The Penny (9 page)

When my turn came to climb aboard the
Admiral
and enter through the gilded doors, I searched for Aurelia, pressing past draped cardigans and dozens of arms and hankies erupting from breast pockets. The
Admiral
’s foghorn warning blast reverberated clear to my toes. And just when people took up talking again, the horn deafened us all once more.

We’d cast off. I could feel the boat keeling to the west, the current moving beneath my feet, persuading me to move, too. Along with the one tide moving me, I’d been caught by another, set adrift in a sea of white faces. I couldn’t breathe without them pushing against me. How different this was from the days I’d spent with Aurelia in the loud streets of the Ville, swirling with color in every shade—the vanilla bean of Aunt Maureen’s face, the burnt caramel of Garland’s, the soft velvet shine of Eddie Crockett’s.

As if thinking conjured it up, I spied a face the beautiful color of maplewood in the throng, her hand poised on the chrome beside the snack bar, searching in every direction, just as I was. She shoved her way toward me, looking breathlessly relieved.

“I just didn’t know what they’d say about me being colored. And look how it worked. Wasn’t no problem.”

“Well, it was a stupid thing to do. We might never have found each other in here.”

“But we
did.
”

I started off in the direction of the sign marked BALLROOM with an arrow that pointed to DECK B. I wasn’t going to forgive Aurelia for at least fifteen minutes. She’d twisted my arm to come with her almost as hard as Darnell had twisted it trying to beat me arm-wrestling. And then she’d gone off and left me alone in a plan of her own devising.

“Wait! Don’t you want a hot dog?” Aurelia asked.

“I’d like to get where we’re going. It’s taken us long enough, don’t you think?”

Aurelia peeled herself away from the line faithfully. With no small twinge of guilt, I saw she already had money in her hand. “Never mind, Aurelia. If you’re hungry, you go ahead.”

“Lost my place in line anyhow.”

I can’t tell you how I knew something strange was about to happen. I just sensed it, the way I used to get goosebumps when Jean ran a duck feather along the underside of my knee. The purser trotted toward us, the one who’d nodded his black-patent leather cap brim at me like I was Grace Kelly as I’d stepped aboard. His arms swung with angry purpose, and his gaze pinned us.

“Come on.” I touched Aurelia’s shoulder. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure how he’d picked out the one girl who hadn’t followed the rules in this crush of people.

“What do you think you’re doing in here?” He grabbed her by the scruff of the neck, the same way I’d seen Marianne Thompson’s dog carry off its puppies.

“Aurelia, show him your ticket,” I commanded, bristling with self-righteousness. “It’s paid for, even though it never got torn in half.”

“My daddy’s in the
Blue Notes,
” she insisted, pulling against him.

He didn’t glance at me even once. He stayed focused on the side of Aurelia’s face, which she’d averted from him in shame.

“Is that so?”

I wanted her to look him straight in the eyes. I wanted her to shout at him, but she didn’t. “Yes.” I could barely hear her whisper.

“Really?” he asked, like he didn’t believe a word she said. Like he’d never believe a word Aurelia had to say, ever.

“Aurelia,
show him
your ticket.” To him, “Mister, I
paid
for it.”

He shot a fleeting glance at me. “It’s okay, young lady. You’re fine, ma’am. You go on ahead and enjoy the show.”

The difference in his voice chilled me. When he spoke to me, he crooned with respect. When he spoke to Aurelia, it sounded like he was speaking to a stupid, dull person. “We’re mid-river. I put you out now and you end up swimming. Current will take you clear down to Festus.”

She said nothing.

“You’ll have to stick with your daddy, then, out of sight. Can’t have you running around on the boat like this. Only Mondays are for the coloreds.”

“My daddy doesn’t play on Mondays.”

For a minute, after she spoke up to him like that, he looked like he wanted to throw her over the side of the
Admiral
after all. He looked like he had a good mind to set her to work washing dishes in the galley.

“Excuse me, sir,” I said when he started to haul her off. Thinking back on it now, I should have talked with the same sarcastic respect that would have made Daddy belt me into the next county. But I was too bewildered. I knew what Daddy said about Negroes, but I thought that was because Daddy was mean as the devil to everybody. I had seen how the colored people didn’t come to the Fox, but I’d thought it was because they had their own theater much closer by. I hadn’t known coloreds didn’t come because white people wouldn’t
let
them. For the first time, hearing the purser’s words, I started to figure out what those portable buildings meant, set up outside our school. I hadn’t known that anyone other than Daddy thought folks from the Ville belonged in a separate place, beneath other people.

Gone was the impertinent way I’d stood at the gate with my chin uplifted and my pocketbook gripped in firm, certain hands. I guess the purser saw me in a different way now, too.

