What’s in a Name?

By Peep Shakespeare

1899

“Oh, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” Stage was up in the attic, pacing and rambling off her lines to herself. She usually rehearsed in the parlor, but it was the week before a show and she had practically driven everyone crazy with her endless practicing. So the attic was her new practice space, where she was usually left alone to scream and shout and be as dramatic as she liked. “O, be some other name! What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet; so Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd, retain that dear perfection which he owes without that title.”

“Hey, Stage? Sissy?”

“What, Peep? I’m trying to run lines.” Her arms fell and she turned to face the little girl, who was bouncing and beaming at Stage.

“Mrs. Heartwick says ya gotta come an’ help me set the table.” Peep grinned and reached out to grab at Stage’s hands, swinging them back and forth. Stage giggled and set her script down before pulling Peep with her down the stairs.

“Well, come on then, Peep! Let’s set the table!” The two girls clattered down the stairs, Peep latching on to Stage’s hand as they hurried. Stage paused in the lobby to check with Mrs. Heartwick that they should set the table at that moment and then Peep was pulling her into the dining room, eager even for work.

“Peep, hold still for two minutes. I’m going to give you the plates and you can stack them on the table… But be careful!” Stage waited until Peep nodded, then dragged a chair over to the cabinet of dishes so she could reach the higher shelves.

As she pulled out a small stack and passed them down to Peep, the younger girl asked, “Stage, tell me a story?”

“Steps is the one for stories. Her or Fae.”

“But I want you to tell me a story!”

“Peep, I don’t know any good stories. Don’t put the plates so close to the edge.”

“Sorry. But you’re an actress, Sissy Stage. Isn’t that what ya do?”

“In a manner of speaking… How many plates is that?”

“….Twenty.”

“All right, two more for certain. Go ask Mrs. Heartwick how many guests, and I’ll think about the story.”

“Okay!” Peep skipped out of the room and Stage sighed. She could never say no to Peep, not when she was asking for something as simple as a story. But the other girls were better at stories than she was. Footsteps, Fae… They could tell a story. They wove words the way painters handled paint, stringing them together to make a story that captivated everyone. She was just an actress, she could take lines and make them her own, but finding her own words was beyond her.

Peep came skipping back into the room. “Seven guests tonight!”

“All right.” Stage passed down the rest of the plates in two groups then asked, “What kind of story do you want?”

“I want…. A story about you!” Peep grinned up at Stage as the older girl climbed off the chair, tucking it back under the table.

Stage made a face. “Why? Why on earth would you want to hear a story about me? Why not a princess or a dragon or something interesting?”

“Because you’re my favorite person in the whole world and you’re so much better than a dumb old princess or a scary dragon or some boring knight.” Peep pouted up at Stage, her blue eyes wide and pleading.

Stage sighed. “Fine. I’ll tell you a story about me. How should it start?”

“Once upon a time, there was a girl called Stage.”

Stage resisted the urge to roll her eyes, turning to take the silverware out of a drawer. “Okay, okay. Once upon a time, there was a girl called Stage…

“Except she wasn’t called Stage. She was Maria Isabella Francesca Belmonte, Izzy to her mami, Bella to her papi, Maria to the teachers, and Francesca to Auntie Heather. But the story really doesn’t start with her. It starts with her parents, Ava Jasso and Alberto Belmonte. Ava had spent her entire life in the Village. She was mixed race so her family was most comfortable here, where skin color doesn’t make any difference. Alberto came over from Italy with his siblings in 1883. He liked exploring the different parts of Manhattan and stumbled into one of the black and tan bars where Ava was working and fell head over heels for the pretty dark-skinned waitress.

“That’s how Papi always told it, anyway. Mami said he got in a fight with one of the other patrons and was knocked out and her boss had her tend his wounds and make sure he wasn’t dead. Either way, they met here in the Village. Papi was living with his brothers and sisters over in Little Italy, where they started a little restaurant. The family business, you know. But he fell in love with my mami and married her and they moved into their own apartment here in the Village. I was born a year after the wedding.

“Steps? I can’t find the napkins, who cleared the table last night? Mole? Oh, hmm. Then the napkins are probably… Come on, Peep. Let’s go check the clothesline. They’re probably still up there.

“Where was I? Oh, I was born. Or, rather, the girl who would become Stage was born. Ava and Alberto adored their little baby girl, a perfect mix of the two of them. They named her Maria for the Virgin, Isabella for Ava’s mother may she rest in peace, although Ava’s mother was Isabelle but they liked the sound of Isabella better, and Francesca for Alberto’s mother may she also rest in peace. And both Ava and Alberto swore up and down that little Maria Isabella was the prettiest little baby they’d ever seen and she would grow into a great beauty when she got older. So Alberto called the little girl Bella because, aside from her mother, she was the most beautiful girl in the world to him. And Ava called the girl Izzy, because it was nice and casual and wouldn’t give the girl a false sense of pride.

