Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo

by Ntozake Shange

  My Darling Daughter,

  Well Cypress, I am so glad you are studying so hard again. I was concerned while you were in California that you would do only the dances the Negroes have always done; all that jumping around and backside movement. I know you’ve never believed me, but it’s on account of all that hip swinging that we colored women have such large rear ends. It has something to do with muscle development and gravity. That’s all I know about it, but you remember what a hard time you had in the ballet . . . (smile). Anyway, if you keep going to classes that build up your technique, something good is bound to happen.

  Your new friends, Idrina and Ixchell, sound very nice, but don’t forget how I told all my girls that close women friends are always more trouble than they are pleasure. You can’t ever keep your business to yourself, or be certain that your very own beau isn’t the light of their life. Really, this is how women act. Seems we can’t be true to anyone who isn’t family.

  So you be careful around all those women. Don’t tell them too much. And don’t introduce them to any of your fellas . . .’less you want to learn the hard way. Remember Mrs. Buchanan; well, she got to be Mrs. Buchanan by seducing her very best friend’s fiancé during choir practice. That should be a lesson to you. Women will use you ’til you get some sense and keep to yourself, while being just as sociable and polite as a lady can be.

  Sweetheart, you didn’t mention whether you were taking any advanced ballet; I mean, do you still use your toe shoes? If you need some new ones, maybe I can contribute to that! Take real good care of yourself. Mind, you keep your distance from women with so little to do they stay around each other all the time, and pray that God’ll see his way to placing you with a fine ballet company in New York City.

  Lovingly,

  Mama

  Usually drinking made Cypress witty and lovey or terribly sleepy and lovey. Now it only made her quiet. And she drank all night, coming in as Celine and Ixchell were going to rehearsal. She slept all day. Around eight or nine she got up and dressed to go out drinking until the next day. She never said anything, not “how ya doin” or “see ya,” she just stared and smiled to herself when someone spoke to her.

  Cypress had discovered Harlem after-hours night life, and was becoming a regular at gambling spots and underworld taverns. Her refusal to speak and that smile drew “Outlaw Willie” and “Rolls-Royce Lou” to buy her drinks or some blow as a token for her madness. She didn’t pick up anybody or make friends, she was just a regular. At an almost bar, two basements down, four bodyguards and five iron doors under an uptown tenement, another ex-dancer, Lily, did all of Cypress’ talking for her. “She would like a Courvoisier, double.” Nothing else was happening.

  Before the Golden Onk opened up, Cypress made it to the downtown bars and pubs. Here, people she knew watched her uneasily, rarely spoke, but always noticed what she was drinking and that smile. She was in an old Irish tavern being taken over by Puerto Ricans and black artists on the Lower East Side, when she abruptly stopped making concentric circles in the sawdust under her feet, to listen. Cypress rushed toward the sound—music from home. She stood anxiously looking over shoulders in the back room, trying to see and share. Who was making this glory? Who was letting her speak? Cypress smiled and burst with “Yes. Yes. Yes.” And before she remembered she didn’t dance any more, she had leaped to the front of the musicians and was speaking of beauty and love in her body. Cypress danced her ass off, improvising and involving the audience in her joy. She whipped a shawl out of one woman’s hand and a cigar out of an old fellow’s mouth. With the lit end of the cigar in her mouth, the shawl over her head, Cypress moved as Yanvallou. Curved and low to the ground, her back undulated like Damballah’s child must. The smoke eased from her mouth like holy vapor, pure and strong. The air was clean, the music rich. Cypress was dancing an old dance, a saxophone whispering hope all around her, love refusing to sit still. Cypress was a dance of a new thing, her own spirit loose, fecund, and deep.

  As Leroy McCullough slipped the alto from his mouth, Cypress grabbed him and squeezed, and felt home again. Such a way to run into an old friend, while she was trying to be dead and silent. Leroy didn’t know what was going on. Cypress wouldn’t answer any of his questions about Sassafrass, or where she was living; she just got another drink and kept holding his hand, smiling and crying at the same time. When she blacked out in his arms, Leroy set her down in a back booth, went on with the next set, and carried her to his place. Cypress was smiling in her sleep.

