The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou by Maya Angelou
“He said, ‘Bitch, you supposed to be so bad. You need a good ass-kicking.’ ”
She looked at me, puzzlement wrinkling her pretty face.
“Baby, I swear to you, I don’t know what sent him off, but before I could say anything, he reached in his pocket and pulled out a knife. You know he’s got something wrong with the fingers on his left hand, so he bent his head over and was trying to open the knife with his teeth. Now, you can see by that, that he’s a fool. Instead of moving away from him I just stepped over to the mantel. I put Bladie Mae in my pocket before I went up to the room. When he came up with his knife half open, I slapped him cross the face with ole Bladie.
“He jumped faster than the blood. Screamed, ‘Goddammit, Bibbie, you cut me!’
“I said, ‘You goddam right, and you lucky I don’t shoot you on top of it.’
“He was holding his face, blood dripping down his hands on to his Hart Schaffner and Marx suit. I gave him a pillow off my bed and told him to sit down. I told him moving around makes the blood pump faster. I came back to the kitchen and told John Thomas to make himself scarce—no point in him being involved—then I called the police and the ambulance.”
Mother inspected the contents of her glass, then she took my large hand in her smaller, plump one and ordered my close attention.
“Baby, Mother Dear’s going to tell you something about life.”
Her face was beautifully calm, all traces of violence lost.
“People will take advantage of you if you let them. Especially Negro women. Everybody, his brother and his dog thinks he can walk a road in a colored woman’s behind. But you remember this, now. Your mother raised you. You’re full-grown. Let them catch it like they find it. If you haven’t been trained at home to their liking tell them to get to stepping.” Here a whisper of delight crawled over her face. “Stepping. But not on you.
“You hear me?”
“Yes, Mother. I hear you.”
—
There had been some changes at home. Bailey had found his first great love. Eunice was a small, smiling brown-skinned girl who had been our classmate. They had met again, and over the protests of her family, rushed to marry. Bailey, the airy false charmer, had drifted to earth and was happy. He laughed and joked again.
They invited me to their Turk Street apartment, where large Gauguin and Van Gogh prints enlivened the walls and fresh flowers sparkled on waxed tables.
He told funny dirty stories and the three of us laughed into the cheap wine and congratulated ourselves on being smart enough to be young and intelligent. We could see the plateaus of success in our futures. Plateaus where we would wait and rest awhile before climbing higher. When he looked at my 8” by 10” professional glossies, he said I had the “biggest nose in show business” but it was prettier than Jimmy Durante’s and I ought to be proud.
I tried to punch him, but he laughed and swerved out of the way.
“You’ll be the tallest dancer on Broadway. Ha ha.” He ran around the table escaping my outstretched hand. “You’ll make a million with each leg and a zillion with your nose.”
Relief made me laugh out of proportion. Later I kissed them both good night and wished I knew how to thank Eunice for helping Bailey find his sense of humor again.
I walked the dark streets toward home and shivered at Bailey’s close escape. Most of his friends, funny and bright during our schooldays, now leaned in nighttime doorways, nodding as their latest shot of heroin raced in their veins. Sparkling young men who were hopes of the community had thrown themselves against the sealed doors set up by a larger community, and not only hadn’t opened them, but hadn’t even shaken the bolts. The potential sharp-tongued lawyer, keen-eyed scientist and cool-hand surgeon changed his mind about jimmying the locks and took to narcotics so that he could float through the key hole.
Eunice’s happy love and soft laughter had come just in time. My brother was saved.
CHAPTER 24
Poole and Rita were booked into the Champagne Supper Club. Pride made me go beserk. I quit my job. How could I exchange the glittering sequined bathing suit and purple satin tap shoes for a waitress apron and old-lady comforts? I wouldn’t insult my muse, Terpsichore, by letting even the idea of the Chicken Shack enter into my thoughts.
A two-week engagement in Big Time, and I was ready.
My lights in stars, my name in lights, my name in stars.
For a few months before the opening we worked for whatever money was offered and practiced daily. R.L. showed me increasingly complicated steps. As soon as I learned, he laced them into our routines. When I had no cash, I asked Mother for a loan. I explained that I was investing my time in career preparation, and when the investment paid off she would be with me, holding hands and laughing and reaping the returns.
With characteristic talent, she enlarged my skit into a full-length revue. And she was the star. She reminded me that during the war years, when she had had lots of money and could have afforded to sit back idle, she had studied barbering, cosmetology, ship-fitting, welding, tool-and-dye making, and that the diplomas attesting to her perseverance hung on the walls of her den. She said she had no intention of ever going to work in an airplane factory or barber shop, but if push came to shove (she snapped her fingers), she was qualified. She approved of sticking to an idea until it was definitely proven bad or good.
She lent me the money, without further preachments, and Poole and Rita continued to practice.
Although I lived and ate at home, the small savings I kept in a jar under my bed diminished. My son always seemed to need new clothes; on Sundays I traditionally bought fresh flowers for the house; and then there were the tap shoes. Rehearsing wore out more taps than dancing three times a night in a cabaret.
I approached Bailey for a small advance. He sat, stubble-jawed, on his corduroy sofa, and looked at the adjacent wall.
“I’ve put Eunice in the hospital. She’s very sick.”
“What’s wrong with her?” I made my voice soft.
“She just had a cold. That’s all.” But he didn’t believe that was all.
“Well, come on. She’s young. Nobody dies from a cold.” If only I could get him to look at me. I went on making a joke. “They only wish they could.”
“Yeah.” He put his feet on the cluttered coffee table, leaned back on the sofa and closed his eyes.
“Good-bye, Maya.”
“Bailey, it’s not that serious.” He didn’t try to hear me and I could not intrude further by repeating myself.
The apartment stank of dead flowers and dirty dishes. His voice blurred but didn’t rise or fall. “I’ve cut out all the runs except Los Angeles so I can be with her.”
The room was oppressive as if a large hand had squeezed the gaiety out of it drop by drop and then released it to resume its former shape.
—
I was getting so I could fairly fly through the routine. My romance with R.L. was danced out in the rehearsal hall, because he made few sexual demands. I gave no arguments to his monthly requests for love-making. After all, he was my teacher and my transportation to Broadway. But I was grateful that they didn’t come with greater frequency. An artist, I was certain, protected and preserved his instrument. Pianists, drummers, horn players, saxists all look after their instruments. As a dancer, my instrument was my body. I couldn’t just allow a person, anyone, to screw my instrument.
Opening night arrived. Mother had taken a large table for her friends, and Bailey miraculously didn’t have to be on the road or at the hospital. The night club, which was large and bedizened with glittering spinning lights, was full.
Excitement made me glow and the lights backstage rubbed away R.L.’s pockmarks. We looked at ourselves in the large mirror. He was absolutely dashing in his powder-blue tuxedo, and I was as glamorous as Esther Williams in my swimsuit. And could dance better, too.
The M.C. called our names, and the band swung into our introduction.
R.L. said in his slow voice, “Okay, Rita
, break a leg.” Show-business talk. I grinned. “You, too.”
And we hit the stage.
The first moment’s unreality was caused by the lights. I couldn’t see the audience, and I thought about the first time when I panicked and froze to the stage. Maybe this was happening again. Maybe I had frozen, I couldn’t tell if I was moving. But suddenly I heard the clap of taps breaking, exploding through the band’s arrangement, and I found I was on the far side of the stage and it was time for me to break. I was dancing, my feet and body were doing the right things. With that I let go, just let the orchestra push, prod and pull me. I surrendered every memory I had to oblivion and let myself dance. Each time I danced near R.L., I laughed out loud at the perfect glory of it all. The music was my friend, my lover, my family. It was a pretty day on a San Francisco hill with just enough high to remark on details. It was my son laughing when I entered his room. Great poetry that I had memorized and recited to myself in a warm bath.
