by Kim Echlin
One of my peas sailed all the way across. Ma was leaving her night shift at the hotel and she waved up at me and called, Well you must be bored!
I went down to sit on the steps with her. She smoked and talked, said Bea’s feet were like mine, and Jimmie was too busy, and Dexter was serious like a businessman and then she asked, How’re the holy rollers?
She was lonely, like me. I said, They pay the rent. Ma, I’m bored playing churches and school gyms. I want to be on the jazz scene.
She looked across Gore Park, past Queen Victoria, said, Don’t complain, Katie, you’ve had it all.
The Palace was emptying after the last show, Lilies of the Field, and a contented crowd moved out into the street under the lights of the marquee. Ma’s words went in like a thin blade. I had a money-making talent, kids no one took away, a lover who was not in China. But I felt like a caged creature.
She said, Did you hear Ellen Fairclough’s not running again?
Who’s that?
She’s only the first girl cabinet minister.
I said, Ma, the jazz scene is in New York. I have to get myself there.
She stubbed out her cigarette and said, You got three kids. You’ll never do that now.
I put in six more years in Hamilton. When I could get a babysitter I took the bus into Toronto and walked to Yorkville and checked out the folk scene at the Riverboat and the Purple Onion and the Night Owl. The papers called the street a sore on the city and said that young people had lost touch with Christianity and all the meaningful values of life. Clayton Ruby and Paul Goodman set up a free legal clinic called the Village Bar to help the hippies have their sit-ins which Ma and I thought was funny. My old friend Ronnie was putting together bands and partying it up. The hippies made him honorary mayor and he said he didn’t need honours, he needed lots of pussy. I asked him, What’s with the go-go girls at the Mynah Bird? He said, There’s something about girls in cages that men like. But he didn’t have any work for me so I went down to George’s Jazz Room and Doug Riley was playing organ and when he took a break, I got up and played, and later Doug jammed with me.
A guy in the audience said, I like your playing. Come to Rochester to the Rowntowner Motel next weekend. I’m helping Marian McPartland start a label. I’ll introduce you.
I was thinking about my kids and how the hell did I expect to get myself down to Rochester, but I said I’d come. I had to run like crazy to make the last bus to Hamilton because in a few hours I’d be rushing out the door to play Sunday services for the Baptists. Dexter liked going. He liked being anywhere he could learn something and he had asked me how Thomas could put his fingers through a dead man’s hands and he wanted to discuss god and why we should believe what we can’t see. I told him there are lots of things he can’t see that he should believe. I was thinking about that on the Greyhound bus and I was also thinking, If you don’t get yourself to Rochester and meet people and get a break, you’re going to be a nobody and feel bitter.
The next Saturday night, Ma couldn’t babysit and I couldn’t get anyone else either. I decided to put Dexter in charge, and I told him I’d be back about four in the morning and to stay in bed and keep the others in bed too. He was nine years old and I felt bad about it. It was the first time I ever left him.
I borrowed Harold’s car, a big Studebaker, and I didn’t have a driver’s licence but I learned to drive with T in the band’s car. The Rowntowner was in the Henrietta suburb along with automobile dealerships and shopping malls. I walked into the Monticello Room around eleven and everything was cooking. Marian McPartland was finishing her set with her trio, a drummer who had played with Thelonious Monk, Ben Riley and bassist Michael Moore. Marian had this accent that was half English and half jazz and when she said “cats” and “groove” she sounded like royalty. Her face was long and she had a strong nose and blond bangs and shy, assessing eyes and she could play anything. She was inventing rhythms and harmonies and that night Alec Wilder came in and tossed her a sheet of music with a piece he wrote for her, “Jazz Waltz for a Friend.” She listened to me play and she liked my style.
She said, I left England with Jimmy and we entertained the troops during the war. When I left home, my mother said, You’ll end up in a cold attic.
She laughed. Mother was right.
Jimmy drank a lot and Marian divorced him and things started to fall apart when her record label dropped her. Everyone was listening to rock and roll, and jazz was getting pushed aside and women in jazz were getting pushed further. Journalists wrote that women couldn’t blow, beat and slap an instrument like a man, that jazz needed a strong, aggressive hand, not one that rocks the cradle. But Marian wasn’t taking any of that. She had this repertoire inside her and she knew everyone. She did not care if you were a man or a woman or black or white or anything else. She only cared how you played.
She said, I am starting a new company and I’m going to call my label Halcyon. Those are the birds that calmed the seas to lay their eggs on floating nests. Isn’t that beautiful? Sherman Fairchild offered me the money and a studio. He’s got two gold Steinways.
I said, I want to record.
Marian said, Why not? Come to New York. When I get my label going, I can record you. Some women buy hats. I start record companies.
It was already three in the morning. I watched the sun rise on the drive home and I took the car back to the Connaught. Dexter’s small face was in the window looking for me. I felt bad, he looked little and frightened. When I came in the door he asked solemnly, Did you get the gig? I told him I did and he said, That was my first time.
Your first time what?
Taking care of you.
I had to turn away, so he would not see my tear of exhaustion and love and the sorrow of eternally imperfect mothering.