  Cypress was air. She felt so good. It was dark and someone was lying next to her. Someone’s thigh, damp and heavy across her ass. She was warm; felt so good. She giggled, getting together where she was, who was this, why so good. Here she was herself again. She was her own mystery and this nice, wandering body was another thing to find out. Cypress crawled out from the legs and remembered Leroy. “Yes, this is Leroy. I was dancin’ and this is Leroy.”

  Cypress ran her hands over his back, not a long back, but sturdy with wiry hairs growing up from the bottom. Thighs covered with masses of slight nappy curls, and funny calves like piano sticks with all the muscle bunched up near the knee. There was a mole on his right ankle. Some kind of birthmark where his ass rounded under. Cypress couldn’t believe she was enjoying looking at a man, having such a good time. She turned him over softly, coaxing him.

  “It’s just me, Cypress.”

  And he went on sleeping and Cypress looked and kissed and giggled and touched. She sat over Leroy for ages, thinking about Idrina, fascinated with Leroy, wondering about herself.

  He was so beautiful, and he woke up. They were silent, letting visions and nakedness speak. Leroy stared at Cypress the same way she had traced every line of his body. There was air. There was Roscoe Mitchell wild. There was Aramide, Halifu, all the dancers of the world. Energy between them was maddening. There were tongues and fingers, lips holding. As Leroy moved into her, Cypress plunged to the edge of the rainbow.

  She left her address on the edge of a paper towel on the foot of the bed. It was day. It was time to dance, no matter what. . . .

  braided lady of subway scents & magic

  rings in nose & wrists/ music in the style of the islands

  lacin the trains dancin in the tunnels of hades

  ka-jungle-jingle-ka-jungle juju

  in damp downtown nights of love/ the secrets of muscles

  used

  lights cajolin the tense spring of calves jumpin/ space

  taken by the ripplin womanness of yr back/

  do as you please/ african lady roamin los campos

  of the lower east side/ caresses you with fried plantains

  & drummers stealin corners for the winds to lift you to the scant sun’s ray/ lyric lady/ dance the original

  dance

  the original aboriginal dance of all time/ challenge the

  contradiction of perfected pirouette with the sly knowin

  of hips that do-right/ stretch till all the stars n sands

  of all our lands abandoned/ mingle in the wet heat/

  sweat & grow warm/ must

  be she the original aboriginal dancin girl.

  Leroy woke to a mass of hair that smelled so sweet from love he took a minute to realize it was his own. His hands swept across the bed—still damp—and he stretched out, waiting for her limbs to stop his. It was the truth; she was gone. He had to laugh; how could he get mad. If someone had pulled him dead drunk from anywhere and made love like some flock of wild scarlet birds, he’d probably have left as quietly as possible, too. “But no,” he thought, “I wouldn’t have gone without a taste more . . . something for the morning.” Now that was good.

  Cypress wasn’t at all like her sister, and Leroy tried to remember if she really had arched backward over the bed so her pussy was at the foot and her head on the floor. Was it true that one leg wrapped all round his chest and the other thigh touched the ceiling? Yes, yes. He rubbed himself where his body remembered such carrying on, and
he looked over the bed, placing Cypress in his arms, between his legs, under his chin, all over his hair . . . and he smelled his locks one more time, before he decided she’d be his. That made him feel so good he did one hundred push-ups, chanted his mantra, showered, and composed three variations of a theme called “When You Get Back Where You Can’t Get Enough,” before he went to rehearse his band, if you could call it that.

  Leading a band of five or six cats who were near starving or living with women who were near starving, or who found time to play music in between getting the money for their dope, was not what Leroy wanted to do. He wanted a music that was a force, and to have that he’d have to have a bunch of cats who were force, full and clear.