The band was playing the closing riffs and R.L. took my hand. We danced to the edge of the stage and bowed. The audience applauded moderately, except for Mother’s table and a bravo from where Bailey sat near the door. I never knew whether the great disappointment came from having to stop dancing or from the fact that the audience didn’t jump up, run screaming for the stage to touch my victory. But in the dressing room I began to drown in a depression sea. Neither the flowers Bailey sent nor Mother’s smile saved me. Two more shows to do that night and by the last one I was questioning whether I was cut out for show biz … whether or not it was too coarse for my pure and delicate nature, too commercial for my artistic soul.
All the area’s drunks and sporting people caught the last show and I was again intoxicated. They shouted, “Shake it, baby,” “Dance, baby, dance,” made noise, stumbled around from table to table, and the sense of gay activity helped Poole and Rita and the orchestra to recreate the earlier magic.
The patrons may not really have noticed the very tall, big-nosed dancing fool up there, but their vitality locked me into a love of performing that continued for many years.
Except for a few “casuals” (one-night performances in convention halls), the talent of Poole and Rita was going largely unappreciated. We refused the itinerant offers to perform at stags. I said I would never dance nude for a bunch of white men to gape at me. R.L. agreed and tried to appear possessive, but probably the larger truth was that we couldn’t work up a “Beauty and Beast” routine. Neither did I have the attributes to portray Beauty, nor did he have the body to dance Beast. We would have been ludicrous.
The gigs at the Elks were bright splatches in the dull landscape. In black communities there is a counterpart to the white segregated secret society, B.P.O.E. (Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks). We call ours the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World. I had been initiated into the mysterious organization as a teenager and had once won prizes in its oratorical contest, and now our dance team was hired at the hilarious and good-fun dansants.
The middle-aged ladies, usually stout and dressed more attractively than the women whose houses they cleaned, patted me after the shows and admired my leanness.
“Honey, you sure know how to shake that thing.” A big pretty laugh. “I used to shake it like that, but them days is gone forever.”
Then they would run their palms down my side.
“Bet your momma is proud of you. I bet you she is.”
And she was. And I was proud of myself.
“Blue Flame” and “Caravan” were my favorite dance arrangements because R.L. laid out most of the time and I danced barefoot in little balls of blue ostrich feathers and Indian bells at my ankles. I tried to imitate Frances Nealy, a beautiful black woman who had played an Egyptian dancer in a forties technicolor movie. A few Dorothy Lamour hand movements and Ann Miller’s leg kicks just added spice.
Then Cotton Candy Adams came to town.
“Let me be your little dog
till your big dog come
Let me be your little dog
till your big dog come
And when your big dog come,
tell him what your little dog done.”
R.L.’s words stumbled when he started to tell me about his ex-girl friend and former dancer. “Oh, Rita … she—Candy and I—I mean, she was my old lady … and she, uh, left me. That is, we used to dance together. She came out here—I mean, she said if … When she left me … uh, if I … if she … ever changed her mind, she’d, uh, find me.”
“Okay, R.L. She came. Are you all going back together?” I was as snappy as I thought a chorus dancer would be.
“See, Rita, she’s a, uh, dancer. I mean, she’s great. She used to dance with Parker and Johnson. And she’s worked the Orpheum Circuit.” He had stopped stuttering. “She brought her costumes. Really flash. Feather fans with rhinestones. See, most of what I taught you—I mean …” Shyness tripped his tongue and he began to stutter again. “Wait till you meet her. She’s … You’re going to … I think you’ll like each other.”
“Sure thing, Bozo.” I had never called a living soul Bozo. “I’d be delighted to meet her.”
Cotton Candy was the picture of every “Daddy’s little girl.” Her real hair hung down in black waves and dimples punctured her light-brown cheeks. She had a cute walk, which wavered between a wanton strut and a little-girl mince. And then she opened her mouth. “Hi, Rita. R.L. told me about you. You’re a dancer.”
I didn’t know how to hold the shock. Her teeth were rotten and her lips refused to help mold her words. I looked at her eyes and understood. They shone feverishly, yet seemed lifeless. Cotton Candy was a user.
