by Maya Angelou
Eddie announced, “And now the Garden of Allah proudly presents Rusty dancing 'Salome and the Seven Veils.'”
Rusty got up from her chair and shrugged off her filmy wrap. She draped it over the customer's lap and stepped up onstage. Her body angled stiffly across the floor in contradiction to the floating chiffon veils.
I hadn't watched any of the women perform since that first day of audition, and so I sat fascinated with Rusty's conception of what was erotically exciting. She glided and stopped, glided and stopped, while her long, lethargic hands draped to the cups of her bra, promising to remove it, then a better idea motivated them to float away and descend to the chiffon at her crotch where they arrived with the same intent. Miraculously a veil would drift off her figure and slowly onto the floor. Rusty's face seemed divorced from the actions of her body. It wore the resignation of a tired traveler on a cross-country bus ride. I knew that that wasn't carnal, but when I turned to get confirmation from the customers, their eyes were focused on the indifferent dancer. They were using her feinting body to erase their present and catapult themselves into a fantasy where sex-starved women lay submissive and split open like red, ripe watermelons.
If I was going to be a success, I had to elicit if not the quality then the same quantity of response.
I had heard all my life that white males, from boyhood to senility, dreamed of slipping into the slave cabin of young “hot mommas” and “ripping off a piece of black tail.” My arrogance and my hatred of slavery would not allow me to consciously batten on that image. I decided during Rusty's dance that I would interest the customers in my movements and hold them in the present, even as a tightrope walker hypnotizes an audience.
Eddie announced, “Rita dancing Scheherazade.” I stepped upon the stage and into a thousand and one nights. The musicians were forgotten behind me as I moved to the edge of the stage. And the furtive men with their lonely longings became the sultans whom I had to entertain. I watched their faces come alive to me as I pointed and gyrated and swept my arms over my head and out and down to my sides as if I might fly offstage straight to a camel caravan waiting. I convinced myself that I was dancing to save my life, and without knowing why, the audience responded to my predicament. The amount of applause startled me, and even Eddie pursed his lips and nodded as I walked by the bar, headed for the stairs.
The dressing room was empty. I stood amid the costumes and wigs and hair rats considering my success and the next move. There was no time to waste. The men had liked my dance and surely one would buy me a drink. While I toweled my body I planned my strategy. Unlike the other dancers, I would not sit around the bar with kimono or peignoir thrown over my costume. I put on street clothes and went up to the bar.
Eddie showed his pleasure at seeing me by introducing a customer. “Rita, here is Tom. He wants to buy you a drink.”
The first conversation was repeated so often, all customers might have been handed questions on slips of paper at the door and been forced to memorize the questions.
“Where'd you learn to dance like that?”
“In school.”
“Did you ever make love to a white man?”
“No.”
“Would you like to?”
“No. No, I don't think so.” Leave room for them to hope. Leave space for me to ask for another drink. “May I have another drink?”
“Sure. Where're you from?”
“NY.” N.O.Y.B. None of Your Business.
“Long way from home. Don't you get lonely?”
“This drink is called a champagne cocktail and I get twenty-five cents for every one you buy but really it's only 7-Up. If you buy a bottle of champagne, it'll cost you eight dollars and I'll get two of that. But at least it'll be real champagne and I can sit with you as long as it lasts.”
The ploy worked, but my interest was never aroused. The men awoke no curiosity in me. I did not follow them in my mind to their hotel rooms or their loveless homes. They were like markers on a highway, to be used without gratitude and to be forgotten without guilt.
The other dancers did not warm to me, nor I to them. They chatted to each other and kept their conversations and their glances to themselves They had not forgiven me for that first week when I sat haughtily in the dressing room as they hustled around the bar soliciting drinks. And since they had the toughness without the tenderness I had found in Babe, I ignored them completely. Success at cadging drinks changed my public personality. I became sassy to the customers. Quick, brittle words skipped off my tongue like happy children in a game of tag. Some men liked the flippancy and began to come back to the club not only to watch me dance but to buy drinks, listen to me and talk.
CHAPTER 8
Two months after I began working in the Garden of Allah the composition of the patronage changed. The lonely men whose hands played with their pocketed dreams slowly gave way to a few laughing open-faced couples who simply came in to watch the show.
Occasionally I would be invited to join a table of admirers. They had been told a good dancer was working in a strip joint. I answered their overused question by telling the truth. “I'm here because I have to work and because I love to dance.” I also explained about the drinks.
Being so close to the tawdry atmosphere titillated the square couples. I decided they were the fifties version of whites slumming in Harlem's Cotton Club during Prohibition, and while their compliments pleased me, I was not flattered.
Away from the bar my days were cheerful. I was making real money. Enough to buy smart, understated clothes for myself and matching ensembles for Clyde. We spent Saturday afternoons at horror movies, which I loathed. He adored the blood and popping eyes of “the Wolf Man,” the screams of “vampire victims” and the menacing camel walk of Frankenstein's monster. He yelled and jumped and hid behind my arm or peeked through his fingers at the grisly scenes.
I asked him why he liked the fearful stories if they frightened him. His reply was a non sequitur. “Well, Mom, after all, I'm only eight years old.”
