Josephine Baker's Last Dance

by Sherry Jones

  Her figure wasn’t half-bad. At fifteen, she’d started to fill out, the contours of the body Paris would call “magnificent” just beginning to emerge, like buds on a tree straining to burst into bloom. Flapping around on a wire as Cupid had strengthened her arms, and all her squats and jumps and flips and breakaways and spins and leaps and hops were shaping her legs into thick, sturdy trunks, nearly as muscled as a man’s. And the continual, frenetic energy that had caused her so much trouble at home worked, now, in her favor. Unable to sit still, she constantly rehearsed, dancing from the time she arose at noon all the way through the shows, and then, later, again in her room, perfecting her moves in the fresh-spilling light of new dawn before falling, exhausted at last, to sleep next to Dyer Jones.

  “You work too hard,” Mrs. Jones said one Sunday afternoon, sprawled on the bed, reading a newspaper and watching Josephine practice sliding down into a split and back up to standing without using her hands.

  Josephine told herself not to listen to those devil’s words. She intended to shine like the star she was meant to be, and that meant polishing herself with practice, buffing herself with work, learning everything she could by watching and imitating until she’d made her own every good thing she saw. Philadelphia was only one hundred miles from New York City, and now that she was here, she meant to stay.

  “Play some music, Mrs. Jones,” she said. “There’s a new dance I want to try.” She’d seen it at the Dunbar the night before: the Geechie dance, a lazy twist of the foot that became a frenzy of kicking legs and swinging arms, hands and knees crossing, a dance that looked like sheer joy to do and was about as much fun to watch. But Dyer had a different idea. She pulled a flier from her purse: We’ve got yellow girls, we’ve got black and tan. Will you have a good time? YEAH, MAN!

  “A rent party? No thanks, Mrs. Dyer. I’m not in the mood.”

  Rent parties were a dime a dozen, thrown to help folks pay their rent. This one promised music, which sounded like fun, but Josephine had had enough of parties. In show business, every night was a party. People called Sunday “Doomsday” because businesses were closed, including the theaters, but for Josephine it was the best day. Sunday meant getting time to herself.

  Dyer persisted, itching to go; she’d heard some good musicians were going to be there, and she wanted to play. “Why can’t you go by yourself?” Josephine said, but Dyer said there was no better way to find trouble than to walk alone into a party full of men hopped up on hooch. That was how she’d met Mr. Jones, and she wasn’t about to make that mistake twice.

  Josephine demurred until Mrs. Jones turned the flier over and showed her the menu: hog maws, black-eyed peas, fried catfish, banana pudding. Josephine’s stomach roared all the way to the party, in an apartment on the top floor of a pretty brownstone with wood floors and high ceilings, “a historic building,” said the woman who met them at the door. Josephine kept her thoughts to herself. Having grown up in old places—crumbling, rotting, smelling of mildew and ash—she preferred the modern, the sleek, the shiny, the new. She walked straight to the long table slathered with good things to eat, catfish and creamed corn and collard greens and sugared tomatoes and cucumbers in vinegar, gumbo and ham hocks and grits and sweet potato pie and watermelon and banana pudding, and, at the table’s edge, a beautiful boy whose eyes made her forget the food.

  She looked away, disoriented, smiling at the catfish, but he knew she meant it for him because from the corner of her eye she saw him look away, too. He put random things on a plate, chocolate pudding and corn, hush puppies and mustard, still smiling, glancing at her as she helped herself to everything and moved to a chair by the window to devour every morsel.

  As she finished, a handkerchief appeared, the boy pressing it to her chin, his smile shy but his eyes insistent, like he feared she might eat him next and also feared she wouldn’t.

  Her mouth watered. She stepped up to the boy, slid her arms around his neck, and pulled him down for a long kiss. She could tell from his awkward response that he hadn’t kissed many girls, but when she pressed her body to his he had no trouble figuring out what to do with his hands. As she stepped back, she took the handkerchief and wiped his face, then her own, and kissed him again. He was a quick learner, out of breath, eager.

  Music struck up in the front room—clarinet, bass, drum, banjo, fiddle, trombones, saxophones, trumpets, and little Dyer Jones making a sound bigger than all the rest put together, playing the “Black Bottom Dance.”