  But where were they? Where were they . . . shit, what a stupid question. They were all over the place just like he’d been—from one conservatory to another, one “jazz” ensemble to the next . . . white bands, black bands, orchestras, orquestras, arkestras. Leroy shook his head, remembering how hard it had been for him to hear what he heard. White folks kept telling him those sounds are impossible: “you can’t do that to the piano” . . . “you can’t push a saxophone that way” . . . “you can’t; you can’t” . . . “You should work on your Bach . . . Your Bartók needs more subtlety . . . You are rushing the Shostakovich . . . There’s more to Prokofiev than you could imagine, my boy” . . . Every slight Leroy had endured in all those years piqued his skin. He thought he might be getting hives. They thought they were giving him credit when early Ellington and Henderson arrangements were offered as an elective for half a credit.

  “Sheeit. My daddy grew up on that.”

  The patronizing reply: “Well, of course, but did he understand it?”

  Leroy was sure he was getting hives. He focused on the day they turned down Ornette Coleman as a possible supervisor for independent study—Composition—but approved Steve Lacy, who wasn’t even in the country. And even though he’d had to import a bunch of cats from New York for his graduate project because the white boys said it was impossible to “read” his notation system, even though he had graduated with honors because of the beauty of this Suite that was impossible to “read,” his advisor’s last words had been, “You don’t need all that ethnic flourish, Leroy, you are too good to work in the Negro idiom.” So the issue wasn’t “where were they,” the issue was how could they make it in a place like the Golden Onk.

  It had been closed down three times for fire code violations, once for selling alcohol to minors, another time for being underneath the food code . . . beneath the food code, humph. They probably sold rat dung as a matter of course. Leroy felt the wall slide onto his back. Maybe Cypress didn’t even remember how he loved her last night. Maybe she didn’t even care.

  “Cypress . . .” he sighed, running his fingers through the hair below his navel. Cypress liked women, or so the rumor went. Now the sister, Sassafrass, was the one who was into men and horns and babies; but everybody from Oakland to Fort Greene had heard that Cypress belonged to some bull-dyke cult, and the queen of Azure Bosom had laid right into whatever Cypress’ trip had been.

  “Dammit, shit. I sure do pick ’em.” Leroy stomped his foot. Why hadn’t it been Sassafrass? He designed ploys that Cypress had used against him. She had been so close to him to prove to herself that she was as much a woman as her sister, because that’s when she had warmed up to him, after recognizing him from that party in San Francisco. Oh shit. That party had been in Cypress’ house, and Sassafrass had been wandering around like a new member of the Catatonic Virgin’s Club. Why, Cypress had even encouraged him to seek out her sister.

  But here in New York, Cypress had been the one. She had been too drunk to lie, too open to make believe all night long. He was certain of that. Not all night long. Not quite like that. Leroy packed up his horns and set off for the Onk. A quick cognac and a good reed would be all he needed until that hussy crossed his mind again. Then he’d smell the scent of her on his moustache and wait. She’d turn up.

  From eight o’clock that morning until nine-thirty that night Cypress was in and out of dance classes, from one end of Manhattan to the other. Whatever she had learned with that honey-lipped hornplayer was working for her today. She had started out at Clark Center with a morning ballet class that kicked her ass. She’d been neglecting her technique in the freestyle Southern improvisations of The Kushites Returned & Company. At the barre she smiled at all those pelvic muscles, hearing her mama whispering that she had better work hard, because the white folks didn’t want to see a colored woman fly of her own powers. She knew the muscles in the top of her thighs were crying for relief, but between a full night of Leroy and a morning of advanced intermediate, relief was out of the question.

  Cypress was truly inspired. She moved like she had never dared move on her own, without Ariel or Idrina there to watch and give approval. She was free of something that had been holding her back, something that set limits to what she could do, how she could move. She felt so much the diva she decided that for the rest of the day she’d wear her red leotard with the embroidery round her backside and up her crotch. That’s the one she’d take her place in, and the first teacher who called her out, saying, “If you are going to look like that, Miss, I hope you can dance like that,” would get such a performance from her that she’d be asked to join a company immediately. And if she joined a company, she could stay in New York with Leroy. But Leroy didn’t know she wanted to stay. And she hadn’t known she wanted to stay with him. She was working herself into a panic, when she heard a voice she knew too well.

