by Maya Angelou
Rhoda Boggs, at five foot eight inches and nearly two hundred pounds, was called “one of the big women in the company.” She wore a mink capelet to all formal affairs, hats that quivered with large silk roses and high-heeled baby-doll shoes, the straps sinking deep into her ankles. She had the lyrical voice and artistic temperament of almost every classical soprano. As the party reached a peak, Rhoda clutched her capelet to her large bosom and started across the small dance floor to share stories with friends at another table. At the same time, Billy Johnson, waspish, impish and balding, decided to traverse the small space en route to another destination. The two collided midway. Rhoda stumbled at the shock while Billy almost fell under the impact. Rhoda was the first to recover. She looked down at the associate conductor as if he were a street urchin laying obstacles in the route of her parade. She rushed to the nearest table.
“Did you see him? Did you see that?” Her indignant voice was sounded like a flute played in anger. “Did you see that he struck Rhoda Boggs?” She went quickly but gracefully to the next table. “Did you see him actually strike Rhoda Boggs? Oh, my dear.” She patted her breast and sang a little mean “Where does he live? Oh, where does he stay?” She carried her outrage from table to table, the roses on her hat nodding wildly in agreement at the affront.
Billy Johnson was still wondering in the center of the dance floor when Earl Jackson approached. Rhoda had relayed her news to the hostess and host, and although under Helen’s influence Earl had mellowed, it was not safe to think he had ripened.
He caught Billy’s lapels and pulled him out of the stupor. “What the hell you trying to do, hittin’ that woman? You trying to be funny?” His voice carried over the room to Rhoda who was fanning her face with her hat. “This is my party, you sonna bitch!”
And then he pushed Billy away with his left hand and slapped him with the right. The loud smack pulled us all to our feet, but Billy Johnson spun and dove a full gainer onto the highly polished wood. All movement and sound were suspended for a second and we heard Billy drawl in his plain Oklahoma accent, “That’s the first time a man has really ever hit me.”
The moment was so brief, there was no time to decide whether the pronouncement was a complaint or a compliment. Some people laughed out of nervousness, others because it was a funny scene, and a few began to down the last of the free drinks and collect their coats.
Behind my chair I heard a waiter say “Carabinieri.” I told Ethel to get her mother and I would find Martha, that we should leave at once because the police had been called. I found Martha in a group sympathizing with Rhoda Boggs.
“Mart, we’d better go. The waiters have called the police.”
“You’re so smart, Miss Thing.” Partying and excitement had thickened her tongue.
“Here’s your coat.” I helped her put it on. “Come on.”
I started toward the stairs and she followed me.
“Maya Angelou.”
I turned and looked back. Martha was on the landing and I was four steps below her.
“Maya Angelou, you’re a smart-ass! Miss Fine Thing doesn’t like smart-asses.”
Obviously, excitement after such a long period of dullness had intoxicated us all.
I opened my mouth to speak just as she threw the contents of her glass in my face. All the pious self-placating words—“Patience,” “Tolerance,” “Forgive, for that is the right thing to do”—fled from me as if I had never known them.
I could have gone back up the stairs and stomped her face flat into the floor until her features became part of the parquetry design. But she was so small. Five foot tall and absolutely too small to hit. Yet I couldn’t just walk out with the whiskey dribbling down my cheeks and into my collar and down my neck.
I grabbed a handful of the hem of her coat and gave it a lusty jerk. Her feet shot out from under her and she came bumping down the stairs. When she settled, a step below me, I saw that her wig had jumped free from the pins and had been turned askew. Long, black, silky hair covered her face and the wig’s part began somewhere behind her left ear.
When I reached the bottom of the stairs I looked back. Ned Wright was bent over the woman. “Oh, my dearie. Someone pushed Miss Fine Thing down the stairs? Do let Uncle Ned help you up.”
