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Authors: Melissa Francis

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Personal Memoirs, #Entertainment & Performing Arts

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BOOK: Diary of a Stage Mother's Daughter: A Memoir

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The AD jumped out in front of us. The walkie-talkie peeked out of the pocket of his already dusty jeans as he ran his right hand through his shaggy brown hair. He pointed to a honey wagon on the left. “Missy’s dressing room is right up there. She can get something to eat, and get dressed and report to makeup. She needs to be on the set by eight. We’re doing the wagon roll scene first.”

Everything was shot out of sequence. So in today’s shot, Mom had explained, I would be watching my still-alive pretend parents meet their disastrous fate.

I looked around at all the people in jeans holding coffee cups or smoking, as we climbed the metal stairs to the dressing room marked MISSY FRANCIS.” Inside, the same purple dress and limp blue bonnet that I’d worn on the set in Sonora were waiting for me. Even worse, the sackcloth petticoat had made the trip too, along with the awful boots. Just looking at them made me cringe. The blisters on my ankles had yet to heal.

Mom helped me put on the getup, including the rubber band socks. Then we wandered over to the craft services truck and hopped on the long line for food.

“Let the little girl cut to the front,” a rough-looking guy on the crew said. He winked at me as he sipped his coffee. I stepped up to the window where the short-order cook listened to our hopes and dreams about breakfast. The crackle of frying bacon made my stomach growl.

“She’ll have an egg and bacon burrito. Scramble the egg and add a little bit of American cheese. I will just have a hard-boiled egg.” Once again, Mom had joined the latest diet craze, which usually lasted a few weeks. She’d shed weight, and was simultaneously thrilled and viciously cranky until she went back to Baskin-Robbins chocolate fudge ice cream and traded the hunger-induced mood swings for defeated depression. The crash dieting tended to coincide with important events. Apparently, my new job qualified as one.

Always hungry at breakfast, I wolfed down my burrito in record time. I had never seen eggs and bacon wrapped together in a burrito. Genius! It seemed like a dish that had been invented so the crew could eat standing up without utensils.

“Does she go to school?” an extra’s mom asked my mom while we were eating.

“Yes. And even though she works all the time, she’s first in her class, bless her heart.” I’d heard this speech before. She’d go on to say how I got a 99 on some standardized test and now I was in a special reading group. It seemed like a good opportunity to slip away and get seconds.

I slid down from my chair and went over to a picnic table that smelled like heaven. A huge box of doughnuts was nestled between baskets of muffins and a rainbow of fresh fruit. I swiped a glazed doughnut and tried to eat most of it before I turned back to Mom. She’d be furious that I was eating more.

I scarfed it down and then skipped back to the table in time to hear Mom delivering the wrap-up to one of her half-dozen or so talking points that she regularly used with new mothers.

“So that’s when the teacher told me just how gifted Missy is. She already reads at a sixth-grade level. Her teacher actually said that her being out of school will give the other kids time to catch up! Can you imagine? I was so upset. I’ve got to find her another school, I guess, if the rest of the class is holding her back like that.” She smiled at the extra’s mom, who was nodding politely. “We’re thinking about Lycee International. It’s French immersion. Jodie Foster goes there, but it’s just so far, I can’t imagine dragging her through the traffic every day.”

Well, that didn’t make any sense, I thought. We sat in mountains of traffic every day when we went for interviews. But I had made the mistake of speaking up during one of Mom’s stories before and learned that no one but Mom was allowed to talk. Afterward, when we’d gotten in the car, she’d pinched my arm ferociously and said, “You are never to contradict me in front of another adult ever again. Do you understand me?” The pain shooting through my arm confirmed how serious she was.

This time I stood quietly while she finished. I didn’t care much about the accuracy of these stories.

