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Josephine Baker's Last Dance

Page 9

by Sherry Jones


  “How are you feeling? Here—have a glass of milk. It’s good for the baby,” Mrs. Baker said.

  Josephine struggled for an answer. She’d started her period the previous Sunday. How could it be? She had felt it growing inside her; it had visited her in dreams, a baby boy with Billy’s eyes smiling up into hers. I will never be lonely again, that’s what she’d thought when she awakened, and the baby whispered, I will always love you, Mother.

  She’d kept quiet about the loss at first, dreading Billy’s disappointment. He’d gotten the Pullman porter job and talked all the time about all the “advantages” he was going to provide their child: a nice house, a college education. Every day he checked to see if she was “getting fat,” but she never was; every night he’d pressed his ear to her belly in effort to hear the baby, whom he’d started referring to as Junior.

  But when she’d told him the truth last night, he wasn’t disappointed at all. He was “sort of relieved, to tell you the truth,” he hadn’t “felt ready” for fatherhood; he wanted some time to “get established” and to have Josephine “all to myself” for a while. Now here she sat in his mother’s kitchen, feeling guilty because the woman still thought Josephine was pregnant. She ought to tell her, but to see how Mrs. B smiled, hear all the questions she was asking about the show, Josephine had never heard her talk so much, and when Josephine replied she hung on every word. When Josephine got up to go to the bathroom, Mrs. B stopped her, saying, “Oh, please tell me the rest of the story before you go, I don’t think I can wait to hear the end,” and as Josephine spoke she ladled out some of the snapper soup left over from dinner and insisted she have some right then and there. When the woman excused herself “for just a minute, to see if Billy wants some,” Josephine followed, unable to hold her bladder a minute longer—but Mrs. B turned and extended her arms, blocking her way.

  “You haven’t finished your soup!” she said, her eyes wide and unfocused. “It’s no good cold. Go on back in and eat it up. Go on!”

  From behind Mrs. B, Josephine heard voices—a female voice, and that of a man not Pa Baker or Billy. “I have to use the bathroom,” she whispered.

  A woman appeared in a pretty, peach-colored dress and matching hat, her skin so pale that Josephine thought, for a moment, that she was white.

  “Mattie, where are you?” the woman said.

  “Get in there,” Mrs. B hissed to Josephine. The woman came up behind her and stared.

  “Who is this?” she said.

  “Nobody,” Mrs. B said. The woman laughed.

  “Mattie Gwendolyn Baker, I see right through your tricks. Everybody talking about what a good cook you are, when you’ve got help in the kitchen. Charles? Come here, and see what the Bakers have been hiding.”

  Josephine saw right away what was going on, why Mrs. B had kept her for so long—she’d been hiding Josephine from her friends.

  “Did y’all like my snapper soup, ma’am?” Josephine curtseyed, putting on her thickest Southern drawl. “It’s my specialty; I’ve been cooking it all day.”

  The woman’s mouth opened. “Mattie, who is this?” Mrs. B looked like a dog about to bite. Josephine crossed her eyes, blocking out that mean face. “My name is Tumpy, ma’am,” she said, and pranced into the living room to dance the Black Bottom, singing “I’ve Got a New Baby” until she heard the whole apartment laughing and Billy’s proud “That’s my baby!” When she’d finished her performance she bowed, and everyone applauded, and she blew kisses. Pa Baker’s eyes glowed with pleasure and Billy’s with pride, the guests in their fancy clothes laughed and praised her—and Mrs. B’s mouth twisted as if she had a shit smear on her skinny lips.

  When they had gone, the church deacon in his flaxen suit and his peach-colored wife, smiling and thanking Mrs. B for the evening—“Your daughter-in-law is delightful, you must be so pleased”—the woman closed the door and rounded on Josephine.

  “You little porch monkey,” she said. “How dare you embarrass me like that? If it weren’t for that baby you trapped my son with, I’d kick your ass out on the street.”

  Josephine looked at Billy, who stared at the floor. She turned her eyes to Pa Baker, who was walking down the hall, calling to his wife to come to bed. It didn’t look like anybody was going to stand up for her, not even her own husband. Coward.

