That Saturday morning, I peeked through the dusty curtain into the lobby of the small theater and saw that it was packed with noisy children. The October frost, which made the outside air crisp and fragrant with the smell of local apple trees, crept into the front door of the theater building every time the doors opened, and the gusts of whipping wind blew groups of small audience members in like so many scraps of colorful paper. Our presentation that day was The Sleeping Beauty, performed by a group of striving New York actors who had gotten out of bed at dawn, and who had ridden two hours on the train, with only Grand Central coffee in their stomachs, in order to sing and dance in funny clothes by 10:30 A.M.
But, as the kids, ages four to fourteen, were noisily jamming into the theater, the Prince, Princess and Evil Witch were still backstage, warming up their dormant voices or slathering on far too much make-up for that hour of the day, while yours truly, the Fairy Godmother, stood hidden , watching the audience arrive. Earlier that morning, as I stared into my dressing room mirror, which was mounted on the paint-chipped wall of yet another dressing room that had seen better days, I wondered how it was that we grown-ups (for at the tender age of 24, I considered myself an adult) managed to convince ourselves that this was an honorable way to make a living. Playing dress-up and pretending to be fairies, kings and witches for a living? Sometimes it just seemed absurd.
That morning however, something happened that I have never forgotten, and it had to do with a young girl.
Invariably, as the house went dark, the kids would get spooked out and make all sorts of silly, nervous noises, pretending that the boogie man was about to get them. The more worldly ones made smooching and kissing noises, informing the world around them that they already knew the possibilities that lay in darkness.
So, when our Stage Manager called places, I gave my Good Fairy Godmother crown one final tug, to make sure I’d secured it with enough Good Fairy bobby pins, and went on in the dark for my first entrance, to be discovered in a rising pool of light singing the opening song of the show “A Simply Magic Circle Just For You” . (Look, I didn’t write the thing! I just had to sprinkle fairy dust and sing those lyrics with as much joy as I could summon at that hour of the morning.
Soon, my song was done, the spotlight snapped quickly out and I “disappeared” off stage, while the lights slowly came up on Beauty and her first castle scene. In the few minutes before my next scene, I stood off right while the crew guy hooked me up to fly, when Beauty came offstage, sidled up to me and whispered “ God, there’s the most gorgeous kid out there, I mean ,please, the most beautiful little girl!”
“Yeah?” I said, half listening to her, half checking my rigging. I had two minutes before my first flying entrance.
“Really, oh yeah! Susan, let me tell you, there is this dynamite child sitting out there like a rose among the thorns. Trust me!”
“How come you saw her? I mean, you just picked her out of the rabble, and boom, there she was? Was she standing on her seat or something?”
“No! That’s just it,” she said now, listening for her cue as well. This was a conversation on the run – or on the fly you might say. “She was noticeable because she was the only one who wasn’t fidgeting or moving around at all. She was so still, so…I dunno…concentrated. She was wearing a red sweater, I think”,
Beauty offered , as she hiked up her white tights and flounced back onstage.
Actors are trained to not pay attention to the audience because the focus is supposed to be on the work we’re doing onstage. But, let me tell you, we look. Far more than you think we do. It’s a rarely taught part of the technique, to help a performance stay alive. To keep it gauged properly, it’s valuable to have a part of your attention on how the audience is receiving what you’re giving them. It’s certainly important doing comedy, where the audience is your partner, and the dance is a delicate one. So, we do look. We listen. We see.
Suddenly, there was the familiar hitch of the harness pulling me toward my entrance, and I felt my feet push off the floor, propelling me out into the airspace above stage right, and I was, many feet above ground, helping a Princess in peril, generally spreading good cheer and lots of glitter dust all over the place.
But, while singing, I did get to run all around the stage and fly into the aisles, handing out candy and sprinkling more fairy dust over the heads of all (I bet Moms hated me for weeks afterward, as they tried to get the glitter out of their kids’ nooks and crannies), and I had my chance to look for the little girl that I had been told about. I felt like some large chiffon and tulle-bedecked reconnaissance flying tank.