Three months passed and I freely spent my salary and commissions in dining at good restaurants, buying new furniture and putting a small portion away for a trip— Ivonne and I had discussed taking our children on a vacation to Hawaii or New York or New Orleans.
I was young, in good health, and my son was happy and growing more beautiful daily.
One night Eddie paid off the other girls first, saying he wanted to talk to me. After they left, he bellied up to the bar and cast his glance on the bandstand where the musicians were stowing away their instruments. When he didn't look at me, I knew it had to be serious.
“Rita, you're making more money than the other girls.”
I hoped so.
“… and they say they have a complaint.”
“What's the complaint, Eddie?”
“They say you must be promising to sleep with the clients. Otherwise why do you end up every night with four or five bottles of champagne and ten dollars or more in cocktails?”
“Eddie, I don't care whether they like it or not. I haven't promised anybody anything. I've just made more money. Let's leave it at that, O.K.?”
“It's not O.K., Rita. They can bring you up on charges with the union, or even get the club in Dutch. You must be doing something. No new girl makes this kind of money.” His hand covered some dollars on the bar.
My protested innocence was forceful but without explanation. I could not reveal to him that I told all my customers about the ginger ale and that they knew the percentage I made from the champagne.
“Please believe me, Eddie. When I leave here, I go straight to my house and let the baby-sitter take my cab so she can go home. I have a child at home.”
“Rita, it's not me. Far as I'm concerned, you're a straight-shooter. Good people. But these other broads. They, uh, what I mean is they can give us a bad time. If they want to make real trouble all they have to do is hint to the right people that girls here accept B drinks.” He wiped at a long-dried sp
ill on the bar and my ears began to burn. “The State Board of Equalization suspended our license once before.”
I had ignored the fact that officers from the Board visited the club in plain clothes. I told each man who offered me a drink the composition of the drinks and the percentage I would receive. So I had been dense before, but if I thought fast I could recover.
“Eddie, if they do that—I mean, tell the wrong person— they'll lose their jobs, too.”
He found another spot to rub. “They don't care, not if they get mad enough. They'll just go to work down the street or around the corner. These joints are always looking for experienced girls. And that's what I want to tell you. I'm putting you on notice. Two weeks. You start looking for another place. I'll tell the girls tomorrow night that you're on notice. That ought to make them happy. If you haven't found something in two weeks, I'll try to keep you on a week at a time, but you won't have no trouble finding another job.”
Shock made me patient. I stood silent and sheeplike as he counted out my night's money. In the taxi I gathered his words together and poked at them dully. Two weeks' notice. Fourteen days before the good life faded and my son and I would be cut loose to scud again without anchor. The dancers didn't like me and the disaffection was mutual. If they envied the money I made, I was jealous of the whiteness of their skin that allowed them to belong anywhere they chose to go. They could pick up their tassels and pack up their G-strings and go to another job without hesitation, but I remembered Babe. She was as white as they, but just because she slept side by side with her black husband, she was banned from the street. And what about me? I was black all over. No—the strippers felt nothing for me that I didn't feel for them.
I was always tired after the six shows, but this night sleep did not rush to float me out of exhaustion.
The next evening the dressing room was filled with electricity. The women were costumed, but had not made their customary dash upstairs. When I entered, they all turned to look at me. Sour little grins played on their faces. Rusty said, “So, you're leaving, huh, Rita?”
I gaped, surprised for a second. Eddie had told them already. I offered them my most gracious smile, looking into each woman's eyes.
“Good evening, ladies. Jody”—turn—“Kate”—turn— “Rusty.”
Jody said, “Lovely evening, isn't it?”
My grandmother would have been proud of me. She had purred into my ears since babyhood, “Three things no person worth a hill of beans won't do. One is eat in the street and another is cry in the street. And never let a stranger get your goat.” If they were going to lick their chops over my distress, they would find their tongues stuck to a cake of salt.
Upstairs I greeted Eddie as if he was simply a bartender. I looked away from him quickly and around the club. A few women sat at the tables with male companions. Their two-piece knit dresses and bouffant hairdos were strikingly out of place in the musty club.
I sucked in my breath and followed the opening bars of my music to the stage. Since I was on notice, I could forget the audience and go for myself.
Three fashionably dressed men and a young Marlene Dietrich-looking woman huddled over a table in the center of the room. The woman had a shock of sunlight-yellow hair and brooded over a cigarette holder. The red-haired man had been in before, but had not spoken. Now the four sat watching me as if they were French couturiers and I was wearing the latest creation from Jacques Fath. The more I tried to ignore them, the more they intruded into my mind. Who were they? Some slumming socialites looking for thrills? I tried to give myself to the music, but the group stared so intently that for once the music wouldn't have me, and I stumbled around the floor creating no continuity in my movement and no story in my dance. It occurred to me that they might be talent scouts and maybe I was going to be discovered. I threw that silly thought out of my mind before it could take hold. Lana Turner and Rita Hayworth got discovered, Black girls got uncovered.
I changed downstairs in the empty dressing room and half expected, half wished that the quartet would be gone when I went back upstairs.
