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Destiny's Daughters

Page 18

by Gwynne Forster


  The next day, after assuring herself again that the seven Holmeses listed in the Goldsboro telephone book were not the ones she sought, she packed her bags, phoned the YWCA for a room, and headed back to Washington, D.C.

  “I’m still here,” Cindy told her. “I could get my own apartment, but as long as I stay at the YWCA, my dad doesn’t gripe about my being alone in this big, wicked city.” A low, sexy laugh streamed out of her. “You’re a southerner, so you may imagine how he is.”

  “I sure can,” Clarissa said, unwilling to indicate that she had no idea as to the attitudes of one’s biological father. She didn’t know who or where hers was.

  She didn’t expect Lydia Stanton to rehire her, but she called to tell her what had happened.

  “Where are you, Clarissa?”

  “I’m here at the Y.”

  “What are you doing there? Come on back home here where you belong.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” was all she could manage to say. “I haven’t had a lot of luck in life, but . . . well, here lately . . . I guess I’d better get my stuff together.” When she got downstairs to the lounge, Sam stood. “Welcome back, Miss Holmes.”

  She followed him to Lydia’s limousine, thinking how typical of the woman to treat her as if she were a guest rather than a servant. I won’t mention singing to Allen Harkens, she said to herself. She had chosen to forego the opportunity in order to be with her foster mother, and she was glad; if she hadn’t, Eunice Jenkins would have died alone.

  “Well, you look the same,” Lydia said, “except for that soul food around your middle. I hope you’ll soon get rid of that. We’re going to a reception at the MLK Library tonight. I hadn’t planned to attend, but since you’re here, I’m anxious to go. I hope you can fit into one of your nice evening dresses.”

  Clarissa dressed in a black sheath that sparkled with polished ebony beads—a gift from Lydia—and black patent leather slippers and carried a small black beaded bag. “You need a nice black dressy coat,” Lydia said. “Here, wear this velvet cape. It doesn’t suit anybody in a wheelchair.” Clarissa looked at the mink-lined cape. “Ma’am, I can’t accept this. I won’t even know how to walk in it.”

  “Then I’ll tell you. You put one foot in front of the other and keep repeating it till you get where you’re going. That cape’s been deteriorating in my closet for seven years. I’d just about forgotten it was there.”

  “You do yourself proud tonight, ma’am,” Sam said to Clarissa as he helped her into the limousine.

  “Thank you, Sam. I’m not proud, though. I’m just giving thanks.” I may not be Connecticut Avenue, she said to herself, standing beside Lydia’s chair in the receiving line, but upper Sixteenth Street ain’t bad.

  “Well, well, Lydia, good to see you back among us,” a man of some girth and ego said. “Where’d you get such a stunning nursing attendant? Wish I had her for my father. She might put some life in the old man.”

  You can always count on some self-important jerk to remind you of your origins, Clarissa said to herself and held her head a little higher.

  Lydia leaned back in her wheelchair and narrowed her eyes. “You’re still putting your foot in your mouth every time you open it. Representative Montague, this is Clarissa Holmes, one of the great jazz singers of our time.”

  “Did you say Clarissa Holmes?” a male voice said. A slim man of indeterminate age introduced himself. “I heard you several times at The Limelight, and I’ve wondered what happened to you.”

  He took a card from his pocket and handed it to Clarissa. “Would you please call me tomorrow? Where do you live?”

  “Miss Holmes is my guest, Mr. Roth. I’m in the phone book.”

  “I’ll call tomorrow, Mrs. Stanton, and to think I almost didn’t come here tonight. What a piece of luck!”

  “My apology, Miss Holmes,” the congressman said in a whispered aside to Clarissa, his southern drawl thick and syrupy.

  She whirled around and glared at him. Insult her in public and apologize in private, would he? “Take your apology and shove it,” she told him, madder than she’d been since the morning she walked in on Josh slamming himself into Vanessa Hobbs, and in her bed at that. She let her gaze pierce the congressman until he blinked. Then, she turned her back to him.

  “That’s one reason why I hate these fund-raising receptions,” Lydia said, letting Clarissa know she heard the exchange. “You brought him down to size, something I’ve wanted to do for years.”