  Josephine felt the music stream like water into her body and she began to move, slapping her hips, snapping her fingers, throwing her arms over her head, consumed by the music and forgetting the boy again until he took her hand and began to dance with her, his legs swinging from side to side, hands reaching up, then down to the floor, his compact body not just mimicking her moves but anticipating them, his jacket coming off in one swift motion and landing on a chair, hands rolling up his shirtsleeves while she answered his challenge, improving on his dance, which was impressive but would pale against what she could do.

  She held herself back, kept to the known steps although she longed to show off for the cheering crowd and especially for him, whose long-lashed eyes watched her with the appreciation of a contender who thought she was good but not good enough to beat him. He slapped his hands on the floor and jumped so high he might have taken flight, shimmying all the way back down, then broke into a twist and a spin, and sent a wink at her that said, Sorry, honey, but I am the best and I know it, and now you know it, too.

  She slapped her behind in a fast rhythm, matching that of the drum, wiggling her black bottom as if it had inspired the dance, then bent over and bumped her elbows to the floor and flung herself nearly to the ceiling before performing her no-hands split. The whole party went crazy, shouting and screaming and shaking the floor. The music stopped, and she bowed, the undisputed winner, while he stood grinning like someone caught in a lie.

  Dyer put down her horn and came over, frowning at Josephine. “You’ll never get a fella with stunts like that,” she muttered, and walked over to the boy, stuck out her hand, and congratulated him on his fine dancing.

  “Not as fine as hers,” he said, missing Josephine’s apologetic smile, which was just as well because she didn’t mean it.

  “What did you expect? To win a dance contest against the Dixie Steppers’ star chorus girl?” Dyer winked at her.

  “Get out,” the boy said.

  “I’m at the end of the line. The comic.” Josephine crossed her eyes.

  He laughed as he reached for his jacket and slipped it on again. “The Dixie Steppers—I’ve been meaning to see that show. Now I will go, for sure.”

  “How about tonight?” she said, stepping closer and reaching for his hand again. He was taller than she was, but only by a little. “The next performance starts as soon as Sunday ends—at one minute past midnight.”

  Doubt crossed his face, making her wish she hadn’t been so bold. She’d forgotten, for a moment, that boys liked to be the ones to ask.

  “I’ve got to be at work at six in the morning, serving breakfast in my family’s restaurant,” he said, but in the next moment he laughed. “Listen to me, an old man at twenty-three. Sure, I’ll go tonight, on one condition: that you’ll let me take you to dinner this week.”

  Josephine kissed him again, on the cheek this time. “I’d be delighted,” she said, as though a boy had ever taken her to dinner before. He caressed her hand with his thumb and her face with his pretty eyes, as though she were the most beautiful sight he had ever seen, and she wondered if he saw the same in her eyes, because handsome, gorgeous, darling kept running though her mind. “My name’s Tumpy,” she said.

  “That’s an awkward name for a graceful girl. Is it a nickname?”

  He had a way of speaking that tied her tongue, using words like graceful, as though he’d actually gone to school and had even finished. For the first time, Josephine wished that she had paid mind to her schooling, too—bu
t then, she’d still be in St. Louis, instead of here with this boy who was too lovely for words, anyway.

  “My real name is Freda Josephine Wells,” she said.

  “Josephine,” he said, and lifted her hand to his lips for a kiss—classy, that’s what he was—that sent shivers up her arm. “That’s the name that suits you, and it’s what I’ll call you, if you don’t mind. Mine’s William Howard Baker—but call me Billy. If you think it suits me.”

  She’d have called him anything he wanted, but instead of telling him so, she tugged at his hand and led him out the door while the music played, down the stairs and up the street, to her room, upon which, finding it empty, she pulled him inside and closed the door behind, locking the bolt against anyone who might come home, knowing that Dyer was out for a long time yet, and laughing to think of giving her unhappy roommate Evelyn, at last, a real reason to complain.

