“And what have we here, Mother dear?”
She nearly suppressed a giggle. “Reggie, you're too naughty.”
He turned to me, holding his lips tight. “How now, brown cow?”
I knew or should have known it would be a matter of time before some racial remark would be made. Here this chit was calling me a brown cow.
“Rita, this is Reggie. Isn't he a naughty boy? Naughty, naughty.” She nearly kitchy-kooed his chin.
I made my diction as prudish as the young man's was prissy. “I haven't the faintest idea whether he's naughty or not. I do know that if he's your son, at least one of you has something to be ashamed of.”
Reggie blanched and tightened. “You have a nasty mind to go with that nasty mouth.” His voice sharpened with indignation. “What are you doing here, anyway? Who asked you?” He began to tremble.
Marge said, “There's no reason to get excited, Reggie baby. Calm down, hear? Just consider the source.” She slipped out of his embrace and put both arms around his back and pulled him over into her lap. “There now, baby, there, there.” She pressed chunky fingers on his hair and then looked up at me distraught.
I was thoroughly displeased with myself. I murmured “Sorry” and rose to go, but a door opened behind me and I turned. Jorie stood in the doorway. She wore a long black dress and lights leaped in her hair.
“Well, darlings, aren't you kind. You started without me.” She laughed at her own good humor. I liked her more at that moment than I had before. She didn't appear to take herself too seriously. When she saw me she gave a little shriek of delight.
“How marvelous, Rita! You didn't forget. Has everyone met this most divine dancer?”
She came toward me as if she was going to take my hand like a referee and proclaim me champion. She stopped and patted my shoulder. “Have you had wine? Are they treating you all right?”
I told her that they were and, satisfied, she walked on to meet the other guests.
I was in a quandary. Obviously I couldn't leave the moment the hostess made her appearance, and just as obviously I couldn't sit back down on the floor near Marge and Reggie, who had finished ministering to each other's sorrow and were watching Jorie's movements keenly.
I wandered into the kitchen and claimed a drink. I had not drunk much dry wine before that night, but if white people could drink wine like Kool-Aid, then there was no reason on God's green earth I could not do the same. The second glass went down smoother than the first and the third more swiftly than the second. Alone, seated in a strange house filled with strangers, I felt as if I were in dangerous waters, swimming badly and out of my depth. I was plankton in an ocean of whales. The image was so good I toasted it with another glass of wine. Loud laughter penetrated the closed door and I wondered how people became so poised, so at ease. Sophistication was not an inherent trait, nor was it the exclusive property of whites. My mother's snappy-fingered, head-tossing elegance would have put every person in the room to shame. If she walked in the house uninvited, even unexpected, in seconds she would have the party clustered around her, filling her glass, listening to her stories and currying for one of her brilliant smiles. My mother was more elegant than Kay Francis and Greer Garson put together, prettier than Claudette Colbert (who I secretly thought was the prettiest white woman in the world) and funnier than Paulette Goddard. Oh, yes. I drank a glass of wine to my mother.
When I found the door leading from the kitchen, I walked back into a near-empty living room. I would have sworn that I had spent no more than fifteen minutes over the wine, but it would have been impossible for the room to clear in that time.
Jorie, Don, Barry and Fred sat in easy chairs listening intently to a record. Gertrude Lawrence or Bea Lillie sang shakily in a reedy voice.
I interrupted, “Oh, hello.”
They jumped up, startled into speaking all at once.
“Where have you been?”
“I thought you had gone.”
“What were you doing?”
“Where have you been?”
I told them I'd been in the kitchen drinking wine.
Jorie collected herself. “Well, my dear, it's awfully late, but do come and sit a minute.”
My progress across the room was not as steady as I wanted, but I proceeded in what I hoped was a dignified manner.
Don got up and led me to a chair.
Barry said, “We're listening to some songs for Jorie's act. She's going to open in New York at the Blue Angel.”
Jorie shook out her hair. “My God, I've got to make New Yorkers laugh. That's what I call a challenge. What have New Yorkers got to laugh about?”