Certainly R.L. knew. After all, he was from Chicago. I couldn’t grasp why he would want to get reconciled with her, and I knew from the enchanted way he watched her that that was exactly what he wanted.
“Yes, I’m a dancer. Are you planning to dance in San Francisco?” Might as well have it out in the open.
“Oh yes.” Although R.L. was feet from her, she cuddled in his direction. “R.L. and I are going to brush up our old act and get started again.” She closed her mouth and dimpled. Her eyes slowly moved to R.L. “Isn’t that what you said, Boogie?”
“Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. We’ll do all the stuff we used to do.”
I had to get away immediately. “Well, good luck to you both. Break a leg.” I walked away from the lovers before they could see the life leaking out of me.
At home, I paced the floors. Mother had taken my son out and Papa Ford snored in the small back bedroom. I cursed Cotton Candy for coming to San Francisco and consigned R.L. to hell for being stupid enough to take her back. My career was over before it began. My tears came hot and angry. I had dared so many things and failed. There was to be nothing left to do. I had given Curly my young love; he had gone away to marry another woman. The self-defense tactics with the lesbians had gained me a whorehouse, which I had neither the skill nor the courage to keep. I had fled to the home of my youth and had been sent away. The Army and now my dance career, the one thing I wanted beyond all others (needed, in fact) for my son but mostly for myself, had been plucked right out of my fingers. All the doors had slammed shut, and I was locked into a too-tall body, with an unpretty face, and a mind that bounced around like a ping-pong ball. I gave in to sadness because I had no choice.
A few days passed and R.L. didn’t come to the house. I telephoned him. He was distracted but promised to drop by and talk about it. I waited past the afternoon hour he mentioned, and long into the night. He never came; he didn’t call.
If we had had the opportunity to talk about it, laboriously and painfully, I might have been forever lost in the romance of romance lost. But with no sounding board except my own ears and honest thoughts, I had to stop weeping (it was too exhausting) and admit that Cotton Candy had dibs on him and maybe R.L. felt more loyal to her because she was a user and needed him.
There was nothing about me to bind anyone to me in sympathy. N
o limp, no habit, crossed eyes or attitude of helplessness. I decided I’d try to sort out my life. I tried to crush the thoughts of self-pity that needled into my brain and told myself that it was time to roll up my costumes, which would eternally have the odor of grease paint in their seams, and put away the tap shoes, which hurt my feet anyway. For, after all, only poets care about what happened to the snows of yesteryear. And I hadn’t time to be a poet, I had to find a job, get my grits together and take care of my son. So much for show biz, I was off to live real life.
CHAPTER 25
A friend of Mother’s who had a restaurant in Stockton needed a fry cook. I packed the clothes I thought we might need and set out for the eighty-mile journey. I wasn’t sure that I’d find pot in the little town, so I stashed a Prince Albert can full, and papers, in the bottom of my suitcase. I refused to cry all the way in the back seat of a Greyhound bus.
Stockton had an unusual atmosphere. Situated in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley, it had long been a center for the itinerant workers, Southerners drawn from depleted farms, Mexicans and Filipinos from their poverty-stricken countries who had raised large families on meager incomes since the early 1900s. World War II had enriched the town’s blood by attracting blacks from the South to work at the local dry dock, the shipyards and defense plants in nearby Pittsburg.
When I arrived, there was Wild West rhythm in the streets. Since some of the plants were still running and the police hadn’t yet cracked down on crime, prostitutes and gamblers came from San Francisco and Los Angeles on weekends to fleece the willing local yokels.
The restaurant was large, seating seventy-five, and had a steady and regular clientele. But because it was two blocks from Center Street, we got little of the sophisticated walk-in trade. My shift began at four in the afternoon, and I fried hamburgers, pork chops and eggs and ham steaks until midnight. Then, to add juice to my dry life, I would wash up, exchange the sweaty uniform for a clinging one-shoulder deal and high-heeled shoes that hurt my already swollen feet. A slow saunter to Center Street, and a perch at the crowded bar gave me a chance to watch the fascinating city folks, and at the same time haughtily explain to any man fresh enough to approach me that I worked for a living. I wasn’t a whore. I told myself that the fact that I might have been mistaken for one, because of my flagrant way of dressing or clinging to a bar alone in a small town at one in the morning, was simply evidence of men trying to read a book by its cover.
