Southern Ruby

by Belinda Alexandra

  I stared at her blankly. My ‘style’ was a conglomeration of what I had seen other strippers do and some moves I’d worked out in my room in Chartres Street.

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Hanley, but I haven’t done ballet since I was a child. You see . . . I’m a stripper, not a dancer.’

  Her hand flew up to stop me. ‘No, you’re a dancer,’ she replied firmly. ‘Sam told me so. An exotic dancer is a dancer nonetheless.’

  I understood: I wasn’t to call myself a stripper in Miss Hanley’s presence.

  ‘Why don’t you show me one of your routines,’ she said, folding her arms. ‘We’ll start from there.’

  We were interrupted by a knock at the door, and Miss Hanley went to open it. She looked over her shoulder and asked me, ‘Did you bring your sheet music?’

  I shook my head, feeling out of my depth.

  ‘Never mind. Your accompanist, Leroy, can play anything. If you hum a few bars, he’ll recognise it.’

  She opened the door and beckoned in a young coloured man a couple of years older than me. Despite the heat he was sharply dressed in a blazer, tie, flannel trousers and a crisp white shirt.

  ‘This is Jewel,’ she said to him. ‘She’s the star dancer at the club.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Jewel,’ he said, taking my hand in his cool one and squeezing it gently.

  A jolt ran through me and I pulled away. Coloured men did not touch white women’s hands. Nor did they look directly into their eyes or call them Jewel instead of Miss Jewel. Then I remembered myself and was ashamed of my reaction. Of course he could shake my hand the same as any white man would do. He’d merely caught me unawares, that’s all. I liked the fact that there was nothing of the shuffling, obsequious stereotype of a coloured musician about him.

  I reached for his hand and clasped it. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you too, Mr . . . ?’

  If Leroy was offended by my initial reaction he didn’t show it. He smiled wider and revealed a row of straight white teeth. ‘My last name is Thezan, but you can call me Leroy. Everybody does.’

  He was handsome, that was for sure, with chiselled cheekbones and a nose like an Indian chief. I was mesmerised by the amber shade of his skin, smooth and glowing like the complexion of a healthy child. He contemplated me with a spark of amusement dancing in his honey-gold eyes and I realised it was because I was still staring at him.

  ‘Jewel is going to tell us what music she’d like to dance to,’ Miss Hanley explained.

  The routines I’d been performing at the Havana Club were too quirky for the Vieux Carré. My ‘Mooche’ routine was the most sophisticated, but I was sick of it. ‘I’ve been developing a routine to a piece of music I bought at the record store on Chartres Street,’ I told them.

  ‘What’s the name of the song?’ asked Leroy, opening the lid of the piano and taking a seat. He rubbed his hands vigorously, then played a blues riff to warm up.

  His manner was so relaxed it should have put me at ease, but for some reason my heart started pounding in my chest like a bongo drum.

  He looked at me again, waiting patiently. A rush of warmth heated my skin.

  ‘Jewel?’ said Miss Hanley.

  The name of the song had gone out of my head. I couldn’t even recall the melody.

  ‘It’s about a man searching for his lover,’ I said.

  Leroy chuckled. ‘Well, that’s a little thin to go on, Jewel. Every man is looking for his lover.’

  ‘She’s lost.’ My face twitched in that foolish way it always did when I was nervous. I had to remind myself that I was sophisticated Jewel now, and Jewel did not lose her composure.

  ‘Hmm.’ He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘What colour is it?’

  ‘Excuse me? Colour?’

  ‘Yes. What colour does the song make you feel?’

  Describing a song by its colour was an unusual way of doing things. How was he ever going to pick a song from knowing only that? I let out a breath and thought about it. The music was rich and expressive, but it wasn’t red. It was tragic, but not black.

  ‘Blue,’ I said, recalling the song’s haunting atmosphere. ‘Dark blue.’

  ‘Like night?’ he asked, grinning.

  A sense of playfulness bubbled up in me and I loosened up. It was as though Leroy was leading me on an adventure.

  ‘Like night,’ I agreed.

  He tried out a few notes on the piano before turning back to me. ‘Night in the city, or out in the bayou where it’s dark and quiet except for the creatures of the night?’

  ‘Dark as in the swampland,’ I said, enjoying the game. ‘But with flashes of gold.’

