The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows (5 page)

   
Yes. But no one ever mentions the incident. I’m the only one who remembers it
.

And maybe not.

   
And maybe not
.

My great-aunts and -uncle on my mother’s side were nothing if not colorful. Aunt Ruth was an amateur tap dancer. On her eighty-fifth birthday, still going strong, she made a tape of her tapping, which she sent to me at the abbey. Aunt Ruby collected all kinds of guns and was expert with every one of them. Aunt Vivian was the only Bowen relative who was fond of Daddy and, to Granny’s everlasting irritation, made her home available as a place he and I could spend time together when he was in Chicago. I adored Uncle Clyde. He had only two fingers on his left hand, the result of a childhood prank involving a firecracker. He always treated me as a little person, not a child, and he was so funny
.

—When I became an actress he sent me a note: “I am your most loyal fan since you were a little girl. I have seen all your movies and the only thing I can’t understand is where in the world you picked up a name like Natalie Wood
.”

During those years, Daddy came back into my life sporadically, sometimes in Los Angeles, sometimes in Chicago. He never brought me presents, not even for my birthday or at Christmas. Well, except once—an oversize, glossy publicity photograph of himself
.

My father’s halfsisters—Gladys, Shirley and Virginia—were teenagers when I met them. Unlike Granny’s side of the family, which was church-living but not church-going, the Hicks girls went to church a lot. They took turns taking me to Sunday school—or schools, since each went to a different church. I think rather than confuse me, this gave me a sense that church was special
.

Once a year, for two weeks, Sister Dolores Marie would come to Chicago. I looked forward to each magical visit. Sister smelled of lavender and dressed with starched linen around her face, which was like an aging peach, fuzzy and full of color. The linen was stiff as a board; you could bounce a coin on it
.

Fred Kude, who never forgave his sister for “being taken in by the Church”, had not spoken a civil word to her for years. It was Esther who paid for Sister Dolores Marie’s annual trips out of her garter money so Fred could remain blissfully prejudiced.

She would read to me—stories of the Creation, of Adam and Eve, of the saints and, my favorites, the wonderful and gory tales about the Christian martyrs. One in particular fascinated me. Saint Tarcisius, known as the boy saint, was a twelve year-old-acolyte who lived during the Roman persecutions of the third century and met a grisly death rather than give up the Eucharist to an angry mob. I was fascinated by this story of youthful courage and devotion. So impressed was I that I told Sister I wished I could live my life all over again because I would be so much better
.

—How old were you then?

   
Six
.

Three

My most vivid early memory of my mother is the care she took in looking after every detail in her grooming. It made her special
.

Something else that was special was the tattoo on her left thigh. It looked like an eye sitting on a triangle. I never ceased badgering her about what the tattoo meant, but she never told. Still I grew up knowing that most likely I had the only mother with a tattoo. She had a flair for glamor and created many faces for herself, each favoring the look of a current movie queen
.

She would have a new boyfriend to go with each new look and always brought them home to meet me, introducing them as Uncle John or Uncle Joe or Uncle Whoever. I knew they weren’t my real uncles, but I was too young to call them by their first names, and the situation was too informal for me to address them as “Mister”. The one I liked best was Don Sebastian, a handsome Spaniard
.

In Los Angeles I attended Beverly Vista Grammar School, which was ten blocks from our apartment, but Mom trusted me to take care of myself on the way to and from school. There was a boy, younger and smaller than I, who lived nearby. He was a nasty little fellow. One day he showed me a necklace he was wearing. It was moving. He had a necklace of live ladybugs around his neck! He had pierced each one, and the poor things were struggling to escape. I was horrified—and furious
.

A few days later I lay in wait for this murderer at his house. I grabbed him and twisted his arms behind him and pushed him down into his basement. Now he would get a taste of his own medicine. I tied him tight to a pole with a clothesline and left him there, yelling his lungs out
.

When I told my mother what I had done, she lectured me that I should have been more cautious. “Holy Toledo, sweetie, you should have considered that there could have been an accident while he was tied up, like the furnace exploding. No, you shouldn’t have done what you did. You should have just beaten the crap out of him
.”

This is the child who once carried a ladybug ten miles on the streetcar to show her little friend Amy Godshaw and then brought it back to Beverly Hills so it wouldn’t get lost.

Bert had remarried after the divorce but remained in nonviolent contact with Harriett, who was friendly toward Bert’s new wife, offering sympathy and frequently first aid whenever Jan would appear with a black eye.

Bert lingered under contract with Twentieth Century-Fox for a couple more years without catching on. It was back to walk-ons for the rest of his film career with two exceptions. He played the heavy opposite Robert Montgomery in
Once More, My Darling
, and he had one scene, albeit silent, as Anne Baxter’s cad of a lover in the episodic
O. Henry’s Full House
. He did a little stage work at the Pasadena Playhouse and with the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera before calling it a day. Coincidentally, his old army buddy, Freddy Cocozza, was beginning what would be a spectacular movie career just as Bert’s was fizzling out. Cocozza was now Bert’s brother-in-law, having married Betty Hicks, and he had a new name. He was now Mario Lanza.

