by Maya Angelou
“Soon as we reopen, the AGVA representative’ll be down here. Every girl has to belong to the union or we get blackballed. If you want to, we’ll advance your initiation fee and you can pay it back in two weekly payments.”
“Thank you.” I was beginning to like this man who talked like a villainous Edward G. Robinson, yet was too withdrawn to look directly at my face.
“I’m only the manager, but the boss thinks that you shouldn’t strip. The other girls are strippers. You just dance. And wear costumes like you wore today.” The costume I had borrowed made stripping absolutely unnecessary. “Most girls buy their materials from Lew Serbin’s Costume Company down on Ellis Street. Last thing is this, Rita: we’ve never had a colored girl here before, so people might say something. Don’t get upset. If a customer gets out of line with any of the girls in a coming-on way, I take care of that, but uh, if they say something about your color, I can’t help that. ’Cause you are colored. Right?” He nearly looked at me. “And don’t go home with any guy or else the police’ll be down and close us up.” He turned his back and began typing on the cash register keys.
“See you at seven-thirty tomorrow.”
“Thank you.”
A showgirl. I was going to be a star shining in the firmament of show biz. Once more adventure had claimed me as its own, and the least I could do was show bravery in my strut and courage in the way I accepted the challenge. It was time to celebrate. No bus could take me back fast enough to Ivonne’s house, where I had left my son. I stopped a taxi and gave the driver her address.
Ivonne grinned when I told her of my new profession and laughed outright at the salary.
“Seventy-five bones a week. What are you going to do with all that money? Buy a yacht?”
“It’s going to be more than seventy-five.” I told her about the drinks and the percentage. Ivonne had the talent of forcing her face absolutely still and looking so intently at an object that her eyes seemed to telescope. She sat a few moments registering my information.
“My. I know you’ll try anything once, but be careful. How many Negroes are working down there?”
“Only the guys in the band, as far as I can see. I’m the first Negro dancer they’ve had.”
“That makes it a little different, doesn’t it?” Her voice had descended to a tone just above a whisper.
“I don’t see that, Vonne.”
I had always wanted to believe that things were exactly as they seemed, that secrets and furtive acts and intents always made themselves known somehow. So I acted easily or uneasily on the face rather than the hidden depth of things. “I’m going there to dance and to make some money.”
She got up from the sofa and walked toward the kitchen. Our children’s laughter floated out from a back bedroom.
“Aleasar made some spaghetti. Let’s eat.”
We sat down at the wrought-iron dinette table.
I asked, “What worries you about my working down there?”
“I’m not worried, you can take care of yourself.” A smile widened her small mouth as much as it could. “All I want to say is what the old folks say, ‘If you don’t know, ask.’ But, don’t let anybody make you do something you don’t think is right. Your mother already raised you. Stay steady. And if that makes somebody mad, they can scratch their mad place and get glad.”
We laughed together. Our friendship was possible because Ivonne was wise without glitter, while I, too often, glittered without wisdom.
CHAPTER 7
The costume store gave me the sense of being in a zoo of dead animals. Rusty bear skins hung on one corner rack; their heads flopped on deflated chests and their taloned paws dragged the floor. Ostrich feathers and peacock plumes in tall bottles were swept in a confined arc by each gust of wind. Tiger skins were pinned flat against the walls and lengths of black feather boa lay curled in a glass-topped counter.
I explained to a heavily made up quick-moving black man that I needed some G-strings and net bras and rhinestones. He flounced around the counter with a feather’s grace and scanned my body as if I had offered to sell it and he was in the market.
“Who are you, dear?”
I wondered if it was against the store’s policy to trade with just anybody.
“I’m Rita. I’m starting to work tomorrow night at the Casbah.”
“Oh no, dear. I mean what’s your act? Who are you?”
There it was again. I thought of glamorous Black women in history.
“I’m Cleopatra and … Sheba.”
He wiggled and grinned. “Oh, goody. Two queens.”
“And Scheherazade.” If I felt distant from the first two, the last one fitted me like a pastie. She also was a teller of tall tales.
“Then you’ll need three changes, Right?”
He had begun to jot notes on a pad. I thought of Ivonne’s advice and decided that since I really didn’t know what I was doing, I’d better ask somebody.
“Listen, excuse me. I’ve never danced in a strip joint and in fact, the owners don’t even want me to strip. They just want me to wear brief costumes and dance.”
The man’s jerky movements calmed, and when he spoke, some of the theatricality had disappeared from his voice.
“You’re new?”
I hadn’t thought of myself as new since I was seven years old.
“Well, I’m new in the sense that—”
“I mean, you have no act?”