She looked at me, puzzlement wrinkling her pretty face.
“Baby, I swear to you, I don’t know what sent him off, but before I could say anything, he reached in his pocket and pulled out a knife. You know he’s got something wrong with the fingers on his left hand, so he bent his head over and was trying to open the knife with his teeth. Now, you can see by that, that he’s a fool. Instead of moving away from him I just stepped over to the mantel. I put Bladie Mae in my pocket before I went up to the room. When he came up with his knife half open, I slapped him cross the face with ole Bladie.
“He jumped faster than the blood. Screamed, ‘Goddammit, Bibbie, you cut me!’
“I said, ‘You goddam right, and you lucky I don’t shoot you on top of it.’
“He was holding his face, blood dripping down his hands on to his Hart Schaffner and Marx suit. I gave him a pillow off my bed and told him to sit down. I told him moving around makes the blood pump faster. I came back to the kitchen and told John Thomas to make himself scarce—no point in him being involved—then I called the police and the ambulance.”
Mother inspected the contents of her glass, then she took my large hand in her smaller, plump one and ordered my close attention.
“Baby, Mother Dear’s going to tell you something about life.”
Her face was beautifully calm, all traces of violence lost.
“People will take advantage of you if you let them. Especially Negro women. Everybody, his brother and his dog thinks he can walk a road in a colored woman’s behind. But you remember this, now. Your mother raised you. You’re full-grown. Let them catch it like they find it. If you haven’t been trained at home to their liking tell them to get to stepping.” Here a whisper of delight crawled over her face. “Stepping. But not on you.
“You hear me?”
“Yes, Mother. I hear you.”
—
There had been some changes at home. Bailey had found his first great love. Eunice was a small, smiling brown-skinned girl who had been our classmate. They had met again, and over the protests of her family, rushed to marry. Bailey, the airy false charmer, had drifted to earth and was happy. He laughed and joked again.
They invited me to their Turk Street apartment, where large Gauguin and Van Gogh prints enlivened the walls and fresh flowers sparkled on waxed tables.
He told funny dirty stories and the three of us laughed into the cheap wine and congratulated ourselves on being smart enough to be young and intelligent. We could see the plateaus of success in our futures. Plateaus where we would wait and rest awhile before climbing higher. When he looked at my 8” by 10” professional glossies, he said I had the “biggest nose in show business” but it was prettier than Jimmy Durante’s and I ought to be proud.
I tried to punch him, but he laughed and swerved out of the way.
“You’ll be the tallest dancer on Broadway. Ha ha.” He ran around the table escaping my outstretched hand. “You’ll make a million with each leg and a zillion with your nose.”
Relief made me laugh out of proportion. Later I kissed them both good night and wished I knew how to thank Eunice for helping Bailey find his sense of humor again.
I walked the dark streets toward home and shivered at Bailey’s close escape. Most of his friends, funny and bright during our schooldays, now leaned in nighttime doorways, nodding as their latest shot of heroin raced in their veins. Sparkling young men who were hopes of the community had thrown themselves against the sealed doors set up by a larger community, and not only hadn’t opened them, but hadn’t even shaken the bolts. The potential sharp-tongued lawyer, keen-eyed scientist and cool-hand surgeon changed his mind about jimmying the locks and took to narcotics so that he could float through the key hole.
Eunice’s happy love and soft laughter had come just in time. My brother was saved.
CHAPTER 24
Poole and Rita were booked into the Champagne Supper Club. Pride made me go beserk. I quit my job. How could I exchange the glittering sequined bathing suit and purple satin tap shoes for a waitress apron and old-lady comforts? I wouldn’t insult my muse, Terpsichore, by letting even the idea of the Chicken Shack enter into my thoughts.