  Josephine felt the woman’s insult coil around her throat. “Porch monkey” was what Mrs. Kaiser had called her. She reached out and grasped the woman’s jaw, the way she’d wanted to do to Mrs. Kaiser when she was little, squeezing, relishing the pop of her eyes. Billy spoke her name, stepped forward to interfere, but she struck out with her free arm, knocking him back—Mama’s boy, good-for-nothing of a husband.

  “Take it back!” Josephine cried, restraining herself from punching the woman’s mouth with her fist, with the very hand that Mrs. Kaiser had thrust into that pot of boiling water. No way would she quit her job now; she and Billy would have to find their own place. “Take those ugly words back, Mattie Gwendolyn Baker, or I’ll force them down your throat.”

  CHAPTER 7

  1923, New York City

  The prod of a policeman’s stick against her arm: time to get up. Josephine pushed herself up and off the bench, wondering if she’d slept, and pulled on the thin jacket she’d used as a blanket. Her hips, her ribs—every place where bone had pressed against wood—felt bruised. Shivering, she stomped her numb feet. A white man with stringy hair watched her from a bench across the sidewalk, taking sips from a paper sack once the officer had moved on. Now, it was just him and her out there: Josephine, and her observer, both of whom had spent the night in Central Park.

  She picked up the bag of clothes she’d used for a pillow and walked across 110th Street and up Seventh Avenue into Harlem, where Wilsie lived. “We’ve barely got room to swing a cat, and three of us in my tiny apartment,” Wilsie had said, explaining why she couldn’t offer Josephine a place to stay. Josephine had shrugged, pretending she had other options, when, in fact, she’d had no idea what she would do. She’d spent all her money on train fare, thinking to audition yesterday and head right back to Philadelphia, but her train had been delayed and she’d missed her appointment. Today things would be different. She’d arrive at the theater early and be the first to audition for the new Shuffle Along touring company. If she got turned down, she’d sleep in the park again tonight and try again tomorrow.

  Too young, too ugly, too dark, Mr. Sissle had said last fall. What would he say now? She’d grown some since her last audition, and she’d been working extra hard on her dancing with her new company, which performed with all the touring shows. Bessie Smith, now billed as the “Empress of the Blues,” had taught her how to “project” herself on the stage. One of the chorus dancers had shown her how to lighten her skin tone by rubbing herself with lemon juice. She’d begun using straightener to tame the kinks out of her hair, and sported a sleek, mature style. She was ready.

  If only she hadn’t made that silly scene at the end of her last audition, looking back up at those men in the pouring rain like some kind of pathetic street urchin. She’d wanted them to remember her, but now she hoped they would have forgotten that awful afternoon.

  LAST OCTOBER, WILSIE had kept her promise and gotten Josephine an audition with Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, the men behind Shuffle Along, who, Wilsie had said, were “as good as gold,” or at least that was true of Mr. Blake, she said. Mr. Sissle was funnier, always making jokes but also “sharp around the edges, and his words can cut.” Josephine didn’t fear either man, or that’s what she told herself; she’d seen their musical five times and could do a better job than any of the hoofers they had. She knew the chorus dances by heart, had practiced them at least a hundred times, rising early to practice while her fellow dancers at the Standard slept off their hangovers from the night before.

  Josephine was confident: she’d open the show in New York, which was scheduled to run off-Broadway, it turned out, but no matter. She’d have Mr. Si
ssle and Mr. Blake begging her to work for them, and throwing money at her to do it. Billy hadn’t liked the idea at first, but she’d convinced him that he could come with her: they had Pullman trains in New York, too. If Wilsie’s pay was any indication, she’d make better money than Billy did. They’d be able to live on their own, far from his mama, who hated Josephine more than ever now and tried in every way to make her life miserable. When she’d learned that Josephine wasn’t pregnant, the woman had laughed and congratulated her for the “fast one” she’d pulled.

  “You got what you wanted, didn’t you?” she said.

  “I don’t have to lie to get a man,” Josephine snapped back. “And if I just wanted to get married, you think I’d pick somebody who lives with his mama?”

  As she spoke the words, their truth rattled her. She loved Billy, she reminded herself. But while leaving her own mama to live with Mrs. B hadn’t exactly been jumping from the frying pan into the fire, it was still too hot in that apartment for her. She wanted out.

