ESL a/s/l?
a WIP multimedia project—
MOVIE NIGHT
Onstage with lights beaming overhead, I get into character for Rebecca Nurse in Arthur Miller’s dramatic production of the Salem witch trials, The Crucible. Our theater director Jan is in the audience surrounded by mostly empty rows of blue, retractable plastic seats that flop down when you’re ready to sit. She observes us, guiding our facial expressions, delivery, and blocking. I was with the other actors as we waited to recite our lines when I noticed Caroline (my sister) standing in the back of the auditorium.
Unlike the cathartic, feel-good scene in Dirty Dancing where “Baby’s” previously disapproving father warms up to his daughter and Johnny post-performance in the “Final Dance,” my sister is there to remove me from the spotlight instead. My parents told me not to continue with Drama Club, and my attendance at this practice was my act of disagreement — not revolt because I wasn’t intentionally going against their wishes, I just didn’t understand why I had to stop pursuing theater and couldn’t imagine not continuing. In fact, Neighbor-Mom Sue from down the street drove me to practice knowing well that my parents disapproved of my involvement. She didn’t agree with them either. Sue felt so strongly about their strict upbringing that she offered to help put me through college if it ever came down to that. Her daughter Megan, a fellow actress, was one of my best friends so they felt like extended family.
My sister drives me home and eventually tells my parents where I was. At this moment I thank my Former Self for having the foresight to have Jan cast an understudy in preparation for exactly what was happening.
Laurel: “She’s probably at play practice with Robert.”
That tip from a different mom’s friend led my sister to the high school auditorium — the scene of my petty crime. Leading up to that, she stopped by the restaurant and called the house’s landline. No answer, because I was preparing for my morally upright role on stage — an innocent woman wrongly accused of witchcraft. Caroline planned to swing by and drop off Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, maybe to make sure I wasn’t bored at home alone. I didn’t like Jim Carrey then and don’t like him now, so it’s funny to think that this is the movie that blew my cover.
She was 28 years old and I was 16. A few years prior, my sister bought a condo in a suburb south of Madison after saving enough to move out in her 20s, so it was just me at home when my parents were working.
That night, Caroline out of the picture and my parents back at home, my mom grabbed a bundle of wooden paint stirrers and repeatedly struck me from the waist down for sneaking out of the house. I think my dad started things off, likely with the encouragement of my mom, but he used soft slippers to gently slap my hands. What he did didn’t hurt and I honestly think he was just going through the motions because he felt like it was the responsible thing to do in support of her.
For nearly three decades I’ve wondered, repressed, and denied why my sister swiftly threw me under the bus. I finally ask, now in her 50s.
Caroline: “It didn’t feel fair that you had so much more freedom than
I did.”