American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee by Karen Abbott Read Free Book Online Page A

darling,” she said. “She’s standing in the wings waiting to go on. She watched you.” She crunched June’s curls, tugged at her dress. “Stop breathing so hard … when I speak to her, be sure you stand directly in front of her. Then look up and smile.”
    June was just over three years old, and when she lifted her head she stared directly into stiff pink layers of tutu. The edges tickled the tip of her nose.
    Anna Pavlova.
    “Madame, if you please,” Rose said in a reverent voice, straight from her convent days. “I would like your opinion.… Would you say my baby was a natural dancer?”
    June peered into the ruffles, her teeth dry from her unbroken smile. She couldn’t see Madame Pavlova, but heard her stilted reply.
    “One cannot tell such a things. She is not even yet borned. Her feets have not formed enough to hold her.” She spun and glided away, her toe shoes rasping across the floor. June released her mouth from the smile.
    “Foreigners,” Rose muttered. “I could hardly understand a word she said.”
    Nevertheless, she quickly forgot the ballerina’s slight. When they left for Hollywood, Rose announced her daughter’s new billing: “Baby June, the Pocket-sized Pavlova.”

    T hey had been down to Hollywood before for minor vaudeville shows and benefit concerts; the write-ups had made every trip worthwhile. “Baby June Hovick, whose three years weigh lightly on her dainty shoulders,” wrote the
Los Angeles Times
, “has danced on her toes since she learned to walk, and is altogether the most adorable little creature in captivity.” Most satisfying, the press bought into Rose’s marketing scheme: “Baby June delighted the large crowd last night, a baby Pavlova,” the
Seattle Times
reported. “Her little legs and feet speak poetry.”Los Angeles society women elected June the queen of their annual carnival, wherethe “little tot” led a parade of Tommy Tuckers, Cinderellas, Aladdins, and Little Bo Peeps and performed “a toe dance as dainty as Pavlova ever dreamed of.” Rose saved every clipping, underlining the most flattering phrases with red pencil, beginning a scrapbook she would keep for the rest of her life. The Baby’s toe shoes didn’t last nearly so long. Blood gathered in the tips, hardly wider than thimbles, spreading across the satin like a blooming rose. At night, Rose dabbed salve on June’s cuts and calluses and taped the tips of her cracked nails. There was always a new pair of shoes waiting to be broken in.
    Sometimes the entire tribe came along: Great-grandma Dottie, Big Lady, Aunt Belle, Rose, June, Louise, and the family dogs. During one occasion they all crammed into a boardinghouse room when it became clear Dottie was nearing death. She was tiny but innately resilient, like all their female kin, and Rose sent June and Louise out to play. When they returned, they saw their mother, Aunt Belle, and Big Lady locked in a hug, weeping. Not because their great-grandmother had finally passed, although she had, but because Rose found the missing diamond from one of her engagement rings under Dottie’s body.
    “Hush, children,” Rose said, placing a finger over each daughter’s mouth. “I had given up hope of ever seeing it again … wouldn’t Granny be pleased if she knew that by dying she had saved me from accusing anyone of stealing my diamond?” The girls found themselves trapped in a grid of arms, Mother and Big Lady and Aunt Belle all squeezing tight, and for one moment the family felt incredibly, indestructibly, close.

    L ater, the sisters would remember things differently, as sisters do, old grudges and misunderstandings refracting each memory, bending them in opposite directions. June looked at her big sister and saw “the most beautiful child alive,” with eggshell smooth skin and a shiny brown cap of hair, instead of an overweight, ungraceful tomboy. She, not Louise, was awkward, with wiry, bruise-mottled legs and a “Norwegian beak”of a nose,