  “ ‘I’m just wild about Harry,’ ” she’d sung as she’d walked to the Dunbar, picturing herself dancing for Sissle and Blake, the famous songwriting team. Would the men want her to make them laugh, or should she play it straight? At least she looked nice. When he’d heard about the audition, Pa Baker had taken her to a fancy dress shop. “The first rule of success is, you’ve got to dress for it,” he said, and bought her a green dress with a navy-and-green cloche, the “height of fashion,” the proprietress said. Real Chinese silk, it felt like water against her skin, but when she said so, the woman told her not to get it wet or it would be ruined. Water dripped from an awning as she passed, and she dodged the drops. It had rained much of the day, but now the sky was clearing, in weather as in life, and some people carried umbrellas but they were folded up. “ ‘I want to spread a little sunshine,’ ” she sang, “ ‘I want to chase away the rain.’ ”

  Just before she entered the stage door, a drop of rain hit her on the head. No, that was not a bad omen, only a reminder to do her best, to shine like the star she was, or would be. Wilsie came running up—Mr. Sissle was there, but Mr. Blake had yet to arrive. “You’ll knock ’em dead, Tumpy. Just do your dancing and forget the rest.” Josephine didn’t need to be told that. She was ready.

  She’d flexed and stretched her arms as she walked with Wilsie across the stage, past the musicians gathering, trumpets and saxophones and drums and a clarinet, down into the auditorium, where a slender man spoke to a white-haired man at his side. He turned his head very slightly and looked her up and down from the corners of his shrewd, hard eyes. His mouth pursed.

  “How old are you?” he’d said before Wilsie had even introduced them.

  The stage door opened, and a very dark-skinned man with a bald head hurried in, talking about “the damned rain,” scampering down the steps, striding up the aisle, shaking water from his clothes.

  “Eubie Blake,” he said, smiling, holding out his hand to her.

  “This is Tumpy, Mr. Blake, the one I told you about,” Wilsie said. “She’s here to audition for Clara’s spot in the chorus.”

  The man with Mr. Sissle—the stage manager—motioned to her and she followed him up the stage steps. Did she know the songs? Could she dance to “I’m Just Wild about Harry”? Josephine wanted to jump for joy. She pretended to watch as Wilsie showed her the steps, which she already knew as if she’d made them up herself. Josephine stripped down to her dingy leotard, tossed her clothes on a chair, then ran and leaped to the center of the stage. This was it. She bent over to grasp her ankles, stretching her legs, then stood and pulled her arms over her head.

  “Ready?” Mr. Sissle barked. The music started, and she began the dance, so simple she could have done it in her sleep. Practicing in the Standard, she’d gotten bored with it and had made up her own steps, throwing in a little Black Bottom, wiggling her ass and kicking her legs twice as high as they wanted to go, taken by the music, played by it, the instruments’ instrument, flapping her hands, step and kick and spin and spin and squat and jump and down in a split, up and jump and kick and spin—oops, the steps, she didn’t need no damn steps, she had better ones—and kick and jump and wiggle and spin. She looked out into the auditorium—a big mistake: Mr. Blake’s mouth was open and Mr. Sissle’s eyes had narrowed to slits. Don’t be nervous, just dance. Only the music remained now, her feet and the stage.

  When she’d finished, panting, and pulled on her dress and shoes, Wilsie came running over, her eyes shining. “You made their heads spin, you better believe it,” she whispered, but when they went down into the aisle Josephine heard Mr. Sissle muttering.

  “Too young, too dark, too ugly,” he said. The world stopped turning, then, the sun frozen in its arc, every clock still, every breath caught in every throat.

  Mr. Blake turned to her, smiling as if everything were normal, and congratulated her on “a remarkable dance.”

  “I can see that you are well qualified for our chorus, Tumpy,” he said, and on his lips, the name sounded like a little child’s. “You have real talent, and spark, besides. How did you learn to do that at such a young age? You are—how old?”

  “Fifteen,” she said.

  Mr. Sissle snorted, and cut Wilsie a look. “Wasting my time,” he said. Mr. Blake looked at her as if she’d just wandered in from the orphanage.

  “I’m very sorry, there’s been a mix-up,” he said. “You must be sixteen to dance professionally in New York State.”