  THE BRIDE WORE white, even though, having been married before (an event she’d kept to herself, what folks don’t know won’t hurt ’em, as Elvira said) and considering her condition, she was far from entitled to the color. Nobody knew the difference, anyway, not the clerk who filled out their license for them—to Josephine’s relief but Billy’s indignation (“Because we’re colored they assume we cannot read?”)—nor the reverend who pronounced them man and wife, although he did look Josephine up and down. As they left the chapel, Billy cursed.

  “We’ve got to get married, that’s what he’s thinking, and what business is it of his?” he said. Josephine smiled and kissed her husband’s pretty bow of a mouth. The reverend was just thinking about their souls, she said. Maybe he figured she wasn’t really nineteen, the age she’d given the clerk, or perhaps he could tell that she was pregnant.

  “The reason for our marriage is not his concern,” Billy said.

  “You’re marrying me because of the baby?”

  “No, that’s not what I meant.” He put his arm around her waist. “I’m marrying you because you are the sweetest, funniest, most beautiful girl on the planet, and I am madly in love with you.” Josephine wanted to fall to the ground and kiss his feet. Who had ever treated her so well?

  He patted her stomach. “But I am mighty excited about Little Billy.”

  “We might have a girl,” Josephine reminded him. “Would that be all right?” Her question was sly; she already knew the answer.

  “As long as she looks like her mama, I’ll be happy.”

  She’d made a good choice: Billy would take care of her. He came from a nice home, and his parents’ friends were “well connected,” as his mama liked to brag: bankers, businessmen, even famous people dined in their restaurant, often with the Bakers themselves. Josephine wouldn’t have to work or worry.

  Already he had applied to work as a porter on the Pullman trains, where he would make more money than he earned waiting tables. “I’ve lived a life of leisure until now,” he said, “but soon I’ll have a family to support.” He’d rise all the way to the top of the company, especially with her to push him along.

  On Sunday afternoons while he slept off their late Saturday nights, she explored the city’s rich neighborhoods on her own, Rittenhouse Square, Chestnut Hill, the Main Line, gawking at the mansions the way she’d done as a child in Saint Louis’s Washington Square, and dreaming of the future. She and Billy were going places: namely, to a mansion on a hill.

  But Pullman porters didn’t live in mansions, and Josephine would have to end her performing career. The Dixie Steppers were moving on, leaving for Chicago in a few weeks. She’d landed a job dancing with Sandy Burns’s company, the troupe billed next at the Standard Theatre, but she’d have to give it up now, though, and her hopes for New York City. When the child started showing, she’d quit: there was nothing funny about a pregnant chorus girl.

  Panic gripped her insides when she thought of leaving the theater. No more, for Josephine, a body filled with music—the drum, the fiddle, Dyer Jones’s trumpet making her step and groove, spin and move, snapping her fingers to the dance in her head, the exuberance, the wildness, the doleful moan. After a while, even the music in her head would surely stop. How would she walk without timing her stride to “Crazy Blues”? How would she laugh without music? How would she live?

  She’d live like everybody else, she supposed, in the audience instead of on the stage.

  She’d be happy. She loved babies, their skin like silk, their talcum smell, their sweet blank faces unmarked by life’s cruel stamp. Had Josephine ever been so innocent? It felt like she’d entered this world with a special sorrow: the taint of being unwanted, her bastard status imprinting her like the mark of the beast.

  Billy would be a good father and a good husband to her—if he ever learned to stand up to his mother. Even now, with Josephine in the household, his mama reigned supreme, like some kind of matriarch. Tall, fine-boned, and oh-so-proper in her fine tailored suits, she’d looked down her nose at Josephine from the minute Billy had introduced her as “a performer in the show at the Standard, one of the stars.”

  “I see,” she’d said, giving Josephine the once-over. She pursed her lips and turned to her son. “She’s a showgirl.”

  “The best dancer in the troupe,” Billy boasted, oblivious, beaming at his handsome father, who cradled Josephine’s hand between his and said he was pleased to make her acquaintance, yes, very pleased. She’d averted her eyes, afraid to see his man-hunger, but he just kept holding her hand until she looked up into a face so kind it made her want to cry.

  No one could harm her, anyway, now that she was married to Billy. He’d promised to love, honor, and cherish, and she knew he would. He had treated her as gently as a kitten since they’d met, holding her close and calming her that evening when his mother had asked how, with a white father, Josephine had such dark skin. That had made her spitting mad, but Billy had loved all the hurt away, murmuring “sweetheart” and “darling” and “beautiful.”

