The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows Read Online Free PDF

the bedroom and opened the front door .
    Fortunately Betty was there, for once inside Bert’s holiday boisterousness turned menacing. Dolores could hear him bullying her mother while both women tried in vain to reason with him. She crept out of her hiding place and saw Bert holding a knife, threatening to use it on Harriett. Betty was trying to take the weapon away from him when the six-year-old child, crying, spoke to her father.
— I told him to give Aunt Betty the knife because what he was doing was not good .
    Bert surrendered the knife. But the row continued. Clapping her hands over her ears to shut out the ugliness, Dolores hid in a closet and wrote a short letter to her grandmother: “Can I come to live with you? This is not a good invirement for a little girl to be in.”

Two
    It was a difficult thing for Harriett to do, but she sent Dolores’ letter to her mother. Esther’s response came back like a shot: “This is enough! You have to send her here.”
    Mommy and I were sitting on the steps at school, facing a big picture window, when she told me she was sending me to Chicago. Although I had wished for it, I was not happy to leave my home. As I sat there on the steps, I thought my heart would break, but ever so quietly I became aware of a lovely blue curtain that waved across the windows, and everything suddenly seemed peaceful. I asked Mommy what the curtain was for. She looked at the windows and said, “What curtain? There’s no curtain.” But I knew I had seen it .
— That image has stayed with me, and only as a contemplative did I come to associate the waving blue curtain with the protective image of the Madonna .
    I was shipped off to Chicago, once again in the care of a porter my mother pressed into service. I wasn’t bright-eyed with expectations. I didn’t know that going back to live with Granny and Grandpa would turn out to be the start of a very happy time in my life .
    Granny was especially good to me. She didn’t spoil me—oh no, she was very strict—but she made me feel included. She taught me to wash and iron and clean house, to knit and crochet. She showed me how to brush and set my hair, and she helped me to learn to read by reading to me—every one of the Oz books. And she lectured me on the value of money and how to get the most for it .
    An essential part of her costume was a garter into which she stuffed her tips. She made good tips because, as she frequently proclaimed, she was the best in the business and the only one at the Round Table who could carry eight plates on her arms at once while, as an added treat, making her false teeth slide in and out .
—My favorite memory is of Granny on duty at the restaurant, standing on her head while she drank a martini. It was a performance she had perfected through many rehearsals .
    If Granny was my best friend, Grandpa was my best buddy. Grandpa was German and, whenever he got mad, he would say the same thing: “Gott, ich bin ein dummer Esel. Schlag mich auf den Kopf und mach’ mich wieder klug.” He said it so often that I memorized it, but I didn’t know what it meant, so I was afraid to say it. It was later translated for me, and I admit there have been many times over the years when I’ve said it myself: “God, I am a dumb ass. Hit me over the head and make me smart again .”
    Grandpa was also a heavy drinker when I came to live in Chicago. You would think I would have recognized the problem, but I didn’t. I mistook his rosy cheeks as blushing. Later he joined Alcoholics Anonymous and successfully stayed off booze for twenty years .
    Grandpa worked as a projectionist at the Drake movie house on Montrose Avenue and used to bring me with him to the projection booth on weekends. Whenever he would take a snooze, it was my job to wake him up in time to switch projectors. In between I would watch all the movies through the little projector window .
    I was spellbound. I eventually got to know the stories so well that I could act