I said: It’s not fair.
I cried. He tried to hold me but I wouldn’t let him. Let him go hold his wife instead.
Mazie’s Diary, October 9, 1920
I’ll move out, that’s what I’ll do. Back into the city. I got a job, I got money saved. I’ll find a single apartment just right for a girl like me. Other girls do it, lots of them, all the time. I can find someone to rent to me. I won’t even tell Rosie. I’ll just move out in the middle of the night. I’ll pack up my things and run in the night. If she wants to talk to me she can come and stand in line just like everyone else.
Mazie’s Diary, October 11, 1920
Mack stopped by the cage.
I said: What’s the good word?
He said: Nothing, not a peep.
I said: What about that thing that happened down on Wall Street?
He said: We’re trying, we’re trying.
I said: Truly nothing then?
He said: Not a lot of evidence to be found, unless you count a horse’s head, and that horse ain’t talking. But we’ve got our eye on some individuals. Just because we can’t prove it doesn’t mean they didn’t do it.
I shuddered then. I don’t like that kind of talk.
Elio Ferrante
But we have a little problem here in New York with authority. The cops are not afraid to use their fists or their weapons.
Mazie’s Diary, October 13, 1920
Early morning, the coffee stinging more than most days.
Rosie down on the floor, washing away specks of nothing. Louis’s eating eggs at the table, fork after fork, not breathing in between.
I said: The kitchen’s clean.
Rosie kept scrubbing.
I said: Did you hear me? The kitchen’s clean, Rosie.
Rosie said: It’s clean when I say it’s clean.
I got down on my knees next to her. I grabbed her hand and she slapped me away. Louis came behind me and lifted me up by my waist. All of this was done in silence, as if we were performing our own lunatic ballet.
I ran to the train in the rain. I ruined my new hat. I threw it on the ground in front of the theater, and watched it suck up the water from the skies until one of the ushers dashed out with an umbrella and threw it away.
Elio Ferrante
It goes both ways though, this problem with authority. You bear down too much, someone fights back.
Mazie’s Diary, October 15, 1920
Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness.
This morning, we’re sniping at each other, me and Rosie, like usual. She won’t rest till she gets me off that train.
Louis said: Can’t a man eat his breakfast in peace? The two of you are like children.
Rosie said: She’s the child.
Louis said: Take it outside. I can’t stand another minute of it.
We went to the porch. Rosie slammed the door behind her. I felt bad for Louis, that he’d be getting it later from her. He must have thought it was worth it. Every once in a while it must be.
The sky was that brilliant early-morning violet I’ve only seen since we moved to Coney Island. I swear the ocean has a different sky than the rest of the world.
I said: Could we look at the sky for just one moment, sister?
Rosie said: Why won’t you do as I wish?
I said: Look at the sky. Look at it.
Rosie said: It’s your safety I’m worried about more than anything.
She started to say something else, but then suddenly the fanciest car I’ve ever seen pulled up in front of the house. I don’t give a rat’s ass about cars, but this was something special. It was a Rolls-Royce, silver. The air changed around it. For a moment I believed Louis had bought me this car. I pictured myself being driven to and from the Venice in it. What kind of ticket taker has a car like that? Me, that’s who. I felt this stir of arrogance. Even writing this now is making me laugh out loud. A-ha, I thought. My ride is here.
But it wasn’t my ride at all. A driver got out of the car, a proper one, wearing a special cap and gloves. He opened the rear door of the car and leaned inside. Someone slid an arm around his neck. Finally he stood, a body in his arms. I saw the casted leg first, and then I saw her face.
Jeanie’s back.
5. Excerpt from the unpublished autobiography of Mazie Phillips-Gordon
Some of these bums are singers — every morning outside my cage I could hear them singing their Irish folk songs, or even a sea shanty or two. There were others who liked to draw, sketches of the park where they’re sleeping, that filthy noisy train overhead, or pictures of the other bums, just being bums. I’ve got hundreds of them, swapped for a nickel, swapped for a drink. There’s real artistic souls out there on the streets. A passion for something vivid and beautiful, not everyone has that. The bottle dims the passion, though, ruins the talent, too. If you let it. But I think you have to want to ruin it in the first place.
Jeanie Phillips, October 21, 1920
Mazie said to write my story down, it’s too long for her to tell, and that it’ll be good for me, it’ll clear my head, and I’m the one who lived it, not her, anyway. Then she said start at the beginning until you get to the end, tell the truth, no point in lying to the page, to the diary, to yourself, and then she handed me this diary and this pen, and away we go.
I skipped town a year and a half ago because I wanted to make my own fate, choose my future myself, rather than accept what Louis & Rosie wanted for me, what Ethan wanted for me, too. I would have been married by now, I would have been working at the candy shop or at the track or at Luna Park, or cooking and cleaning like Rosie, or making babies with Ethan. And it’s not that I’m too good for any of that, or even that there’s anything wrong with that. Only I wanted to dance, I wanted to use these legs, these arms, my body, my gifts, my weapons. I didn’t want to waste them on sitting still, at least not yet.
So I started dancing with the Folsom brothers, Skip & Felix, two white-blond-haired boys from Pennsylvania, escaped from a milk farm, no teat squeezing for them, just throwing me around in the air instead. A better fate, they said, more fun to throw the pretty girls in the air than touch the cow’s titties. They were tall and strong, strong enough to toss me and catch me, and make me feel like I could disappear forever. If they just kept spinning me, I’d turn into a whisper and I’d be gone.
Felix is the elder brother, older by a year, and he still reads the Bible every night, but says it’s only a habit, and the stories put him to sleep. He’s married to Belle’s girl Elizabeth, who does all her hair and makeup and sits by her side. She’s a cherub from Philly, round cheeks, big eyes, and a real pleaser, yes’s rather than no’s any day of the week. And Skip’s the dreamboat that everyone else falls in love with, and so I did, too.
I didn’t fall in love with Skip until we were out on the road together. I swear on my life, on the air that I breathe, I wouldn’t treat Ethan like that, never lied to him, never cheated, only loved and respected that boy, him being my first sweetheart and all. But Belle says tour love’s as common as the flu, highly contagious, and I caught it, sleepless nights and dizzy daydreams and all the rest. I fell in love with the world we built together, the nerves before the curtain opens and Skip squeezing my hand for luck, the applause at the end taking my breath away every single time, whiskey & wine after the show, me on Skip’s knee, Elizabeth with her hands in Felix’s hair, Belle barking at all of us to do as she bid. Belle’s always telling me she’s the one who gave me a shot, like she’s twenty years older than me instead of two, and didn’t grow up three streets away from me. I let her say what she wants though, because she’s more right than wrong. Without her I’d have been nowhere at all, or at least in the same place as always.