Walking with the Muses

by Pat Cleveland

  The next day, we left Florida and ventured into the Deep South, starting with New Orleans. Mom and I spent the whole day together, seeing the sights and eating shrimp gumbo. My purple miniskirt seemed to attract quite a bit of attention from the menfolk, not all of it positive. The style, which was all the rage up north, evidently hadn’t made it to Louisiana just yet.

  That night, after the show, all the other girls went out to the jazz clubs, but I was underage and had to stay back at the hotel. So I just stood on the balcony of our room, which faced Bourbon Street, basking in the muggy night air and soaking up all the sounds that drifted up from the streets below. I was close enough that it was the next best thing to listening to the musicians in person. The following morning, from that same balcony, I watched a funeral pass by, with its wagon pulling a casket covered in multicolored flowers, trailed by a parade of trumpet players and mourners swinging to the beat. Dancing at a funeral? I thought. What kind of crazy town is this? I would have liked to stay longer, but Baton Rouge was next on our crowded docket, and then it was on to Jackson, Mississippi. I loved that word: M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i; I used to jump rope to it.

  The Fashion Fair was weighted toward the Southern states: We went to nine in all and skipped most of the central states. We were often traveling through the night in the most rural parts of Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas, en route to our shows in Montgomery, Columbus, Greenville, Chattanooga, and Little Rock. I asked Mom if she was happy to be back in the land where she grew up, but she just shrugged. I got the feeling there wasn’t a lot of love lost between her and the South.

  One night in the middle of God knows where, the girls were all asleep on the Hound, some stretched out across the seats, some sitting straight up and nodding, others leaning on each other, drooling. In the back, the wardrobe ladies were snoring heavily. In truth, we resembled nothing so much as hamsters sleeping in a cage, huddled in between the blankets, newspapers, magazines, and crumpled potato-chip bags. We ate a lot of potato chips on that tour.

  Light gradually broke, and Ben greeted us with his perky, wide-awake voice. “Good morning, ladies. Time for breakfast.” He pulled into an almost hidden, shabby-looking diner off the detour dirt road we’d been traveling on.

  Ben, Albert, and a few of the girls practically sleepwalked their way out of the bus. Mom told me to go ahead with Joanna and Peggy while she tried to wake up the wardrobe ladies. All three of us needed to use the ladies’ room, so we followed the signs and walked around to the side of the diner. We found a small, dirty wooden shack with a padlock on the rotten door. I pulled on the handle, but the door wouldn’t budge.

  Just then a big, lumpish man with blotchy red skin appeared out of nowhere and stuck his huge tattooed arm across the shack’s entrance. He pointed to a hand-lettered sign over the door, half hidden by overgrown weeds, that read “Whites Only.”

  Peggy, whose skin was a pale olive color, was from Italy and was relatively new to America, so it took her a moment to figure out what the sign meant. She sounded it out in her cute Italian accent: “It . . . says . . . ‘W-w-w-whites . . . Only.’ What does this mean?”

  The big guy said, “Just what it says. Your nigger friend here has to go ’round to the outhouse. We don’t want no coloreds filthying up our toilets.”

  This place is an outhouse, I thought. And it’s the filthiest one I’ve ever seen.

  Peggy didn’t absorb what the man was telling us at first, but when she did, she got really angry. “What are you saying, mister?” she asked, putting her face right up next to his. The girl was fearless!

  The man pointed to her and then to me and said, “You two can use the toilet, but your colored friend here goes out back.” He gestured to Joanna and then to the bushes, which presumably held an outhouse somewhere among them, though I shuddered to think what it must look like if this dilapidated shack was the “nice” toilet.

  Peggy lifted her head, straightened her shoulders, and said haughtily, “If my friend can’t go in there, I’m not going, either.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said.

  Joanna was yanking on her sleeve as if to say, Let’s just go, but Peggy got even gutsier and said, “Excuse me. I’m going in there, and my friends are coming, too.” She locked arms with Joanna and me, but the man just sneered at us, spat on the ground, and stood with his arms crossed, blocking the door. “You didn’t hear me. I said: We. Don’t. Allow. No. Niggers. In. There.”

