Josephine Baker's Last Dance

by Sherry Jones

  “Turn a quick trick, baby doll? I’ve got twenty dollars for you right here.” Patting his crotch, grinning at her.

  “I wouldn’t give you the time of day for that puny offer,” she shot back. Twenty dollars sounded good to her right now—it would buy her a room if she had to stay in New York another night—but she quickly dismissed the thought. She wouldn’t need a room tonight. She would not.

  “You ain’t seen what else I’ve got,” the man said, his right hand fumbling with his fly. Josephine ditched her plan to wait on the steps until Wilsie had the chance to wake up. She pressed the buzzer once, twice, three times, holding it in the third time until Wilsie came down to let her in, scowling and pointing to her watch and asking Josephine what in the world she was doing here so early.

  “I know you didn’t get to bed until at least three o’clock this morning, because that’s when I went down,” Wilsie said. “Don’t you ever sleep?”

  “Cops turned me out when the sun come up,” she said, telling Wilsie where she’d spent the night. Wilsie gasped, and her expression changed to guilt as Josephine had hoped.

  “Lord have mercy, why didn’t you tell me? I thought you had other friends in the city you could stay with.”

  “They weren’t home,” she lied.

  Quietly, Wilsie let her into the apartment, as tiny as she had said it was, a single room with three twin beds and a kitchenette.

  “Come on and get in bed, I don’t care what the girls say.” Josephine, still wearing all her clothes, crawled under the blankets and quilts with her friend and snuggled in her arms, drowsing off. But she didn’t want to sleep, she whispered, she wanted to be at the theater when Mr. Blake and Mr. Sissle arrived, she didn’t want to miss her chance as she’d done yesterday, she’d have to take the train back home this evening, she’d gotten her friend Mildred to lie for her once, but she didn’t want to push her luck.

  When Wilsie heard her fretting, she kissed her cheek and told Josephine not to worry. She was a good dancer, even Mr. Sissle had admitted it after she’d left that day last fall, telling Mr. Blake that if Josephine weren’t too young he might have overlooked the rest. Too young, too dark, too ugly. She would show him; she would show them all.

  “Just tell them you’ve turned sixteen,” Wilsie whispered, but Josephine was already in another world, winding up her arms and kicking up her heels, throwing off sparks, spinning like a dervish, rising to the ceiling and shining there, filling the theater with light.

  ACT III

  * * *

  Josephine Chante La France (Josephine Sings France)

  A crowd of Negro dancers fills the stage, wearing grass skirts and dancing to a jungle beat: La Revue Nègre, the colored American revue that would have flopped like a dead fish in America—it was nowhere as sophisticated as Shuffle Along, or even the second Sissle and Blake show that Josephine toured in, Chocolate Dandies. In Paris, though, Negroes were in vogue after the Great War, the colored soldiers having fought so valiantly with the French, and artists like Pablo Picasso now using African masks in their art to express man’s “primitive” nature. Josephine didn’t understand what Africa had to do with her—she was from Missouri—but she knew a good thing when she saw it, and let the good times roll.

  Chocolate Dandies closed after just a couple of months on Broadway, a flop even though it was good, telling real stories of real Negro life. Not a lot of people went to see it, the novelty of an all-colored musical having passed, and white critics dismissed it as “too ambitious” and “not Negro enough.” Although they heaped praise on Josephine, calling her a “star” when, in reality, she was only in the chorus, she could not break out into a real starring role. At the Plantation Room on Broadway, she auditioned to sing, but the manager said her voice was weak. He hired her for the chorus, instead, and made Ethel Waters his singer. It was Ethel whom Caroline Dudley Reagan, a rich white woman who always wore black, had come to see on the night she hired Josephine.

  “Come to Paris and be my star,” Mrs. Caroline beckoned. How could Josephine say no? She signed up on the spot, to hell with what Billy thought. He wanted her to quit show business and raise a family, but he couldn’t get her pregnant again, so why shouldn’t she go? She’d make more money in a few months than he earned all year, and she would be back by the spring to try again for that baby.