“So let’s go get you into hair and makeup, sweetie,” Mom announced, ushering me back toward the honey wagon.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said. We walked back up to my dressing room and I went in alone. By now I was too full, and felt like I needed to throw up. All the breakfast food I’d devoured was sitting heavily in my stomach.

I emerged from the bathroom to find Mom waiting outside at the base of the trailer steps.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“My stomach hurts.”

“That’s because you stuffed yourself full of so much junk. Why did you do that?” She shook her head sadly. “I saw you eat that doughnut, by the way. You better be careful. You’re getting a real tummy. Do you remember what the doctor said? You need to watch it. You are right on the verge of being fat. Do you want to fight this terrible battle your whole life like every woman in our family? We’re genetically predisposed to fat bodies. We come from fat stock. Do you want to follow in those footsteps? Look at your sister. She’s packed on so much weight. I think it’s too late for her.”

I was taken aback by Mom’s criticism of Tiffany. My sister looked fine to me. After all, she was the pretty one. Her hair was lighter and longer than mine, and Mom let her have bangs, which made her look grown-up. We had the same big round eyes, but Tiffany didn’t smile as much as I did, which made her look more soulful.

As for Mom, I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Her dark hair set off her light eyes, and she had a big smile that showed off her perfect teeth. Although she was always on a diet, she never seemed fat to me.

Now I looked down at my protruding belly and tried to suck it in. It didn’t work. I wished I had a sweater to hide the bulge.

The AD rushed over and saved me. “We need Missy in hair and makeup like ten minutes ago.”

When I got to the set, Michael stood on a grassy landing. He gestured with his arms, explaining to the cinematographer where the action would lead.

“So Cassandra, James, Albert stand here.” He pointed to wooden crosses lying on the ground as marks. “I’m here.... Then when the wagon picks up speed, I’ll go to my second mark here. Then we’ll push close on the kids as the wagon rolls off the hill and cracks up into a million pieces. We can do the tight on James and Cassandra as a cutaway if they don’t get to the emotion and it doesn’t work as one shot.”

The AD turned to Mom. “Is she ready?”

“Yes.”

She kneeled down next to me and my fat belly. “You need to watch the wagon fall off the side of the hill and go from scared to really crying, imagining that your parents are inside it. Can you do that? This is really critical. This is the scene that got you this part. You need to really look scared and then produce real tears while you’re watching. You can do it, sweetie.”

She paused for a second.

“You absolutely have to do it now.”

No pressure.

It was true, I had produced real tears on demand at the audition. We’d learned I was the only eight-year-old who had done it right that day. Now they wanted to see if I could deliver again. I got the feeling that they’d give me a car if I succeeded.

What Mom didn’t know was that crying on demand wasn’t a new trick for me. I’d discovered that talent years earlier when Tiffany and I were playing Atari upstairs at home. We each had a hard black plastic joystick that we used to play Pong. We sat in front of the TV, glued to the game, which had evolved into a death match.

Tiffany scored on me one last time and celebrated with a whoop. In a fit of rage, I raised the joystick high over my head and decided I would use the square base to crush her skull.

I brought the joystick down as hard as I could, and then both of us staggered back in surprise. Neither of us could believe I’d done it. She began to wail in pain, and within seconds, her screams brought the pounding footsteps of Mom rushing to see who had been maimed.

I knew I was dead. I had to think fast.

So I burst into tears, just like Tiffany.

I gambled that when Mom got there, she wouldn’t be able to tell what had happened if we were both hysterical. Throwing a distraction into the mix was my only shot at avoiding an instant death sentence.

Mom walked in and saw us both screaming and crying and couldn’t make sense of what had happened, much as I had bet. So she picked up Tiffany by the arm and smacked her as hard as she could on her bottom and dragged her into her room, slamming the door with nearly as much force as I’d used in hitting Tiffany over the head with the joystick. Poor girl.

She then returned and repeated the process on me.

So I didn’t escape punishment, and poor Tiffany got hit twice. But, more importantly, I learned I could produce tears on demand.