The soprano had both hands on her wig. In one move she snatched it around straight on her head and composed her face. She smoothed the hair down to her shoulders, fingering the curls that lay on her collar.
“No one pushed Miss Fine Thing,” she said, jaw lifted as she struck a pose on the steps. “I fell.”
The next day I sat sulking in my room, feeling betrayed and friendless. I told myself the time had come to go home. I missed my son and he needed me. His letters, printed in large letters, arrived regularly, and each one ended: “When are you coming home, Mother? Or can I come to visit you?”
Breen and Bob Dustin had offered to send for him and give me an allowance for his upkeep. But there were many male homosexuals in the company, and while I wasn’t afraid that they might molest him I did know he was at an impressionable age. He would see the soft-as-butter men, moving like women, and receiving the world’s applause. I wasn’t certain that Clyde wouldn’t try to imitate their gestures in a childish attempt to win admiration. Everyone wants acceptance.
No matter what it cost in loneliness, I was doing the good-mother thing to leave my son at home. Thus I had soothed my guilt, never admitting that I was reveling in the freedom from the constant nuisance of a small child’s chatter. When the travel had been good, it had been very good. I could send money home, write sad and somehow true letters reporting my loneliness and then stay up all night past daybreak partying with my friends. There were no breakfasts to either prepare or worry about. I could wear my hangovers openly, like emblems of sophistication, without fear of judgment.
The truth was, I had used the aloneness, loving it. Of course, I had to work, but dancing and singing every night with sixty people was more like a party than a chore. And I had my friends.
I thought about Martha and knew I’d never speak to her again. Or to Lillian, or Ned, or any of the others. They had been friends before I came along and I was certain they were closing ranks to push me out, even as I sat in the miserable hotel room. I had lunch sent to my room and made up my mind to hand in my resignation. It was time for me to go. The greatest party of my life was over.
That night I barely grumbled hello to the singers backstage, and when we took our places and the overture began, I was working hard at holding back the tears.
The curtain rose on Bey, Ned, Joe Jones, Joe Attles and John Curry shooting dice. Ned, as Robbins, sang his lyrical tenor line, “Nine to make. Come nine,” and won the pot. Crown, angered by the game’s outcome, took the baling hook and a fight began. In the struggle, Crown stabbed Robbins with the weapon. Robbins screamed as always and turned upstage to face the company. A small gasp of surprise raced around the stage. He had always played the death scene to the audience, milking the moment for every drop of drama. Now he clutched his chest where the hook was supposed to have struck and said aloud, “He struck me. Oooh! He struck me. Did you see that? He struck Ned Wright.”
He stumbled across the stage from right to left. He asked Joy McClain and Delores Swann, “Where does he live? Where is he staying?” He then hurtled over to Freddie Marshall and Ruby Green, “Did you see that? He actually struck me. Oooh weee!”
The company was supposed to be shocked into silence by the murder, and the music rests during the scene, but when Ned began imitating the disaster of the night before, a few soft giggles could be heard onstage.
After thrusting, clutching and stumbling, Ned finally went down to the floor. He then sat up absolutely straight, putting one fist at the back of his head and another to his forehead, gave a vigorous tug, slipping both hands around until they were directly over his ears.
He said prissily, in a loud whisper, “No one struck Ned Wright. I fell.” Only then did he lie down and close h
is eyes.
The giggles might never have increased except that Ned was hunched face down while his body jumped and shook with convulsions, and Bey let out a bass shout of such pure glee that we were all pulled along into uncontrollable laughter.
The conductor looked up from the pit, aghast. He lifted both hands, cueing the singers to begin the dirge; not one voice followed his signal. He lifted his hands higher, imperiously pointing his baton at the stage, but the sopranos had buried their faces in their aprons and the men had covered their mouths with their hats, their shoulders shaking with laughter.
Alexander Smallens’ face darkened with fury. He held his baton between his fingers like a pencil and made short stabbing motions at the singers. The orchestra played the entire passage alone. On the cue for the cast to exit stage left in a wild attempt to escape a white policeman who enters stage right, we tripped over each other, falling into the wings.