A two-week engagement in Big Time, and I was ready.
My lights in stars, my name in lights, my name in stars.
For a few months before the opening we worked for whatever money was offered and practiced daily. R.L. showed me increasingly complicated steps. As soon as I learned, he laced them into our routines. When I had no cash, I asked Mother for a loan. I explained that I was investing my time in career preparation, and when the investment paid off she would be with me, holding hands and laughing and reaping the returns.
With characteristic talent, she enlarged my skit into a full-length revue. And she was the star. She reminded me that during the war years, when she had had lots of money and could have afforded to sit back idle, she had studied barbering, cosmetology, ship-fitting, welding, tool-and-dye making, and that the diplomas attesting to her perseverance hung on the walls of her den. She said she had no intention of ever going to work in an airplane factory or barber shop, but if push came to shove (she snapped her fingers), she was qualified. She approved of sticking to an idea until it was definitely proven bad or good.
She lent me the money, without further preachments, and Poole and Rita continued to practice.
Although I lived and ate at home, the small savings I kept in a jar under my bed diminished. My son always seemed to need new clothes; on Sundays I traditionally bought fresh flowers for the house; and then there were the tap shoes. Rehearsing wore out more taps than dancing three times a night in a cabaret.
I approached Bailey for a small advance. He sat, stubble-jawed, on his corduroy sofa, and looked at the adjacent wall.
“I’ve put Eunice in the hospital. She’s very sick.”
“What’s wrong with her?” I made my voice soft.
“She just had a cold. That’s all.” But he didn’t believe that was all.
“Well, come on. She’s young. Nobody dies from a cold.” If only I could get him to look at me. I went on making a joke. “They only wish they could.”
“Yeah.” He put his feet on the cluttered coffee table, leaned back on the sofa and closed his eyes.
“Good-bye, Maya.”
“Bailey, it’s not that serious.” He didn’t try to hear me and I could not intrude further by repeating myself.
The apartment stank of dead flowers and dirty dishes. His voice blurred but didn’t rise or fall. “I’ve cut out all the runs except Los Angeles so I can be with her.”
The room was oppressive as if a large hand had squeezed the gaiety out of it drop by drop and then released it to resume its former shape.
—
I was getting so I could fairly fly through the routine. My romance with R.L. was danced out in the rehearsal hall, because he made few sexual demands. I gave no arguments to his monthly requests for love-making. After all, he was my teacher and my transportation to Broadway. But I was grateful that they didn’t come with greater frequency. An artist, I was certain, protected and preserved his instrument. Pianists, drummers, horn players, saxists all look after their instruments. As a dancer, my instrument was my body. I couldn’t just allow a person, anyone, to screw my instrument.
Opening night arrived. Mother had taken a large table for her friends, and Bailey miraculously didn’t have to be on the road or at the hospital. The night club, which was large and bedizened with glittering spinning lights, was full.
Excitement made me glow and the lights backstage rubbed away R.L.’s pockmarks. We looked at ourselves in the large mirror. He was absolutely dashing in his powder-blue tuxedo, and I was as glamorous as Esther Williams in my swimsuit. And could dance better, too.
The M.C. called our names, and the band swung into our introduction.
R.L. said in his slow voice, “Okay, Rita
And we hit the stage.
The first moment’s unreality was caused by the lights. I couldn’t see the audience, and I thought about the first time when I panicked and froze to the stage. Maybe this was happening again. Maybe I had frozen, I couldn’t tell if I was moving. But suddenly I heard the clap of taps breaking, exploding through the band’s arrangement, and I found I was on the far side of the stage and it was time for me to break. I was dancing, my feet and body were doing the right things. With that I let go, just let the orchestra push, prod and pull me. I surrendered every memory I had to oblivion and let myself dance. Each time I danced near R.L., I laughed out loud at the perfect glory of it all. The music was my friend, my lover, my family. It was a pretty day on a San Francisco hill with just enough high to remark on details. It was my son laughing when I entered his room. Great poetry that I had memorized and recited to myself in a warm bath.
