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Fanny and I and the Baby
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“She says, ‘Go on with your story/ ” Fanny translated, and went:
“It was a newspaper advertisement that says the lady wanted new beginners for the stage, and with my mommuh I answered it. The lady was a Miss Rachel Lewis, little and Jewish and thirty; and she has for partner an actor by the name James O’Neill, but not the original. She says she will make me A Number One actress for two hundred dollars paid now in advance. But my mommuh is Jewish, too, and offers her thirty-five.
“For days and days,” droned Fanny, “I go round to the bum hotel where Rachel Lewis lives, and see no actors, no lessons, no nothing. My mommuh is getting impatient, so one day I says, ‘Why don’t you teach me?’ and Rachel Lewis she shows me a Spanish dance, and I take it home and show mommuh. She says, ‘For thirty-five dollars only a Spanish dance !’ and wants to know where my costumes are.
“So I went back and told Rachel Lewis and she said she’d measure me, and showed me a tape measure. She shows me a tape measure for two weeks, and that’s all she shows me. She’s busy rehearsing a crowd of queer-looking creatures who say they’re actors, in a rented show which is called ‘The Ballad Girl.’ Rachel Lewis is the Girl, and I’ve got a part, too, but no costume yet.
“I get it,” Fanny went on, warming, putting down the baby and pacing the long living room in trailing Japanese negligee. “I got the costume the night we open ‘The Ballad Girl’ in Hazelton, Pa. And it comes just to here.” Fanny designated a place midway between waist and knee.
“I was so thin those days it was a shame to show