  Beautiful? That was a first. Josephine had been called all kinds of things—monkey, blue gums, ferret face, buck teeth, coon, skinny, thick lips, darky, tar baby—but no one had ever said she was beautiful. In the bathroom of his parents’ apartment one afternoon, standing before the big mirror over the sink, she’d glimpsed for the first time what he must see: luminous dark eyes, an oval face, clear skin. Her chest was pretty flat, true, but she was only fifteen, there was time to grow, and her body was lean and strong and her butt round and firm, “like two melons,” Billy said, and when, onstage, she arched her back and shook it like a rooster wagging its tail feathers, the crowd cried out like she’d done something no one ever had before.

  Mrs. Baker walked in and, seeing her preening, said, “Beauty is only skin-deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.” Josephine slunk out like a kicked dog but remembered that she’d set her glass of tea on the sink. Turning back to get it, she encountered her mother-in-law-to-be lifting the lid of her jewelry box, “checking to make sure it’s all here.”

  Josephine wanted to run down the stairs and out the door, but instead she joined Billy and his daddy in the kitchen, where Pa Baker was stirring a pot of chili and saying with a grin that he bet Josephine didn’t mind a little heat, being “hot stuff” herself.

  “She isn’t vain enough that you’ve got to encourage her?” Mrs. Baker snapped as she swept past to the living room. Josephine looked at Billy, but he’d blushed like he had neither a tongue to speak with nor a girlfriend to stand up for.

  Now, on their way to tell his parents about their marriage, she wondered if he would protect a wife better than a girlfriend from his mother’s wrath. Mrs. B would throw a fit, for sure. Pa Baker would be all right—he loved her, and when he heard there was a baby he would understand—but Mrs. Baker had never said a kind word to Josephine.

  “Will they be upset?” Billy squeezed her hand. “They might be, a little bit, but they’ll get over it fast. Shoot, we’ll be living with them. Seeing you every day, how can they help loving you as much as I do?”


  CLOSE YOUR MOUTH, her grandmama would say, or a fly’s gonna fly in it. But every time she closed her mouth it popped open again. Sitting in the fifth row of the Dunbar Theatre on Broad Street, Josephine felt like she’d entered another world, one that, when the curtain went down and the lights came up, she didn’t want to leave. She had never seen anything like Shuffle Along, had never even imagined such a show, with Negro folks acting and singing and tap-dancing—tap-dancing!—not in blackface but just as they were. “I’m Just Wild about Harry” was as catchy a tune as she’d ever heard, someone whistling it as the audience filed out. “As good as any white show,” the woman in front of her said, as if she or anybody in the room had set foot in a white theater.

  “Better than most, I’d wager,” her companion said. “I read in the Tribune that it’s going to Broadway.”

  Broadway! Josephine was out of her seat in a blur, leaving Billy as she headed backstage to see Wilsie Caldwell, her classmate from Dumas Elementary School, whom Josephine had recognized in the chorus. Two months had passed since her and Billy’s wedding day; one week since she’d discovered that she wasn’t pregnant, after all. She’d been blue ever since. Billy had brought her out to cheer her up, and succeeded beyond his wildest hopes: motherhood was, suddenly, the last thing on Josephine’s mind.

  “If it isn’t Tumpy,” Wilsie cried when she saw her, making Josephine blush at the ugly, childish name. She smiled and said she was glad Wilsie remembered her, and the girl said how could she forget? “Teacher put the dunce cap on your head, and you sat there making faces. It was the funniest thing I ever saw.” By the time Billy caught up, Wilsie was saying yes, she would be happy to arrange an audition for Josephine, that having her in Shuffle Along would be the “cat’s meow.”

  Did Billy walk with her to his parents’ apartment that evening? With her head in the clouds and her eyes so full of dreams, she had a hard time seeing anything else. She did remember Mrs. B’s greeting them at the door, though, and linking arms with Josephine like they were best friends, and asking for her help in the kitchen. Josephine knew how to make cornmeal mush and that was about it, but she let herself be led, exchanging a smile with Billy as they parted.