  Chapter 5

  Clarissa was unprepared to talk business when Roth called the following morning, because she hadn’t taken his interest in her seriously. “I’m not prepping myself for another big disappointment,” she told Lydia.

  “You want me to try out for a Broadway play? Mr. Roth, I’ve never been near Broadway, and until six months ago, every play I’d seen had been on a television in somebody’s house other than mine. You don’t want me to act silly like those TV people, do you?”

  “No indeed. You’ll be a maid in a wealthy family, watching that family rip at the seams, and you’ll sing the blues as a way of commenting on what’s going on. With that voice of yours, you’ll be perfect.”

  “Well, I’ll do my best.”

  She won the part, and after tryouts in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, Another Kind of Blues opened in New York. Clarissa was not the lead actress, but a minor member of the supporting cast. Yet, the audience cheered her longest and loudest.

  Clarissa Holmes is a genuine original with a spectacular voice, the Daily News critic wrote, and The Herald critic proclaimed, It’s been many years since I heard a voice like that of Clarissa Holmes. Don’t miss her.

  Late in the day on which those notices appeared, Clarissa entered the theater with nimble steps, humming her opening song, smiling and greeting stagehands. Her world had finally taken shape, and she had a niche in it. Little did she know that that sense of well-being would be short-lived.

  “If I don’t watch her, Miss Collard Greens will be moving right into my dressing room,” Clarissa heard the show’s star say. “No actor with sense tries to upstage the star. She’d better watch it.”

  “Tell me about it!” another woman said. “What do you expect from somebody who didn’t know the curtain from the set? Where the hell did Roth find her?”

  “How y’all doing?” Clarissa said, walking between them as if she hadn’t heard what they said. Neither spoke.

  I don’t care, she told herself. I’m gonna sing to the best of my ability, and if the audience applauds me and not them, too bad.

  Nothing prepared her for the coming trouble. On stage, she was supposed to sing while ironing, but there was no ironing board, although she’d seen it where it was supposed to be minutes earlier. Not to be outdone, she looked at the audience and grinned. “I’m supposed to be ironing, but the ironing board walked off the stage, so I guess I’ll polish the furniture.” The comment brought an explosive applause from the audience, which had witnessed the act of sabotage before Clarissa came on stage. Each night, the snide remarks and cast members’ interferences with her performance grew worse, more blatant and more intolerable.

  “I’m starting to hate this work,” Clarissa told Lydia by phone one evening. “It was not an accident that a pot of flowers dropped down from a window and almost hit me on the head as I was about to enter the theater yesterday. During the show, they throw me miscues, and do everything they can to make me look stupid. So I am going to leave at the end of this contract. Mr. Roth asked me to sign on for the run of the show, but I’m going to tell him no, thank you.”

  “Show people can be vicious if they put their minds to it. If you’re not happy, you shouldn’t stay. Life is too short.”

  “From now on, I’ll stick to singing. No more acting for me. At first, I loved it. Oh, well . . .”

  “But you can’t leave—you’re the whole show,” Roth told her. “We didn’t plan it that way, but you’re the person people come to see.”

  “I’
m sorry,” she said, and she was, because he took a chance on her, and she appreciated it. “I don’t wish the other cast members any harm, but I don’t care if I never see any of them again.”

  After the show that night, Roth assembled the entire cast. “You’ve made Clarissa’s life miserable, so she’s leaving us.” He didn’t respond to the chorus of gasps. “If next week’s take falls off significantly, I’m closing the show, and you can all look for another job. If Clarissa had stayed, the show would have run for at least a couple of years. I hope you’re pleased with yourselves.”

  He clasped Clarissa in an embrace. “You’re a real pro. Next time, you’ll be the show’s star. Get a good agent, and you’ll go places.”

  Clarissa thanked him, but didn’t tell him that she didn’t care to have another foray into acting.

  Now I have to make it myself, Clarissa said to herself the next morning when she awoke, once more without a job. At least I’m not broke. She answered the phone, thinking that Lydia was her caller.