The band was playing the closing riffs and R.L. took my hand. We danced to the edge of the stage and bowed. The audience applauded moderately, except for Mother’s table and a bravo from where Bailey sat near the door. I never knew whether the great disappointment came from having to stop dancing or from the fact that the audience didn’t jump up, run screaming for the stage to touch my victory. But in the dressing room I began to drown in a depression sea. Neither the flowers Bailey sent nor Mother’s smile saved me. Two more shows to do that night and by the last one I was questioning whether I was cut out for show biz … whether or not it was too coarse for my pure and delicate nature, too commercial for my artistic soul.
All the area’s drunks and sporting people caught the last show and I was again intoxicated. They shouted, “Shake it, baby,” “Dance, baby, dance,” made noise, stumbled around from table to table, and the sense of gay activity helped Poole and Rita and the orchestra to recreate the earlier magic.
The patrons may not really have noticed the very tall, big-nosed dancing fool up there, but their vitality locked me into a love of performing that continued for many years.
Except for a few “casuals” (one-night performances in convention halls), the talent of Poole and Rita was going largely unappreciated. We refused the itinerant offers to perform at stags. I said I would never dance nude for a bunch of white men to gape at me. R.L. agreed and tried to appear possessive, but probably the larger truth was that we couldn’t work up a “Beauty and Beast” routine. Neither did I have the attributes to portray Beauty, nor did he have the body to dance Beast. We would have been ludicrous.
The gigs at the Elks were bright splatches in the dull landscape. In black communities there is a counterpart to the white segregated secret society, B.P.O.E. (Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks). We call ours the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World. I had been initiated into the mysterious organization as a teenager and had once won prizes in its oratorical contest, and now our dance team was hired at the hilarious and good-fun dansants.
The middle-aged ladies, usually stout and dressed more attractively than the women whose houses they cleaned, patted me after the shows and admired my leanness.
“Honey, you sure know how to shake that thing.” A big pretty laugh. “I used to shake it like that, but them days is gone forever.”
Then they would run their palms down my side.
“Bet your momma is proud of you. I bet you she is.”
And she was. And I was proud of myself.
“Blue Flame” and “Caravan” were my favorite dance arrangements because R.L. laid out most of the time and I danced barefoot in little balls of blue ostrich feathers and Indian bells at my ankles. I tried to imitate Frances Nealy, a beautiful black woman who had played an Egyptian dancer in a forties technicolor movie. A few Dorothy Lamour hand movements and Ann Miller’s leg kicks just added spice.
Then Cotton Candy Adams came to town.
“Let me be your little dog
till your big dog come
Let me be your little dog
till your big dog come
And when your big dog come,
tell him what your little dog done.”
R.L.’s words stumbled when he started to tell me about his ex-girl friend and former dancer. “Oh, Rita … she—Candy and I—I mean, she was my old lady … and she, uh, left me. That is, we used to dance together. She came out here—I mean, she said if … When she left me … uh, if I … if she … ever changed her mind, she’d, uh, find me.”
“Okay, R.L. She came. Are you all going back together?” I was as snappy as I thought a chorus dancer would be.
“See, Rita, she’s a, uh, dancer. I mean, she’s great. She used to dance with Parker and Johnson. And she’s worked the Orpheum Circuit.” He had stopped stuttering. “She brought her costumes. Really flash. Feather fans with rhinestones. See, most of what I taught you—I mean …” Shyness tripped his tongue and he began to stutter again. “Wait till you meet her. She’s … You’re going to … I think you’ll like each other.”
“Sure thing, Bozo.” I had never called a living soul Bozo. “I’d be delighted to meet her.”
Cotton Candy was the picture of every “Daddy’s little girl.” Her real hair hung down in black waves and dimples punctured her light-brown cheeks. She had a cute walk, which wavered between a wanton strut and a little-girl mince. And then she opened her mouth. “Hi, Rita. R.L. told me about you. You’re a dancer.”