People leaned on the walls or clung together—some even held on to the curtain—trying to keep laughter under control. Rhoda Boggs wiped the tears from her round face; she managed to steal a breath from her spasms and said, “That Ned Wright. Uh uh. That Ned Wright. He’s crazy.”
Someone caught me and pulled me around. It was Martha. She looked at me and I wasn’t sure if her wide grin was meant to be an attempt to apologize. Suddenly she put her hands on her wig and pulled it askew. Then she shoved it back to the correct position.
“Miss Fine Thing didn’t fall. Somebody pushed her.”
I bent low, laughing, and she put her arms around my neck. Neither begged the other’s pardon. We picked up our friendship as if it had not fallen but had only stumbled. A few weeks later she shed the wig. A Black beautician in Rome curled her newly grown hair in a high and luxuriant coiffure, and we never mentioned the incident again.
CHAPTER 26
Porgy and Bess was to be the first American opera sung at La Scala. Famous white sopranos, tenors and baritones from the United States had soloed at Milan’s renowned opera house; now an entire cast of Negro singers were nervously rehearsing on the legendary stage.
Photographers and journalists lounged around the stage door and waited in our hotel lobbies.
“Miss Davy, how does it feel to be the star of the first …?”
“I am honored, of course, but then, we all work hard. I am just one of the Besses.”
“Mr. Scott, are you nervous about singing at La Scala?”
“Nervous? No. I am excited, yes, but then, I am excited each time I sing.”
“Miss Flowers, did you ever think you would have the opportunity to sing in Milan? At the world’s most prestigious opera house?”
“Certainly. I do believe in the work ethic. Work hard and be prepared. Naturally, we are all pleased.”
Oh, I was so proud of them. Their hands were knotted with tension and their brows moist with perspiration, but they acted cool.
We were told that La Scala audiences reacted to singers in the same way patrons of the Apollo in Harlem responded to the acts. That warning didn’t need to be spelled out. The Apollo audiences were famous for shouting mediocre performers out of the theater or joining the entertainers on the stage to show them how a dance should be danced and how a song should be sung.
On opening night the backstage silence was unusual and ominous. Dressing-room doors were not only closed but locked. When the five-minute call was given we all went quietly to our places; not even a whisper floated over the dark stage. The rustling audience was stilled by the gradually darkening lights; they applauded the conductor’s entrance and the overture began. The cast remained apart and I felt a little afraid. Suppose Gloria lost her voice, or Annabelle couldn’t hit her high coloratura note. Just suppose I tripped over someone’s foot on my entrance. I was coiled tight like a spring and realized as the curtain rose that every other member of the cast had also wound themselves up taut for a shattering release.
The moment the curtain opened the singers in concert pulled the elegant first-night audience into the harshness of Black Southern life. When Robbins was killed, the moans were real (didn’t we all know people who, unable to talk back to authority, killed a friend over fifty cents?). The entrance of the white policeman was met with actual fear (wasn’t the law always on the side of the mighty and weren’t the jackals always at our heels?). The love story unfolded with such tenderness that the singers wept visible tears. (Who could deny this story? How many Black men had been crippled by the American oppression and had lost the women they loved and who loved them, because they hadn’t the strength to fight? How often had the women submitted to loveless arrangements for the sake of bare survival?)
The first smiles of the evening were shared during our bows. We had sung gloriously. Although we faced the audience—which was on its feet, yelling and applauding—we bowed to compliment each other. We had performed Porgy and Bess as never before, and if the La Scala patrons loved us, it was only fitting because we certainly performed as if we were in love with one another.
