Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (11 page)

“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 words, 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.

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.

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.”

The Purple Onion was a basement cabaret which Jorie called
la Boîte
(Don translated that into “the sardine can”). Its walls were painted a murky purple, and although it was supposed to accommodate two hundred people, well over that number crowded into the room the first night I went to catch the show, and the air was claustrophobically close. Jorie in a simply cut, expensive black dress leaned her back against the curve of the piano. She partly sang and partly
talked a torch song, waving a cigarette holder in one hand and languorously moving a long chiffon scarf in the other. Her voice scratched lightly over the notes.

She looked at the audience directly shrugging her thin shoulders. Her look said that Bill really was quite awful and she had little understanding of why she herself had noticed Bill. Before our eyes she changed from the worldly-wise woman, disillusioned by a burnt-out love affair, into a “regular” girl who was just one of the folks. The audience howled at the transformation, delighted by having been taken in.

I sat in the rear enthralled. It was hard to believe I was being asked to move into this brilliant woman's place, although my audition had gone well enough. The Rockwell family, led by the elder son, Keith, owned the club, and without much enthusiasm had signed a six-month contract with a three-month option for my services.

Jorie drooped over the piano dripping chiffon, and delivering accented witticisms. Or she would stand still, her shoulders down and her hands at ease and speak/sing a song that so moved her listeners that for a few seconds after she finished, people neither applauded nor looked at one another.

When I went to my first rehearsal, Jorie brought her
drama coach to meet me. He was a tall, thin, black-haired man named Lloyd Clark, who spoke elegantly out of pursed lips and threw his fingers out as if he was constantly shooting his cuffs. He was accompanied by a handsome Dutch Amazon, whose blond hair was pulled back and hung in a two-foot ponytail. Her little girl's smile seemed incongruous on a face that could have modeled for a ship's prow.

And she spoke softly. “I'm Marguerite Clark. I'm his wife.” There was so much pride in her statement that I would not have been surprised had she hooked her fingers in her armpits and stalked around the room. Lloyd took her adoration as his due and asked me if I had ever worked with a drama coach. I told him that I had not, but that I had studied drama and that I was a dancer.

“Well, first, my dear, you must sing for me.” He held a cigarette between his third and fourth fingers, reminding me of a European movie actor. He puffed fastidiously. There was a neatness about the man which showed most prominently in his diction.

“I can't know if I can help you until I have”—each beloved word chosen carefully and handed out graciously, like choice pieces of fruit—“seen you perform.”

The piano player, who was white and experienced, intimidated me nearly as much as the drama coach. Earlier in the afternoon he had asked for my sheet music, and when I told him that the songs I intended to sing had hardly been published, he slammed the piano lid down and stood up.

“Do you mean I'm supposed to play without music? Just vamp till ready?”

I did not understand his indignation, nor the sarcasm in
his last question. “I've signed a contract and I'm supposed to open in two weeks. What can I do?” I had found that direct questions brought direct answers if they brought answers at all.

“Have some lead sheets written for you,” he said indifferently.

“Can you do it? May I pay you to write the lead sheets? Whatever they are.”

He gave me a thin smile and, partially pacified, said, “If I can find the time.”

He sat again on the bench and opened the piano. “What do you sing?”

I said, “Calypso. ‘Stone Cold Dead in the Market’ ‘Run Joe,’ ‘Babalu.’ Things like that.”

He asked, “What key for ‘Stone Cold Dead’?” His fingers ran over the keyboard and I thought of my pervasive ignorance.

“I don't know.” The music stopped and the musician leaned his head on the piano. He was so dramatic I thought he should have been the star.

I said, “I'm sorry to be a bother.” Usually when one throws oneself at another's feet, one should be prepared to do a fast roll to avoid being stepped on. “But I'd appreciate your help—I'm new.”

The pianist rose to the occasion, which, given his sardonic expression earlier, might have come as a bigger surprise to him than to me.

“O.K.” He straightened away from the keyboard. “Try this.” He started to play and I recognized the tune.

“Yes, that's it.”

“I know that's it,” he said dryly. “Now how about singing so I can find your key.”

I listened carefully, squinting my eyes and tried to find where in all the notes he played I should insert my voice.

“Sing.” It was an order.

I started: “He's stone cold dead in de market.”

“No, that's wrong. Listen.” He played, I listened. I started to sing.

He said, “No, wrong again.”

Finally by chance I hit the right note. The pianist grudgingly nodded and I sang the song through.

He stood up and bounced a glance off me as he turned toward the bar. “You need music. You really need it.”

I watched him order and then gulp down a drink greedily.

And here was Lloyd Clark, tended by his adoring Brünnhilde, telling me to repeat the awkward performance.