But before the search had even begun, it was over.
Because there she was, that child, and from the instant I lay eyes on her, I played the show for no one else.
As I hovered around her, it seemed to me that she was about nine years old.
She had skin the color of melted toffee.
Her neck was long and graceful and perfectly proportioned in its support of her generously shaped, rather large head, so that the effect was one of balance.
Her skin was that astonishing golden brown, her lustrous black hair done up in intricate French braids and wrapped around the back of her head, so the effect was that of a halo. Her forehead was wide and clear, her eyes large and probably brown. Her little nose was delicate, straight, her cheeks sculpted into a roundness, as they sloped to a perfect chin. The effect was one of sheer animal aliveness, like a young fawn. This was not a cute child.
But the real hook, the killer were those eyes.
This child made me feel as if I could really fly, not just sing about it.
Them just as my song was nearing its end, my time in the audience was over, and I was flown back to the stage, leaving the kids behind. As I left, I turned back around and pointed my magic wand especially at the little girl in the red sweater. And, I swear, as soon as I began to do that, she lifted her right arm and extended it fully, her small hand reaching to touch the edge of the star that tipped the wooden wand.
For a moment, I thought I could see an arc of blue electricity between my wand and her hand. As though we had touched.
It was weird, because I was actually nowhere near her.
These Saturday performances always ended with the entire cast fully costumed, in the lobby, greeting and talking with the children. Parents got to take photos of their kids with favorite characters and we signed tons of autographs. These meetings were full of the same inanities and stock remarks about how they’d better be good boys and girls and leave their lost teeth under their pillows for my sister, the Tooth Fairy.
But that Saturday morning, I was the first in the lobby, waiting for my special one to come out of the theater. I searched for her immediately, but couldn’t find her, so I assumed that she and her Mom had left quickly to avoid the traffic.
Just as I was heading back to my dressing room, however, I felt a gentle tug at the back of my skirt. I turned around and there she was.
My breath left my body as I looked down into her little face, and my first thought was that she was so much smaller, more fragile than she seemed in the audience. The, the next instant ,I realized something was terribly wrong here; that the ecstasy and belief that had filled her eyes were not gone, but had deepened in a way that told me her normal mechanism for understanding, for grasping the mere truth was faulty, in disrepair, and was probably permamnently damaged. I was looking into the face of a severely mentally challenged child, but one whose beauty was breathtaking, nonetheless. Maybe because she looked broken, off-kilter, her beauty was all that much sweeter.
“Her name is Mirshala,” a soft voice told me, and I looked directly into the brown eyes of a lovely tall woman. The mother, clearly.
“Mirshala,” I repeated. What a great name.”
“Yes,” the mother said, her eyes getting glassy with tears.
At this point, Mirshala was holding a portion of my skirt with her left hand and reaching for my wand with her right.
I knelt down to her and, enclosing the wand and her tiny hand in mine, I kissed her on the cheek and stared into her beautiful eyes. It was clear, without a word spoken, that she totally believed and , withquestion, knew that I was her true Fairy Godmother, no two ways about it.
Who knows? Maybe I was.
“I wish that wand really worked,” her mother said quietly and simply.
“Yeah, me too.” I replied. “Me too.”
I left the wand in Mirshala’s hand and walked her and her Mom to the front door. The little one never stopped looking at me the entire time we walked across the lobby. I helped her mother bundle her up in her small coat, gloves and hat, then took Mirshala in my arms and hugged her gently, firmly, for along time. When we parted, she sparkled from head to toe. I didn’t think her mom would mind.
We held each other’s gaze until their car drove out of the parking lot.
As soon as they were gone, I made it back to the dressing room as fast as I could and sat sobbing. We had another show to do in an hour, and I cried through the entire break. Glitter sticks to tears. A bitch to remove.
And the prop girl had to make another wand for me, real quick.
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