Dolores was spending most of each year in Chicago so the question of schooling was a chief consideration. The nearest public school was some distance from Hermitage Avenue, through busy streets and across streetcar tracks. Esther simply wouldn’t allow Dolores to walk there. There was a Catholic school closer to home with a safer route. So, for practical rather than religious reasons, Dolores was enrolled in Saint Gregory’s third-grade class.

I wasn’t the only non-Catholic child in school, but there weren’t many, and I sensed a difference, maybe that the kids who were Catholic had a feeling of security that I lacked. I used to hang on every word they said when they talked to each other about their family life. It was different from mine. And I was shy and embarrassed that my clothes weren’t as nice as the other kids’. Granny’s philosophy was if you’re dressed warmly enough, that’s all that mattered
.

The teachers were stricter than those in public school, expected more and, one way or another, got more. Sister Celine was my favorite. She took special care with me because I didn’t have the advantage of a Catholic background and she didn’t want me to fall behind the other students. She also considered me musical and thought I should play an instrument. I made up my mind on the harp, but Grandpa nixed it. He couldn’t see me lugging the thing all over town, and he sure wasn’t going to be my bearer. He made up
his
mind on the clarinet, so the clarinet it was
.

Classes in religion were part of the curriculum at Saint Gregory’s. Each child had a
Baltimore Catechism,
a little blue book with questions such as “Who is God?”, “How many Persons in God?” and answers such as “God made me to know Him, to love Him, to serve Him and to live with Him for all days and even unto eternity.” It was something a child memorized—like the Pledge of Allegiance
.

Harder for me to accept was the edict that if you weren’t Catholic you couldn’t go to Heaven when you died. As taught in parochial schools then, you went to Hell and lived in eternal damnation
.

—When I heard those words, that non-Catholics couldn’t go to Heaven, I thought of Granny and Grandpa. It was a hard swallow
.

Students spent some time each day in the adjacent church, and I went along with them. I didn’t understand the Mass but did pretty much what they all did, copying their postures. When they would stand, I would stand; when they kneeled, I kneeled. I found these prayerful movements and the ritual of the service very appealing. In fact, I was finding most everything about the Catholic Church engaging, and I started to go into the chapel when no one else was there
.

As young as I was, I was taken by a special presence in the sanctuary, and I grew to understand that this presence came from the place where the candle was lighted and was holy. It made me feel secure. Although that feeling certainly contributed to my entering the Church, it wasn’t the main reason
.

When I began school, all the children who received Communion at Mass in the morning, and most of them did, fasted from midnight until they broke the fast with Communion. Then they would all have hot chocolate and sweet rolls for breakfast right there at school. Non-Catholic kids were supposed to eat before Mass and weren’t invited to breakfast. The sweet bread looked very good, so I asked one of the sisters if I could have bread with the other children. She thought I meant that I would like to receive the Eucharist and asked me if I wanted to become a Catholic. I said I would ask my grandmother
.

Granny didn’t care. She said whatever I wanted to do, I could do: “Just because we never found anything, that doesn’t mean we should deny you the right to try.” Mom gave me the same answer she always had as long as I could remember: “You should do what you know in your heart is right.” When I learned that I would be allowed to convert, I got down on my knees and said aloud all the Catholic prayers I had memorized
.

Dolores was entered in First Communion classes, a first step toward the conversion that began, not with a strong religious incentive, but two practical ones: don’t cross dangerous streets and have breakfast with the children.

Sister Dolores Marie was ecstatic. Every day she would get me on my knees and teach me the Rosary, which we did in the back bedroom closet so Grandpa wouldn’t hear
.

At Mass I watched when the children received Communion. I began to put together the fact that the presence I experienced when I was alone in the church—the reassurance, the well-being—was somehow associated with the wafer the children ate. Soon I would be able to participate in a new way—not only going into the church but actually receiving the wafer kept in that box, the tabernacle. It was hard to explain as a child—there I was finding this wonderful thing, and there I was eating it
.

—
It’s hard to explain as a grown-up too
.

After school, some of the Saint Gregory kids would go swimming at the YMCA, and not wanting to be left out, Dolores went with them, never admitting that she didn’t know how to swim. One day, she took a dare and jumped off the high board. She bumped into the side of the pool and was taken home, badly shaken and very groggy. When she didn’t recover as quickly as Esther expected, a doctor was called. The doctor administered penicillin, unaware that Dolores was allergic to the new drug. That night she had a serious reaction and great difficulty moving. Esther was sure it was polio. In the 1940s there was a polio epidemic in America, and public swimming pools were high on the list of places to contract the disease.

I remember everybody being so sad. Granny slept on cushions on the floor next to my bed, and whenever she couldn’t be there, her friend Lola Menary was. The atmosphere was decidedly gloomy, and I couldn’t help but pick up on it. When a playmate slipped in and placed a lily on my chest, causing Granny to burst into tears, I believed I was going to die. I couldn’t explain it, but I felt the presence of something that I accepted as the presence of authority—the presence of God. I spoke—not prayed, but spoke—to God: “If You want me to go to You, I’ll go. I’m not afraid
.”