Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (9 page)

Two months after I began working in the Garden of Allah the composition of the patronage changed. The lonely men whose hands played with their pocketed dreams slowly gave way to a few laughing open-faced couples who simply came in to watch the show.

Occasionally I would be invited to join a table of admirers. They had been told a good dancer was working in a strip joint. I answered their overused question by telling the truth. “I'm here because I have to work and because I love to dance.” I also explained about the drinks.

Being so close to the tawdry atmosphere titillated the square couples. I decided they were the fifties version of whites slumming in Harlem's Cotton Club during Prohibition, and while their compliments pleased me, I was not flattered.

Away from the bar my days were cheerful. I was making real money. Enough to buy smart, understated clothes for myself and matching ensembles for Clyde. We spent Saturday afternoons at horror movies, which I loathed. He adored the blood and popping eyes of “the Wolf Man,” the screams of “vampire victims” and the menacing camel walk of Frankenstein's monster. He yelled and jumped and hid behind my arm or peeked through his fingers at the grisly scenes.

I asked him why he liked the fearful stories if they
frightened him. His reply was a non sequitur. “Well, Mom, after all, I'm only eight years old.”

Three months passed and I freely spent my salary and commissions in dining at good restaurants, buying new furniture and putting a small portion away for a trip— Ivonne and I had discussed taking our children on a vacation to Hawaii or New York or New Orleans.

I was young, in good health, and my son was happy and growing more beautiful daily.

One night Eddie paid off the other girls first, saying he wanted to talk to me. After they left, he bellied up to the bar and cast his glance on the bandstand where the musicians were stowing away their instruments. When he didn't look at me, I knew it had to be serious.

“Rita, you're making more money than the other girls.”

I hoped so.

“… and they say they have a complaint.”

“What's the complaint, Eddie?”

“They say you must be promising to sleep with the clients. Otherwise why do you end up every night with four or five bottles of champagne and ten dollars or more in cocktails?”

“Eddie, I don't care whether they like it or not. I haven't promised anybody anything. I've just made more money. Let's leave it at that, O.K.?”

“It's not O.K., Rita. They can bring you up on charges with the union, or even get the club in Dutch. You must be doing something. No new girl makes this kind of money.” His hand covered some dollars on the bar.

My protested innocence was forceful but without explanation. I could not reveal to him that I told all my
customers about the ginger ale and that they knew the percentage I made from the champagne.

“Please believe me, Eddie. When I leave here, I go straight to my house and let the baby-sitter take my cab so she can go home. I have a child at home.”

“Rita, it's not me. Far as I'm concerned, you're a straight-shooter. Good people. But these other broads. They, uh, what I mean is they can give us a bad time. If they want to make real trouble all they have to do is hint to the right people that girls here accept B drinks.” He wiped at a long-dried spill on the bar and my ears began to burn. “The State Board of Equalization suspended our license once before.”

I had ignored the fact that officers from the Board visited the club in plain clothes. I told each man who offered me a drink the composition of the drinks and the percentage I would receive. So I had been dense before, but if I thought fast I could recover.

“Eddie, if they do that—I mean, tell the wrong person— they'll lose their jobs, too.”

He found another spot to rub. “They don't care, not if they get mad enough. They'll just go to work down the street or around the corner. These joints are always looking for experienced girls. And that's what I want to tell you. I'm putting you on notice. Two weeks. You start looking for another place. I'll tell the girls tomorrow night that you're on notice. That ought to make them happy. If you haven't found something in two weeks, I'll try to keep you on a week at a time, but you won't have no trouble finding another job.”

Shock made me patient. I stood silent and sheeplike as he counted out my night's money. In the taxi I gathered his
words together and poked at them dully. Two weeks' notice. Fourteen days before the good life faded and my son and I would be cut loose to scud again without anchor. The dancers didn't like me and the disaffection was mutual. If they envied the money I made, I was jealous of the whiteness of their skin that allowed them to belong anywhere they chose to go. They could pick up their tassels and pack up their G-strings and go to another job without hesitation, but I remembered Babe. She was as white as they, but just because she slept side by side with her black husband, she was banned from the street. And what about me? I was black all over. No—the strippers felt nothing for me that I didn't feel for them.

I was always tired after the six shows, but this night sleep did not rush to float me out of exhaustion.

The next evening the dressing room was filled with electricity. The women were costumed, but had not made their customary dash upstairs. When I entered, they all turned to look at me. Sour little grins played on their faces. Rusty said, “So, you're leaving, huh, Rita?”

I gaped, surprised for a second. Eddie had told them already. I offered them my most gracious smile, looking into each woman's eyes.

“Good evening, ladies. Jody”—turn—“Kate”—turn— “Rusty.”

Jody said, “Lovely evening, isn't it?”

My grandmother would have been proud of me. She had purred into my ears since babyhood, “Three things no person worth a hill of beans won't do. One is eat in the street and another is cry in the street. And never let a stranger get your goat.” If they were going to lick their
chops over my distress, they would find their tongues stuck to a cake of salt.

Upstairs I greeted Eddie as if he was simply a bartender. I looked away from him quickly and around the club. A few women sat at the tables with male companions. Their two-piece knit dresses and bouffant hairdos were strikingly out of place in the musty club.

I sucked in my breath and followed the opening bars of my music to the stage. Since I was on notice, I could forget the audience and go for myself.