  “Listen, girl, I’m telling you Lilah James, Eleo Pomare, Rod Rodgers, Royal Brown, Sounds-In-Motion all gonna be in this special gala for that grand lady of black dance, Savilla Forte. Plus the Dance Theatre of Harlem, Ailey’s Junior Company, and us, Azure Bosom.”

  “You serious?”

  “Would I lie to you about our coming of age, our first real break in the City?”

  “Oh, Idrina, that’s so wonderful. I’m so happy for you. I guess I got back just in time to see my lady strut ’cross that stage.”

  Cypress moved to throw her dance clothes in her bag and run. She didn’t. She told each muscle that had frozen, every gland that was sweating and joint that ached, to let go, to just let go. Laura and Idrina, just beyond the dressing room, talked like they were the very last lovers on the planet. Cypress fixed her mouth to shout, but didn’t. She simply nodded. Yes, today was the day for the red leotard with the embroidery, the yellow leg warmers, the rhinestone waistband, and the best series of turns she’d ever accomplished. Maybe six pirouettes would do, for today. With a grand jeté just over Idrina’s head.

  “Yeah. Idrina never gave me credit for all I could do.” Cypress stretched once and sauntered toward the laughter of two women who weren’t thinking about her.

  Laura looked nothing like Cypress had figured. She didn’t look like she lived in Manhattan, or had even ever been in Manhattan. Cypress forced herself to see this Laura with Idrina, among the other women from Azure Bosom. Women with lavender hair, nose rings, toe rings, and passions of sub-Saharan Sapphos. She had to put her hand over her mouth to hide the grin. Laura was all of four-foot-ten. Innocent as a child raised in a convent a hundred years ago. Soft like the bubbles of a bath of rose damask. Not one line of malice edged her eyes, there was no permanent pout in her lower lip. Her only extravagance was the placement of five diamond studs around her left ear, so her female orifices sparkled no matter what time of day, no matter who could see. But these thoughts had to hurry along, because now Cypress had to speak to this Laura before this moment of glory, or mischief, passed by.

  Leaning against the lockers in the hallway, hips pushed forward like she might give birth, Idrina shouted, “Why Cypress, it’s so good to see you!” She pulled up to hug Cypress, so close their nipples almost touched. Then the two, Cypress and Idrina, grabbed each other. Laura watched Idrina in this warm reunion, knowing that Cypress was looking her straight in the face, as if to
say, “Now what?” There was a silence that any one of them could have broken, and Laura said:

  “Hi, Cypress, I’m Laura. I’ve been waiting to meet you.”

  Idrina pulled back as the two women spoke. Cypress, feeling ebullient from the night before with Leroy, thought she’d take it all, and cooed,

  “Oh, not nearly as long as I’ve wanted to meet you.”

  Idrina jumped in with an idea that they should go celebrate her company’s good fortune.

  For some reason Cypress thought about her mother in Carolina, weaving away whole years of her life, but not losing control of any. She saw her mama over the stove, going on about the kind of place New York was and why she’d never go there . . . but she trusted the Lord to look after her dancing daughter in that hellified place where sin and temptation whet every appetite. Cypress hoped she was thinking loud enough for her mama to hear, “Well, Ma, we’re in New York now,” but her mother was still over the stove and had no useful information concerning social amenities in this situation. Cypress choked a desperate laugh that caused Laura and Idrina to jump back and ask what was wrong. Cypress swallowed a little, and fighting tears ready to reveal her innocence, not her worldliness, said, “Oh, nothing.” Still, she asked herself what her mama would do, now . . . only to hear her mama’s voice saying, “No girl. I don’t know what you’re doing.”

  They made off for a Greek restaurant near 48th Street, Laura in the middle, Cypress and Idrina catching glimpses of one another over Laura’s head. A tense gaiety enveloped them. Cypress examined Laura, taking her apart gesture by gesture, limb by limb; the way her tongue fell through the tiny gap in her front teeth, while the diamonds shone on Idrina. Then before she knew exactly what she was doing, Cypress stopped, softly touched Laura’s shoulder, caught Idrina’s attention, pulled her dance bag closer to her and said: