Big Ed stuck his face through the change curtain. “Cops just come by. Don’t come in tomorrow. Having a little accident. Stagin’ a fire. Best take your costumes lest they get a little smoked up.”
“First you wanna fire me for not showin’ up,” Lizzie protested, “then you tell me don’t show up. Jesus, get me outta this joint!”
It took her an extra half hour to pack up her stuff. The morning was already bright when she curled up next to Cinnamon. With her knees pulled in, Cinn took up a full cushion’s length of Elma’s couch. Lizzie snuggled under the covers and tried to cradle her daughter in the crevice of her shoulder. Cinnamon frowned and grunted, stretched in her sleep and did a full turn. As her shallow breathing settled back into heavy slumber, her chubby fingers kneaded her mother’s breast, still playing the piano game.
Lizzie had barely shut her eyes when Elma’s morning kitchen clatter awakened her. Lizzie shielded her face from the brightness of noise and sunlight coming from the kitchen. Cinnamon stood in the door frame eating a piece of toast, the red jam decorating her cheeks. Her baby was growing. Her wispy edges had given way to full plaits, two stubborn ram’s horns of hair. “She up, Mama El.”
Mama El? Lizzie swung her feet to the floor. When’d that start? A wave of toxins sloshed across her brain. She pitched forward, lowering her head between her legs.
Elma bustled into the small living room, her hard-soled shoes slapping against the bare wood floor. She shoved a cup of black coffee under Lizzie’s nose. “You nearly scared us to death! Gone two days again. Lizzie, I can’t take this!” Cinnamon dawdled behind Elma, clutching a piece of her dress, sucking on two of her fingers.
“Can we talk about this later? I need to get some sleep.”
“You need to get on your knees and pray.”
Lizzie bounced to the floor on her knees, scrunched her eyes, and held up her hands in supplication. “Dear Lord, please let me get two hours sleep before auditions this afternoon.”
“Go to church with me on Sunday.”
“All right already, Jesus!” She turned her face to the crack in the couch and threw the coverlet over her head.
Elma started to speak, but held her tongue. “Come on, Cinnamon. Let your mama get some rest.” Elma retreated to the kitchen, Cinn trailing behind her. Elma was encouraged by Cinnamon’s interaction with Jesse. Her son now was making sounds, and movement, though slight and spasmodic, was evident in his arms and legs. His mouth still seemed lazy, staying open dripping saliva, but his eyes, which used to be expressionless, now followed Cinnamon’s running form and even seemed, on occasion, to make and hold contact with her. She had found in the paper news of a specialist, “Neurology.” Just a paragraph at the end of the article mentioned his work with premature infants, who were sometimes slower in development. She had not considered that Jesse’s birth at seven months might have something to do with his condition. She didn’t know if the doctor would even see them now that he was three—if he would see them at all, the family being colored—but she was determined to find out. An office on Park Avenue. She would need money for that. More than Ray was making. After the fiasco with Landry, he had managed to join the carpenters’ union, passing for Irish again, but starting over with the least seniority. She had to find more money. She was thinking of asking her mother, but she was afraid. Afraid of Dora’s response and of Raymond’s.
Cinnamon and Jesse are getting along real fine. Elma composed a letter to Dora and Mah Bette in her head as she uncoiled her hair. Maybe I should write Francina, too.
She ran her fingers through the braid parts to loosen them and flipped her hair over the sink. She let Cinn stand on the stool beside her to watch. The ritual of washing her hair took hours. Snatches of thought flowed through Elma’s mind as the water flushed through the rivulets of locks, which were thickest at the nape of her neck, the ends curling around the drain. Cinn’s diligent little hands delighted in the silkiness and suds and the stories. “You should have seen it when I was a girl, Cinnamon. First year of college. We were forbidden to speak, not even to hold hands with a fellah. This hair, it ran down my back, so thick I could sit on it.” The little girl’s eyes widened with wonder, her fingers clutching the strands. Elma felt every move, remembering how Benna used to play with her braids and Gabby ask to comb it. She wrung the hair out like a thick slippery towel. You’re losing it, day by day. Broken bits all over the floor. Sweep, sweep it up ’fore somebody catch your soul, Mah Bette would say. Your crown and glory. Comin’ in white.
