Josephine Baker's Last Dance

by Sherry Jones

  When they returned to the table, Pepito excused himself and Bricky rounded on Josephine.

  “What on earth are you doing with that creep?” she said.

  Josephine felt like she’d been slapped. Creep? Did she mean Pepito? He was no creep, he was an Italian count; he treated Josephine like she was royalty, too, hadn’t Bricky noticed how he’d pulled out her chair every time she got up from the table and sat back down again, how he’d kept her glass filled—

  “He fills it with champagne you paid for,” Bricktop interrupted.

  “We’ve hardly had a thing to drink, Bricky, we’ve been so busy dancing. Did you notice what a good dancer he is?”

  Bricky snorted. “He ought to be good, as much practice as he gets. You heard Elsa. He hits her tea garden every afternoon, dances with rich women for money and does who-knows-what with them at night. He’s a gigolo, Josephine. Ain’t got a dime to his name, if I’m lying I’m dying. You take a look at his collar and cuffs, and those cheap cuff links?”

  “I told you, he’s a count.”

  “And I’m the Queen of Sheba.”

  “Are you calling him a liar, and me stupid for believing him?”

  “I’m saying he knows how to charm the ladies into paying his way.” She opened her fan and began fanning herself. “I’ve seen him here these past couple of weeks, always with one woman or another, wining and dining and never picking up the tab. Don’t look at me like that. I’m your friend, remember? You told me to warn you when I see you headed for trouble, so I’m doing what you asked. And what I’ve got to say is this: count, my ass.”

  Josephine felt the blood rush to her face. “You’re jealous.”

  Bricktop laughed and rolled her eyes.

  “Jealous? Of what? Of that no-account count?”

  “Jealous of me,” Josephine said. “Ever since we had that night together in Deauville, you act like you own me.”

  “Honey, you can let go of that fantasy right now. We had fun, but I’m not into jelly roll. I honestly prefer meat with my motion.” She laughed again, sending Josephine’s blood pressure through the roof. She’d like to punch Bricktop in her ugly, freckled face. Jo Baker’s French is bad, but her English is worse, she’d teased earlier tonight, laughing. How could she be so hurtful?

  “Well, you ought to lay off the jelly rolls and the bread basket, too.”

  Bricky’s face turned as white as a ghost’s, but Josephine wasn’t stopping. Every bad thought she’d ever had about her friend came tumbling out. Her string of expletives and insults started low and ended in a high, screaming fit about how Bricky had a hard-on for Cole Porter, everybody could see it, “but he wouldn’t fuck you with a ten-foot pole, you’re just his passing-for-white Negro prop so everybody can see how modern he is,” and a lot more that the whole room might have heard if the band hadn’t started playing just when she was getting wound up.

  When she had finished, Josephine went to the table and announced that they were leaving. Bessie came running after her asking what was the matter. Josephine looked at Pepito, her eyes taking in his frayed collar and cuffs and worn shoes, and said she was tired of Le Grand Duc. She was thinking, though, that maybe he was penniless, like the duchess who made the rounds at night and got everybody to buy her drinks. But how could she find out, when he didn’t speak English?

  On the way to her car, it started to rain. Josephine cried out—her dress would be ruined. But Pepito pulled her under an awning and wrapped his arms around her and gave her a kiss that mixed up everything, and when they’d finished, all the pieces of her life had settled in a different place from where they’d been. And when the downpour stopped and the long kiss ended and they joined Bessie, who asked again what had happened with Bricktop, Josephine laughed.

  “Bricktop who?”

  CHAPTER 15

  1926

  Josephine screamed and hurled a vase against the mirror, shattering both. “Honkies! White crackers!” With each shout, Bric and Brac screeched and rattled their cages. She unlatched the doors, setting them free.

  Pepito walked in to find the monkeys swinging from the chandelier; the goat chewing the tablecloth; the birds flying in circles, spattering the rugs and upholstery with their scat, and Josephine cursing. But for once, he didn’t try to calm her down, didn’t even warn her about the bill the hotel would send her for this destruction although she could read that worry on his face.

