I. Daly’s Theatre, 1907. Opening Night.
You’re about to descend the staircase.
Breathe.
Remember, rosin is on your soles so you won’t slip. Remember, you are not going to die. No one actually dies of stage fright. If they boo, you’re just back to playing Lally in the New Aladdin.
How fear coats like cotton, a swabbing over your head!
You’ve tried to tell George how your heart beats like an anxious bird each time, even though you’ve performed ever since you were a spindly girl of ten. It happens every time.
He’s not listening. You can’t seem to make him understand.
II. Queen’s Theatre, Manchester, 1897
The stage is a forest and you are draped in a red cloak and there’s a jolly fat actor in a suit with a papier-mâché wolf’s head. He opens his coat and you duck under it and through his legs, disappearing from the audience’s view. Everyone thinks he’s eaten you up, but you just scurry back into the dark wings to be resurrected.
At the end, everyone applauds darling Little Elsie!
On the best nights, in the dressing room after the applause, Wolf gives you biscuits from a paper bag and tell you about his little son at home.
Wolf says, “Don’t worry so, sweet, you’ll soon be home, too, safe in bed.”
“I want to quit,” you say, not telling him home is far from safe. But he knows, he’s heard the whispers.
“But you’re so good,” he says. “You’ll be the star someday.” When he says it, his kind eyes crinkle. You want to tell him how absent fathers make ample bills and that’s why you are doing it. But you don’t.
III Daly’s Theatre, 1907. Rehearsal.
George says you’re so good, too.
You practice again and again. You think the part is much too sophisticated.
“No,” you tell him. “‘Vilja’ wants an opera singer and I’m no singer. I’m not a widow. I’m not even twenty-one.”
George says, “Dear Elsie, you will astonish them all.”
IV. Queen’s Theatre, Manchester, 1897
You have been Elsie who works. Elsie who models. Elsie who pays the bills. You have been Little Elsie and Dear Elsie and you’ve been Lily Elsie and once Elsie Hodder and maybe Elsie Cotton. Maybe. You don’t know. Your mother can’t tell you the name of your father. There are so many choices.
Deep down, you’re just Elsie.
V. Daly’s Theatre, 1907. Opening Night
The music trills. A minute—before it all begins again.
The cap’s not red now. It’s huge and black and casts a shadow. But that’s later. The hat’s in the third act.
You gulp for air, head spinning. Fatherless daughter, fearful girl. What if you tumble down the stairs, a rustle of oyster satin and beading? Will you suffocate?
You can’t stop thinking about what might come at you once you’re out there, what might come from the darkness of shadow, what might be demanded of the light. Everyone may hiss when this meager thing called a voice departs your throat.
Your mouth is so dry, your head is so stuffed. It’s all so much cotton. Why? Who owns this voice and has told it to be so quiet? All your potential fathers are like ghosts who flit into the forest. They hold no round remembrance like Wolf, the provider of biscuits. They are no saviors.
Tonight, you’re not Elsie maybe-Cotton, little or otherwise. You’re Sonia, the merry widow. Though you can’t forget Sonia in Franz’s original version is named Hanna.
“See, her name keeps changing, too,” George has told you. “It didn’t stop her.”
Blink. Breathe.
Prepare for blinding lights. Prepare for women’s beating fans. White gloves that will raise to clap or point the way off stage.
In the dim lights you can see George, beaming in the wings of the stage, eyes twinkling, believing. Believing in HannaSoniaElsie. Believing in you.
The velvet curtains sweep to the edges of the proscenium and the stage is like the belly of the coated wolf.
But this time, you won’t disappear. This time, you walk toward the audience. This time, you embrace the second chance to be born, to cry unabashed. You sing. You let the merry notes ring out.
And this time, everyone listens.