“Hello, I'm Don.” The redhead grinned and a map of freckles wiggled across his face. “This is Barry.”
Barry was a tall, graying man whose smile was distant and distinguished. Don, obviously the major-domo of the group, waved his hand toward a pretty young man whose eyes were beautifully deep.
“This is Fred Kuh, and this”—he gestured like a circus announcer who had saved the lion tamer for the last—“this is Jorie!”
She shook her head and her hair fell back from her face, heavily as if in slow motion. She spoke in a low, theatrical voice.
“Hello. My dear, you dance divinely. Just divine.”
Not Marlene Dietrich, I was wrong; she was Veronica Lake with substance, a young Tallulah Bankhead. “And you're so refreshingly young.” Her perfume was thick, like the air in Catholic churches.
I said, “I'm twenty-one.”
Barry asked if I would have a drink with them and I began my spiel about the B drinks, the percentages and the bad champagne.
Jorie said, “It's true. My Gawd, it's true. You're right on cue. We were told that you'd say that.”
“What?”
“You're kind of famous, you know.”
Don grinned, “You must be the only open-faced B-girl on the Barbary Coast.”
“In San Francisco,” said Barry.
Jorie corrected: “In captivity.”
They approved of me and I warmed to them. I allowed myself their flattery. It was easy to suppose they liked me because I was honest. I did not want to pry into their acceptance for fear that what I found would be unacceptable to me. Suppose they thought me a clown?
Barry explained that Jorie was a chanteuse, currently starring at the Purple Onion, a nearby night club. He managed the place and was the emcee. Don Curry and Fred Kuh were bartenders and I was welcome anytime I could get away.
These beautiful people and their friends began dropping in each evening and I awaited their arrival. I danced indifferently until I caught a glimpse of their party near the back of the room, then I offered them the best steps I had and as soon as the dance was finished I hurried over. There was no need to butter up the manager or hustle the customers. It gave me a delicious sense of luxury to be sitting with such well-dressed obviously discriminating people, while the strippers roamed among the tables looking for the odd drink and the lone man.
CHAPTER 9
One evening I was invited to a wine party at Jorie's apartment after closing time. The house sat on a hilly street. A stranger opened the door and took no more notice of me, so I entered and sat on a floor pillow and watched the guests spin around one another in minuet patterns. There were glamorous young men with dyed hair who rustled like old cellophane. Older men had airs of sophistication and cold grace, giving the impression that if they were not so terribly tired they would go to places (known only to a select few) where the conversation was more scintillating and the congregation more interesting.
There were young women who had the exotic sheen of recently fed forest animals. Although they moved their fine heads languorously this way and that, nothing in the room excited their appetites. Unfashionable red lips cut across their white faces, and the crimson fingernails, as pointed as surgical instruments, heightened the predatory effect. Older, sadder women were more interesting to me. Voluminous skirts and imported shawls did not hide their heavy bodies, nor was their unattractiveness shielded by the clanks of chains and ribbons of beads, or by pale pink lips and heavily drawn doe eyes. Their presence among the pretty people enchanted me. It was like seeing frogs buzzed by iridescent dragonflies. The young men, whose names were Alfie, Reggie and Roddy and Fran, hovered around these fat women, teasing them, tickling them, offering to share a portion of their svelte beauty. None of the company spoke to me. That I was one of the three Negroes in the room, the only Negro woman and a stranger as well, was not a sufficiently exotic reason to attract attention.
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I sipped the wine and listened to the concert of gossip and bon mots, repartee and non sequiturs.
Don stooped beside me and asked if I was all right and had I met everyone. I told him I was and I had, and added a sincere smile. His high pink color, green eyes and fire-red hair made him the prettiest person at the party, and he had a sense of humor I found missing in the other blades, despite their clacking laughter.
He looked into my eyes and found the lie. He stood and turned quickly. “Everybody!” He spoke just below a shout. “Everybody!” Voices quieted. When the room was still, he spread his arms and fanned his fingers away from his wrists and nodded toward me. “Everybody this is Rita. She's an artist, a truly tremendous dancer. She is absolutely the world's greatest. I thought you should know.”
People peered at me. Most found nothing remarkable about the announcement and, indeed, if at that moment I had executed a tour jeté from a sitting position, it would not have pried them away from their indifference. Only the plum-soft women marked the statement and cared. Each round face softened and smiled on me.
Don dropped his arms and said rather weakly, “Well, I just thought you ought to know.” To me he said, “Don't mind these people, Rita. They're only pretending to be blasé because they don't know what else to pretend to be. I'll get you some wine.”
One large woman came over to me carrying a pillow. She gracefully settled on the floor at my side, denying her bulk.
“I'm Marge.” Then she told me, “And you're Rita.”
“That's right.”
“And what kind of dancing do you do, Rita?”
“Modern ballet and interpretive.” (I knew a shake dancer named L'Tanya who could quiver her hips so fast they disappeared in a blur and she called her performance interpretive.)
Marge's mouth made an O. One young boy who had been courting her wafted over to us. He folded down beside Marge and arched an arm over her round shoulders, his hand dropping on the rise of her breast.