We arrived in Rome on a late spring afternoon. I arranged my bags in the hotel room and went downstairs to find a telephone directory. In Paris, Bernard Hassel had told me to go to Bricktop’s if I ever got to Rome. She was a living legend. He said Bricktop, Josephine Baker and Mabel Mercer had been the high-yellow toasts of Europe in the thirties. They hobnobbed with the rich and the royal, and although Mabel had gone to the United States and Josephine was semiretired, Bricktop still owned the most fashionable night club in Rome.
When night fell I walked down the Via Veneto, past the outdoor tables of Doney’s Restaurant and into the next block where a small simple sign BRICKTOP’S hung over the door.
I opened the door and found myself standing behind a pudgy broad-shouldered man and a heavily made up woman whose brown hair was frosted blond. A small, very light-skinned, freckled woman with thin red hair stood facing the couple.
“On dit que vous avez bu trop en Cannes. (They say you’ve been drinking too much in Cannes). ”She frowned and her French accent was as Southern and sweet as pecan pie.
The man said, “Please, Brickie. I promise not to drink tonight. My word of honor.”
Her scowl relaxed when the man’s companion added, “I won’t let him have a thing, Brickie. We’ll just watch the show.”
Bricktop called a waiter. “Come here and take King Farouk to a table.” My ears almost rejected the name. “But don’t give him a drop. Not one goutte.”
The couple followed the waiter and Bricktop signaled to me. Her face was closed.
“Are you alone?”
I said, “Yes.”
“I’m sorry, miss. But I don’t allow ladies in here unescorted.” She started to turn away.
I said, “Miss Bricktop, I am sorry too. I have been waiting for six months to come here and meet you.” It was flattery, but it was also the truth.
She walked closer to me and stood straight. “What are you doing in Rome?” The question was asked cynically, as if she thought I might be a traveling prostitute, and her eyes said she had heard every version of every lie ever told.
“I’m with Porgy and Bess. I am a dancer-singer.”
“Uh-huh.” I could see her defenses relax. “When did you get in?”
“About two hours ago.”
She nodded, appreciating that her place had been my first stop. She turned and lifted her hand. A waiter came scuttling to her.
“Take mademoiselle to a table.” She said to me, “Go and sit down. I’ll be over to talk to you pretty soon.”
The club had thick carpets and heavy chandeliers, and the waiters dressed as handsomely as the customers. Bricktop was a Negro woman away from the United States thirty years, and still her Southern accent was unmistakable. I was even more amazed when she later told me she wasn’t Southern at all, but had come from Chicago.
When she finally came to my table, she asked where I was from.
I said, “San Francisco.”
“How do you feel, being so
far from home?”
I said, “There is no place God is not.”
Her face crinkled in a little-girl grin. “Oh, you’re going to be my baby. Did you know that I’ve converted to Catholicism?”
I said I hadn’t heard.
She leaned across the table, her eyes sparkling. “I have friends who ask me why. They found out I go to Mass every day and they’re shocked. I say, ‘Look, for thirty years you saw me running in and out of bars every day and you never tried to stop me and it didn’t shock you. Why do you want to stop me now?’ ” She sat back in the chair and smiled smugly. “Don’t you reckon that stopped them?”
She invited me to the club whenever I wanted to come and promised to cook a dinner of black-eyed peas. “I know where to find them in this town. Fact is I know where to find anything and everyone in Rome.”
I looked around the room at some famous American and European faces, and at the line of people waiting inside the doorway for tables. I didn’t doubt that Brickie had the keys necessary to open the Eternal City.
CHAPTER 27
After a few weeks in Rome I received a disturbing letter from Mother. Wilkie had moved out into his own studio. Lottie was looking for a housekeeping job because Mr. Hot Dog was losing money. And mother was planning to become a dealer in a Las Vegas Negro casino—which meant there would be no one to take care of Clyde, who missed me more than ever. He had developed a severe rash that resisted every medical treatment. I wrote immediately, saying I would be home in a month. I was obliged by union rules to give two weeks’ notice, but since we were in Europe, it was only fair to allow the company four weeks to find another dancer-singer.