At the market that morning, maneuvering through the crowd, she had followed a young family, two women with several children, one child asleep in the second woman’s arms. As Elma stepped behind the group at the curb, the sleeping child calmly opened her eyes. They were a deep dark blue like Eudora’s. The women tried to steer the children through the crowd. Elma reached to help and felt dizzy, queasy, a slight pressure on her bladder. An elderly woman approached her. She spoke in another language, Polish perhaps. Elma didn’t understand the words, but their substance was clear. She was pregnant again. The young woman gathered her chicklets together and instructed them to stay close, crossing the street. This one will have eyes like Mama’s.
Dread mixed with hope. I will go to the hospital for the birthing this time. Perhaps if I had before. This one will go right. No more death. Mr. Rosario, from the family across the street, wore a red tie to protest his wife’s inability to bear children who lived. He wore it like a banner of mourning, driving the poor woman to hysterics. But Ray was silent, distant, withholding of both love and condemnation. He simply stayed away. Need to get on your knees and pray. You need to find yourself another church home.
After the embarrassment of Ray’s dismissal, Elma refused to attend Bethel at its new site. To her great consternation Ray swore he would never set foot in any church again. In concern for his hurt pride and in empathy with his anger, she had been lax in finding another place of worship. I’ll go to the Catholic church round the corner if I have to. Roof of God’s house over your head. The Madonna too had lost a child. Standing over the sink, she began to sing, “It’s me, Oh Lord, it’s me, Oh Lord, standin’ in the need of prayer!”
“Think I’m kickin’ up my heels, havin’ a good time. Eighteen hours a day, two-three gigs strung together! No hot water, damn!” Lizzie’s angry feet clomped up the stairs, the just opened bottle of bleach spilling over her hand, a towel haphazardly wrapped around her, the ends of her headscarf flapping in her face.
She found Elma combing through her long black hair, still damp, Cinnamon chattering beside her, “Tell me about the dance when you met Uncle Ray. When you paid the piano.”
“It’s played not paid, and why ain’t there no hot water whenever I need it?” Lizzie shouted, her arms flailing, the bleach for her freckles splashing to the floor.
“Lizzie, you know how long my hair takes,” Elma crooned plaintively as she tried to see her sister through the tangled mane over her eyes. “You know, forever. I used a whole bottle of soap.” She pointed with the comb to the row of neatly torn muslin strips on the table. “Still have to wind in all those rags. Ray likes me to look like Mary Pickford.”
“Oh grow up. That chippie is a hundred years old. You should cut it. Be modern!”
Lizzie stomped out of the apartment, slammed the door behind her, and sat on the steps. Miss Tavineer poked her head out of the lower apartment to see if the coast was clear. Cinnamon scooted from the apartment above and, balancing herself along the wall, quickly conquered the steep stairs winding toward her mother. Lizzie’s frowning face rested in her fists. Cinnamon’s strong, pudgy fingers tugged at her arms. “Mommy, Mommy. Pay piano on my tummy.”
“Mommy don’t wanna pay piano. Mommy cain’t pay piano. That’s the problem. But you know what? Your daddy used to say one man’s problem is another man’s opportunity. We gon get you a real piano, Cinnamon Turner. And a telephone!” she hollered over her shoulder at the shut front door. “Why I got to have the
only fam’ly stuck in the nineteenth cint’ry?”
Lizzie regarded her recent calamities as a temporary loss of her luck, a missed fortune, as one would arrive at the subway platform just as the train pulled away. A dash of anger with a kick of her shoe, a few expletives, and complete confidence that another train with your letter on it would follow shortly. She didn’t need prayer. A true god would not rob Osceola of his future. A real god would not snatch Jim Europe from his victory tour, wouldn’t let her father vanish, or make her pregnant by a bastard like Deke Turner. A rightful god wouldn’t give her a child she wanted to love and hated to look at. Any moment could draw her back in. To the rage. Any setting—a lonely crossroad, an abandoned depot, a crowded sidewalk, a department store counter, a bank teller’s line, a bus stop—could set her off. At any moment—like no hot water! No burden of a three-hundred-pound cotton sack or lash across her back, but the wounds, nonetheless, could reopen and stretch into ugly, daggered, stinging gashes, emptying her of anything but fury. Toughened with methods minus the understanding, Lizzie kept moving. Never slow down, never get caught, never surrender. She stepped onto the street and hollered up to the window, “God helps those that help themselves!”