“So the girl grew up in the Village, surrounded by artists and actors and singers and dancers and storytellers and all sorts of interesting people. Alberto still worked in Little Italy, in his family’s restaurant, and Ava stopped working in the bar and instead worked with a lady in their building doing laundry and seamstress work. The little girl was far too energetic to sit still by her mother’s side during the day, so she was entrusted to the care of another woman in the building, an actress known as Heather. She called the little girl Francesca, not using her first or second name. As she always told the girl, “Your first name is for your teachers. Your second name is for your parents. But your third name, that beautiful, elegant, mysterious name… That will be your stage name. Wait and see.” So Francesca, as we will now call the little girl, grew up under the wing of the talented actress Heather. She spent her days in the theatre, watching rehearsals and teaching herself the dances the chorus girls learned, playing back in the prop and set loft, playing dress up in the costume room. She was a child of the theatre.

“Fae! Fae! I can’t find the gravy ladle, what did you do- Oh. There it is. What is it doing there? Never mind, I don’t care. Peep, I told you to hang on to the pads for the hot dishes, what did you do with them? Oh, good. I thought you lost them.

“Sorry, sorry. Where was I? Right, the theatre. Well, Francesca grew up there, as I said. The actors got used to her watching and grew to love the little girl, with her wild curly hair and constant smiling. She was always on hand to run errands for the director, to stand in to hold a place for blocking, to just help out where she was needed. It wasn’t long before the directors started automatically casting her in the child roles. She was well behaved and an attractive child and when casting children, those were the two most important qualities. She had her stage debut at the age of six, after she had been spending her days in the theatre for two years. She played the daughter of the leading couple and from then on, she was a feature in many productions, moving up through the roles as she got older. Her first speaking role was when the theatre put on an adaptation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and she starred as Alice. She was nine years old and a hit.

“She was happy. She would go to school in the day then as soon as classes got out she would run to the theatre and spend the rest of her afternoon and evening in the hallowed halls, going home for supper and then straight back to rehearsals. She would go home after rehearsals were over and sleepily listen to her parents tell her a story then fall asleep, exhausted. Ava and Alberto were worried their daughter might be doing too much at the theatre, but the girl was happy, so that was all that mattered.

“Sit up straight, Peep, and don’t slurp your soup. I’ll finish the story after dinner.

“All right, all right. Stop fussing. We’ll go up to the library and I’ll finish the story. Why on earth do you like it so much? It’s not that interesting, really. Nothing like what Steps and Fae tell.

“Right, where was I? She was nine, wasn’t she? Already a star. So, little Francesca was happy with her life, happy to be in the theatre and up on stage. Happy with her parents, who were happy to see their little girl so happy. Life was perfect.

“Of course, this is the part of our story that gets a little bit sad. Stories and life can’t be happy all the time, can they? Of course not. So up until Francesca was eleven, life was good. One day, Ava and Alberto announced to the girl that Ava was pregnant. Francesca was going to be a big sister. Naturally, Francesca was overjoyed. She had been an only child for so long, but now she was going to have a little sister to fuss over. Yes, like you. Just like you, but not like you at all. You’re special, Peepers.

“Now, Francesca was so excited she didn’t want to go to school. But Ava made her go, so off she went, disappointed she couldn’t spend the day with her mami rearranging the apartment to make room for a crib and a place for the baby.

“Francesca was antsy all through the day. She couldn’t sit still. She wanted to get home and see what her mami and papi had done with the apartment. As soon as school got out, she raced back to her apartment, but something was wrong. The block was roped off. The building was gone. Francesca heard a man mention that no one got out alive, that the fire had happened at 8:30, before her mami and papi would have left for work.

“Francesca didn’t think. She just ran, ran to her safe haven and the only familiar place left in the world. She sat on the steps to the stage door, sobbing into her arms. Someone found her. Someone listened to her bawl. Someone picked her up and took her to this lodging house.

“And there she stayed. Between the lodging house and the theatre, she made her home again. The girls at the lodging house christened her Stage and she clung to it. Her other names reminded her too much of her mami and papi. Stage was clean. Stage had no bad memories attached to it. Just the joy she felt at being on stage.

“And that’s how Maria Isabella Francesca Belmonte became Stage Belmonte. Just Stage to her friends. Sissy Stage or Sissy to one little blonde chick.”

“Hey!”

“And that’s the end of the story. Are you happy, imp?”

Peep nodded, nestled in her bed. “Mhmm. Love you, Sissy.”

“Love you too, Peepers. Sleep well, sweet.”

After Peep drifted off, Stage left the bunkroom, wandering up to the attic. She picked up her script again, looked it over, then closed it and set it by the stairs. The attic was big, piled with trunks and all sort of random things. It was quiet.

She sat by one of the windows, staring out at the night sky. She barely even heard when Footsteps came up behind her, jumping when she touched her shoulder.

“Hey. You okay?”

Stage nodded. “Mhmm. I’ll go to bed soon. I just need a minute…”

“D’ya want to talk about it?”

“No….” She shook her head, wrapping her arms around her knees. When she didn’t elaborate, Footsteps just patted her shoulder again.

“Well, I’m around if ya wanna talk.”

Stage nodded, looking back out the window. She waited until she head Footsteps head down the stairs before burying her head in her knees.