In acting, it didn’t count if you scrunched up your face and made crying noises but no water actually came out of your eyes. Directors hated that. They could always stop the cameras and dribble Visine down your cheeks, but that didn’t win you any points.

Now I stood on my mark waiting to watch my imaginary parents get crushed to death. The pressure was on, and I knew it. So I thought about what it would be like to watch my real parents speed down the hill and I started to freak myself out. Then I pictured my cat in the wagon with them, and I was on the verge of a breakdown before they even got rolling.

Michael yelled, “Action!”

An AD motioned with his arms behind the camera to show us the imaginary wagon picking up speed. We looked scared. Then he mimed diving as if the wagon were diving off the side of the hill. For most kids, a mime routine would not provide sufficient motivation to show fear and panic, and shed real tears, but we were pros.

Jason yelled, “Oh, no!” and I let loose. Tears flooded my cheeks. I wailed and cried, as if I’d just been cracked over the head with a joystick.

“Cut and print!”

From then on Michael called me the One Take Kid.

CHAPTER SIX

B
utterflies fluttered in my stomach at the thought of walking back into the classroom. We had shot the two episodes of
Little House
that introduced Jason and me to the show and had gone on hiatus for the season. I returned to second grade, having missed about a month of school. Usually I enjoyed a bounce in popularity when I returned from an acting job because of the novelty of being an actress, but I never knew for sure what I’d encounter. My friends could all have new friends. Luckily, my first week back at school flew by without incident, friendships still intact.

Then, as my premiere on the show approached, Mom buzzed around like a six-year-old who had downed a bag of sugar. Much to my horror, she told every person we encountered to watch me on the show. She was a one-woman
TV Guide
. Even at the cleaners: “Make sure you watch Missy tonight at eight PM! She’s the new star of
Little House on the Prairie
!” And also at the pharmacy: “She’s in every scene! She cries. I don’t want to spoil the end, but Michael Landon adopts her!”

I shrank inside the collar of my polo shirt. Her promotional efforts were mortifying.

Mom got her hair and nails done and invited the extended family over to watch, which included her parents, her sister, Marilyn, who was her closest friend, and her other, more bizarre sister, Gloria, whom we saw much less often because she tended to clash with Mom at every turn. Gloria was even louder and more opinionated than the rest of Mom’s family, which was really saying a lot. Plus, I never knew what color her hair was going to be when she walked in. This time, she didn’t fail to surprise me, showing up with hair the exact color and style of Ronald McDonald’s.

The whole family crowded into the living room. Tiffany and I squeezed ourselves into one armchair, pushing each other for space. Mom was on the phone gathering viewers until the minute the show started. I could have been landing a space shuttle on Mars.

The opening credits began to roll. The whole room cheered when my name appeared on the television screen. They screamed again the first time I was on camera.

“There she is! What a doll,” Grandma clucked.

In the second scene, Jason and I were sitting at a dining table with Michael and our about-to-be-dead TV parents, all having breakfast.

“Look at her wolfing down the food. Didn’t they feed you? No wonder you can’t fit through the front door anymore,” Tiffany said with a laugh. I gave her a sharp elbow to the ribs.

When we got to the scene where the wagon rolls down the hill, tears welled up in Marilyn’s eyes as she watched me wail. Slightly taller than Mom, Marilyn always quipped about being the naturally blonde sister. Her red T-shirt said, “Blondes have more fun,” in cursive writing, but it didn’t seem to be the case. She was a quieter, more rigid and reserved version of Mom. She always insisted we call her “Auntie M.” I didn’t understand the reference.

Tiffany turned toward me and said in a low voice, “You look like a frog when you cry. Why didn’t anyone stop you from making that face?”

I looked at the image of myself on the screen and realized she was right. I hopped down from the chair and left the room. No one noticed.

BOOK: Diary of a Stage Mother's Daughter: A Memoir

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