“You want to come with her?” He looked down his nose with disdain. “You follow me.”

He led us into the stairwell, in the opposite direction from where I’d been headed. Our feet, in our dressy patent leather shoes, tapped like raindrops on the aluminum steps.

Chapter Ten

W
hen we were first ushered into their dressing room downstairs, it took seconds for our eyes to adjust to the cigarette smoke curling in our faces. But not so long that I missed Chick’s sharp glance at Aurelia’s daddy when we stepped into the room. Mr. Crockett stood up, looking at his daughter with such immense concern in his eyes that I couldn’t bear it.

“This is no family gathering.” A cigarette dangled precariously from T. Bone’s lower lip. “Don’t know what you two think you’re doing here.”

“Jenny brought me,” Aurelia told her father.

“I can see that,” he said. “Does Maureen know where you are?”

Aurelia didn’t answer; I guess that told him what he needed to know. By the way Eddie Crockett frowned at us when we turned up in that dressing room, I thought for sure he’d send us packing for home.

“Daddy,” Aurelia said, “you can’t blame us for wanting to hear you take the house down with your horn. You’re the one always going on about it.” And by the time he lifted his fancy hat and scratched the top of his head, even though he gave Aurelia a good reaming, I knew he had changed his mind. He let us help carry music stands (which they didn’t need, but they had to pretend they used them) to the shadowy center of the stage, behind the curtain.

Chick set up folding chairs for us right before the show started. He slapped a drum fanfare on the metal seats. “You’ll be just fine here, Miss Aurelia. You’re my guest. If you have any more trouble, you come and get me.” As if he could have done something about it. “We’ll give everyone the what-for.”

He put us against the wall, beneath a shadowed overhang where no one could see or disturb us.

“Back for another weekend aboard the
Admiral . . .”
The announcer’s voice boomed, and I’ll bet you could hear it, low and resonant, all the way across the river into Illinois. The red velvet curtain jostled and billowed from last-minute adjustments made behind it. The footlights came up. The spotlight blazed to life. The curtains parted with a faint metallic hiss. For a moment, the silence held. Voices hushed. Silverware stilled.

In spite of the unpleasantness we’d experienced getting on the boat, Aurelia ended up being right as usual. It was worth everything to hear the Blue Notes play.

Eddie Crockett lifted his trumpet to his lips with that air about him I loved, like you were about to hear something you’d never heard before in your life.

T. Bone Finney poised his big fingers over his guitar strings.

All the world seemed to be waiting when Chick, the rhythm man, finally tapped the downbeat on his hi-hat cymbal and the Blue Notes took off.

The gleam in Eddie Crockett’s horn zigzagged like lightning. Dancers flooded the floor, their skirts twirling, their feet prancing, surrounded by hand-painted zodiac signs and little white lights that formed the constellations. Pullman chairs and chrome-and-glass cocktail tables decorated the mezzanine overlooking the floor.

Aurelia had spoken truth about the Brooks Brothers suits, too. If I’d passed this collection of musicians on the street, I wouldn’t have spoken. I wouldn’t have known them, they looked so debonair. T. Bone even wore a black hat cocked low over one eyebrow. Who would have known they could look so fine under the lights?

The Six Blue Notes played all evening while Aurelia whispered the names of the songs to me. “Body and Soul.” “Fussing All the Time.” “Tuxedo Junction.” “One O’Clock Jump.” And it was more than hearing the music that filled me up and set my mind in a jumble. It was the heavenly scent of ladies’ perfume and the quick bursts of laughter and the feeling that, out of the dark, smoky place where our escort had first taken us, Aurelia and I had been afforded the seats of honor.

I got to sit here with Aurelia, yet I was an unworthy person. No matter how many times I snuck away from Wyoming Street and rode the streetcar to the Ville, no matter how often I tried to flee what I had incorrectly thought or done, I suffered Daddy’s reminders in my head. I knew everyone looked at me and did not like what they saw. I didn’t deserve even one moment of the pleasure I felt, listening to Eddie Crockett wail on his trumpet. When wrong happened, it would always somehow be my fault.

If I thought running with Aurelia would allow me to escape my guilt, I’d thought wrong about that. The better I knew the heart of my friend, the more my sense of dishonor grew. Aurelia loved me in spite of everything. How could she be treated so shamefully (“We can’t have you running around on the boat like this. Only Mondays are for the coloreds.”) when mine would always be the heart colored by disgrace?

As Chick nodded his chin to the strokes of his drum brushes, he glanced up and caught Aurelia’s eye. When the number ended and a gentleman dropped a handful of coins into the ashtray they’d set out for tips, T. Bone found us and winked. Curtis Jackson put down fifth-notes on the piano, rippling like rivulets in a stream. Eddie Crockett pointed his trumpet toward us and fingered a rift so unexpected, I figured he’d just taken off into his own personal jam session.