Her suitcase of costumes and sheet music weighed on her arm like a coffin. It was only mid-day, too early to head back uptown to Big Ed’s. She told her feet to take her somewhere. They pointed downtown, discovering random Manhattan worlds along the way. She spotted the great Bert Williams standing beneath a Broadway marquee, deep in thought, his long arms laced behind his back. Least I’m not the only one with troubles. “Though his kind I wouldn’t mind much havin’,” she talked back to herself, “Ziegfeld Follies, now that I wouldn’t mind.”
The library was flanked with banners announcing a new exhibit related to the unearthing of Tutankhamen’s tomb. “The Sun King, buried a thousand years,” she read. “You and me both, buddy. Tut, tut, tut,” she scatted. Her feet echoed with body music, a listless ball-and-jack blues. Miller and Lyle’s Colored Revue Runnin’ Wild had a matinee. “Best seats a dollah fifty . . . shit, a whole night’s pay.” She wandered on, contemplating her next move. “Tut, tut, tut. Lizzie May Winrow’s inna rut, runnin’ wild, goin’ nowhere.”
She noted Valentino had a new movie, The Sheik, but going to the cinema only brought back memories of sneaking into the Bijoux, poppin’ redhots in the balcony, gettin’ hot lips. Oh Ossie, how I’m to do this on my own? She was twenty-two and the world was passing her by. Other colored performers were making it. Cars, jewels, and maids, and what am I doing? Still making my own costumes! Sure, Sparrow always had an audition lined up, the next big revue. An out-of-town tryout like the last one. “Bombed royally in Camden, no less. Who the hell plays in Camden?” she said out loud. Like the rest of the crew, she had to make her way back to New York on her own. Back up to Big Ed’s, beggin’ for her spot. Just like her dancin’, she kept spinnin’ around and finding herself right back where she was.
The day was overcast and the air misty. Droplets floated upwards, the soft drizzle wreaking havoc with her marcel. “Damn!” She stopped to check the damage in the Macy’s store window on 34th Street. The mannequins were bedecked in the new flapper styles, flat breasts and skirts halfway up the leg, bowed square-heeled shoes. Being modern was going to cost her a whole new wardrobe. She could alter the clothes she had. At least she knew how to do that. Mama would be thrilled my sewin’ skills come in handy.
Through the glass she saw that copper, bouncing on his heels, across the street, just waiting to make his move. Ever since that day at Penn Station, he always had somethin’ to say to her. Them both bein’ redheads, each was easy to spot. She hurried along, weaving among the pedestrians, unconsciously arriving at her destiny, 28th Street, from the East to the West, the meat market of America’s music—cannibals all we be! Tin Pan Alley!
From each gold-plate-lettered window, upright player pianos competed with crooners sampling their wares. From show tunes to shimmies, carnival barking pitchmen competed, enticing any would-be buyer with the next great hit. True to its name, the strip of publishers and professional pluggers of sheet music sounded to the untrained ear like the din of a thousand tin pans. Lizzie was baffled by the myriad company monikers. She wondered which one that foul Mitch Jackson had been to and how many other songs of her’s and Ossie’s he had hocked. When if ever I see him, he’ll get a piece of what for, for sure! But she was hestitant. She battled with herself. These are Osceola’s and mine. How can I sell what belongs to both of us? Ours together.
The internal debate resolved when she spied Lew Leslie, choreographer and stage manager at Rhone’s and the new club called the Cane Break. He walked right past her into Axleton Bros., accompanied by three short, square-shouldered gents, their fedora hats pulled low over sallow white faces. Gangsters! I shouldn’t go up there without Sparrow. Oh what the heck! Everybody’s a little illegal.
She followed the quartet, catching the tail end of their conversation, “We gotta have new songs for the revue. The club just opening, it needs to be something the people ain’t heard before. Somethin’ Queen can cover. Snappy, like that,” snap, snap, snap.
“That be ‘Cotton Patch Rag,’ ” Lizzie blurted as she followed them through the door. Two fedoras whipped around, flaring their jackets, each with a trigger finger to the rib, poised to draw a weapon from a side holster.
