Come Back (10 page)

You, who are always so always logical, will say yes.

I've gone on endlessly. But maybe that's because I am so afraid of your reaction. I am, as always, enraptured. And the distance between us makes me feel closer to you than ever. I know that is a frightening and very romantic statement.

One more thing. One of the elements I love in the
Euphues
passage that Dash quotes is that it is based on the notion that chameleons live on air — that it is their sustenance. I don't get much from you and that makes me think I am sometimes like the Early Modern chameleon. Others live on love; I live on air. But whatever you give me, I promise to love it, as I am yours, always.

I
don't know where to start. I am quite beside myself. Which calls up the image of another me sitting here. And to some degree that is the problem, I think. I have been trying very much to be a good girl and live the life that has been set out for me. But I don't know if I should do it. I'm champing at the bit. Not because I'm spoiled or selfish — something you might say. I honestly don't know how you expect me to take what you say lying down. It's completely unfair, especially for someone like me. You may say it comes from all those years at
MGM
, of being told that I was special. Well, there you go again, like everyone else, making assumptions about me. I don't understand why I can't be treated like everyone else. Just because I happen to be talented — or
did
happen to be talented — doesn't make me inhuman, does it? Well, I've always been treated as non-human or subhuman or superhuman. I really feel I've reached the point where I have nothing to lose with you. I can't even get an image of you. What I get is words, just words. That's all that comes back.

I've had it with syntax. In one of your theorizing moments you said — referring to Wittgenstein (or maybe it was just the whole last century and language theory in general) — that you can always tell when I'm in trouble. Apparently I start using bad language, or just bad syntax. You think that's what's happening now. And you went on and on about this as we academics tend to do. You wonder which came first — the syntax or the emotional problems. Oh my, maybe the disintegrating syntax
caused
my emotional problems.

How very post-structuralist of you.

Well, it's like this. The garbage you sent me is, yes, garbage. And
I
can make threats, too, you know! What you sent is full of fucking threats. Do you know what threats
do
to me? Do you have any idea? I'll tell you what
she
did to me. You know
who
I'm talking about. I'll never forget it. Since time began, it seems I've had to read this shit about me being abandoned by my homosexual father. And then the amateur psychologists chime in — “This created a longing for an abusive relationship with a man.” Whatever. I wish those armchair psychologists would just spontaneously combust in their fucking La-Z-Boys. He never abused me, emotionally or otherwise. He was a wounded bird and the world didn't understand. Does he have to be a villain just because he was a homosexual?

Listen to me.
She
was the villain. Has anyone ever done a fucking study of mothers? We get a dumb rep. And by that I mean a good one. In other words, we can never be really
bad
because we're mothers. But mothers are the worst; worse than any knifing or torture. What that fucking bitch did to me! I know you've heard this story before. But before, I always gave the nod to your suggestions that perhaps it was not true. I let you think it might be exaggeration. Well, I'm not exaggerating.

I was there. I was tired, I was worn out, I was eight years old and I was complaining about the vaudeville act. To my mother, this was heresy. I had good reason; it wasn't just that we were going to have to get up early the next day and haul our asses to some godforsaken town outside of Pasadena to do an afternoon show. It was because the last time we performed there the crowd was terrible. There was no one there — and the sad little group that finally turned up abused us. They fucking threw things at us. I mean, people don't like the act? Fine, big deal. We all don't have the same taste. But do they have to throw things?

And so my mother wakes us up with the “Upsy-daisy, girls! It's never too early to shine!” She knew I didn't want to get up that morning. She just loved torturing me with her fucking fake cheeriness, loved making me unhappy. It's as simple as that. Now, why would that be? You know, there are some women who just don't like other women. No, it's true, they don't. And these women-haters are not necessarily femmes fatale. Jesus, I'm the femmest fucking fatale there is, and I love women — especially if they're smart and have a fucking edge.