  “This crappy-ass hotel ain’t getting a thing out of me,” she said. “If they even think about collecting, I’ll sic the gendarmes on their asses. Hell, I’m going to do that, anyway.” France had laws against discrimination. Slapped with a fine, maybe the management would think twice before giving a customer the boot for being colored. Pepi didn’t say a word, not that there’d be much he could say. Not even a week here, and she’d been asked—no, forced—to leave because some Americans had complained. They didn’t like sharing the hotel with a Negro! Maybe they felt bad that she had the fanciest suite, four large rooms with a fountained terrace and a view of the Arc de Triomphe. When the manager came to see them today, his face red and his eyes shifty, Josephine had stood right there as he’d told Pepito, not her, what was going on. Only Pepito’s hasty slam of the door had stopped her from lighting into the coward.

  “Stupid bastards,” she muttered, putting on her makeup in the bathroom while the maid, Yvette, packed their clothes and Pepito made calls to find them a new hotel. “They don’t know their asses from a hole in the ground.” She’d thought this kind of thing couldn’t happen in Paris. They had laws against this shit—she could walk, ride, shop, eat, and sleep anywhere, or so she thought. Parisians loved her skin color, they called her a “bronze beauty” and a “black pearl.” She’d never felt disrespected in France until today.

  American crackers. She’d endured two weeks of seasickness on the Berengaria to get away from their prejudiced bullshit, but she couldn’t go far enough, it seemed. What kind of man would ask her to leave because of their complaints? Pepito said the hotel had plenty of white Americans and only one colored one, so she had to go. They would never do this if she were French, he said, startling her, because she felt more French than American these days, more at home in Paris than anywhere she had ever lived.

  “They don’t hate us in Paris like they do in the States,” she’d said to Florence when they’d finally gone out together, to the Ritz to feast on oysters, foie gras, and duck and talk about old times. Florence agreed that folks were friendlier in Paris, but she wouldn’t say, as Josephine did, that they were color-blind.

  “They think we’re all Africans, or they want us to be,” she said. “That’s its own kind of prejudice.”

  Josephine winced.

  “I’ve worn grass skirts and blackface, myself,” Florence said, guessing her thoughts.

  “You’ve got blackface in this show,” Josephine blurted.

  “Sometimes, you’ve got to sweeten the pill.”

  While Parisians treated Negroes better than people in the States did, things weren’t perfect here, Florence went on. “Look at the people protesting the colored revues, warning that jazz—‘Negro music’—will corrupt French culture. Look at the French government invading Africa.”

  “How do you know these things?” Josephine said.

  Flo gave her a long look. “I read the news,” she said.

  Their talk hadn’t settled easily in Josephine’s mind, especially after reviewers called her “savage” and Florence “civilized.” What did they know about either Flo or her, except what they saw on the stage?

  But Florence did have one precious possession that Josephine did not: a singing voice that people loved. Lord, how Josephine had cringed to hear herself on her first record. If she sounded half as good as Flo, she’d be on that Follies stage in New York in a feathered headdress, singing white songs, showing the world that a Negro could do it.

  “When are you coming home to the States, Jo?”

  “It ain’t my home, not anymore
. If I go back, they’ll make me sing mammy songs.”

  “And you’d turn those songs right back around on them. You’d have the white folks laughing at mammy songs and laughing at themselves. Look what you do here, wiggling around in that banana skirt. You think I don’t know what you’re up to?”

  She winked as though she and Josephine shared a secret joke, although Josephine wasn’t entirely sure what she was talking about. What was she “up to” besides making people happy? Making good money, sure, but she worked hard for it. She would never have to live on the streets again, not even if a spineless jellyfish threw her out of her hotel suite because he couldn’t say no to some lily-white, stick-up-their-ass bigoted fools.

