ninotchka

     

Jul 4th, 2007

I stayed home sick from school one day…had my period and cramps, guess I was about 15.  I always loved old movies, back and white, knew more about them than most adults. I saw that Greta Garbo was on in “Two Faced Woman” …I’d never seen any of her films…just heard the name…and my mom used to say “Greta Garbage”  every once in a while in reference to what I don’t know.  Well Garbo was before my mom’s time too.  I saw this wonderful creature so different, so otherworldly, a woman of course, but something else, so beautiful, beyond pretty like most sweet faced actresses. she a had a strength, but vulnerability, tragic, aloof, intimate…well who can describe Garbo…” what men see in a woman when drunk, one sees in Garbo sober”   that’s about the best anyone can do.  

I immediately began to find books about her and comb the TV guide to catch her movies.  I had my mom take me to the museum of modern art when they did a retrospective of her films, then once I walked by her house in the east fifties…

   I’m “in therapy,” my therapist is gay after living a hetoesexual life, married, four children, Anyway she is a gem, and really helping me out!  She has helped me to admit that I had a tough childhood…still have a hard time writing it out, but I was abused by my father, spanked…well beaten quite a bit and verbal abuse too.  He wasn’t a complete monster, had problems himself and worked so hard for the family…but he didn’t do right by me.  So of course the therapist says that I’ve gone into myself to cope with what happened.  That is why I  always felt pretty uncomfortable around people…oh I felt ok if I was “in charge” the person responsible for things, or acting on stage, or being funny, but if it was to be “regular” it was  uncomfortable for me.  I felt like I didn’t exist sort of, like I was just an outline like in a coloring book, or a ghost.  not really a person like everyone else…not better than them, not really less then them, just not like them somehow…

     So apparently that is people often do…make another life for themselves because their real life is so difficult, and that’s what I did as a child, teenager, and beyond.  Even when I met my husband I used to drive him crazy by speaking softly to him…he’s yell” speak up! Speak up! ” I made him part of my internal world, so forgot he was real sometimes.  Well all of this helped me to cope but has led me to  be, even so many years after, not direct with people, especially very important people, the more I need or want them in my life the less able I am to let them know. 

         When I had my first child I was really concerned that I couldn’t hug and kiss him…that I wouldn’t be able to, or that even I’d want to, and that if I did people would ridicule me, as if to say that was not like me, who did I think I was kidding, I was cold and hard and would shatter like a sheet of ice.

       Fortunately I overcame that pretty quickly, and adored both of my children and was affectionate with them, and my dogs!  of course, and husband, although he says not enough but that’s another story.

      My five year old niece was born in Russia and abandoned at two days old.  She had a problem with her digestive system, and needed an operation; she apparently went from one hospital to another in the first 10 months of her life.  She was operated on and recovered, then placed for adoption.  As she was an ill child it took her longer to be placed.  My sister received a photo of her via a fax; she was skinny, great round dark eyes, not much hair, not a pretty child. But my sister said “that’s my baby” as soon as she saw the photo and that was it! 

      When we went to Russia to pick her up they took us into the orphanage in a small city about 2 hours from Moscow.  Sure it snowed every day, and there were white birch trees all around and interesting log houses with carved woodwork on some of them, but it wasn’t so foreign and exotic as we’d anticipated.  The orphanage itself was an old public building, maybe had been a school.  It was a bit shabby, but very clean and very WARM!  My sister and I actually went and bought long underwear, snow boots, and heavy parkas for the trip…we didn’t really need them, everywhere we went it was overheated! 

     They took us on a tour of the orphanage, they were proud of the place; the children were all under 4 years old and so many of them fair; blond, blue eyed.  I was so hoping that our baby would look like them as we are quite fair.  They took us into a large playroom where there were about 20 children playing with all sorts of toys, balls, tricycles, blocks.  As soon as we walked in the children stopped playing and swarmed around us they got very close to us and began to talk to us… tried to communicate with us.  We smiled and crouched down to play a bit but were surprised at their intense reaction, and a little overwhelmed. Did they know we where there to take one of them?  They seemed too young to be” in on it, ” or was their need for closeness so acute that they were drawn to us just out of sheer need to be close to someone….an adult , to take care of them?
      After the tour we were led into a very nice large room, it had many windows with cute curtains, a piano, play area, nice area rug and some toys.  There was a large wallpaper mural over one entire wall with a photograph of birch trees, a typical Russian scene; there we were to wait with another American couple for our children to be brought to us.  We made small talk, and somehow managed to get through the next 15 minutes or so without screaming, pulling our hair out and gashing our teeth in sheer anxiety over meeting our children for the first time!

     Finally a staff worker came in holding a toddler by the hand.   This was the boy to be adopted by the other couple.  An absolute cherub…no kidding or exaggeration this child was gorgeous, blond, blue eyed, pink cheeked, handsome sturdy little body.  my sister and I went ga ga!    as did his new parents!  While they got acquainted my sister and I tried not to bore a hole in the door with our anxious stares. 

      At last the door quietly opened and in came a woman with a baby on her hip.   a dark little face wrapped in a faded blue boy’s coverall with the most preposterous white knit hat on!   This hat tied under the chin and had two white peaks standing straight up on top….ornamentation at one time…of what we  couldn’t figure, maybe they had little wooly balls attached that came off?  Well the outfit made the baby seem more like a creature from mars than as our darling new baby!   oye!  I thought to myself, of all of the pretty children here we get an alien!  we walked up to her, her skin was two whole shades darker than ours, then the other children, she had intense round eyes, with dark circles under, we took off the hat she had almost no hair!  Whoa!  I don’t mean to sound shallow but this skinny little chicken was not what I had envisioned.

