Right now I am reading one of the most fascinating boos I have ever read. Its "Blonde" by Joyce Carol Oats and is a recounting of the life of Marilyn Monroe in form of a novel with a biographic approach. And, in relation to it, I was inspired to write a short story.
This short story is content wise my own work, but the characters of Norma Jean and Gadys have really existed, as their drives trough the Hollywood Hills. But the undertone of it is in borrowing from Oats book. I hoe you enjoy reading it, as much as I enjoyed writing it.
The Celluloid Church
Sunday, June 24th, 1934.
Putting on her dress on Sundays has always been an exciting moment for the little eight year old Norma Jean. Her mother was in their small apartment’s bedroom and put on her dress when the girl entered the room. It was a knee long black satin dress. It had a white underdress that pushed up the upper skirt. Gladys closed the zipper on her back. She wore her dark hair open and in curls, it surrounded her face beautifully. The hairstyle laid emphasis on her porcelain doll face, her voluptuous lips, with the thick red lipstick, that were voluptuous and sensual, and her eyes that Gladys had put on a light make up. On the bed Gladys had laid out a dress for Norma Jean and some shoes as well. She put on her white and black leather pumps as Norma Jean picked up the dress she laid out and started to put it on. It was a very simple, but still very chick dress, with a diamond pattern of blue and white with a simple black belt around her waist. Gladys had put curlers into Norma’s hair earlier today, so the girl only had to remove them now. But under the judging look of Gladys eyes, these eyes that seemed to see everything but nothing real at all, she hesitated to do it, until Glasys walked towards her. "Let me do it, we don't want your hair to look horrible, not today." Today, the day others went to church and after the service had pancakes at the diner, mother and daughter had their own little, reliogiously stylized, ritual. If Gladys had the money for it, the two would sit in their car and drive to the Hollywood Hills to look at the movie star houses, and today was one of these days. And of course, as the occasion was a holy, a special, one, they had to dress upf or the occasion. At least that is what Gladys always said about ocasions and the befitting wardrobe. "Special occasions call for a special wardrobe, dress up to the event, even if you have to make debts for it!"
So Norma Jean just put on the dress and let Gladys do her hair, to fulfill the expectations.
And now she was sitting in the car. The eight year old starred out of the dirty and scratched right side window, and waited for wonders to happen, as Gladys turned the key and the engine started. The motor roared and they slowly drove towards the mysterious and glorified hills, the Hollywood sign in their front window view. The car was a green, twelve year old Ford with black leather seats. The left backseat had a rupture at the right upper part, and filling came out of it.
Her view went right through the window, the material that set these two worlds apart, the much too real world of the car and the mysterious shimmering world of the hills. When they, if they, would just stop, open the cars doors, and get out of it they would enter another world, set foot on hallowed ground of Hollywood. But they never did do, they were just visitors who were feeding their eyes with this supreme dream that became material reality. All its glory was consumed by their lenses. Norma Jean did not even dare to touch the cars window glass and insult the magnificent sight with the fingerprints of her hands on it. The gaze was too perfect to insult its perfection with something so utterly human as fingerprints. In a state of severe awe the girl just held her breath, with the feeling that she and her mother, were in a world of larger than life people, the realm of true stars, of inhuman perfection and a superior standing point. This hot day it was the sun that was burning down on Los Angeles like the flames of hell. They made the small car heat up pretty fast. Although Gladys had lowered her window to let in a bit of fresh air, Norma did not dare to lower the window on her side, she did not see herself worthy of the air this place offered. This space was not to be just entered. Not directly and not yet. Not as an intruder, but as someone you had to get entered. They turned left into a beautiful long avenue, with palm trees on green hedges on both sides, as Gladys started to slow the car down. Norma Jean knew that if her mother slowed down the car, and they were driving very slowly already, some magnificent thing must be about to happen. When Gladys hands, covered by satin gloves up to her elbows, put the steering wheel back into its straight driving position, the anticipation was nearly touchable. It covered over the momentum like a thin, silky veneer of Egyptian cotton.
As they approached the gate of the most wonderful estate the little girl has ever seen, Gladys raised her voice, and full of pride and admiration she said: “Here lives our Jean, Norma Jean. Here lives Jean Harlow, our Jean!” And the girl looked out of the window and soaked all she could see in, into her eyes, her brain, her nerves, her soul, her senses and her being. All the visuals were absorbed right into her cortex, into her deepest inner parts. Here, with the mighty and shiny iron gate, the ridiculously green hedge and the monogram in the gate, the tremendously green lawn and the stunning beauty of the mansions front porch, the crack between these two worlds seemed to be in range. The rupture in the continuums broke the barrier that separated reality and fantasy. The barrier was so thin, so thin in her imagination, that just the exhale of her breath could burst the glass and set her free, free into this unnatural naturalness of beauty and dreams surrounding her. There was a connection. A red line that connected her and the legendary Harlow, a link beyond admiration and desire. Beyond the movies, and beyond the desire for her, as this child of eight years could desire such iconic figure as this actress. She had something in common with the glamorous and adored Jean Harlow. They shared a name. They had in common this thing that only is given once and never can be taken away from you. They had an essence that they shared. That they shared names made that little girl, so full of hope, desires and dreams, filled with admiration and agony, strength and fear, part of the dream. Part of her myth. Part of her course in life, in the universe, and a part in the plan of the gods plays.
With her eyes focused onto the world on the other side of that green Ford’s window, the little girl knew that this would one day be her realm and some other girl would be in her place, starring and dreaming. She was so sure about it, it just had to be. It was destined to be. The gaze would change, for sure.
As they drove on Gladys voice started to get more and more pregnant with excitement, but as she described which movie star lived which house, her voice as well started to crack a little. And by the mentioning of one another stars name the excitement of the afternoon grew to the unimaginable. But knowing her mother and her ways, Norma Jean knew that all the suspense built up, and she knew the changing temper of her mother very well, would culminate in nothing. The expectation would grow like a balloon, pumped with air to be given to a pretty little girl by some friendly person somewhere, and then, at its beauty’s peak, the moment of its fullest perfection, it would pop, make a loud noise and let you wonder what actually happened. Exactly the same it was with Gladys and expectations. At the culminating point her bubble of good mood reached its breaking point, and exploded. And, as it is with the balloon, all that is left of all the happiness, all that sheer excitement and the connection between the Hills and Norma Jean, between Gladys and Norma Jean, would be gone. All that would be left was the dull memory of the moments of luck that already faded away, forced by the mental state of Gladys, even though the moment was bright as a star and happened only seconds ago. “… lived here. She starred in this movie, “The Wind and Gone” with …”, and Gladys was in her element. As they drove and drove along the streets of the Hollywood Hills on this hot summer day of 1934, mother and daughter together, united by the admiration and covered by the blanket of hope and desire, the future of their existence seemed eminent. To be a star, to be someone, to gain an identity on the horizon of this celluloid world, to be admired, to be a person of superior faith and a god given path in life. A name, an image and a life, hallowed and sacred, iconic and photographed by the world. And preserved forever, constantly repeated, never dead but always alive. In every household, admired and praised like a prophet, the prophet promising another life, sometimes, somewhere and for something. A thing magnificent enough to be captured, an image that spreads its hallowed light onto the celluloid.
Gladys cursed on the way back home, because she ignored Norma Jeans plead for a stop, so she could use a public toilet. She hit her daughter when she smelled that the girl could no longer hold it. The have been on the road for four hours, and Gladys was too taken to know that, to notice that, unlike the many names she counted, the myths she recounted, they, sitting in this run down car, were human. Two human beings, one doomed and the other one cursed.