  From the look on his face when she told him, he must have foreseen how it would all turn out. Confronted with his tears, she’d wavered—hadn’t she promised “till death do us part”? But then Mrs. Caroline bought her the red dress she’d been eyeing in the window of a Fifth Avenue shop, and had smiled when Josephine told her she wanted to sing.

  “Paris, queen of the world,” she sings in Josephine à Bobino, the dancers in their grass skirts gyrating around her in frantic imitation of the moves that made her famous, the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe and the windmill of the Moulin Rouge rolling out onto the stage. Little had she known, when she’d signed the contract for La Revue Negre, that she would become the Queen of Paris at age nineteen. Even her big dreams hadn’t carried her that far. But Billy had known.

  Nothing, in fact, had turned out the way Josephine had imagined. But if, like Billy, she’d seen into the future, she’d have done it all the same. No. If she’d known what would happen in France, she wouldn’t have walked onto that steamship to Europe: she’d have danced.

  CHAPTER 8

  1925, Atlantic Ocean

  On top of the world was how she felt on the deck of the RMS Berengaria, a triple-decker steamship as big as a continent. She felt small, surrounded by stars in the sky and their reflections glittering in the water, but also big, floating on the ocean fathomless and eternal and filled with possibility. Steam from the three stacks atop the ship dissolved like dreams into the warm September night, the crescent moon waxing, the smell of the sea filling her nose and mouth, music falling from the upper deck where the band warmed up for the show they were about to put on. The whole world moving under her feet, propelling her forward. She had never been so high, and tonight was only the beginning.

  Josephine ascended the broad spiral staircase in her red Tappé dress, stepping carefully so as not to rip the stitches at the narrow hem. Everything must be perfect on this, her night to shine. Tonight, she would show Mrs. Caroline where her true talents lay—not as a “great clown,” as the woman kept calling her, but as a singer.

  Angling for a singing role in La Revue Nègre, she’d told Mrs. Caroline that she’d filled in for Ethel Waters at the Plantation Room, which was only almost true. Ethel had gotten sick for three days, and Tony, the manager, had almost let Josephine take her place. But then Ethel got wind of that scheme and said, “Ain’t no goddamn way,” no chorus dancer was going to get a crack at her job, and she came back to work.

  Tonight, though, would be different.

  In exchange for passage for her musicians and cast, Mrs. Caroline had promised a performance for the first-class passengers in the upper-level dining room. Featured would be the other star dancer, Louis Douglas, the singer Maud de Forrest, and Josephine. Unbeknownst to Mrs. Caroline, though, Josephine had decided not to dance, but to sing “Brown Eyes” as she would have done in Ethel’s place in the Plantation Room. Then, for the rest of the voyage, the white people would be talking about her in their white lingo, how “marvelous,” how “the bee’s knees,” how “the cat’s meow” she was. They might even ask her to perform again, and Mrs. Caroline would realize that she ought to be a singer and not a comic.

  She neared the top step, a pair of white shoes stepped down, and then she was in Claude Hopkins’s arms, the bandleader’s face so close she had to look away, not wanting to smear her lipstick. Her lips brushed his collar, just slightly. She saw the faintest, tiniest smudge of red, but when he let her go his shirt closed around his neck and there was nothing to see except his out-of-this-world handsome face: wavy hair, smooth skin, sensuous mouth that could kiss her until she turned to cream, heavy-lidded eyes telli
ng her all the things he wanted to do to her right here and now.

  “You look delicious in that red dress,” he said, smacking his lips. “I ought to carry you back to your room right now and eat you up.”

  She lowered her head and pushed past him. “It’s not a room. It’s a berth.”

  The first-class dining salon, on the other hand, ought to be called a palace, with its domed, elaborately painted ceiling rising above an enormous, red-carpeted room with marble walls and a balcony running all around. There were white-clothed tables and green chairs upstairs and down, glowing sconces on the walls, and plants filling the room with more green. Josephine found Mrs. Caroline at the front of the room, on the small stage before a wooden dance floor, with Spencer Williams, the stocky piano player, and the baby-faced Sidney Bechet, who played clarinet and saxophone.

