Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen

“Never mind the Poles,” said Beth Millstein. “What about the Jews? You have something against the Jews?”

“You know,” chipped in Carla, “she could be Korean. There are lots of Koreans in New York, aren’t there, Lola?”

Mrs Baggoli clapped loudly. “Let’s all settle down, shall we?” She smiled at me. “Her name’s Doolittle, Lola,” said Mrs Baggoli. “She’s just a poor white girl who was born in New York. Use your own accent.”

Nodding, I went back to my place on the stage. I closed my eyes, imagining myself in a red jacket with a name-tag pinned to the pocket: Hi! My name’s Liz. I heard the Muzak and the rumble of shoppers’ conversations; I heard someone drop a bottle of oil on aisle three; I heard kids whining and the packers fooling around; I heard people grumbling about the prices and the state of the tomatoes. I waved a cucumber over the scanner. My fingers touched the keys of the register. I thought about my father, Mr Doolittle. My father was a garbage man and a hopeless drunk. My mother died when I was little, probably from drugs. I left home when I was sixteen. I shared a grungy apartment with two other check-out girls who also came from dysfunctional families. There was a boy I liked who worked on one of the delivery trucks. He had three tattoos and a gold nose ring. I could see this boy clearly. His name was – I opened my eyes. I had no idea what his name was. It could be Tom, or Tony, or Jesus, or Vinny, or Joseph, or Onion for all I knew.

“We’d all appreciate it if you could do this this afternoon,” boomed Mrs Baggoli. “There are other people waiting to audition, you know.”

“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I really am.”

I took a deep breath.

It was Liz Doolittle from Brooklyn who spoke next. But girls from Brooklyn don’t whimper, no matter what the stage directions say.

“F— off, turkey,” snarled Liz Doolittle. “Keep your f—in’ hands off me.”

Everybody cracked up at that. I was afraid Mrs Baggoli was going to choke to death, she was laughing so hard.

“I don’t think the PTA’s going to think very much of that,” she said when she was finally capable of speech. “But I can see that I may need your help polishing the modernization.”

Carla Santini gave me one of her mega, full-dental smiles. I had no trouble interpreting its meaning: It’ll give you something to do – now that you won’t be Eliza.

Mrs Baggoli didn’t let outsiders sit in on the auditions, so Ella waited in the library until I was done.

She started shutting her books as soon as I came through the door.

“Well?” Ella demanded in a loud whisper. “How’d it go?”

I flung my cape over my shoulder. “I’m pleased to be able to announce that after a rocky start our heroine gave a brilliant reading.”

I really was pleased with what I’d done in the end. I was sure that when the parts were posted the next morning my name would be the one next to Eliza Doolittle. I explained about the rocky start as we left the library.

“Oh, God…” groaned Ella. “What a nightmare.”

“It happens,” I said philosophically. Wasn’t it Shakespeare who said that you can’t be wise if you’ve never been a fool? “There isn’t a great actor in the history of the theatre who hasn’t done something even worse. I read that Robert De Niro once got up on a stage and started performing the wrong play.”

“Really?” Ella grinned wickedly. “Wouldn’t it be great if that happened to Carla Santini?”

Mentioning Carla Santini’s name was like mentioning Satan’s. She instantly appeared, walking across the car park with Mrs Baggoli. Carla drives a red BMW convertible. Mrs Baggoli drives an old black Ford.

“Speak of the devil,” said Ella. She gave me a look. “So how did Carla do?”

“She was good.” If you’re going to be a great actor, you have to learn to be magnanimous. I winked. “But she wasn’t as good as I was.”

“You can’t tell from looking at her, though, can you?” said Ella.

I followed her gaze. Carla and Mrs Baggoli had stopped by Mrs Baggoli’s car. Mrs Baggoli was nodding as she climbed into the driver’s seat. Carla was talking animatedly. Her curls were tossing all over the place. She didn’t look like someone who knew she’d just lost her chance to play Eliza.

I whipped my cape over my shoulder and bent to unlock my bike.

“She probably thinks that if she talks long enough, Mrs Baggoli will give her the part just to make her shut up.”

Things Get Both Better And Even Worse

Even though my soul was withering like a rose deprived of sunlight and water, I was in a pretty good mood Tuesday night.

As I’d told Ella, although I’d admittedly gotten off to a less than spectacular start with my reading, I was confident that I’d performed significantly better than Carla in the end. I mean, I’d have had to, wouldn’t I? Expecting Carla to identify with a poor supermarket check-out girl was like expecting the Queen of England to identify with a mud wrestler from Alabama.

And although playing Eliza wasn’t the same as knowing that Sidartha was out there – a spiritual satellite in the great nothingness of the universe – it did give me something positive to do with my grief. I would use it to be the best Eliza Doolittle I could be, no matter what her ethnic background. It’s what all great actors do, of course: they put aside the disappointments and tragedies of their own brief lives and throw themselves into their work. The show, as they say, must always go on.

Self-doubt didn’t kick in until sometime between Tuesday night when I fell asleep to the Stu Wolff classic “Everything Hurts” and Wednesday morning when I woke up with a heart as cold and as heavy as Mount Everest.

I dreamt about Carla Santini. She was up on the stage of a packed auditorium. The spotlights were on her, and her arms were filled with dozens of orchids. I was standing in the wings. I was wrapped in my cape because the costume I should have been wearing was on Carla Santini. Just as the flowers that were meant for me were in her arms, and the applause that should have been mine was falling on her ears. I was crying very, very softly. As the audience erupted in shouts of “Bravo! Bravo!”, Carla turned to face me. She smiled at me the way she had during my audition.

My eyes opened to the stain that looks like an amoeba on the ceiling over my bed. From one cell all life grew. One day there’s just this microscopic dot floating around in some swamp, and a few billion years later I’m lying in bed wondering how I could be so stupid.

How could I be so stupid? Why had I been so certain I was going to get the lead? Had I forgotten how Mrs Baggoli had laughed at me? Had I forgotten what she had said? You’re not trying out for Serpico… I don’t think the PTA’s going to think very much of that… We’d appreciate it if you could do it this afternoon… I thought this was going to make it easier, not harder… I can see that I’m going to need your help polishing the modernization…

All she’d said to anyone else was “Thank you”, or “Try it again”, or “Could you speak up a little?”. At no one else had she rolled her eyes and sighed.

I’d gone too far. This is something my parents often wrongly accuse me of doing, but this time I really had. I’d figured Mrs Baggoli would be impressed by my desire to know the character I was portraying in every intimate detail and to make her real, but now that I thought about it she’d been more annoyed than impressed. What convinced me of that wasn’t the expression I could remember on Mrs Baggoli’s face, but the look I could remember on Carla Santini’s. That smile… It was the smile of Iago as he watched Othello storm off to ruin his life.

I jumped out of bed and dressed in record time. I raced into the kitchen, grabbed something for lunch and was out of the house before my mother could yell at me for not having any breakfast. I had to get to school before everyone else. If I really wasn’t going to play Eliza, I wanted to be the first to know. And I wanted to be alone when I found out. I could handle it – after all, rejection is part of the creative process; as painful as it is necessary for true