and poor people as good as rich ones. But life wasn't perfect, Aunt Sally said, and you had to face facts. Facts was that if Roberta came to 3-A to play she would only get jealous of all the dolls and pretty dresses and how lucky I was. And if I went over to Roberta's house to play first it was too small and we would have to play outside and we shouldn't play outside because the ground over there has broken glass and bottle tops and rusty metal things and I might fall and hurt myself or even bust up my face. And Mommie also explained that wanting to play with Roberta was a nice idea but it wouldn't work because Roberta and I had nothing in common and Roberta knew that even if I didn't. I don't think Roberta knows that. Even if she did we would have a lot more in common if she had one of the dolls and an organdy dress. Besides, they don't have TV sets over there next door because no plugs which means Roberta doesn't even know I'm on TV. So she might think I'm just a little girl like her and she might like me. She always smiles at me.