  It was time to get the hell out of there. Never mind that the Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed just two years earlier by President Lyndon Johnson, had outlawed Jim Crow segregation once and for all. I could smell the alcohol on the guy’s breath and could see his decaying teeth, cracked and brown, probably from chewing too much tobacco. He was wearing a hunter’s vest loaded up with bullets. Somehow he didn’t seem like the type who’d be persuaded by legal arguments.

  I looked around and noticed one of the other models running to the bus. I tugged on Joanna’s arm, and we started pulling Peggy with us. As we approached the diner, Irma ran up to us and said, “Come on! There’s trouble in there. We’ve got to leave.”

  We reached the bus and banged on the door. Mom pulled the lever and we all scrambled into our seats. “What’s wrong?” she asked, but before anyone could answer, the other models were rapping at the bus door to be let in. I opened it as fast as I could, and as they burst in, they said, “They wouldn’t serve us! They told us we had to leave.”

  “Where’s Ben?” Mom asked, her head swerving around. “We have to find him.”

  “I’ll get him,” I said.

  “No!” Mom yelled, then said more gently, “You stay here.”

  Then we saw Albert and Ben rushing to the Hound from opposite directions. Albert got in, looking distraught and disheveled, and Ben followed a step behind. The wardrobe ladies finally woke up, along with Dave and Jorge. Ben was just about to get off and check to make sure the doors to the luggage compartment were firmly closed when he saw several of the men from the diner marching toward us. Three of them were carrying rifles. Ben quickly changed his mind, hopped into the driver’s seat, and closed the doors fast. He started up the motor, but it didn’t catch. Ben called out, “Ladies, I believe we’ve just run into a pack of Ku Klux Klan boys, and I have a pretty bad feeling. So stay seated and hold on.”

  The girls started to scream as Ben tried again to start the bus. “Don’t panic,” he said. “Stay in your seats and pray.”

  There were about ten men now; they seemed to be rising out of the earth itself, what with the early-morning fog and the overgrown, untamed landscape. Two bloodhounds appeared out of the mist. It was exactly like something from a horror movie, except it was real. “Mom, what’s happening to us?” I whispered, my voice breaking in fear.

  Her face wore an expression I’d never seen before—a rigid mask of ice-cold anger. “This is what happens when you’re in the Deep South,” she said, “and you run into people who don’t like Negroes.”

  Ben was talking to the bus like it was a horse. “Come on, Nelly. Don’t fail me now.” He kept pumping his foot on the gas pedal, again and again, trying to get the motor to turn over, trying to force it with the key. “He’s going to flood the engine,” Mom muttered, sounding desperate.

  One of the rednecks decided to pound on the side of the bus. He shouted out, “This is a good catch of niggers!” He got more and more worked up, pounding harder and harder. His posse hooted and shouted stuff like “Yessir, we’s gonna have a party with some of this nigger tail here!” One of them pressed his face up against the window, and he looked wild and glassy-eyed. I shuddered.

  “Keep your heads down! Do not let them see your faces,” Ben shouted, sounding scared and really, really angry. “They’re like a pack of wolves—hungry wolves.”

  We scrunched down in our seats, some of us on the floor in the aisle. I didn’t dare even lift my head.

  The next sound was the sweetest I’d heard in many a moon: t
hat of a motor revving up. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. As we peeled out of there, I couldn’t resist a tiny peek out the window. In the quickly receding distance, I saw a hateful, distorted face screaming something that, thankfully, I could no longer hear.

  We figured we’d been through the worst, and for a while it seemed we had, as the Hound rolled on and I got a personal on-the-ground lesson in US geography that was the best possible supplement to my textbook. From Atlanta, we made our way north to Illinois, and in Chicago I went on a shopping spree to end all shopping sprees, buying a fantastic (and fantastically expensive) silver leather coat with a silver dress and silver go-go boots to match. (Ah, it was great to be back in a big Northern city, where wearing a miniskirt did not mark you as an alien.) We rolled through city after city, arriving in Little Rock, Arkansas, just in time for Thanksgiving.