  Pepito strutted into the bedroom, he’d found another hotel, one with no Americans, him beaming like this was a great achievement, like he wanted a medal for his efforts. Josephine held her tongue. She hadn’t wanted to come to this hotel. Her apartment near the Parc Monceau was plenty big, but Pepi had complained, saying her pets took up too much space. She’d put her feelings aside and agreed to move because of all he had done for her: straightened out her bank accounts; put her apartment into his name and most of her money in his accounts to shield her from Paul Poiret’s lawsuit—the bastard had given her all those clothes, but now that she was famous he wanted to be paid for them—gotten her name on a new hair straightener, Bakerfix, that had already made her a bundle in sales; enrolled her in voice lessons and French lessons and English lessons and even a kind of charm school where she learned to walk like a lady; negotiated her recording contract with Odeon; arranged photo sessions and interviews and modeling sessions in famous artists’ studios; put on charity events in her name for publicity. He kept her busy, but she made sure to take time for herself, too, learning to play the ukulele, working out new dance steps, strengthening her body, taking long baths, and making love—not always with Pepito.

  For all his energy elsewhere, he couldn’t keep up with Josephine in the bedroom. She was starting to think no man could. But she kept her side affairs to herself, dreading his jealous temper that she’d already glimpsed. Last night, he and her friend Dr. Gaston Prieur had come up with a scheme to open a Josephine Baker nightclub. When Pepito found out that she’d signed a one-year contract to dance in L’Imperial every night for no pay, he saw red. Josephine, who went to several clubs a night and danced at every one for free, thought she’d gotten a good deal: L’Imperial gave her a meal every night and their spaghetti was the best in Paris. And besides, the owners had put her name in lights, changing the sign out front to JOSEPHINE BAKER’S IMPERIAL. What advertising! But Pepi said she shouldn’t do anything for free, and Dr. Prieur, sitting at their table, agreed. She went to dance, and when she came back Pepi had talked the doctor into financing a club for her and had even decided on a locale, near Le Grand Duc.

  Without thinking, she’d thrown her arms around Dr. Prieur’s neck and kissed him in thanks. Pepito hadn’t liked that.

  “Dr. Prieur was your lover?” he said on the ride home, scowling.

  She shrugged and asked what did it matter, as long as he was willing to put up the money for her club.

  “Trop d’amours,” he fumed. “Too many lovers. Have you sexed all the men in Paris?” His voice rose. “This one?” He gestured toward André, who, to Josephine’s relief, looked straight ahead.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Pepi. Other men don’t matter. I’m yours now.”

  “You are mine,” he said, and seized her and buried his face in her bosom.

  “Yes, baby, all yours. Nobody else’s.” Did André keep his eyes on the road as Pepito lifted up her skirt and had his way with her in the back seat? (Josephine hoped not.) Now, with her arms around his neck and her lips at his ear, she hoped he’d do it again, here in the bathroom with Yvette outside the door. Take me, she whispered, but his thoughts had moved on, and now so did he, stepping into the parlor to help Yvette marshal the animals back into their cages.

  When everything was ready, Pepito rang for the bellhop and they marched into the lobby with Yvette and two hotel maids, André, and two bellhops carrying her trunks of clothing and cages of animals. Josephine and Pepito led them, she in her yellow crepe de chine dress, pearl-seeded cloche, and ermine stole, holding her billy goat Toutoute on a diamond leash and clasping the arm of Count Pepito Abatino in his tan suit, red-and-yellow shirt, and two-toned leather shoes, shocking the Americans with the sight of her black hand wrapped around his white Italian elbow and his white hand on her Negro ass.

  “We’re moving out,” she announced loudly as she led the group through the lobby, her strappy high heels rapping on the marble floor. “Be forewarned, you all: This hotel is filled with rats.”

  She walks onto the stage in a skintight dress covered in silver spangles that reflect the blue lights, reminiscent of the mirrors that lined her first club. A marquee descends, flashing CHEZ JOSÉPHINE. Dancers surround her in shimmering silver leotards and blue-feathered headdresses: a parade of peacocks, which is how Josephine felt at the time, preening, adored, beautiful. She gives a shimmy and runs her hands down her torso, eliciting cheers. She has kept her figure or, rather, starved herself to get it back, any extra flesh reined in by a girdle so constricting it’s a miracle that she can sing “J’ai Deux Amours.” She’d rather not, anyway, but people expect it now; it’s become her signature, performed so many times that she has to muster all her acting skills to pretend she’s enjoying herself. “I have two loves, my country and Paris.” Later, she changed the lyrics to sing, “My country is Paris,” but only after her native country betrayed her, or, rather, revealed itself as the unfaithful lover she’d always known it to be.