I said, “But I thought you were a singer.”
Don said, “She's a singer-comedienne. And”—he became protective—“she's bloody brilliant.”
Jorie touched Don lightly and smiled, “You don't need to defend me. She didn't say I wasn't bloody brilliant.”
Don caught her affectionate tone. “Sorry, Rita, but of course you've never seen Jorie perform, have you?”
Barry said, “And she won't, either. Her working hours, remember? Jorie leaves in three weeks.”
At that moment I thought about my job and covered my fear by blurting out, “I'll be able to see you next week. I'm on notice at the club.”
“You mean you've been fired?” Disbelief raised Don's voice and widened his eyes.
Jorie said, “But, darling, you're the only talent they've got. I mean. Surely they don't think people come there to see those awful strippers in their awful sequins. I mean.”
I explained why I was fired, putting the blame on jealousy.
Barry asked what I'd do next and I could not answer. Only a small savings account stood between me and poverty.
“It's a pity you don't sing,” Barry said in his clipped accent. “The Purple Onion needs someone to take Jorie's place.”
I had not told them I could sing.
“What about folk songs?” Jorie said. “My dear, everyone, but every single soul today, knows at least one folk song. Of course, it has one thousand verses and lasts for two hours without intermission. I mean.”
Everyone laughed and I joined in. Not because I agreed, but because I was pleased to be in such clever company.
I said, “I know a calypso song.”
The men exchanged knowing looks with Jorie, then turned to me, straight-faced for a minute, and broke into a mean laughter.
“That's a good one. Oh, Rita, you're good.”
They were laughing at me and I was expected to join them. Only the secure can bear the weight of a joke and only the very secure can share in the laughter.
“Do you think calypso music isn't folk music? Folks sing it. Or do you believe because the folks are Negroes their music doesn't count, or that because they're Negroes they aren't folks?”
It was obvious that my anger was unexpected. A pale shock registered on their features. Don's eyebrows rose, making him look like a leprechaun tricked out of his burrow. Barry, having found my loss of control distasteful, averted his eyes. Jorie blinked and winked her false eyelashes. Fred Kuh, who had said little, quietly offered: “No one meant to hurt your feelings, Rita. Jorie has a passion against calypso. That's all there is to it.”
“What's wrong with calypso?” I had so strongly pulled anger to me as a defense that I could not shoo it away merely because it was no longer needed.
Fred said, “I think it's because the singers rely more on the beat than on storytelling. And Jorie's concerns are just the opposite.”
“Oh, my dear”—Jorie was back with us—“It's the god-awful thump, thump, thump. It's the ‘de man,’ ‘de girl,’ ‘de boat’ My God, haven't we got beyond ‘dis’ and ‘dat’? Really.”
It was a question of how I was to show that I was mollified without seeming to surrender my advantage.
“When you or any white person says ‘dis’ or ‘dat,’ it is certain that you intend to ridicule. When a Black person says it, it is because that'
s the way he speaks. There's a difference.” There was a delicious silence. For the moment, I had them and their uneasiness in the palm of my hand. The sense of power was intoxicating.
“You say you dislike calypso and that the songs have no story line. Do you know ‘Run Joe’ by Louis Jordan?”
Their heads shook, which showed they were not totally immobilized.
“It goes like this.” I stood.
“Moe and Joe ran a candy store
Telling fortunes behind the door
The police came in and as Joe ran out
Brother Moe, he began to shout
Run Joe
Hey, the man at the do'
Run Joe
The man he won't let me go
Run Joe
Run as fast as you can
Run Joe
The police holding me hand.”
I had played Louis Jordan's record until it was gun-metal gray so I knew every rest and attack of the song. I stretched my arms and waved my hands and body in a modified hula, indicating how fast Joe made his getaway. I tugged away from an imaginary policeman showing the extent of restraint imposed on Moe. I spun in place in the small area, kneeled and bowed and swayed and swung, always in rhythm.