  I had no particular preconceptions of Little Rock, though I vaguely remembered being a little girl and watching Mom and Auntie Helen cheer as the newscaster on our tiny black-and-white television talked about the “Little Rock Nine.” Mom had explained that they were nine heroic Negro teenagers from that city who’d walked through a mob of angry protesters carrying picket signs just to enroll at an all-white high school. It seemed like a very long time ago. Naive Northerner that I was—and despite our recent near-disaster—I never even considered the possibility that racial animosity could still be a problem in Arkansas.

  Our hotel, a Little Rock landmark, looked like something a prosperous plantation owner would have built. The exterior featured immense columns and a spacious porch with high-back wooden rocking chairs lined up in a row; surrounding the mansion on all sides was a perfect flower garden that was still in full bloom. The interior had dark polished wooden floors that creaked when you walked on them, and nineteenth-century-style furniture buffed to a high gloss. I felt I had stepped back in time just being there, but I reminded myself that if I were actually back in that time, my family wouldn’t have been living in the big house; more likely we would have been in the slave quarters.

  Theresa and I decided to walk into town, which was just down the hill from the hotel. At nineteen, Theresa was the model closest to me in age. Thin yet curvy, with green eyes and sandy-colored hair, she was a dark-skinned knockout. She and I liked to sit in the front seat and joke with Ben or simply watch quietly out the window as America unfolded its gorgeous landscapes. Somewhere between Florida and Kentucky, we’d taken to calling ourselves sisters.

  It was a perfect sunny day, with birds chirping and warm air ruffling our skirts. We were both in high spirits because there were only thirteen cities left on the tour—definitely something to be thankful for on this day of giving thanks. We didn’t have a show that night and were going to celebrate Thanksgiving with a big dinner back at the hotel. When we got to the main street of downtown, it was deserted; all the stores were closed because of the holiday. Only a few young men stood together on a corner, smoking cigarettes. Theresa and I walked past them silently. They shot us dirty looks but didn’t say anything at first. Then one of them started to laugh really loudly as he pointed at us. Before Theresa and I knew what was going on, we had four guys following us and hurling horrible racial slurs.

  “Hey you, what kind of colored are you?” one of them said to Theresa.

  Another one said, “Why, son, I believe she’s some kind of nigger.”

  The two of us walked bravely on, ignoring them. They wouldn’t be deterred. “Don’t you hear us talking to you, you half coon or whatever you are?” another shouted as all four of them stepped in front of us, forming a human barricade. One of them leaned in close to me and said, “Hey you! White girl! What you doing with that colored trash?”

  I stayed calm and tried to figure out an appropriate response. We were clearly outnumbered, and now the guys were circling us. What kind of people act like this? I thought. Why are they so nasty? What can I do to change their minds? (Did I mention that I was a naive Northerner?) I smiled my nicest smile, but the boys just narrowed their eyes and stared.

  Theresa and I exchanged looks and silently agreed that we should go back to the hotel. We turned around, and one of the guys pinched Theresa on the rear, and another picked up a rock. When I saw that, I yelled, “Run!”

  We took off like lightning as rock after rock sailed through the air, accompanied by such charming phrases as “You no-good nigger whores!” We ran so fast that my vision got blurry, but luckily, we missed getting hit except for one rock that grazed Theresa’s arm. By the time we got to the hotel—it seemed so much farther away than it had on the way into town—we were both crying and Theresa’s arm was bleeding. We didn’t tell anyone what had happened, not even my mother, who was off with the wardrobe ladies in their sewing circle, getting the clothes ready for the next day’s show. Maybe we should have said something, considering what happened that night.

  I’d never been away from home for Thanksgiving, but Mom was my only real family, so home was wherever she was. And she was with me. The table was decked out with cut flowers, several polished silver candelabras, and an eye-popping spread of classic American food: three enormous roasted turkeys with all the trimmings, from corn bread to collard greens, pecan stuffing, sweet potato pie, and cranberry sauce. For once, the whole crew got dressed up and sat down together at the same table for dinner. We bowed our heads and Albert led us in saying grace.