  “I’ll be sixteen in June,” Josephine said. Her voice sounded plaintive and faraway. (Why had she said that? It was April now—would they remember, and turn her away?)

  “We need someone now.” Mr. Sissle folded his arms as if she were underage on purpose. Mr. Blake led her toward the stage door, an apologetic Wilsie saying she hadn’t known. Mr. Sissle followed, talking to Mr. Blake about adding some steps to “I’m Just Wild about Harry,” saying they should put in some kicks, that he’d been thinking about it for a while. Uh-huh.

  “Come and see us in New York after your birthday, doll,” Mr. Blake said. “You never know when we might have an opening.” He opened the door and let the rain pour in before shutting it again. He looked at Josephine’s thin, optimistic dress. Where was her umbrella? She hung her head. He stepped over to retrieve a black umbrella propped against the wall and handed it to her. She took it without even knowing, her thoughts colliding like too many birds in a cage. She would have to stay in Philadelphia, she had failed—too young, too dark, too ugly—she should have lied about her age, what had gotten into her? Showing off, that was what. And now Mr. Sissle disliked her, and she would never get into their show; it didn’t matter how many times she went back. As she stepped out into the rain with that big umbrella in her hands unopened and felt the rain pour down her face; she was glad, for now they would think it was water instead of tears, but when she looked back, Wilsie was crying, too, in the open doorway. Seeing the men watching from a window, she stopped. They wouldn’t forget her; she’d make them remember. She walked slowly, her silk dress dripping, while Mr. Sissle gesticulated with excitement as he stole her ideas—authentic Negro dancing were the last words she’d heard—and Mr. Blake looking as if he wanted to run out there, scoop her up, and carry her back inside.

  SHE’D WANTED THEM to remember her, but now she hoped they wouldn’t. Maybe Mr. Sissle wouldn’t recognize her with her new hairstyle, with the curl on her forehead, and the chorus costume she’d brought from the Standard instead of the dingy dance leotard she’d worn for the last tryout.

  Mr. Blake, at least, would be impressed. She recalled how he’d looked at her in Philadelphia, his eyes moving over her body like a lover’s hands. She would smile at him at lot, and lie about anything that needed lying about, and dance as if life depended on this audition, which it did.

  She hadn’t come all the way to New York and spent the night on a bench in Central Park to fail. She’d come to follow her destiny, which was Shuffle Along.r />
  She’d gotten Wilsie’s letter about auditions for a new, traveling troupe and begged Pa Baker to lend her the money for train fare, telling him she could stay at Wilsie’s. At work, she’d done her shows and pretended, the night before last, to get sick. How many performances could she miss before losing her job at the Standard? What if she failed the tryout and ended up with no work at all? Depending on Billy made as much sense to Josephine as trying to dance with her hands tied behind her back. One misstep, and she’d fall on her face, and then how would she get up again?

  Billy’s paltry wages from the Pullman Company couldn’t pay the rent for a place of their own, and he wouldn’t let her contribute her salary, saying it was the man’s job to provide. Now he was always gone, leaving Josephine in bed alone and listening for ghosts, and enduring the merciless indignities of life with Ma Baker, a name Josephine had taken to using for the sheer pleasure of seeing the woman grit her teeth. (Billy called her Mother, a bloodless endearment if she’d ever heard one.) But who did Josephine need, really, besides the audiences who cheered for her every night? She’d escaped from that hard life in Saint Louis and made it to Philadelphia by using her wits and working hard, and she’d make it in New York on her own merits and her own terms.

  The city was just waking up as she neared Wilsie’s brick apartment building, horses pulling carriages among cars and streetcars honking and rattling up the street and filling the air with the sickly sweet odor of exhaust; shop owners rolling out their awnings and sweeping the sidewalks in front of their establishments; a grocer setting out fruits and vegetables on a rack; a florist filling buckets with flowers and taping a sign to his window (APRIL SHOWERS BRING MAY FLOWERS); a big dog leading two little ones in a zigzag across the busy thoroughfare and cars screeching to a halt and drivers honking their horns to avoid hitting the dogs; a grizzled man leaning against a doorway, smoking a cigarette and whistling at her as she passed, his eyes greedy.

 

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