When I finished the song, which seemed to consist of fifty verses, the assembly applauded loudly and their smiles were brilliant.
Jorie lifted a handful of hair and said, “But I mean, pet, you can sing. Have you ever sung before?”
Don said, “It's obvious you have. But professionally?”
When I was growing up in Stamps, Arkansas, Momma used to take me to some church service every day of the week. At each gathering we sang. So I knew I could sing. I did not know how well. Our church was bare because the parishioners were poor and our only musical instruments were tambourines and our voices. I had never sung to piano accompaniment, and although my sense of rhythm was adequate, I had not the shadow of an understanding of meter.
Jorie said, “But, my dear, if you can sing like that you should take my place at the Purple Onion. You'll be a smashing success. I mean they will simply adore you.”
“How many songs like that do you know?”
“How many musicians will you need?”
“What about gowns?”
“Can you have an act together in three weeks?”
My God. My world was spinning off its axis, and there was nothing to hold on to. Anger and haughtiness, pride and prejudice, my old back-up team would not serve me in this new predicament. These whites were treating me as an equal, as if I could do whatever they could do. They did not consider that race, height, or gender or lack of education might have crippled me and that I should be regarded as someone invalided.
The old habits of withdrawing into righteous indignation or lashing out furiously against insults were not applicable in this circumstance.
Oh, the holiness of always being the injured party. The historically oppressed can find not only sanctity but safety in the state of victimization. When access to a better life has been denied often enough, and successfully enough, one can use the rejection as an excuse to cease all efforts. After all, one reckons, “they” don't want me, “they” accept their own mediocrity and refuse my best, “they” don't deserve me. And, finally, I am better, kinder, truer than “they,” even if I behave badly and act shamefully And if I do nothing, I have every right to my idleness, for, after all, haven't I tried?
Jorie said, “Of course you won't get the mint or probably half of what you're making now. But, my dear, if you're not working after next week, you may as well take this on. For the time being.”
They began to make me up. I had to change my name. And wouldn't it be super duper if I had another origin? Something more exotic than tired old Southern Negro. People were tired of the moss hanging from the magnolia trees and the corn pone and the lynchings and all that old stuff. Anyway, I couldn't compete with Josh White, or Odetta, who I thought was the greatest singer of American Negro folk songs, and who worked nearby.
Couldn't we come up with something gayer, less guilt-awakening?
Jorie, Don and Barrie, along with quick assists from Fred, poked around in their imaginations as I sat watching. It was three o'clock in the morning and they were like children amusing themselves with play dough on a rainy day.
Because I was tall, I should be very grand, possibly from a long line of African kings. And could I speak any African?
I had studied African dance with Pearl Primus, but I had never met an African face-to-face. In fact, in the Negro community of 1953 the phrase used to describe a loud and uncaring person was “as uncouth as an African.” I had lost a job in a leading dance school in Cleveland because I promised to teach “African primitive dance” to the children of the Black middle class.
No, I did not know any African. But I did speak Spanish. Jorie announced that she had an idea: I could be Cuban. That was it. I could be a Cuban who spoke little English, although I sang in the language. I should be torrid and passionate on stage, but haughty and distant offstage: “Rita, the Cuban Bombshell,” the Latin señorita whose father was a Watusi chieftain sold in Cuba.
They were casting me as the star in a drama and I had no real desire to refuse the role. I feebly wondered aloud what would happen if I was discovered a phony. Herb Caen, the acerbic columnist, was a Janus creature, who guarded the local past while guiding the locals' future. He liked Jorie and Stan Wilson and Mort Sahl. But, what if he found that I was a fraud? He could make me the laughingstock of San Francisco.
My new friends countered, “Why should he care? If he did find out and mentioned it, San Franciscans would be amused.” People would laugh with me, rather than at me. After all, the city had more eccentrics than lights on the Golden Gate Bridge.
