Making a Movie as a Child, 1990s, by Nikkie
From MemoryArchive
Who: Nikkie What: Making a Movie as a Child When: 1990s? Where:
Mom dressed me in a ridiculous white dress, like a flower girl at a pompous wedding. Around my neck, a giant wool scarf for warmth, prickly against my chin. On top of it, her fur coat – padded shoulders, 80’s chic. She used to say it was made of dog, but god, I hope she was joking. The coat dragged on the floor and stairs, too long for my five-year old body. The floor was dirty, damp, cold. My legs, in thin white stockings with holes around my toes and polished little “stylish” European black shoes she bought at the market were freezing, shaking. Clicking along with those little shoes, I hurried behind her, dragging coat and scarf and a white stuffed rabbit. He was made of some cheap material, coarse to the touch, with two deep red eyes. I didn’t notice then that I was dragging him, getting his side all black and grey with ash, whatever else people have on the underside of their shoes and ages of city dust. We took a cab. As always, it smelled like cigarette smoke and sweaty men. I pressed my dirty rabbit closer, against mom’s stylish coat.
Walking into the studio, mom smiled and laughed and greeted everyone - women with too much makeup and tussled hair, fat men in bandanas overgrown with beards, skinny ones with caved-in stomachs, deep-set eyes and thin lips, smiling sheepishly, looking at her as at something fantastic and unattainable. Her artist friends. Mom pushed me forward, slipped off the scarf and plopped me into a makeup chair. A woman with a side-ponytail, smudged lipstick and bad teeth grabbed a palette of hues and used my face as a canvas, smoothing it over with her fuzzy brush, quickly, lightly, turning me into a pale, half-dead reminiscence of me, “angelic” she called it. In a blur, I remember meeting others, and him.
We drove to an abandoned metal yard, the camera crew set up and smoked lazily. Mom stood to the side, holding scarf and coat and rabbit. He took me in one arm, threw me up a bit to check the weight, to see if he could handle it. He could. With the other hand, he grabbed the camera, “an antique, so make sure you don’t fucking drop it,” as the director said. I could feel him straining under the weight of us both: the camera and me. The veins in his neck were slightly visible beneath the skin. The sun shone brightly, making the scene appear as if it were summer but the crisp autumn air nipped at us from all directions. “Make this quick, eh?” he yelled to the crew, then smiled at me like a man about to jump off a cliff. Slowly, he stepped onto the metal pile – wheels, caps, hubs and all kinds of scrap, all rusted, aged, weather-worn, matching the rich brown wood of the antique camera – the kind that pulls out like an accordion. I wrapped my little hand around his neck, right under where his light auburn hair ended. As he climbed, balancing me gingerly against the camera, his hair swayed and tickled my wrist. I held on tighter. My ridiculous white dress must have felt coarse against his arm. “Cut!” The director yelled. He sighed with relief and slowly placed me down, returned the camera to the crew and lit up.
When night fell, in an abandoned building, they shot me looking over him dying – head wrapped in bandages, stained blood red, auburn hair dirty and tossed every which way. I winced, but knew that it was all fake, part of the act. I placed the soiled rabbit on the side of his bed as the camera peered into my eyes, looking for the right emotion. He looked back at me, according to the script, hallucinating, thinking I was his angel from the past. I will never forget the way he looked at me… not at me, but past me. He was thinking of something completely different at that moment, of some loved one he had lost, something he had forgotten, and it had nothing to do with me. He gazed off into the darkness and tears appeared in the corners of his eyes. The camera savored them for a few moments and was done with us.
The director thanked mom for helping him with his movie project and handed her some money. She wrapped me in coat and scarf and as we drove back in the dark and she placed the money in an envelope in my hand. “We’ll get you some chocolate tomorrow, ok?” she smiled at me . I looked into the envelope – it was just enough for two candy bars.