      Of course I didn’t let on to my sister…we cooed at the baby, and I kept imagining how much better she’d look with a little hair.  Just by chance the music teacher was in the room and took her over to the piano and began to play a little song.  The baby immediately began dancing around in our arms smiling and nodding her head in time to the music.  The teacher said that she was very responsive to music, the baby came alive.  Instantly everything seemed to change, I saw her in a different light…she was like us, loved music and dance…she could be, well she was our little girl! 

     The following day we went to pick up the baby and take her away from the orphanage forever.  As the nurses were dressing her in all of her fine new clothes and giving my sister last minute advice I took my video camera into the babies bedroom.  This room was filled with a sea of cribs…I counted 17 cribs, and the babies in them!  All adorable and all alone it was stunning; I asked a nurse…”will they find homes?”  “Oh yes, all go home” she said smiling. I took some video of our baby’s crib now empty, then of some of the children don’t worry “I whispered to them…”someone is coming for you, you’re all beautiful and brave and someone is coming for you!”  I prayed,” Please God make it soon.”

    We left the orphanage with our baby, she didn’t look back!  Not a whimper, just large dark eyes taking us and everything else in.  Back at the small shabby hotel she wanted to be put down, and immediately began to try to walk around the room holding onto furniture then even bracing herself with her hand on the bare walls when she ran out of chairs.  My sister and I sat on the floor to help guide her; she smiled at us and kept going.  For some reason, she took to me, in particular right away.  We thought it was because having children of my own I was easier with her than my sister, don’t know but it was obvious to us then, and to this day four  years later she seeks me out, defends me to anyone who would dare critize me or raise their voice to me.  She says,” You leave my Maelu alone, that’s my Maelu!” Her orphanage name was Aza, but my sister renamed her Nina or in Russian the diminutive “Ninotchka”

     Garbo…The first movie I saw that day I stayed home from school, was her last and least successful, “Two Faced Woman” It was made in a way as a sequel to one of her most successful films, “Nintouchka” this the movie that ads boasted “GARBO LAUGHS!”  She of course had laughed and smiled in other films but by in large she was known as a tragedian  playing Camille (leaves her lover rather than ruin his life because of her reputation, then dies), Anna Karenina (throws herself in front of a train)…roles like that.

     But in Ninotchka she plays a cold, unemotional Russian woman who goes to Paris to rescue three comrades, who have fallen under the spell of that city, and are having fun rather than doing their duties as good Russians.  At first she is all no nonsense, stony faced and businesslike.  But pretty soon she starts to thaw out…she notices a whimsical hat in a store window, and then peals with laughter when her leading man falls over a chair in a restaurant.  There it was “Garbo laughs!” 

      So much of the time I’ve lived behind glass…going through the motions, doing the “right thing” but not really living.  That’s acceptable, even expected.  You are an adult and not every day can be extraordinary…or can it?

         Garbo lived on the Upper East Side, right around the corner from the fancy acting school I attended.  Such a leap of faith for me, blue collar girl, to insist that I fulfill my dream of being in the theatre!  The majority of my peers did not attend college, they became hair dressers, or secretaries, married the local Tony and had kids.  I had to, had to escape!  leave the dreary town of no possibilities and live in Manhattan, just to be around the world of ideas, just to say, well I did it! I tried!   Even though I was so young I remember standing in front of the mirror in dance class and seeing myself and the other kids and thinking “God I’m so happy I’m right where I want to be, in New York and I’m an actress!” I closed my eyes and said I’ll always remember this moment, here in modern dance class studying the Graham technique where “Martha” herself danced and all the wonderful actors that had been in my place before me.
           Then Garbo! Garbo! would be walking around the streets, right outside the school!  A “Garbo sighting” was a big thing for those, like me, “in the know.” Dick Cavette wrote about seeing her in a grocery store, he followed her into it then positioned himself near her…  not knowing what to say he picked up a mango and asked her ” What is this a pomegranate or a mango?”  She just titled her head and looked at him, said nothing turned and walked away.   But to see her!  To walk behind her, to wonder, was like a special gift, a sign, I walked the same streets as Garbo, I breath the same air, I’m mortal, I exist!

     Now so many years later I’m at a crossroads in my life, questioning everything, wanting change, but caught in a holding pattern.  Bound by forces and circumstances, most of which I’ve arranged, but yearning for freedom, liberty, love, something!

    After her huge success in “Ninotchka,” and an equal failure in “Two Faces Woman,” Garbo retired.  she was  36.  She continued to live  a life of mystery.   While she was acting she could be seen at least once or twice a year, a shadow on the screen.  She was a total enigma then  afterwards for decades, as far as anyone could tell…roaming the streets of New York City, and the world searching, searching ,walking, walking…she  capturing the imagination of so many, seemed alone and lost.

        And so I have been wandering alone existing, making an occasional appearance but not really living, not brave enough…now trying

         But our little Ninotchka! She sings and dances, rushes up to strangers and introduces herself, talks to gas station attendants, and waiters and includes them in her prayers. And just as Garbo finally broke through her tragic facade and laughed so our girl, coming from nowhere with nothing but the will to be loved has prevailed.  She has renewed in us, by her example, the belief that love is real and that with patience and faith the soul will find a home.

     For little Ninotchka everyday is a gala premier.  A red carpet is always under her feet, she has hair now, but the same large dark eyes and her skinny dark limbs can do flips, and tricks. My husband, her uncle, is  her “Daddy” my daughter is her “sister-cousin” and I…well she thinks I hang the moon and the stars…but I know the truth…she hands the moon and stars to me, everyday.