  “I’m Morton Chase. Roth told me you need a good agent. I heard you in Another Kind of Blues, and I can promise you that if you want to work in clubs, festivals, and TV, I can keep you busy.”

  Wary of the machinations of entertainment people, she called Roth and asked him whether he recommended her to Morton Chase and, informed that he had, she called the agent and hired him. That Thursday, she headed for St. Louis, settled in the hotel room that her agent reserved for her, got the telephone book, and began checking off entries with the last name of Holmes When she’d called most of them to no avail, her spirits began to droop. With shaking fingers, she dialed the last one.

  “Hello,” she said to the man who answered, “I’m trying to find my sisters.”

  “Why you calling here, lady?”

  “Please, sir. My mother gave birth to three girls, triplets, and we were separated right away. My first foster mother said the woman who gave me to her wasn’t my mother, but somebody else. All I know is that there were three baby girls named Holmes, and we’re now thirty-three years old. I want to find my sisters. If you know anything, please tell me.”

  “That’s rough, lady. I sure am sorry, but I don’t know anybody who would fit that picture. I wish you luck.”

  At least he hadn’t hung up on her as so many had done. “Thanks for your patience, sir.”

  “No sweat. Hang in there.” He hung up, and she slumped in her chair. Maybe they weren’t alive. But they had to be, and she meant to keep on looking for them until she found them.

  The following evening, she performed to a packed house at BB’s, with only her acoustic guitar. This is where I belong, she realized, on the stage singing to my people.

  “You need some private life,” Chase told her at their first meeting when he went to St. Louis to hear her sing. “I got two daughters almost your age, and I want to see them happily married and giving me some grandchildren.”

  “Been there and done that. Well, most of that. I don’t have any children, but I’ve got a philandering husband in North Carolina shacking up with an eighteen-year-old whore.”

  Chase’s eyebrows shot up. “Then you’d better get a divorce, because he can claim half of what you earn. In most states, the law says that what a spouse earns is community property.”

  “Don’t make me laugh. He’s lucky I didn’t skewer him.”

  “Yeah, but you’d better protect your flank. As soon as he knows you’re making money, he’ll be back.”

  Chapter 6

  After a successful five-week run in St. Louis, she opened at Pilot III in Kansas City, Missouri, with her own three-piece band that consisted of guitar, bass, and piano. For the first time, when she walked out on the stage, the patrons stood and applauded, and her nerves rioted throughout her body. She opened her mouth, and not a sound escaped. Her gaze drifted to the front row, and a man who sat alone gave her the thumbs-up sign. She turned around, signaled the band to start again, opened her mouth, and out poured “St. Louis Blues.” She glanced back at the stranger, who made the sign again, but neither smiled nor showed any other kind of emotion. She tried to ignore the quivers racing around in her body, forced a smile, and bowed in appreciation for the applause.

  “Who was that guy?” Raymond, her guitar player, asked her after the show.

  “Never saw him before, but I had a strange feeling about him, like I’m supposed to know him.”

  “Maybe that’s because the cat looks like money,” Oscar, the pianist, suggested. “I’ll bet a lot of women have thought they oughta know him. He’s one cool-looking dude.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s more than that. Almost a premonition. He didn’t hang around, though. Thank God.”

  “I hope to hell he’s not a stalker,” Raymond said, articulating her second thoughts. “Never can tell about these three-piece-suit types.”

  She thought Konny, her bass player, winced at that remark, but she wasn’t sure. Besides, why should he? She’d never seen him wear anything but chinos, a plaid shirt, tweed jacket, and hat at work, and baggy jeans during their rehearsals.

  The four of them sat in a small upstairs bistro a few doors from the Charlie Parker Memorial that stood near the corner of Eighteenth and Vine. Jazzmen loved to frequent the place because they were unlikely to encounter groupies and fans, and the owner didn’t expect to sell them more than coffee and a light supper.

  Sipping on his third cup of black coffee, Konny looked at the others. “Wanna go jamming over at the Key Note? It’s too early to go home.”