  ‘What’s the gold? When I imagine gold in the dark it always makes me think of hope.’

  I’d been picturing torches, but hope sounded more romantic. I nodded.

  He turned back to the keyboard. ‘Is this it?’ He played the first few bars of the song ‘Chloe’.

  ‘How did you pick out a song by its colour?’ I cried. ‘Are you a mind reader?’

  His lips formed into a wry smile and he swung his legs over the stool so he faced me. ‘Earlier this afternoon, I was having a soda at the drugstore on Esplanade Avenue when a fashionably dressed lady walked past. I didn’t know who you were then, but I distinctly heard you humming “Chloe”.’

  Miss Hanley laughed, and after a moment’s surprise I did too.

  ‘He’s a sneaky one,’ Miss Hanley said. ‘You watch out for him.’ Then she clapped her hands. ‘All right, we’ve got the song now. Show us what you’ve been working on, Jewel.’

  Leroy began to play. I wasn’t in costume, so I mimed the parts where I took off items of clothing. Several times I caught Leroy watching me. The band leader at the Havana Club had done that too, to see where I was up to in the routine, but something in Leroy’s scrutiny was different. I’d been taking my clothes off in front of men for some months now and yet I’d never felt so shy as I did in front of him. A man was a man as far as I was concerned, but white strippers never undressed in front of coloured men. Not in the South at least.

  I finished my dance, expecting Miss Hanley to be contemptuous, but she was tactful.

  ‘You never stop moving, Jewel, but I want you to think of yourself as a sculpture. You have to stop at certain points and let the audience drink you in.’ She held herself in a pose with her chin up and a haughty expression in her eyes. It was a convincing transformation from choreographer to stripper. She turned back to me and was herself again. ‘With Orry-Kelly designing your costumes for one thousand dollars apiece, you’d better make sure the audience has time to appreciate them or Sam will have a fit.’

  She turned to Leroy. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Yes, Jewel should stop still so people can admire her,’ he agreed, tugging at his collar as if he was too warm.

  Miss Hanley indicated for Leroy to play the piece again and we spent nearly an hour on my walk alone. ‘Regal, but leading ever so slightly with the pelvis,’ she instructed me.

  She had me stand in poses for minutes at a time. ‘Everything you do must convey flirtation that eventually becomes seduction: the way you breathe, the blinking of your eyes, the slightest movement of your fingers . . .’

  I did everything that Miss Hanley asked me to, but my pulse was racing. It was as though I was directing every gesture and movement at Leroy instead of an imaginary audience. ‘What a pity you didn’t continue with ballet,’ Miss Hanley said when we’d finished for the day. ‘You could have been great. You have the quality a good dancer needs: the ability to convey energy even when you are still. We’ll meet again the same time tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ I asked, surprised. ‘We’re going to do all this again tomorrow?’

  Miss Hanley huffed. ‘Why, yes, my dear. Sam has requested a new routine a week. We had better get cracking! And don’t forget you’ll have to do the final rehearsals with Leroy and his band.’

  Leroy led the way down the stairs. I kept my eyes fixed on his square shoul
ders and tried to think of ways to start a conversation. ‘There is no way I could have been a ballet dancer,’ I finally managed to say when we were out on the street. ‘I don’t have the discipline and I don’t like pain. My calves are aching enough just from the past few hours.’

  ‘Well, rest up before tomorrow,’ he said, putting on his hat. ‘Miss Hanley was being gentle on you today. She’s a taskmaster.’

  I watched Leroy walk down the street with a self-assured gait. His sudden coolness stabbed me but I was grateful for it at the same time. Wherever my imagination had started to wander during the rehearsal was too dangerous to follow.

  That night, I sat in our dining room eating dinner with Maman, Ruby again. Maman looked well in the lilac dress I’d bought her. Mae had been doing as good a job with her rehabilitation as the nurses at the sanatorium, walking her up and down the apartment stairs every day and around the courtyard to strengthen her remaining lung.

  I turned my attention to the table and the new Wood and Sons dinnerware I’d bought to replace the dishes we’d had to pawn over the years. The set wasn’t as fancy as the Haviland Limoges china we’d had in our family for decades, but it was pretty nonetheless. And the food on the table was of the best quality, from the cornbread to the maque choux. I did this, I thought. I provided all this through my hard work.