  Paris could be fickle, there was no doubt about that—but it never abandoned her. And from 1926, when she debuted at the Folies-Bergère, until 1928, when she left on her world tour, the city belonged completely to Josephine Baker. Even while the audiences dwindled for her second Folies show, they crowded her nightclub in the after hours. If you were famous; if you were chic; if you were beautiful and rich; if you loved to have a good time; if you dug jazz and wanted to hear the best in town play it; if you had a bundle to spend on champagne; if you wanted to see and be seen in the most fashionable club in the city; if you were white; if you were colored; if you didn’t mind a venue that mixed the two onstage and off-; if you didn’t mind flashbulbs; if you were willing to wait in a long line until the wee hours to see Josephine Baker make her grand entrance; if you wanted to get your picture taken with her; if you wanted a night that you would never forget unless you wanted to, then Chez Joséphine was the place where you wanted to be.

  Her first nightclub was only the beginning. Chez Joséphine clubs opened in New York and Berlin, as well, dazzling with stars: Astaire, Hepburn, Davis, Gable; Dietrich, Grosz, Brecht, Weill; in Paris, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Kiki, Buñuel—and in 1939, Frida Kahlo, that enigmatic, beguiling vixen whose tongue imprinted Josephine’s body with secrets she never told.

  She’d met Frida in the “pussy palace” version of her club, as Sim called it, the Chez Joséphine she opened in Paris after her disastrous time in New York, damn Pepito for talking her into that mistake! She’d come back angry and determined to push back against the rising tide of racial prejudice in Europe. The pink motif—pink walls and carpet, pink leather furniture, pink bathroom sinks, pink linens, and pink lights—embodied life in the cold shadow of the Nazi threat.

  None of her clubs, however, could compare with her first, opened in 1926 on the Montmartre hill and pulsing with music and craziness and fun. Every night after dancing two shows in the Folies-Bergère, she’d make the rounds of the hottest spots in the city to end up at her boîte. Those were the golden years for Josephine. Her picture in the newspapers every day; famous artists painting and sculpting her; her face on posters all over the city and in magazines; fashion designers sending her expensive clothes, her name in lights over her own Paris cabaret: Josephine had always dreamed big, but never had she imagined al
l this!

  CHAPTER 16

  1927

  Chez Joséphine was the most elegant boîte in Montmartre; she made sure of that. The cut-glass mirrors around the stage reflected her dances in what seemed like a thousand angles, and its stage could hold a full orchestra, not just a few instruments as in other Paris joints. Its dance floor was big, too, with enough room for the whole club to join her there. She’d put a mirror on the back wall to make the place look twice as big, filled the club with little tables all crowded together, and had the white walls and pillars trimmed in gold paint. Most of the patrons were white, too, and many of them Americans, which made her laugh as she, the great-grandchild of slaves, charged them outrageous prices for dishes whose ingredients cost almost nothing. Forty-five francs for a dozen oysters!

  People paid in part because the food was so good. She’d hired Freddie, her chef, away from L’Imperial—gee, were the owners mad about that! They’d filed a lawsuit for breach of contract, but Pepi said they wouldn’t win since the club had never paid Josephine a sou. Her clientele didn’t come for the food, though. They filled her club night after night to enjoy an evening of unadulterated class. Blue chandeliers bathed the room in cool light that accentuated the curls of cigarette smoke swirling up and around and made Josephine’s skin look like café au lait. A mural depicting a dancing Josephine covered one wall, painted by Paul Colin, now the most popular artist in Paris, thanks to her. And she always made sure to enter the club in high style, delaying her arrival until one in the morning so folks would keep eating and drinking while they waited for her to burst through the doors amid a fanfare from the stage, wearing outrageous designer fashions and leading a train of maids and animals.