Siren Queen(7)
“Look, you ain’t hurt. Not really. Not like some of these mooks would hurt you, right? Stop crying about it. You got a long life ahead of you. Stop crying. You’re going to be fine.”
He forced money into her hand, and she stumbled away like a dog that had been struck a glancing blow by a car. He looked after her anxiously until she was out of sight, and then, shaking his head, he returned to the set.
My sister and I went to the Comique to see Jackson’s Corner when it came out. I would never have known what movie I had appeared in if I hadn’t heard the name mentioned after my short scene.
It was bread and butter fare for the time. Maya Vos Santé was a woman with a past, looking to make amends, and the male lead turned out to be Raymond Reeves, forgettable but with a fairly admirable profile. The movie was like any I had seen, but suddenly I recognized the set change to Baker Street, which in this movie served for the streets of Hell’s Kitchen.
My body jerked like a fish on a hook when I heard my cue again. The camera found my skinny form pelting around the corner barefoot, and I watched, face flushing red as I skidded to a halt.
“Please,” came a childish, piping voice through the Comique’s tinny speakers, and my arm by my side itched as its twin rose on the screen.
It was exactly what Jacko had needed it to be, drawing pathos and wistful sighs from an audience that was just as likely to spit on a beggar as give her money. More important, of course, was Maya Vos Santé herself, kneeling down to kiss my forehead.
In that moment and out of it, I felt the brush of something true there, something larger than life and far better. She was generous, she was pure, she was a woman with a past, but her heart was still kind enough to wrap around a skinny little beggar child. She was a benediction, and again, I felt strangely and mysteriously blessed.
None of Maya Vos Santé’s films survived, of course. They were lost in the great fires that took so many of the kings and queens of Hollywood. There were some rumors about hers, that Jackson’s Corner, Dream of Wild Days, She Demands Her Way and all the others were sacrificed to John Everest’s revenge, long after she could do anything to stop him.
She disappeared before her films did, and there weren’t even any rumors about it, none that I heard. Women disappear, and even if you are famous, it can happen without a sound, without a ripple. I have to assume that one night, when the stars were gleaming overhead, she met a devil on the road like so many of my friends did, and he offered her a spread of cards, flipping them between his pale fingers. Alcoholism, born-again reverence, madness, a quiet cottage, a noisy car wreck, a lonely house on the edge of the desert, a book she could use as a tomb, a single line etched in the boardwalk, they would have flickered by, and taking a deep breath, she would have closed her eyes and chosen.
V
When Jacko wanted me, he would call my mother or send over a runner if it was very last minute. I was at school less and less, ostensibly helping my parents at the laundry, but if the truth were told, I was waiting on the phone call that would, for a few glorious days, free me from the endless shirts and trousers of Hungarian Hill.
Once Jacko asked after my sister, but she was developing a horror of my other life. When my mother carefully brought up the idea of joining me for one of my days on set, Luli cried and cried, hiding in the closet with the door pulled behind her as she had not in years. By turns, she clung to me and hid from me as if she was unsure about what I was becoming. To be honest, I wasn’t always sure either. There was a warmth and a weight deep inside me, something strange and new.
There was Su Tong Lin, of course, whose star you can still see gleaming softly and demurely near the meridian. I hear her star in Paris is brighter by far, and the one in Mumbai even more lovely. She grew up in the Chinese circuses, from which vaudeville was an easy jump and the silent movies even easier. She was born to the life, and though she might have mended a sleeve here or darned a sock there on the road, she certainly never pushed an iron in a room so hot she could have fainted.
My mother understood somewhat, because she would come with me to the set when she could, but day by day, my father watched me, puzzled and increasingly aggrieved. He came to see me on set exactly once, when I sold flowers to Genevieve Dumar. It was a good shoot, and I even got a couple of lines that Jacko made up for me on the spot. He had developed a kind of absent affection for me, passing me candy or the odd hair bow as a treat. That day he gave me lemon candy that tasted like sharp sunshine, and I held it in my cheek until it melted to memory. After the day was up, Jacko ruffled my hair and handed my mother another ten. My father stood behind my mother the whole shoot, face stone and shoulders straight, but I could see a storm brewing on his face every time Jacko came near me.
It didn’t break until we got home. He struck me a glancing blow across my cheek, sending me reeling to the kitchen floor.
He shouted in Cantonese, and by then, it was nearly lost to me. I heard the words “disrespect” and “bitch” and “whore.” He might have struck me again if my mother hadn’t wrapped her strong arms around his chest and dragged him back.
I clapped my hands over my ears and shut my eyes as they fought. She shouted in her broken Cantonese, and his words were faster, snakes and lightning accusing her, accusing me of all kinds of evil.
I opened my eyes just in time to see him raise his fist to her, and without a flinch, she had a kitchen knife in her hand, up and pointed straight at his throat. Her hair was ashen gray that day, but my father’s skin hung in soft folds around his neck and his arms were thin and ropy with sagged muscle. His powders lost their potency in the West, and now he was showing it.