  Our prayers were interrupted by shouts just outside the dining room windows. We paused for a moment—I figured it was some sort of holiday celebration—but we were all too hungry and too excited about our meal to spend much time wondering what the ruckus was. Never have so many people made so much fuss over a lousy turkey drumstick. Then our peaceful evening was shattered—literally. A huge rock came crashing through the window of the dining room, sending shards of glass bouncing all over the polished wood floor.

  We were speechless. Then we saw flames outside the window. My God, were the trees on fire? Our group became very still. Should we try to find out what was happening or ignore it and go on eating our dinner? Then we heard the words “Niggers, go home” boom out as if from a megaphone. It became a chant, a drone that filled the air and seeped through the walls like a toxic gas. One by one, we stood up from the table and cautiously went over to the window to see what was going on.

  I was clutching Mom’s hand as I pushed the curtain aside and looked out on a sight I had never witnessed before and hope never to witness again. Parked in the garden at the foot of our hotel’s entrance was what looked like the entire local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, holding lit torches and dressed in full Klan regalia—long white robes, pointy white hats, and white masks covering their entire faces except for two eerie dark holes that their eyes peered out of. Their cone heads tilted back as they moved toward the hotel in unison, like a blob of maggots. I was certain they’d be upon us in minutes.

  Then, as quickly as they’d appeared, they were gone. It was almost as if we’d hallucinated them. Except they’d left us a little souvenir. Albert picked up the rock, which had a crudely printed note attached to it with a rubber band. He read the note silently, shaking his head, then passed it to one of the wardrobe ladies. “What does it say?” Ben asked. She handed it to him and Ben read it aloud: “ ‘No niggers allowed in our historic buildings. Get out of our town!’ ” There was a collective gasp from the group.

  There was no point in trying to salvage the evening. We were too frazzled to eat and scared that we might be murdered in the night. So we all went back to our rooms and hastily packed our bags. The hotel manager was distraught and tried to talk us into staying. He was a liberal with lofty ideas about changing the world through integration. But the Klan had threatened him, too, and our being there could mean more broken windows . . . or worse. I suspect he was secretly relieved when we insisted on leaving immediately.

  After canceling the next day’s show, Albert asked Ben to go out and start up the bus. So we boarded our big silver behemoth
for yet another all-night ride, this time to Dallas. Great, I thought grimly, that’s the place where President Kennedy was shot. Our grand adventure had taken a gloomy turn.

  chapter 13

  STARDUST

  Backstage in Las Vegas, 1966. Acting grown-up with Bill Cosby and a few models from the show (from left): Diane, me, Irma, and Gertrude.

  After a week of riding through the desert of the American Southwest in that muggy, un-air-conditioned Greyhound, I woke up one night to white light and neon in every conceivable color and shape, brightening the midnight sky as if it were high noon. Compared to this place, Broadway was a dark alley. We were in Vegas, baby.

  We pulled into the Sands, the best hotel on the Strip. The lobby was filled with slot machines and crawling with people playing them.

  “I can’t wait to try them,” one of the models said.

  “Yes, think of all the money we can win,” said another.

  I’m not playing, I thought. I’m saving my money.

  Albert heard this conversation and, ever the prudent manager, decided to nip it in the bud. “If you think I’m going to let you girls blow your salaries on these machines,” he said, “think again. You’re not getting paid until we leave.”

  “Why are you so mean?” said the first model.

  “ ’Cause gambling is a bad habit.”

  “We just want to try,” she said sweetly.

  “No way, we’ve got a big show to do here,” he said. “Besides, what kind of friend would I be to let you throw your money away?”

  Albert’s strategy was backfiring, because now that he was forbidding it, I was getting interested. “Please, can we?” I asked.

  Albert looked at me incredulously. “You’re too young to even be in here!”