  “Man, you never want to sleep,” Oscar said. “Sorry, but my old lady looked like she had some plans for tonight, and I’m going home. If I don’t, tomorrow night I’ll have to beg.” The other two men gave each other knowing looks.

  Raymond’s laugh amounted to an innuendo. “Right on, man. Sometimes I forget you’re only thirty. Go do your thing.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Clarissa asked.

  Konny flipped back the hat that he wore everywhere and lit a cigarette. “Sex. What else does Raymond talk about?”

  Raymond, who was twice Oscar’s age, lifted his glass in a salute to the group. “At least I can talk about it.” He looked at Oscar. “When I was your age, I took care of business, man, like it was going out of style. And speaking of business, Clarissa, a good-looking and talented woman like you got no business being by herself.”

  “I’m married.”

  She knew Raymond wouldn’t drop the subject; he never did until he had exhausted it. “Yeah. In name only. Somebody needs to take a stick to that husband of yours.”

  Konny drew on his cigarette. “Leave him to heaven, girl, and get yourself a man.”

  Clarissa didn’t want to think about Josh, but she knew she would have to, for one day he’d come crawling back to make her more miserable than when they lived together in Low Point. And she didn’t feel like jamming. Besides, Buck Ryan had warned her to conserve her voice.

  “I’m turning in,” she told them. “See you tomorrow morning at Konny’s place.”

  She eased into a Tuesday-through-Saturday-evening work routine and adjusted herself to the constant companionship of three men who quickly filled the void of father and brother in her life. After a month, she moved out of the YWCA and into a furnished apartment near the club.

  “I’ll never get used to living up this high,” she said to herself, looking down from her thirty-second-floor balcony at the square below and the ant-like shapes that moved to and fro, here and there, across its plain. A blue, red, and gray streaked sky cushioned the descent of the setting sun, and she gasped in awe. And to think that she had lived thirty-three years without seeing that particular scene and feeling the spiritual healing that it evoked in her.

  I guess poor people are so busy grubbing for something to eat and a place to stay that they don’t have time to appreciate nature. People working hard out in the cold, in the hot sun, sometimes two and three jobs, don’t feel like making love the way they ought to, ei
ther. Where’s a man who’s been splitting logs or working at a sawmill all day going to get the energy to satisfy a woman? Life is not fair. Josh and I didn’t stand a chance.

  Each night, she sang to sellout crowds, and each night when she walked out on the stage, she glanced down to see the stranger whom she and her band referred to as Mr. X. And he was always there, a part of the scenery, manifesting no more emotion than did the tables and chairs around him, but night by night, he seeped into her.

  One Monday afternoon she and the band members sat in her apartment, working out a new arrangement. “The dude just sits there looking at Clarissa while she sings, and when the show’s over, he gets up and leaves. He’s either smitten or he’s a kook,” Oscar said.

  Konny disagreed. “Did it occur to you that the man may love great jazz? If he was after Clarissa, he’d have made a move long ago. The man loves to hear her sing.”

  “He used to give me the willies,” Clarissa said, “but you know, he’s comforting. I’ve gotten used to him. He’s like an old friend who welcomes me every night.”

  Raymond’s eyebrow shot up. “Don’t get careless. He could be a weirdo.”

  She made buttermilk biscuits while Oscar revised the arrangement. “All you’re getting today is biscuits, ham, and apple pie. If I’m not careful, you fellas will move in with me just so you can eat.”

  “Yeah,” Raymond said under his breath. “Oscar’s subject to give up that deal he’s got at home so he can fill up on your biscuits. Man, ain’t no biscuits on earth that good.”

  She enjoyed their camaraderie and, working with them, she learned much about men. If I’d known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have wasted fifteen years of my life on Josh Medford, a loser even before he left his mother’s womb.

  That night, after the band played “‘Round Midnight,” it’s third and last warmup number, Clarissa walked out on the stage to the microphone, let her gaze sweep the audience as she usually did, and stopped. Mr. X was not in his usual seat. She scanned the place again as a hush settled over the patrons. He was not in the house. She gathered her aplomb and, after a minute, signaled Oscar to begin. But for the first time since she’d become a professional singer, she could hardly focus on her work.

 

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