“Yes. I have no act.”
His body took on a stillness as he looked at me. “I will create your costumes. You will be gorgeous.”
He brought out beige net bras and G-strings and told me how to dye them the color of my skin by soaking them in coffee grounds. I was to sew brown shiny coq feathers on one set for the Sheba dance, red sequins on another for Scheherazade and gold lamé panels on a G-string for my Cleopatra number. He selected a stuffed cobra, which I was to carry when I portrayed the Egyptian Queen, and ankle bells for Scheherazade. Sheba was to be danced with no frills—a brown doe upon the hills.
He seemed to know so much about show business, I asked if he used to dance.
“I was a female impersonator in New York for years, dear. Just years. When I came out here and found I had gotten older, I got this job, and now I sell pretty things to the pretty young boys.”
I paid for the purchases and was grateful that the man hadn’t laced sadness in his sad story.
“If you need anything, come back or call me. Ask for Gerry.” He flipped away to another customer, then turned his head over his shoulder in my direction and said, “Gerry with a ‘G.’ ” His laughter snapped in the dusty air.
The first shows were anticlimactic. No crowds threw flowers at my bare feet, no deafening bravos exploded when I bowed after dancing for fifteen strenuous minutes. When I realized that I was the only person in the entire night club embarrassed by my near nudity, my embarrassment increased.
My body was all I had to offer and few of the serious-faced men in the audience seemed to notice. There had been scattered applause as the other dancers floated across the stage, flirting with their bodies and snuggling up to the soon-to-be-discarded bits of chiffon. My only applause for the first three performances were the desultory claps from Eddie, who, I decided, was programmed to automatically respond each time an orchestra beat out the closing chord.
The musicians encouraged me as I danced. “Yeah, baby. That’s right, shake it!” Their union had ruled that they must have fifteen minutes off each hour, and Eddie arranged for another pianist to come in and play for the acrobat.
Before the next show, Jack, the drummer, came to the dressing room. He had close-set eyes and a sharp countenance, as if his features had run away from his ears to gather at the center of his face.
“Rita, me and the rest of the cats dig you. Just tell us what you want. We can play anything, but all anybody asks for is ‘Tea for Two’ and ‘Lady in Red’ and ‘Blue Moon’ and everything slow. I play so much draggy music, my butt is dr
agging. One thing I like about you is you don’t drag your butt.” Then he smiled. His lips parted and a million white teeth gleamed. The abrupt change startled me away from my defenses. I stood watching that sparkling smile, unable to think of an appropriate response. His lips suddenly withdrew from the smile with the finality of a door being slammed.
“Here’s the rundown. We’ll do ‘Caravan’ first. Then, ‘Night in Tunisia’ and ‘Babalu.’ Then we go back to ‘Caravan.’ Okay?”
I managed an “O.K.” and Jack left the dank dressing room. I had once fallen in desperate love at first sight when I was seventeen. He was a handsome, cocoa-bean-colored man, whose voice was as soft as mink. He had loved me in return and treated me gently. Now, again, there was a dull whirr in my ears and a tightness around my chest and the man wasn’t even handsome, might be a brute or happily married and I didn’t even know his last name. I only knew he was a drummer and that the sun rose when he smiled.
When Eddie announced my last turn, “Here is Rita as the Arabian princess, Scheherazade,” and I went on stage, Jack became the blasé Sultan for whom I danced beautifully. When I finished, there was scattered applause. I turned first to Jack, but he was talking to the pianist. Hastily I remembered my manners, and spun around to bow to the audience. The solemn old men still leaned, hands occupied with diluted drinks. I looked over the audience and found Ivonne sitting alone at one of the tray-sized tables. She smiled and nodded. I smiled back and walked off the stage. Another patter of hands came from a table by the door. I saw two men at a table lighted yellow by the outside amber neons. One looked like a false eye-lashed mannequin; the other was Gerry—spelled with a “G.”
For the first week after each show, I raced down the concrete stairs and put on my street clothes. Fully dressed, I tried to disregard the contemptuous looks of the strippers who clattered into the room, flung provocative garments over their naked bodies, then without sitting once, went back to the bar and the clients. I was afraid that I would be speechless if a customer spoke and mortified if he didn’t. Furthermore, Jack, whose last name I still didn’t know, continued to excite my imagination. I couldn’t allow him to see me planted on a barstool guzzling down the fraudulent drinks. So when I danced I refused to look at the audience and kept my eyes half shut and my mind centered on Jack.
“Rita.” The bar was empty, except for the musicians packing down their instruments and the strippers waiting for their nightly take. “Rita.” Eddie’s voice caught me with my hand on the door. I turned.