First thing Monday morning I went over to the Connaught and found Harold.
He said, Hello, Mrs. Goodnow. You’re up early.
I’m moving to New York, Harold. Time to clean the mirror. I want to get there soon.
Katie, I don’t book jazz.
I’m not asking you to. I want a ride.
You leaving Jenny and your kids?
I’m taking my kids. Ma’s got her own life.
I just lent you my car.
C’mon, Harold, two days, one down and one back. And a driver and a U-Haul.
He stood up and turned around pretending to move some paper but I knew he was thinking. When I felt him talking himself out of it I started in again.
Please, Harold, help me get there. Ronnie’s got a million cars, borrow one of his. I’m gonna make a record. A producer promised me.
What ya wanna move there for? Go and do it and come back.
Who’s gonna take care of my kids?
Got a contract?
You want to move in and take care of my kids?
Katie, what makes you think he’ll even recognize you when you get there? He was probably trying to get in your pants.
The producer’s a woman. Never mind, go to hell. I’ll take them on the bus.
MAHSA
What were you doing in my closet?
Monique held out the boot from the back of my closet where I hid my money. She said, You need a bank account.
But why were you in there?
Looking for a pair of shoes to borrow. You can’t leave your money like this. Someone like me could steal it and besides you could be getting interest.
What’s interest?
She took my hand and pulled me out of the bedroom.
Then she slipped on her jacket and still holding my boot, ran outside and said, Catch me! I chased her all the way to Sherbrooke and we were both laughing when she stopped at a corner with three banks and she asked, Which one?
The Royal Bank building had attractive lions standing on their hind legs carved into stone, so I pointed to that one and Monique said, Good choice. That’s where I bank too. Then she ran inside and put my boot on the counter and said in French, This girl wants to op
en a bank account. The teller said, She needs her father’s signature.
She’s from Pakistan and her father’s dead. Her uncle pays everything. I want to talk to the manager.
The teller looked at me and said, Why don’t you talk?
Monique said, Her French is bad. Then she dumped out my boot full of small bills and change in front of him and said, She needs a chequing account and she is going to be here for four years.
The manager came over because Monique was making a scene and said, If she wants an account her father must sign for her.
Monique said, Monsieur, she is from Pakistan and her father is dead. If you can’t take her money we will take her boot to the bank across the street.
He placed his tongue between his teeth and squeezed down as if he were in pain, then he sighed dramatically and nodded to the teller.
I had never written a cheque. I began to giggle when they shook the toe of the boot to see if there were any more bills stuck inside and then they counted my money. Monique started to laugh too.
On the sidewalk I asked, Why did you do that?
It is the only way to get your own account. I had to do it too. Anyway, it’s fun.
This way of thinking was new.
*
Rockhead’s Paradise had the longest bar I had ever seen, with big chandeliers hanging from the ceiling that might have made it feel elegant except for the smells of stale cigarette smoke and spilled beer and the sweat of men and women. Uptown hotels were like Karachi, but this place belonged to the neighbourhood of Little Burgundy. It was at the corner of Montagne and Saint-Antoine, down by the railway station. I went because I heard Paul Bley was playing.
After the show I went up to him and asked, How do you get to play here?
He asked, You play?
Yes.
Let’s hear.
So I sat down and played and I was used to clinking glasses and talking and I pumped it out. I had learned a few tricks like bending over the keyboard so my hair was falling forward and the skin on my back was revealed because Monique told me it looked very sexy. I was playing strong and I heard with relief the moment when the chatter dies down and the crowd is listening. Someone asked for “You Don’t Know What Love Is” and I played it.
When I was finished, Paul Bley said, If you need bread you can get two gigs a night on this street. The Black Bottom bar is in a basement down the block. Across the road, there’s Café St-Michel.
I’d read about Rockhead’s, about all the greats who played there, but I was twenty years out of date. The manager came out and asked Paul, Who’s she?
I’m looking for work, I said.
He was a bulky, muscular man who could clear a room if he needed to. I felt like a paper doll beside him. I straightened my back and said, I play the Ritz.
He laughed and said, Well, la-di-dah, de Ritz. Anyway, I like your playing.
I felt something not quite safe in there, but I did not know what it was and I wanted to play. The neighbourhood around Rockhead’s was tired. The bars along the street used to be classy, with jazz acts like Armstrong and Holiday. But that was a long time ago. I made good tips at Rockhead’s. The men who went liked to watch a young woman in a sari with a bare midriff. I was exotic. I could not always understand the French of the girls who worked there but we were friendly with each other because we were all doing the same thing, earning money, serving men, matching ourselves to the night. I learned the dark rhythms of those places. Most men went there to drink and get some sex if they could. I was fair game and I had to learn to be aware of how men were watching. At the end of my first night, I picked up my tips and wrapped my coat around me and headed for the door but the bouncer grabbed my elbow. I jerked my arm away and banged his hand against the door jamb.
Doucement, I’m not doing anything, he said, rubbing his thumb. You’re not walking home alone.
It’s not far.
He stepped out the front door, whistled for a cab, said, Get in. Écoute.
And he paid the driver for me. I learned that the first hour I played was cab fare and when I complained about this Monique said, That’s your overhead. You’re a professional.