  Dismay flattened Mrs. Caroline’s tiny face when she saw Josephine. Her argument with Sidney came to a screeching halt as her mouth dropped open.

  “How are you going to dance in that dress?” she said.

  Josephine felt Claude on her neck like a hot breath. “I’m not dancing, ma’am. I’m singing. Claude and I have been working something up, and Sidney.”

  Mrs. Caroline looked up at Claude.

  “We’re doing ‘Brown Eyes,’ ” he mumbled.

  “Josephine. I had hoped this performance might inspire the audience members to come to our show.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said.

  Mrs. Caroline fingered the pearls circling her throat, giving Josephine a long look that she couldn’t quite decipher. Josephine looked right back, unintimidated by the diminutive, doll-like woman.

  She sighed. “Fine, Miss Josephine—you finally get your way.” Her expression hardened, though, before she turned back to Sidney and Spencer.

  When the show began, Mrs. Caroline took the microphone and introduced Josephine Baker, one of the “stars” of the new Paris musical Le Revue Nègre, “making her singing debut.” She did not sound enthusiastic. Josephine rankled: was she trying to hex the performance? Then Claude began at the piano, and Sidney blew his horn, and Josephine forgot all about Mrs. Caroline as she stepped onto the stage and began to sing. “Teardrops in the light, in your eyes so bright, just like raindrops in the window pane.” How she loved this song!

  But something was off. A ruddy-faced man at a front table lit a cigar; the smoke puffed into her face, nearly making her sneeze. She snapped her fingers, trying to get the beat—where was it? Her voice cracked. Someone laughed; she followed the noise and saw two women chatting as though she weren’t even there. Soon everyone was talking. Josephine raised her voice, singing another off note that Sidney covered up with playing so good people began tapping their feet to the beat that Josephine had finally found, but then the song was over, and the music stopped, and the silence that followed rang more loudly than any applause.

  The man with the cigar puffed away. His wife smiled blankly. Josephine wanted to cross her eyes, but how would that look in her slinky red dress? Not funny at all. Sad.

  Could they hear her heart beating like it wanted to jump out of her chest and run away? Dazed, she looked at Claude, who began the next song, a peppy tune. Louis Douglas’s little girl, Marion, whom Josephine had taught to dance the Charleston, got excited and ran out to join her on the stage. Why didn’t her daddy call her back? The crowd applauded as the girl danced, knobby knees, white anklet socks, patent-leather shoes, her arms waving in a blur. Josephine knew she should dance with her, the audience would like that—but how, in this dress? Instead, she sang more forcefully, her voice warmed up, now, but no one was looking at her, they were watching the five-year-old. They wouldn’t notice if Josephine walked off the stage, which she felt tempted to do. Mrs. Caroline stood at the bar talking behind her hand to Maud de Forrest, that old drunkard who’d looked down her nose at Josephine for begging to sing just one song. Both of them were eyeing her, Maud smirking and Mrs. Caroline’s lips twitching in a shit-eating grin.

  Mrs. Caroline knew this would happen. The realization hit Josephine in the chest so hard she couldn’t find her breath for a minute, but then she ended the song with a long, low note, and little Marion bowed, taking all the love that should have been Josephine’s. Marion’s eyes shone as she skipped off the stage with her hand in Josephine’s. Josephine remembered being her age, dancing on Market Street outside the Rosebud Cafe, Tom Turpin inside playing ragtime on the upright piano, Mexican Robert on the sidewalk playing his harmonica, Uncle Joe spinning her around, and Miss Sweety clapping her hands while Josephine did the Mess Around, the Shim Sham, and the Tacky Annie all at the same time, pennies falling at her feet, people calling her name, “Do it, Tumpy! Look at that girl go.” Little Marion’s daddy was a dancer; she’d be one, too, now.

  Louis Douglas went on next, dancing while Maud sang, her raspy voice lubricated by the gin she’d started drinking as soon as they hit international waters. Josephine took the girl to bed, ignoring the narrowed eyes of Claude’s wife, Mabel, and her friends. They were jealous, Mabel that Claude loved her, and the rest, because among the dancers, she, Josephine, was the only star.