I not only agreed to the charade but began adding my own touches. My father, the Watusi chieftain, had not been a slave (ah, to rid myself of that stigma) but was the son of a chief who had sailed to Cuba to retrieve his sister, who had been stolen from Africa. Once there, he had fallen in love with a dark-eyed Spanish girl. He had won her after a bloody duel, married her and she had given birth to my father. They, my very well-to-do parents, had sent me to the United States so that I could see some of the world before I married and settled down in my own well-staffed hacienda.
My audience listened, mouths agape, as I reeled my story before them. Their imaginations had been good, but mine was better. They had been amusing themselves, but I was motivated by the desire to escape.
Ivonne sat watching me as I talked. She nodded to indicate not so much that she agreed with me but, rather, that she comprehended what I was saying.
“So I'm going to sing at the Purple Onion. I'll sing calypso songs. Jorie Remus, who is the star there now, and the manager and bartenders are fixing it all up.” I sipped the beer I had brought for a celebration. “They're all white, but they're nice. Sort of like foreigners.”
She inclined her head.
“I mean they are Americans, but Jorie has lived in Paris. In France. And I guess that's why she's kind of different.”
Ivonne drank beer and waited. Our friendship had brought us so close, she sensed that I had something more to say and that what I was saving until last was the most pertinent of my news.
“They remind me of Hemingway and Gertrude Stein and that group that lived in France, you know?”
Because she had not read the books I had read, the names I mentioned did not bring to her visions of the Left Bank and Montmartre. She made no connections with a gay time when America's good white writers sat in places like the Deux Magots dreaming up a literature which would enthrall the world for decades.
My friend was at ease in her silence.
“So they suggested I change my name and …” What had been easy to accept in the company of strangers was almost unspeakable now in Ivonne's familiar living room.
I had thought only that an attempt to pass was an acceptance of that which was not true. As I searched for w
ords, it occurred to me that what I was about to do was to deny that which was true.
“They suggested that I say I came from Cuba.”
Her black eyes and voice were equally cold and hard.
“Oh, Ivonne. For the romance. Just because it'll make me more exotic.”
“They want you to stop being Negro …”
“Oh no, come on.”
“And you say these people are free? Free of what? And free for what?”
“You don't understand.” I was exasperated with her. She and my mother had more in common than I had with either of them. “And I'm going to sing. I'm going to have a new career.”
“You're going to sing Cuban songs? Like Carmen Miranda? With bananas on your head going ‘Chi chi boom boom’?” Sarcasm syruped in her voice.
“Listen, Vonne, I'm going to sing calypsos. And I'm going to be very good.” I didn't relish having to defend myself. She was my friend. We shared secrets and woes and each other's money. We had keys to each other's houses and together watched our children grow.
“Just listen to this.” I got up and took a place in front of the coffee table.
“He's stone cold dead in de market
Stone cold dead in de market
Stone cold dead in de market
I kill nobody but me husband.”
My voice faltered and fell. I lifted it into a shout. When it sharpened into a screech I softened it. I fled between and over the notes like a long-distance runner on a downhill patch. When it was all over, I had sung in about three keys and Ivonne leaned back on the nearly paid-for sofa. A small resigned smile played hide-and-seek on her face.
She said, “I'll say this for you, Marguerite Johnson”—no one had called me by that name in years—“You've got a lot of nerve.”
And she was right.
CHAPTER 10
North Beach bubbled as noisily and colorfully as the main street in a boom town. Heavy drumbeats thudded out of the doors of burlesque houses. Italian restaurants perfumed the air for blocks while old white-shirted men loudly discussed their bocce games in Washington Square. Pagoda signs jutted from tenements in Chinatown and threatened the upturned faces of milling tourists. One block away on Columbus Avenue, Vesuvio's bar was an international center for intellectuals, artists and young beats who were busily inventing themselves. Next door, Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti read their new poetry at the City Lights Bookstore. Two hundred yards down Columbus, the Black Cat bar was a meeting place for very elegant homosexuals who draped themselves dramatically beside the bar and spoke loudly and familiarly of “culture.”