Page 14 of In a Far-Off Land
In August, I got a couple callbacks from Central Casting that didn’t amount to anything and then—finally—I got picked as an extra for a bar scene in a B film. My face ended up on the cutting room floor, but I still got my seven bucks. It wasn’t stardom but it was a start. I went out celebrating with Lana and a couple of fellas she knew. My date bought me a steak and got us into a second-rate speakeasy on Wilshire. He got fresh in the back seat after, but that was to be expected and I made sure to put a stop to it before he went too far. I wasn’t going to repeat my past mistake—not when I was so close.
Then—it seemed like overnight—rumors turned into a reality. According to the papers, box office numbers dropped by half and unemployment doubled. We’d thought things were bad, but within weeks they got worse. Breadlines swelled and dance partners at the Rose dwindled. Men begging for nickels couldn’t spare two for a dance. By the time the Santa Ana winds blew summer into autumn, I was lucky if I made a dollar a night. And a dollar wasn’t enough to live on.
I kept trying at the studios—Don’t you give up, Minnie,I could hear Mama say.
Some days I was too short, others too tall. On Monday my hair was too red, on Tuesday not red enough. It was just too much. Pretty soon I was living off the change in the bottom of my handbag. My face in the pocked mirror at the boardinghouse was drawn, my skin chalky. My hair lost its shine, and gowns I woreat the Rose—they had a rack of dresses in the changing room that all the girls used—sagged where they should have curved. I tried, I really did. I sparked up my smile and perked up my dancing, but I heard from Lana that Bert was looking to send some girls packing, and I was lowest on the totem pole.
Finally, I had no choice. I brought Mama’s ring into the pawnshop on Hollywood Boulevard, just down the street from Grauman’s Chinese. The proprietor, a fella with a long face and sad-looking eyes, must have thought he was talking to a chump. “Inferior quality,” he claimed, holding it close to his face.
I took the ring back, desperation rising in my chest. “It’s solid gold.” I pointed to the intricately worked gold vines holding a pink-tinged pearl the size of a cat’s eye.
“It is unusual, but only eighteen karat.” He sighed as if he’d seen this kind of thing before. I suppose plenty of people were down on their luck. “I’ll give you thirty, with sixty days to redeem it. Best I can do.”
Thirty dollars? I walked out of the store. But the next day I was back, hungrier and not so nervy. That mug took one look at my face and dropped his offer to twenty-seven. I didn’t have a choice if I wanted to eat, so I handed it over.
People can be downright horrid, I thought then.
The thing was, I didn’t know the half of it.
——————
I’d been in Los Angeles six months when I learned just how naive I really was.
Lana taught me a lot in those days. Like how to make my lipstick last by mixing it with petroleum jelly and how to make a piece of baloney taste like ham by frying it up on the hot plate. I pickedup smoking from her, too. I didn’t like it all that much, but it kept you from getting hungry, like she said, and I could make a pack of smokes last almost a week. I’m ashamed to say she also taught me how to ride the streetcar without a ticket and slip a lipstick into my pocket while the salesgirl at Bullock’s wasn’t looking.
I picked up the lingo from Lana as quick as the cigarettes. When I’d first got off the bus, I didn’t know a bird from a bohunk. Thanks to Lana, within a couple weeks, I sounded just like all the other girls out here calling themselves sisters and their fellows macs and palookas.
But what I couldn’t figure was how Lana had money to spare for glad rags and bootlegged gin when I worked the same job and couldn’t scrape together enough for rent at the end of the month.
On a cool morning in October, I looked—really looked—at myself in the mirror. I wasn’t going to get a part in a film unless it was about castaways on a deserted island or victims of drought in an ancient land. I’m not saying I was the only one suffering. Who was I to complain when able-bodied men were selling apples on the corner or praying for a few hours’ work in the fields? When women with children clustered at their feet begged for pennies?
That day, I went to one of the breadlines on Broadway. A woman carrying a hollow-eyed infant—with two more children hanging on her ragged dress—stared at my up-to-the-minute frock and fashionable hat. I couldn’t bear it. I fished my last quarter from my purse and pressed it into her hand. I wasn’t about to take food from children. I’d done this to myself, truth be told, and didn’t deserve charity.
Later that day when Lana asked for the rent, I didn’t have a nickel. Then she told me how she kept up. Even after six months in the City of Angels, I was shocked.
She fished a cigarette out of her handbag and lit it, taking a long drag. “It’s not as bad as it sounds, Minerva. And it will make you ten bucks quick. I can’t keep covering the rent for you, you know. There’s plenty of girls who could move in here.” She offered me a puff.
I said no to the smoke with a shake of my head. I’d known Lana was free with her affection—she called herself a New Woman just like the magazines talked about. But what she was saying... No, I couldn’t do that. Besides, I wasn’t like Lana. She had time working against her. Although the roster at Central Casting listed Lana as twenty-one, I’d seen her in the mornings. She was thirty if she was a day, and thirty was tough to sell in Hollywood. She had less chance of making it big every day that went by.
“I’ll find something else. I’ll take extra shifts at the dance hall.” But we both knew that it didn’t matter. Men weren’t coming to dance when they couldn’t afford a cup of coffee.
Lana shrugged like it was nothing. “Listen, it’s not your first do-si-do or anything, right?”
Search me how she knew, but she was right. Alex had taken care of that.
She raised her perfectly penciled brows. “So what does it matter?” My stomach twisted as I realized what she was saying. I was already spoiled, she meant. I guess she was right.
She gave me three days to cough up the rent or get out. I spent every one of them looking for a day job and came up with nothing. I went through my belongings looking for something to take to the pawnshop, but I didn’t have anything left. When my time was up, I went back to her. My mouth was dry, and my stomach turned a cartwheel. “Don’t you worry about... getting pregnant?”
Lana drawled, “Don’t worry about it, hon. It’s not likely, andif it happens, Bert will take care of you.” She eyed me and for a moment seemed to take pity on me. “Honestly, there’s no shame in it, Minerva. When you’re a film star, this will all be worth it. And anyhoo, no one need ever know.” She gave me a sympathetic look. “It’s not so bad. Just close your eyes and think of Clark Gable.”
Late that night, when my shift ended, Bert was waiting for me. He gave me a couple of shots from his flask—whisky—then introduced me to Cal. The dark-suited man shifting from foot to foot had a sagging, middle-aged face and thick, black-rimmed glasses. He smelled like mothballs and perspiration. My knees shook and the whisky threatened to come back up as Cal led me to his dusty Lincoln touring sedan with a back seat big enough for two.
No one need ever know. No one need ever know.I repeated it like a prayer.
Lana was right. It was quick. It didn’t hurt, not like with Alex, but I’d rather have pain than the shame that twisted in me as Bert tucked a damp ten-dollar bill in my hand. When I got home that night, I cried just the same as I did that night in Odessa.
In the morning, I paid Lana and swore I wouldn’t do it again.