Three fashionably dressed men and a young Marlene Dietrich-looking woman huddled over a table in the center of the room. The woman had a shock of sunlight-yellow hair and brooded over a cigarette holder. The red-haired man had been in before, but had not spoken. Now the four sat watching me as if they were French couturiers and I was wearing the latest creation from Jacques Fath. The more I tried to ignore them, the more they intruded into my mind. Who were they? Some slumming socialites looking for thrills? I tried to give myself to the music, but the group stared so intently that for once the music wouldn't have me, and I stumbled around the floor creating no continuity in my movement and no story in my dance. It occurred to me that they might be talent scouts and maybe I was going to be discovered. I threw that silly thought out of my mind before it could take hold. Lana Turner and Rita Hayworth got discovered, Black girls got uncovered.

I changed downstairs in the empty dressing room and half expected, half wished that the quartet would be gone when I went back upstairs.

“Hello, I'm Don.” The redhead grinned and a map of freckles wiggled across his face. “This is Barry.”

Barry was a tall, graying man whose smile was distant and distinguished. Don, obviously the major-domo of the group, waved his hand toward a pretty young man whose eyes were beautifully deep.

“This is Fred Kuh, and this”—he gestured like a circus announcer who had saved the lion tamer for the last—“this is Jorie!”

She shook her head and her hair fell back from her face, heavily as if in slow motion. She spoke in a low, theatrical voice.

“Hello. My dear, you dance divinely. Just divine.”

Not Marlene Dietrich, I was wrong; she was Veronica Lake with substance, a young Tallulah Bankhead. “And you're so refreshingly young.” Her perfume was thick, like the air in Catholic churches.

I said, “I'm twenty-one.”

Barry asked if I would have a drink with them and I began my spiel about the B drinks, the percentages and the bad champagne.

Jorie said, “It's true. My Gawd, it's true. You're right on cue. We were told that you'd say that.”

“What?”

“You're kind of famous, you know.”

Don grinned, “You must be the only open-faced B-girl on the Barbary Coast.”

“In San Francisco,” said Barry.

Jorie corrected: “In captivity.”

They approved of me and I warmed to them. I allowed myself their flattery. It was easy to suppose they liked me because I was honest. I did not want to pry into their acceptance
for fear that what I found would be unacceptable to me. Suppose they thought me a clown?

Barry explained that Jorie was a chanteuse, currently starring at the Purple Onion, a nearby night club. He managed the place and was the emcee. Don Curry and Fred Kuh were bartenders and I was welcome anytime I could get away.

These beautiful people and their friends began dropping in each evening and I awaited their arrival. I danced indifferently until I caught a glimpse of their party near the back of the room, then I offered them the best steps I had and as soon as the dance was finished I hurried over. There was no need to butter up the manager or hustle the customers. It gave me a delicious sense of luxury to be sitting with such well-dressed obviously discriminating people, while the strippers roamed among the tables looking for the odd drink and the lone man.

One evening I was invited to a wine party at Jorie's apartment after closing time. The house sat on a hilly street. A stranger opened the door and took no more notice of me, so I entered and sat on a floor pillow and watched the guests spin around one another in minuet patterns. There were glamorous young men with dyed hair who rustled like old cellophane. Older men had airs of sophistication and cold grace, giving the impression that if they were not so terribly tired they would go to places (known only to a select few) where the conversation was more scintillating and the congregation more interesting.

There were young women who had the exotic sheen of recently fed forest animals. Although they moved their fine heads languorously this way and that, nothing in the room excited their appetites. Unfashionable red lips cut across their white faces, and the crimson fingernails, as pointed as surgical instruments, heightened the predatory effect. Older, sadder women were more interesting to me. Voluminous skirts and imported shawls did not hide their heavy bodies, nor was their unattractiveness shielded by the clanks of chains and ribbons of beads, or by pale pink lips and heavily drawn doe eyes. Their presence among the pretty people enchanted me. It was like seeing frogs buzzed by iridescent dragonflies. The young men, whose names were Alfie, Reggie and Roddy and Fran, hovered around
these fat women, teasing them, tickling them, offering to share a portion of their svelte beauty. None of the company spoke to me. That I was one of the three Negroes in the room, the only Negro woman and a stranger as well, was not a sufficiently exotic reason to attract attention.

I sipped the wine and listened to the concert of gossip and bon mots, repartee and non sequiturs.

Don stooped beside me and asked if I was all right and had I met everyone. I told him I was and I had, and added a sincere smile. His high pink color, green eyes and fire-red hair made him the prettiest person at the party, and he had a sense of humor I found missing in the other blades, despite their clacking laughter.

He looked into my eyes and found the lie. He stood and turned quickly. “Everybody!” He spoke just below a shout. “Everybody!” Voices quieted. When the room was still, he spread his arms and fanned his fingers away from his wrists and nodded toward me. “Everybody this is Rita. She's an artist, a truly tremendous dancer. She is absolutely the world's greatest. I thought you should know.”

People peered at me. Most found nothing remarkable about the announcement and, indeed, if at that moment I had executed a tour jeté from a sitting position, it would not have pried them away from their indifference. Only the plum-soft women marked the statement and cared. Each round face softened and smiled on me.

Don dropped his arms and said rather weakly, “Well, I just thought you ought to know.” To me he said, “Don't mind these people, Rita. They're only pretending to be blasé because they don't know what else to pretend to be. I'll get you some wine.”

One large woman came over to me carrying a pillow.
She gracefully settled on the floor at my side, denying her bulk.

“I'm Marge.” Then she told me, “And you're Rita.”

“That's right.”

“And what kind of dancing do you do, Rita?”

“Modern ballet and interpretive.” (I knew a shake dancer named L'Tanya who could quiver her hips so fast they disappeared in a blur and she called her performance interpretive.)

Marge's mouth made an O. One young boy who had been courting her wafted over to us. He folded down beside Marge and arched an arm over her round shoulders, his hand dropping on the rise of her breast.

“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.