He aimed his music right toward our seats. There might as well not have been anybody else in the ballroom. He serenaded us like he was trying to blow the nails off the roof, running through all that music like it was nothing. It was like he wanted to tease us and teach us right from the stage with his horn wailing,
You’d better never do anything again that’s not safe for you, young ladies, but since you’re here anyway, guess I’ll just have to demonstrate what you’ve been missing.

By the time he finished his bebop rendition of “Bloomdido,” Eddie Crockett had everyone in the ballroom on their feet. We jumped from our seats and applauded so hard that our hands stung. Up in the mezzanine, guests forgot about their filet of lemon sole and their lamb steak béarnaise as they whistled their appreciation. Dancers pressed toward the stage.

Aurelia gripped my shoulder. “Don’t know why they won’t let them bring those suits home. Everybody in the neighborhood ought to see. Don’t they look fine?”

I nodded.

“They ought to play here every day of the week. Daddy wouldn’t have to have any other job except this one.” She glowed with pride. “This is the gig he wants. He would die if he couldn’t play his horn. Aunt Maureen ought to see this. Listen—don’t people just love them?”

I didn’t answer. I’d been distracted by the sight of a man pressing a paper bill into Mr. Crockett’s extended hand. His girl clung tighter against him than ivy clings to a trellis. She wore a vermillion pink dress with her full lips painted to match.

The man whispered to his girl and she giggled, swung away from him, tried to pull him away with her hand. But the Blue Notes had gathered at the edge of the stage.

I saw the man insisting. I saw the girl lower her chin in embarrassment and smooth her hair behind one ear. I saw Mr. Crockett shake his head.

T. Bone bent his microphone toward his mouth. “What’s going on here is this fellow is making a request for the lady. He wants us to play ‘Embraceable You.’ ”

A ripple of romantic appreciation ran through the crowd in the mezzanine. Contented and amused, they reseated themselves at their tables and took after their dinners with renewed zeal.

Not until then did I truly sense the danger. I saw the fear flash in Aurelia’s eyes, and knew she expected it to come to the same end as I did.

“We take requests all the time. But see, ‘Embraceable You’ is a pop number. What we been doing up here for you is the bebop jazz.”

Only seconds before, we’d been clapping, but now Aurelia squeezed my hand in despair. I imagined T. Bone trying to change the subject and then Chick saying, “No, sir. Sorry, sir. We don’t know that song.”

“That’s not the kind of music Daddy
plays,
” Aurelia whispered.

I pictured the man not taking no for an answer, grabbing the book off the stand, and thumbing through pages of music no more readable to the Blue
Notes than a barbed-wire fence.

The man would say, “Sure you do. Every band does. It’s right here,” slamming the page onto the stand.

The dancers would turn on them. The rowdy applause from moments before would fade into shouts of contempt. “We want a real ballroom band, not a group that doesn’t know music.”

Eddie Crockett picked up his horn, narrowed his eyes, fingered his valves. Let me tell you, those valves were springy as a cat on a telephone line.

I touched Aurelia’s shoulder.
Wait.

“You got to know,” he said to everyone gathered below, “when we play this song it’s a change of pace. We’re used to playing the free expression, where you get away from the melody line and let the instruments follow their own trails. You got to understand we may be a little raw with this kind of music. But I’d like to dedicate the song to this couple here, John and Annette.”

“Do you think he can play it?” Aurelia breathed.

For years after that, I liked to think I read Mr. Crockett’s lips when he turned to Chick. I liked to think I’d been the one to see him say the way he told us he did later,
“Lamoretti taught us these notes. No reason we can’t pull it off, add a little hip rhythm to it. Have fun with it.”

That was Eddie Crockett for you. He wouldn’t let himself be broken in front of Aurelia. He went and figured out something to do. I saw him tap his toe so T. Bone could catch the beat. I guessed he hummed a few bars so the rest of the Blue Notes could hear. He swung his arm and snapped his fingers like Lawrence Welk.

When “Embraceable You” started, the man held his girl’s hand in a proud knot. I held Aurelia’s hand. She clung to mine.

The couple pressed against each other, her arm folded against his chest, his nose against her ear so he could breathe in the scent of her hair. She laid her head beneath the jut of his chin. When she lifted her cheek to his, you could see they didn’t care what song was playing. She wrapped her hand around the back of his neck and met his eyes, their hips swaying together in tempo. They danced in a world where skin color didn’t matter and families loved each other no matter what. They danced in a different world than ours.