I didn’t know how to hold the shock. Her teeth were rotten and her lips refused to help mold her words. I looked at her eyes and understood. They shone feverishly, yet seemed lifeless. Cotton Candy was a user.
Certainly R.L. knew. After all, he was from Chicago. I couldn’t grasp why he would want to get reconciled with her, and I knew from the enchanted way he watched her that that was exactly what he wanted.
“Yes, I’m a dancer. Are you planning to dance in San Francisco?” Might as well have it out in the open.
“Oh yes.” Although R.L. was feet from her, she cuddled in his direction. “R.L. and I are going to brush up our old act and get started again.” She closed her mouth and dimpled. Her eyes slowly moved to R.L. “Isn’t that what you said, Boogie?”
“Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. We’ll do all the stuff we used to do.”
I had to get away immediately. “Well, good luck to you both. Break a leg.” I walked away from the lovers before they could see the life leaking out of me.
At home, I paced the floors. Mother had taken my son out and Papa Ford snored in the small back bedroom. I cursed Cotton Candy for coming to San Francisco and consigned R.L. to hell for being stupid enough to take her back. My career was over before it began. My tears came hot and angry. I had dared so many things and failed. There was to be nothing left to do. I had given Curly my young love; he had gone away to marry another woman. The self-defense tactics with the lesbians had gained me a whorehouse, which I had neither the skill nor the courage to keep. I had fled to the home of my youth and had been sent away. The Army and now my dance career, the one thing I wanted beyond all others (needed, in fact) for my son but mostly for myself, had been plucked right out of my fingers. All the doors had slammed shut, and I was locked into a too-tall body, with an unpretty face, and a mind that bounced around like a ping-pong ball. I gave in to sadness because I had no choice.
A few days passed and R.L. didn’t come to the house. I telephoned him. He was distracted but promised to drop by and talk about it. I waited past the afternoon hour he mentioned, and long into the night. He never came; he didn’t call.
If we had had the opportunity to talk about it, laboriously and painfully, I might have been forever lost in the romance of romance lost. But with no sounding board except my own ears and honest thoughts, I had to stop weeping (it was too exhausting) and admit that Cotton Candy had dibs on him and maybe R.L. felt more loyal to her because she was a user and needed him.
There was nothing about me to bind anyone to me in sympathy. N
CHAPTER 25
A friend of Mother’s who had a restaurant in Stockton needed a fry cook. I packed the clothes I thought we might need and set out for the eighty-mile journey. I wasn’t sure that I’d find pot in the little town, so I stashed a Prince Albert can full, and papers, in the bottom of my suitcase. I refused to cry all the way in the back seat of a Greyhound bus.
Stockton had an unusual atmosphere. Situated in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley, it had long been a center for the itinerant workers, Southerners drawn from depleted farms, Mexicans and Filipinos from their poverty-stricken countries who had raised large families on meager incomes since the early 1900s. World War II had enriched the town’s blood by attracting blacks from the South to work at the local dry dock, the shipyards and defense plants in nearby Pittsburg.
When I arrived, there was Wild West rhythm in the streets. Since some of the plants were still running and the police hadn’t yet cracked down on crime, prostitutes and gamblers came from San Francisco and Los Angeles on weekends to fleece the willing local yokels.
The restaurant was large, seating seventy-five, and had a steady and regular clientele. But because it was two blocks from Center Street, we got little of the sophisticated walk-in trade. My shift began at four in the afternoon, and I fried hamburgers, pork chops and eggs and ham steaks until midnight. Then, to add juice to my dry life, I would wash up, exchange the sweaty uniform for a clinging one-shoulder deal and high-heeled shoes that hurt my already swollen feet. A slow saunter to Center Street, and a perch at the crowded bar gave me a chance to watch the fascinating city folks, and at the same time haughtily explain to any man fresh enough to approach me that I worked for a living. I wasn’t a whore. I told myself that the fact that I might have been mistaken for one, because of my flagrant way of dressing or clinging to a bar alone in a small town at one in the morning, was simply evidence of men trying to read a book by its cover.