“Come over here.”
I walked back to the bar, the air conditioner had stopped its hum and the room had settled in silence. The women seemed to lean toward me in slow motion and the men on the stage might have been dolls handled by a drowsy puppeteer.
“Rita, we didn’t pay your union dues for you to sit downstairs on your can. Do you think that’s why we hired you?” He sounded like a teacher admonishing a mischievous child.
“I thought you hired me to dance.” My voice would not follow my urging and it came out nearly whining.
A woman snickered in the prurient dark.
“To dance? Dance?” His cough could have been a chuckle. “This here’s no concert hall. This ain’t the San Francisco Ballet Company.”
The pianist laughed out loud. “Lord, ain’t that the truth.”
Eddie continued, “You want the job?”
Yes. Desperately. I needed the money and I wanted to be near Jack and I loved to dance. I said nothing.
“Tomorrow night, you bring your fanny up here as soon as you change and sit at the bar. First joker that comes in here alone, you ask him for a drink. Or …” The unnamed threat hung in my ears. Teacher was brandishing his whipping cane.
“Tomorrow night. One more chance.” He began to count bills, thudding his hand on the bar. “Okay, Kate. Here’s yours.”
Last chance? He didn’t know me. There was no chance, absolutely no chance that I’d be there the next night. I went to the door and fumbled at the lock.
“I’ll help you, Rita.” I turned to see Jack’s sharp face cutting through the gloom. My prince, my sultan.
“Thank you.”
He opened the door easily. The mustard light from the exterior neon sign robbed him of his own color. He slanted toward me and whispered, “Wait for me. I’ll just be a minute.”
Standing in the amber doorway, I decided I would call the sitter and tell her I’d be late. Jack would probably take me to breakfast at one of the popular after-hours places and we could talk softly over the loud music. He would smile his break-of-day smile and I would say how much he meant to me. The job was forgotten.
The musicians came out of the club together. Jack was the only one not surprised to find me at the entrance. He said, “You cats go on. I’ll meet you at the club. I’m going to walk Rita to a cab.” He took my elbow and steered me toward the corner.
“I understand you, Rita.” I knew he did. “You think taking B drinks makes you cheap. Well, let me tell you it doesn’t. These old guys come in strip joints because they want to look at pretty women. Pretty naked women. Some of them are married, but their wives are old and fat or young and mean. They’re not trying to get you to go to bed or anything like that. If they wanted prostitutes, they’d go to whorehouses. They just want to see you and talk to you. Personally, I feel sorry for them. Don’t you?” We stopped in front of another darkened night club. If he felt sorry for them, I pitied them to pieces. All I wanted from Jack was to know what he thought I ought to be thinking.
“My wife and I talk about them all the time. She’s a waitress in a club like the Garden of Allah and every night she’s got some story. I pick her up downtown and she right away starts talking about the guys she’s waited on.”
A smile began to pull at his face. “Philomena—pretty name, ain’t it? She can tell a story that would break your heart. Or else she can make you split your sides. Anyway …” He forced his thoughts back to me. “It’s just life, Rita. Just life. Don’t be afraid. You’re in that joint to make money. So make it.” He put his hand on my cheek. “See you tomorrow night.” As he turned I caught a side glimpse of his smile. It was all for Philomena and not a wrinkle of it for me.
I spent the next day girding my mind for battle. I loved to dance and I needed to work. I could create steps and develop new choreographies. If men wanted to buy my drinks, I would accept and tell them that the drinks they were paying for were 7-Up or ginger ale. That, along with imaginative dancing, would erase the taint of criminality. Art would be my shield and honesty my spear, and to hell with Jack and his close-set eyes.
The next night Eddie’s face moved slowly in surprise when I appeared at the bar. I gave a smile to encourage him.
“Rita. Well. Decided to join the gang, huh?”
I said, “I want the job, Eddie.” And kept the grin easy.
“All right. You understand what I told you. Twenty-five cents off every drink and two dollars on a bottle of champagne. There’s not many customers yet, but it’s early. More’ll be coming in soon. You stand a better chance sitting at the bar than at one of the tables. It’s too dark for them to see you.”
I couldn’t afford to ask if he was making a slur at my color. I grinned and waited.
“Want a little drink to warm you up?”
“No, thanks. I’ll wait for a customer to buy me something.”
I looked around the club. A few men had come in, but the other dancers had already fanned out to sit at their tables. There was a dense romance to the room I hadn’t noticed before. The white faces hovered like dully lighted globes and the gloom was fired by glinting rhinestone jewelry. The musicians’ stands glittered under red, orange and blue revolving spotlights.
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.