She thought it was funny and brave that I was working on Saint-Antoine. She said, Your French is getting better.
I said, My playing too. I can do an hour without repeating a song now.
When I got home, Monique was usually up with her actor friends. She’d call, Here’s Mahsa, she knows every topless bar in Montreal, and I’d say, They’re not topless, they’re jazz bars. I didn’t feel ashamed, I liked it. One dawn Monique was making crepes with gouda cheese and strawberry jam and everyone was talking about where they came from, what their parents did, Baie Comeau and the paper mills, the north end of Montreal and the rag trade, Sherbrooke and business.
What about you Mahsa. Where’re you from?
Oh, you would not know Karachi, it is a port city.
That’s near Afghanistan, non? What about your parents?
They died in a car accident. My father was a water engineer.
How could they understand? Everyone was a bit stoned or drunk. Afghanistan was the hippie trail. No one knew about East Pakistan or the people who would become the Mohajirs. They talked feminism and civil rights and Vietnam. Some had heard of Bhutto. Islam to them meant Muhammad Ali and Black Power and a clenched fist. They knew nothing of the tribes of my mother or honour or hospitality. I did not tell them my father was American. They sometimes talked about Quebecers and separatism and who was pure wool and who was not, as if they did not notice I was there. I did not think about being different most of the time because I did not care. These were my friends and we passed each other coffee and we talked and talked and they admired my music and I was making money playing and this was good enough for me. Always I had been different.
KATHERINE
Harold sent me a car and a U-Haul and his favourite roadie, soft-voiced Bill Carling. I loaded up my four mattresses and a kitchen table and five chairs and a box of crockery and four big boxes of our clothes and our television and record player. The heaviest box was the records. Jimmie was carrying his peashooter because Ma told him New York City was dangerous. Bill Carling did not grumble and he did not say, I’m not a moving man. He said, It’s another gig, and that made me feel better and Baby Bea asked, Are we going on a gig? She and Jimmie were running back and forth helping like crazy, singing, New York, New York but Dexter was sullen. He did not want to leave his school where his favourite teacher told him he should be a lawyer. I told him we were going to be closer to Daddy and said he could study to be a lawyer in New York and asked didn’t he like our great big red drop-top Cadillac?
Ma stopped by on the way home from work. She said to Dexter, You help your brother and sister, and to Jimmie, You behave, and to Bea, You stay nice. She did not say much to me but she handed me an envelope which I did not open. We chafed against each other and talked to each other every day and now I was going the hell away. I was getting free. I said, Bye, Ma, I’ll bring the kids back in the summer to visit. Then I gave her a hug and said, I’m rooting for you.
I’m rooting for you too, Katie.
I was scared to death but it was too late now. We all climbed in and slid around on the white leather and I wondered how many rockabilly girl fans had put out to musicians in that backseat.
Wave goodbye to the steel mills, I said to the kids, as we headed for the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge, then through to Syracuse and into a Howard Johnson’s with a red roof and a sign that said 28 Flavors.
Bill said, Time to feed these kids, and I said, Bill, I packed lunch, I don’t have money for restaurants, and he answered, Don’t you worry, somebody left some money in this glovebox. I started to relax and feel like a celebrity driving around and having money to eat in restaurants, and I guess we were a bit of a picture, me with my black permed hair and my three brown-eyed kids and the old roadie. The kids ate hamburgers and I had my first fried clams, and then we all meditated a
long time on the abundant flavours of ice cream and Dexter chose macaroon which Bill congratulated him on as adventurous, and Jimmie had frozen pudding and Bea took strawberry which the boys told her she could have at home but she said she wanted something she at least knew she liked.
As we stood watching them eat, Bill handed me a cigarette and lit it for me though I did not smoke and the last half of the trip, I was smoking Bill’s cigarettes in the open car and we were singing and reading aloud the American signs and looking at American corner stores that sold liquor, passing through Mount Pocono and Stroudsburg and the Oranges and Jersey City and Hoboken and I was thinking, What am I doing? and How am I going to manage in New York City with three kids, am I crazy? I said to Bill, I’ve got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. What’s New York like, anyway?
We stopped one more time and while the kids were in the bathroom Bill pulled out a joint and gave me some too. He said, Things go the way they are meant to. You’ll be fine.
Next we were seeing the Empire State Building and the Woolworth Building and the Waldorf Astoria and I was feeling freer, lighter, happier than I had since Dexter was born. On the Brooklyn Bridge Bill asked, Where to, lady? How ’bout the Plaza? I hear there’s good jazz there.
Bea shouted from the back, Eloise and Weenie!
Bill said, Well?
I said, I haven’t got a clue.
About what?
About where next.
Bill paid a guy to watch the car and the U-Haul when he dropped us at the Y on Times Square and he said to me, The car’s the only thing worth stealing.
I said, Can you stay with the kids in the morning while I go and find an apartment?
He shook his head and smiled the funny way he did when we were driving together and I knew he liked us. Lots of people liked me and my kids together, and I knew that he wanted to get back to Hamilton and I was taking advantage of his goodwill and whatever money Harold had paid him.