  “Just because she can cross her eyes and wiggle that ass. What kind of talent does that take?”

  “She doesn’t even do the steps. Just flaps her arms and crosses her eyes like somebody with no brain.”

  “Ever hear her talk? She ain’t got no sense.”

  Oh, the chorus could be awful, brutal, everyone scratching to climb that ladder with so little room on each rung, clawing at one another, trying to push everybody else down as they strove for the top. Josephine didn’t need to play that game. She danced her own dances, and people loved her: nobody could take that away. These girls would love to see her cry after tonight’s humiliation, her head hanging down, her lips pooched out and quivering. Instead, she walked back into the lounge like the star she reminded herself she was, the star of Le Revue Nègre, chic and elegant and beautiful in her Tappé gown and diamond earrings and dancer’s body.

  She moved through the crowd gracefully, smiling as though she had triumphed, but no one would meet her eyes, not even Claude, who stood at the bar with Mabel and her friends; certainly not Maud, who murmured, “She set you up,” as Josephine passed her table; not the dancers she liked, Evelyn and Mildred, sipping Coca-Colas and whispering to each other; not even Sidney, drinking a beer and sliding his gaze to the floor rather than look at Josephine.

  Tears came to her eyes, and she blinked once, twice, and saw Mabel standing before her, arms folded.

  “You stay away from my husband,” she said. Bea Foote and Marguerite Ricks, her cronies, came to stand with her, their arms crossed, too, loyal to the bandleader’s wife who’d gotten them their jobs.

  “You’d better talk to Claude about that.”

  “I’m talking to you.” Mabel’s voice rose. Josephine could feel people onstage and off- looking at them now. “You stay away from Claude, or I’ll fix your ass.”

  Josephine laughed. “A few no-talent chorus dancers can’t hurt me. I’m the star of this show.”

  “You’ll be the star of nothing if we all quit. We’ll go back to New York and take our husbands with us. I’ll take Claude. Without a bandleader, you’ve got no show.”

  Josephine turned to Claude, who shrugged. Shrugged! All his good looks and sexiness drained away. “Claude? Didn’t he tell you? I already ditched his ass. I’m through.” She cocked an eyebrow at Mabel. “Don’t worry, I left some for you.”

  She turned, her temples throbbing, a headache coming on. She walked as if she had all day to the piano, where Caroline stood talking to Spencer Williams as he ran his fingers over the keys.

  “How could you do that to me?” she said in a low voice. Spencer began to play a song.

  Caroline acted like she didn’t know what Josephine was talking about. She’d wanted to sing, hadn’t she? She flicked her cigarette over an ashtray. Josephine felt tempted to knock the burning thing from her hand
.

  “You’re fixing to kill me.”

  “Ah, my dear, I don’t think you need my help for that.”

  “You set me up.”

  Yes, the woman said, she supposed she had. “I wanted you to realize where your talents truly lie.”

  The weight of tonight’s failure crashed down upon Josephine. No one had clapped. They had just sat there, their hands fidgeting, their eyes looking past her, searching for the next act.

  “I’m going home,” she said, trembling. “I’m headed back to New York tomorrow.”

  “That’s fine.” Again, she flicked her ash as if she had not a care in the world. “But we are in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. You will have to wait until the ship docks at Cherbourg. I will pay for your return journey.”

  Adrenaline flooded her body, making her heart race. This was not the response she had expected. After her performance tonight, Mrs. Caroline now wanted to get rid of her. Pricked, she felt all her pride seep away. Her shoulders drooped, and tears filled her eyes. Did she have any talents?

  “Why did you choose me, Mrs. Caroline?” Josephine sniffled, and brushed away a tear. “Why did you want me to come with you?”

  “I chose you because you can dance,” Mrs. Caroline said. “And because you are beautiful. My God, look at you tonight! You have a chic that will amaze even the Parisians. And you are funny. People love you, you make them laugh.”

  “But I want to sing.”

  Caroline shook her head. “Maud is our singer. You are a dancer, and a brilliant one. And you are our clown. There is where your talents lie, Josephine. Do not forget that.”