In Theda Bara's Tent (as Reviewed by Publisher's Weekly)

CHAPTER TWO

Day after day, I stood at the windows looking out for Uncle Sonny. Sometimes I saw him and raced downstairs and out the front door just to discover my mistake. Waiting, waiting, hope turning to anger, anger turning to despair, the indignity of helplessness. I could hardly believe this was happening to me, the crown of my mothers head. She said that to me when she tucked me in at night, “Harry, you are the crown of my head.” Homesickness was perpetual, like blinking. I went to sleep with it; I woke up with it--the middle of me was encased in a bubble of hurt.

The house was a converted private mansion, so there was no dormitory but separate rooms: a nursery for unfortunate babies, schoolgirls on the second floor, boys on the third. It was my misfortune to be in the same room as an overly developed twelve-year-old named Kyle. He wasn’t an orphan but was one of those who came to the home when he needed temporary relief from whatever horror was going on at his own home. Another boy was in that room too, an eleven-year-old named Freckles who was strong enough to scold Kyle for bullying the smaller children.

He could only scold what he saw, and much of what Kyle did was done in secret. For some reason, there was no lock on the bathroom door, and one of Kyle’s favorite tricks was to open the door while I was on the toilet. When I protested, he closed the door. Then he opened it and peeked in and closed it again. Then he opened it and came inside and just stood there and when I protested, he departed with a maniacal cackle, leaving the door wide open. Kyle’s other trick was shoving you so you’d stumble down the stairs.

The Elizabeth Home was run by volunteers. Each day, self-assured, cheerful, efficient men and women came into the house to attend to something. And how are we today, they said to me but never waited for a reply. Members of the bedding committee bustled about with sheets and blankets. One volunteer insisted I try a few different pillows to see which one was most comfortable, but since I had never slept with a pillow before, I didn’t know how to judge and kept saying, “No, thank you. No, thank you.” Her insistence was aggressive as though giving me that pillow was a test to see if she had what it took to uplift someone else. The education committee arrived with books for our library. Men from the fuel committee checked our furnace. The clothing committee brought freshly laundered, hand-me-down trousers, shirts, pajamas and underwear, which filled the clothes chest assigned to me next to my cot. The Lend-a-Hand Circle of Kings Daughters knit socks and caps for us.

I was of particular interest. Is this our little Hebrew? My, what eyes! Has a Jewish family been found yet?

I explained to Lady Mother that it was important for me to remain there so Uncle Sonny could find me when he returned. When he returns, she said, well tell him where you are. But she did not find a Jewish family. For a while I believed it was my fault. When I became familiar with Haverhill, I realized that most of the Jewish families had eight or more children and lived crowded together on what the city map referred to as Jew Street. Many of those immigrants prospered. Indeed, some of them eventually came to own some of the shoe factories. But when I arrived, no one could afford to feed another mouth. All extra money was used to bring more relatives to America.

I was used to celebrating the Sabbath on Friday nights, a special roast chicken dinner, my father laying his hand on my head and blessing me and my mother silently praying over the candles. Now on Friday nights, I joined the other children in the front parlor where we sang hymns as Lady Mother banged away on the upright. The bold melody of Onward Christian Soldiers excited me and so did the odd words “Marching as to war.” What were they going to war about? “With the cross of Jesus going on before.” They were going to war with a cross? No guns? But I loved that tune and sang with gusto. The words to Amazing Grace made me choke up. At first I could not sing I once was lost but now Im found. When we came to that part I just had to swallow and bite the inside of my cheeks. Then the evening came when I could sing those words, and I knew that something had shifted in me, and though it felt like a relief that the pain was duller, I worried that I was forgetting my old self. 

The public school in Haverhill was about five blocks away. We followed Lady Mother like a line of ducklings. Her final inspection included straightening collars, flattening flyaway hair and making stone suckers spit out their stones. The other children going into school slowed their pace, stared and looked away, embarrassed. They could imagine nothing worse than being us. They had been told to save their outgrown clothes for the orphans and to think of starving orphans when they wasted food. I had been told the same thing by my parents. 

All of us, with equal eagerness, watched the transformation of the Haverhill fairgrounds when Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show came to town with eight hundred performers and five hundred horses. Hundreds of Indians in his troupe set up tepees, and we saw Mexicans in big sombreros walking around town. Most of the children in school would go to the show with tickets bought by their parents, and this was bitter to me because I believed that I loved Buffalo Bill better than any of them. Even when I lived in New York City, I read books about him and played being him. I cantered around on Powder Face, his white horse.

I struggled trying to decide whether buying a ticket was a good use of my remaining money and decided that it was. The cash was in a little pouch at the back of my books on a shelf above my cot, except that it wasn’t there. I was alone in the room and went to Kyle’s space opposite mine to find out if he was the culprit. Kyle had gone home and would stay there, so the others told me, until his father was put in jail again. He had shoved the pouch under his mattress without any of my coins in it. I cried harder than I had ever cried before. It sounded like a wail, and I couldn’t stop even when I heard one of the volunteers coming up the stairs. It was Mr. Cogswell from the bank, coming to check the ceiling for leaks. “Say, youngster. That’s no way. You don’t want me to tell Lady Mother to keep you home Saturday, do you?”

He had bought all of us seats right in front, and none of us had to worry about Kyle because he wasn’t there. We joined fifteen thousand other fans in the bleachers. Fifteen thousand of us leaped to our feet and cheered when, to the sound of a military march, Buffalo Bill, mounted on his high-stepping white horse, pranced into the arena holding an American flag upright in his gloved hand. His clothes, hemmed with fringe, were the color of tumbleweed; his white hair touched the shoulders of his leather jacket. White mustache, white goatee—his expression was stern. He held black silver-studded reins and sat with ease on a silver-studded saddle. The acts consisted of cowboys riding at lightning speed clinging to their steeds with only one foot in the stirrups and Indians doing rain dances. When an old Deadwood stagecoach rolled into the arena, a cowboy with springs for feet demonstrated how fast a man could change horses in the days of the old Pony Express.

At the end of the show, to the sound of cheering, Buffalo Bill dismounted, took off his gloves and walked around the edge of the arena, shaking hands with the children who leaned out over the railing. They begged him to take their hand, calling, Me! Me!” I did not bother to extend my hand or call his name because I did not want more disappointment. I just stood by the railing, awestruck as he came nearer.

Skin like bark, he was as exotic as a tree come to life. Much to my amazement, he stopped in front of me, looked into my eyes, showed me his grave and intelligent soul and took my hand. His hand was large, warm, with no impatience in it. Quite the opposite. There was something comforting and slow in it. However long it took for us to connect, to really connect, thats how long he stayed. When he moved on to the next child, I felt I had been given a present, that he had lodged a ruby in the middle of me. I smelled my hand and put my palm gently to my cheek. Me, he chose me. There was a bigger world out there and people in it who would see my worth. Such are the encounters from which children draw strength.