I used to love Marlene. I couldn't stand June Allyson. But the difference is so easy to see. You put the two of them together and it's evident. But, you know — one of the reasons might have been Marlene's clit. June Allyson didn't even have one; I doubt if she even had a boat, never mind the little man in it. But Marlene had a gigantic one; it was like a small dick, I swear. She showed it to me. (Noël Coward was very impressed with it, by the way. He offered to go down on her, but Marlene said it would be incest.) Marlene wanted
me
to go down on her. But then again, Marlene wanted
everyone
to go down on her. I'm really not into that. I mean, I like women,
but
. . . And she absolutely understood. I think she was just pulling my leg. She really liked to shock people. But, boy, did that broad like blow jobs. I think that's all sex was to her — just getting a good blow job. She used to tell me stories about Mammy going down on her. You know, Mammy from
Gone with the Wind
— Hattie McDaniel. They met on the set of
Blonde Venus
. The whole movie was about sex, sex, sex — and debasement. So, sure enough, Hattie starts winking at Marlene. She said that Hattie knew right from the first moment she saw her that all Marlene wanted from life was a good blow. Hattie said that some women, just from the way they wave their cunts around, might as well be wearing a sign saying,
Gimme a blow job now!

Well, anyway, Hattie really got off on Marlene's oversized equipment. I must say, this story made me love Marlene. I didn't hate June Allyson because she was a woman. I hated her because she was boring. I didn't love Marlene because she had a big clit and was, therefore, a man. Don't go all essentialist queer theory on me. Anyway, Marlene
wasn't
a man. She was all woman and full of the business. And she was so smart and so nasty — but in a good way. She could make mincemeat of awful people as she would not say one good thing about them. She loved tearing them to shreds. She did it with that Nazi drawl of hers and made it sound like she was sending them to a concentration camp.

But there's a kind of woman — usually the pinched June Allyson kind, and the kind like my fucking mother — who congenitally hate other women. Who knows why? It's probably innate, some crazy genetic thing. I know my sister Virginia was not too fond of women either, so maybe she got it from my mother. Well, this kind of woman is always jealous, always competitive — like a man, actually — around other women. Okay, so now imagine a woman like this with three fucking daughters. What luck, eh? Well, of course she's going to torture them. I used to feel so sorry for my father because he knew she hated us; but there was nothing he could do about it. I mean, mothers back then — and even now — those manipulative hags can do no wrong. Those evil bitches, someone should rewrite the book on mothers. Mother's Day should be Hitler's Birthday, and hey, how should we celebrate
that
? Get Hitler a nice card, congratulating him on his crimes? Why is it that women don't commit as many crimes as men? But oh, they do. They torture their children — it's called parenting.

So that morning we were in some sad and sorry hamlet near Pasadena on our way to another matinee. And we had to get up early after a late-night show. But mainly I couldn't face getting hit with the tomatoes. You know, years later Sue, Virginia and I would laugh about the tomatoes. But at the time it wasn't fun, and it wasn't funny. And I wasn't having a tantrum or anything, Jesus, I wasn't lying on the floor doing a Helen Keller. I wasn't being a fucking child star; I wasn't even a fucking child star at this time. This was completely before Hollywood. I was just the prettier, cuter sister who could actually sing. Now, I may have been crying, but it wasn't fake crying. And believe me, I know the difference.

I got up and packed my suitcase and sat on it. As I say, I was crying. And Mother was in a rush like she always was. And there was a schedule. And there was just me in the room. My sisters were already in the car waiting. It was a very sad room — the room I had slept in with Sue the night before. I remember there were two single beds, and a painting of a brook and a stream and a church. A goddamn church. And there was a lamp that didn't work on the bedside table. And, of course, a Bible inside the table, and bedspreads that had that kind of grubby feel. You know, not exactly dirty, but not exactly clean. There was only one tiny round window, and it was also dirty. And there was a rug on the floor that had some sort of biblical scene woven into it.

I'll never forget that room.