  ‘Ruby, there’s a light in your eyes I haven’t seen for a long time,’ Maman said. ‘Those tennis lessons Mae tells me you’re taking in the afternoons are doing you the world of good.’

  I glanced at Mae, who was standing in the doorway in her new tailored uniform. She didn’t blink and it took all the theatrical control I’d learned from Miss Hanley not to burst out laughing.

  Mae had covered for me superbly, but I longed to tell Maman about the Vieux Carré Club. I would be a star there — desirable, exotic and sought after. But here at home, Jewel was someone to be ashamed of and kept secret. Becoming Ruby again after being Jewel was like returning to earth after a balloon ride.

  ‘Is there a young man?’ Maman asked with a smile. ‘You’ve got the glow of a young woman with a beau on her mind.’

  ‘No, Maman,’ I said, taking a piece of cornbread and buttering it. ‘There isn’t any young man.’

  ‘Not yet,’ she said, slicing into a stuffed bell pepper and lifting her fork to her mouth. ‘Not yet. But there will be soon. I can feel it. Love is going to come calling for you, Ruby. Very soon!’

  The next day, after I’d changed into Jewel in my room on Chartres Street, I passed the drugstore on Esplanade Avenue that Leroy had mentioned and peered in the window. Some young Negro men were sitting at the coloured end of the counter, but Leroy wasn’t among them. I went in anyway and ordered a vanilla flavoured soda. While the soda jerk poured it for me, I perched on a stool up the white end of the counter.

  The soda jerk placed the glass on a paper doily in front of me and I’d just taken a sip when I heard an imperious voice behind me. ‘Excuse me, young lady.’

  I turned to find myself face to face with Aunt Elva. She had put on weight since I’d last seen her, but she was still expensively outfitted in a slate grey dress teamed with a cropped jacket and a clamper-style floral hat. She blinked at me and I froze, sure that she’d recognised me. But then she smiled and I knew she hadn’t. Aunt Elva wouldn’t smile at me. The closest I’d ever gotten from her was a pained grimace.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking,’ she said, in the sugary voice she reserved for people who weren’t members of her family, ‘but what shade of lipstick are you wearing? We have a similar skin tone. I think it would quite suit me.’

  What would suit Aunt Elva most would be a bag over her head, but I kept my mouth shut. I saw my life as Jewel going down the drain with one false move. Then I decided it was a test. If I could fool shrewd Aunt Elva, I could fool anybody.

  I fixed my gaze on a point above her head and said, ‘Bessette’s Cherry Red,’ in my stilted French accent.

  Her eyes narrowed and my pulse raced again. My toes clenched in my shoes.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, with a little laugh. ‘Well, thank you. You have a fine day.’

  I nodded and let my breath go. A giddy feeling came over me as Aunt Elva went to the cosmetics clerk and told her she wanted a tube of Bessette’s Cherry Red. I watched the clerk package the purchase and Aunt Elva leave the store.

  I turned back to the counter and contemplated the red smudge at the top of the straw in my soda. I wasn’t wearing Bessette’s Cherry Red; I was wearing Revlon’s Fire and Ice. But I’d heard the coat-check girl at the club say that Bessette’s Cherry Red had given her a painful skin rash that had lasted a week. Lord, I’ve got the devil in me, I giggled as I finished my soda. Maybe this would all catch up with me one day, but I was sure enjoying the thought of Aunt Elva’s lips swelling up like she’d stuck her head in a beehive.

  I arrived at the rehearsal studio half an hour early. Miss Hanley, who was doing some stretches at the barre, was surprised to see me.

  ‘Enthusiasm — now that’s what I like!’ she said.

  I stopped listening to what she was telling me about the beauty of long, lyrical movements when I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Light, buoyant steps and yet distinctly male.

  Leroy stepped into the room. ‘Good afternoon,’ he said.

  He was wearing a slim-fitting pearl-grey suit with padded shoulders. He looked smart and there wasn’t a drop of sweat on his forehead despite the New Orleans humidity.

  ‘Lord, it is hot!’ Miss Hanley said, moving to open the window facing the street.