Whenever I had danced non-angelically on the point of a pin, I always knew I might slip and break my neck. It could be fatal, but at least all anxiety would cease. Because of that, I often rushed toward holocausts with an abandon that caused observers to think of me as courageous. The truth was, I simply wanted an end to uncertainty.

The pianist responded to my nod and with visible resignation sat at the piano and began to play the song we had tried earlier.

I looked beyond my audience and decided to ignore the musician and his snide attitude. I fastened my mind on the plot. A poor West Indian woman had been threatened by her brutal husband (my mother's father was Trinidadian, and although he was kind he was very severe) and she struck back in self-defense. My sympathies rested with the mistreated woman. So I told the story from her point of view.

Don said, “Great, just great.”

Jorie asked Lloyd and the world at large, “Didn't I say she's marvy?”

Lloyd rose smiling, he came toward me offering his hands. “Fab, fab, darling, you're going to be fab. You're marvelously dramatic.” He turned to his wife, who was like a tall, white shadow following him. “Isn't she, Marg? Just fab?”

Marguerite gave him a loving smile. “Yes, Lloyd darling.” Then to me she said softly, “You're good. So very good. And after you work with Lloyd … Oh, I can hardly wait.” Her voice belied impatience.

“Now, dear, do sit down. Come, we must do some serious talking.” Lloyd took my hands. He leaned around me and said to the musician who was beelining for the bar, “Thank you, young man, thank you. And you did it without lead sheets. Brilliant!”

“Now, my dear, sit.” He pulled me along to Jorie's table. She patted my cheek and lowered one long-lashed eye slowly, meaning I was in, and hadn't she said so, and I had nothing to worry about and weren't we all so awfully smart. I winked back and grinned.

Marguerite sat so close to Lloyd she was nearly in his lap and Don made congratulatory little noises to me and to himself.

“First, dear, your name,” Lloyd said.

“Rita.”

“Is that your name? The name you were born with?” Disbelief was evident.

“No, my name is Marguerite.”

Marguerite Clark complimented us both. “Oh, isn't that nice?”

“It's all right for you, Marguerite, but it doesn't do anything for her.” I had been named for my maternal grandmother, who would not have taken kindly to that statement.

“She needs something more exotic. More glamorous.” Lloyd turned to Jorie and Don. “Don't you agree?”

They did indeed.

“A really good name,” Don said, “is half the act.”

I thought about the popular entertainers who were mentioned in the newspapers weekly. I didn't know if their names were created for show business or if the entertainers had simply been lucky. I said nothing.

“Let's think. Think up some names.”

Don went to the bar and brought over a bottle of wine and some glasses.

Thaïs, Sappho, Nana, Lana, Bette, names of heroines from Greek history, world literature and Hollywood were bandied about, but none seemed to please my inventors.

I said, “My brother has always called me Maya. For ‘Marguerite.’ He used to call me ‘My sister,’ then he called me ‘My’ and finally, ‘Maya.’ Is that all right?”

Jorie said, “Di-vine. Di-vine, darling.”

Don was ecstatic. “It suits you, my dear, oh God, it suits you.”

Marguerite waited for Lloyd. He thought, looking at me pointedly, trying to find the name in my face. After a minute, he said, “Yes, you're Maya,” as if he was christening me.

Marguerite said, “Lloyd, you're right, darling. She
is
Maya.”

Don passed the wine around.

“Maya what?” Jorie looked at Lloyd. “Do deliver us from
performers with one name. Hildegarde, Liberace. No, she must have at least two names.”

I said, “My married name is Angelos.”

Don chewed the words around, tasting them.

“Maya Angelos.” Jorie took the name over, weighing it on her tongue. “That's not bad.”

Lloyd said, “It sounds too Spanish. Or Italian. No, it won't do.” An idea broke his face wide open. “I've got it. Drop the
s
and add a
u.
Maya Angelou.” He pronounced it Angeloo. “Of course! That's it!”

Jorie said it was too divine. Don said it was perfection. Marguerite beamed her approval of Lloyd and then of the name.

We all drank wine to toast our success. I had a job, a drama coach, a pianist who was going to provide me with lead sheets, and I had a new name (I wondered if I'd ever feel it described the me myself of me).

We begin to prepare for my debut. For three hours each day Lloyd coached me. His instructions included how to stand, how to walk, how to turn and offer my best profile to an audience. He worked over my act as busily as a couturier creating a wedding gown for royalty.

“My dear, but you
must
stand still. Glide out onstage like the
Queen Mary
slipping out of her berth, reach the piano and then stand absolutely, but absolutely, still. After a few seconds look around at your audience and then, only then, at your pianist. Nod your head to him and then you will begin your music. When he finishes his intro, then you will begin to sing.”