So there I was sitting on my suitcase crying. My mother comes back up to get me. I was ready to tell her I was sorry for crying, and fully expected to do my duty and go down to the car. But no, when my mother saw me she was livid. Sometimes I think my mother actually resented me
because
I was such a nice person. There are people like that, you know. They feel bad because they're not nice people, and so they hate people who are. The bad people who are just fucking bad are actually not as evil as the ones who wish they weren't. Evil people who are just evil will leave you alone. But the ones who feel bad about being evil and wish they weren't — they just love to torture nice people out of jealousy.

So she opens the door and sees me there. I swear she didn't miss a beat, she just started her act. My mother was a very good actress, really she was. She didn't get much of a chance to show it in vaudeville. But when the chips were down, man, you didn't have a chance with her. Nobody did. She could turn it on and off like a fountain at Versailles. She took one look at me and she went completely dark. It was like a cloud passing over the sun. She said, “I'm sorry to see you're crying.” And I fell for it and sniffled and said, “I'm sorry too.” Then it was serious shit, completely terrifying, and she knew it.

“I've been thinking about it a lot and you're a drag on the act,” she said. “But audiences like me,” I said, hopefully. “Sometimes they like you,” she said, “but the problem is you can't take it. You can't handle it. You're no good on the road. You're just a pain. So I'm sorry to do this to you, darling. But we just can't have you in the act anymore.” I didn't understand. I asked her what she was talking about. “I'm leaving you, I'm leaving you here in . . .” I remember now; the name of the town was San Gabriel. That's right, like the angel. “I'm leaving you here in San Gabriel,” she said. I'll never forget those words.

I was confused. I said, “Mother, how can you leave me here? I'm your daughter!” Then — I swear it — I was seven years old, remember? Well, maybe eight, but I was a young eight, at least emotionally. And remember, my father was already living in a shack. And my life hadn't been too secure up to that time. All I really had was being onstage and singing with my sisters, and, of course, having audiences love me. So I couldn't believe
that
was being taken away. But my mother really seemed to mean it. She said, completely seriously, “No, we're going to leave you here, honey; we're going to leave you in San Gabriel.”

And this is the part that sounds completely crazy now, so many years later. The idea that I would actually believe that my mother was going to leave me in that lousy one-horse town sounds crazy. But at the time I truly
believed her. I said, “Mummy, how can you do that?” And she said, “Sometimes parents leave their kids. Daddy left all of us. Now I'm leaving you. That just happens sometimes. You're a pretty girl and you can sing all right. Maybe someone will adopt you. And maybe, when you work for them, you won't complain so much and you won't be so much trouble, and everything will be all right. But right now, I'm going to have to say goodbye.” By then I was starting to get hysterical. She pretended to comfort me, which made it even more real: “Don't worry, honey, I'm sure you'll be okay.” At this point she had closed the door and locked me in the room — those old rooming-house doors could be locked from the outside. Well, that was it. I was alone in the room. And as far as I knew, because I was eight years young, it was forever or until someone found me. Of course, I started screaming and yelling, and my mother, God love her, that righteous bitch, let this go on for at least an hour. We almost didn't make our gig. She almost made us miss our gig so she could teach me a lesson.

I remember how I used to hate it when people would praise us, and she'd say, “I never spank them, you know, I don't believe in corporal punishment.” No, she didn't. She was a
good mother.
Instead of spanking us she delivered the kind of torture that makes you wish you'd never been born. I will never forget what it was like when my mother left me in that room. Therapists talk about abandonment issues, and with most people it's just abandonment
in theory
. They think their parents don't love them and might threaten to leave if they didn't measure up. But my mother invented
conditional
love. She made it perfectly clear that she wouldn't love me if I didn't measure up. And, in fact, there was no point in her loving me if I didn't sing like a trooper and turn up on time. Her standards were high. And when it came to vulnerability and weakness and all the good emotions — pity and love — well, she didn't have time for any of that shit.

So you have to understand that when you make threats like you did, it must happen: you turn into my mother. I know I'm supposed to leave that behind. But some things you can't leave behind. Jesus, it's not fair for you to play on that kind of shit when you know the story. I know I've told you before — you
know
how sensitive I am about being just left. What do you want me to do, get down on my knees? You know I can't anymore. I couldn't even give you or anyone else a blow job.