  ‘Have you been practising your queenly walk?’ Leroy whispered to me. His aloofness at our parting the previous day had dissipated and he was smiling warmly at me.

  ‘I have,’ I replied. ‘All the way here.’ ‘That must have made many a man’s day!’

  My heart fluttered. I stepped away from him so he couldn’t see me blush.

  Miss Hanley returned to her position and rehearsal began. But I found it more difficult to concentrate than I had the day before. Every time Miss Hanley told me to turn right, I’d go left instead. When she marked the spot where I should remove my dress, I overshot it.

  ‘You do realise you’re standing in the orchestra pit right now, don’t you?’ she said, looking as flummoxed as I felt.

  After two hours of rehearsal, Leroy apologised that he had to rush off to practise with this band. ‘I shall see you the same time tomorrow, ladies.’ He said it to both of us, but I felt his eyes linger on me.

  I sighed, disappointed that he’d gone. Rehearsing was going to be a bore without him.

  ‘He’s a nice young man,’ Miss Hanley said. ‘Now let’s get back to that walk of yours, Jewel. I want you to enter stage left.’

  She cleared her throat. ‘Jewel?’

  ‘Oh yes, I’m sorry,’ I said, taking my position.

  She cocked her head. ‘Are you all right? Is the heat getting to you?’

  ‘I’m not used to rehearsing so much,’ I confided in her. ‘Where I used to dance we only got to practise our routines a couple of times with the band before we had to perform.’

  Miss Hanley’s face softened and she patted my shoulder. ‘You’re in the big league now, Jewel,’ she said. ‘You’re going to be a star. Mr Coppola doesn’t have patience for amateurs. You’ve got to be perfect and it’s my job to make you so. Now, let’s get back to your entrance.’

  After the rehearsal I had a meeting with Sam Coppola. As I walked to the club, I thought about Leroy and wondered about his life. Where did he live and what was his family like? There was something about him that I related to and I wanted to know more about him. I would have spent the whole day with him if I could have.

  The club had come a long way since the last time I’d seen it. All the tables and velvet-upholstered booths were installed, and crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling. There was an orchestra pit to the right of the podium with buttressed urns around it.

  ‘Is this where
Leroy and his band will play?’ I asked Sam.

  He shook his head and beckoned for me to follow him down the stairs to the dressing rooms.

  ‘Can’t have a coloured band playing for a white performer. That pit is for the club’s main orchestra. Leroy and his band will play behind a curtain backstage.’

  ‘Then why did you get a coloured band for me,’ I asked, ‘if you can’t put them on show?’

  He opened a door at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Because I wanted the best jazz musicians for my star act and Leroy and his band are the best. But this is the South and I can’t afford to get this place shut down.’

  I followed him into a dressing room, where a blonde woman was laying out the pink and silver ensemble Orry-Kelly had designed for me.

  ‘I’ll leave Annie here to help you get dressed,’ Sam said. ‘A photographer is coming in an hour to take some publicity shots. After that I have an interview lined up with a reporter from the Times-Picayune.’

  Publicity shots were one thing, but an interview with a reporter? What if he discovered who I really was?

  Sam saw the fear in my face and led me to one side. ‘Is something wrong?’

  I lowered my eyes. It seemed a beautiful dream was about to be ripped from me. ‘Jewel isn’t my real name. I’m stripping to support my mother.’

  ‘I know that,’ he said. ‘What’s the problem?’

  I looked up at him, surprised, and blushed.

  ‘Don’t you think I get everyone thoroughly checked out before I hire them?’ he said. ‘You’re Vivienne de Villeray, and your family has a name but not a dime. I understand the whole picture. Do you think my family is proud of me and what I do?’

  I’d assumed that Sam’s family was part of the mob too, but apparently not.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’ll make sure you’re only interviewed by journalists who owe me a favour and won’t be nosey. They’ll write what I tell them to, you understand? Now let’s get Annie to help you into your costume, and let me do the worrying.’

  He led me back to Annie, who was taking a pair of beaded shoes out of a box.

  ‘And, Jewel,’ Sam added, ‘if your family isn’t proud of you, you should at least be proud of yourself. Some people have star quality and others — no matter how talented — just don’t. You’ve got oodles of it. Your personality bursts out right past the floodlights. That’s not common, and it’s why I hired you. Remember that.’