G
1898, PLAINS STATES
rowing up without roots, you never fully bloom. You may find the sun, rain, or wind on your face, but it only burns, wets, and batters. Nothing takes hold, burrows into a community, blossoms out of purpose. That's how I came to be here. I'm no more than a dandelion seed, standing in the middle of the road in a small town in South Dakota, ready to blow away on the next breeze. It doesn't matter. Not a bit. One town looks the same as another after a while. There's always the sheriff's office, a saloon, a boarding house and mercantile. The roads are rutted and muddy. It's what's behind the walls, the swinging doors, the metal bars that make the difference. I was born in the back of a painted wagon. My parents were actors, emoting in town after town, placing me backstage in a wooden box with a sugar teat to suck on, the noise of the crowds my lullaby. After the show, they left me to sleep in their dressing room or the wagon, while they visited restaurants
and saloons, rubbing up against the locals, pitching the next play, the next job. Father was classically trained, a vagabond from London who came to America on a whim, or so he said. I think he was invited to leave England by a constable, and the next ship leaving port was for New York. My mother came from a good family in Philadelphia. Mother went to college, and along the way fell in with the actors and artists who filled the hallways of higher learning with lofty ideals. She met Father when he performed in a play in New York, and the rest, as they say, was history. Mother was beautiful. People said I looked just like her. We shared the same bright red hair and deep green eyes. It was exciting when our wagon rolled into town. People were eager for laughter and drama. They paid to sit on wooden benches in makeshift theaters or saloons, so they had something to carry out the door with them when the evening ended. I can't describe what it felt like to lose both my parents to the Russian Flu that swept through America in 1890. I survived with nothing more than a raspy throat, only eighteen years old, and orphaned.