Lizzie froze and blinked a lot. The sidemen dropped their hands to their hips as she patted her bangs to the side, blotting her brow. Leslie, a short, cosmopolitan Jew, sat on the edge of the desk, glinting through a funnel of blue cigarette smoke.
“I’m here to sell a song,” Lizzie continued. “I got just the one for you. Perfect for your revue.” He had a high forehead, big ears, and one blind eye. The other, sharp and instantly assessing, made up for it. “Mayfield Turner.” She stuck out her hand.
“This is Mr. Meeks and his associates, Mr. Edwards and Mr. McPherson. I’m—”
“Lew Leslie, I know. I auditioned for you once . . . a while back.”
“Yes, I recall. Tolbert and Cobbs. You had that rather unusual brawl.”
“Mm, well, today I have just the song you been looking for—as good as ‘Cotton Patch,’ if not bettuh.” She launched into an a capella teaser:
“Oh, oh, oh, baby
I musta been a little bit crazy
To think that I could talk to my baby
When she been cryin’ the blues
Oh, oh, oh, baby
My memory’s just a little bit hazy,
But I just was wonderin’ if maybe
It ever happened to you . . .”
“Not bad. I like it. Kinda snappy,” said the one called Mr. Meeks. His skin was bilious, she noted without looking directly at him, and his nose had been broken several times. She knew this to be Cappy Meeks, the East Side thug who had muscled his way into Jolly’s shop as well as much of Midtown and who now was huffin’ and puffin’ at Harlem. The former Calvin Murkowsky got his name for his penchant for capping his competitors and debtors in the knees. His clothes had gotten better and he had been taking skin treatments, but he had no lips.
Leslie flicked his cigarette. “That your portfolio?”
“My wh—? Oh, yes!” Lizzie responded and popped open the weathered bag and unbound her charts.
“Twine and waxpaper. Cute.” They were leering, making fun of her. Her blood was pumping so heavy she could feel her temples. “We don’t see too many chickies peddlin’ music, doll,” Meeks cracked. “How do we know you didn’t just rob those off your boyfriend?”
Lizzie glared at him and said flatly, “I wrote these with my husband. He was killed in the war. The lyrics are mine. The arrangement is his. The songs belong to both of us.”
“Touching,” Leslie said as he picked up the song titled “Crazy Love” to examine it, the ash of the cigarette threatening to fall.
“The war,” Meeks scoffed and sniffed, “that’s ancient history, sistuh. Things gotta be
uptempo—you know, jazzed.” He snapped his fingers spasmodically.
“Tempo ain’t nothin’,” she clipped. “I mean you can always change that. One-step, two-step, foxtrot, tango—nothin’ but time. It’s the melody has to be catchy. Every single one of these is a hit. If you like ‘Cotton Patch,’ I know you’ll like these. I been workin’ ’em down at the Turf Club.”
“Turf Club,” one of the sidemen said without moving his lips. “They don’t allow no whites. Too exclusive.” His boss choked off his laugh with a glance.
“Open up a practice room, Lew.” Meeks’s off-hand command was crisp. “Let’s see what she got.”
“Anything for the war effort,” Leslie added snidely. “It’s Queen, you know, has to like it.”
“It’s me has to like it first. What’s your name again, doll?” Meeks inquired.
“Mayfield Turner.”
“Okay, May, let’s see what you got.”
She had not anticipated success. She had no clue of what she would perform. Their heels echoed on the marble floors. A dissonant array of sounds wanting to be music richocheted off the walls and collided with a clatter of noisy, urgent, loud-mouthed voices. All male. Beyond a couple of silent, suspicious, mascara’d secretaries wearing too much powder, she was the only woman in the building.
They entered a room at the end of the hall. The door glass was frosted, the room was musty and close. It contained only a beat-up brown upright piano and a couple of folding chairs. No dancin’ routine here. One errant aerial kick and she’d be out the window. Instinctively, Leslie sat on the sill. His persistent cigarette ash folded over in an annoying defiance of gravity. The others leaned over the top of the upright as the last to enter shut the door behind him. She didn’t like the closeness. Memories swarmed in on her. “I play standing up,” she said, shoving the piano stool back toward them with her foot. “Have a seat.”
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