Some Sing, Some Cry

by Ntozake Shange

  “Where in God’s name have you been? I’ve been up worried all night long. I won’t have this behavior goin’ on in my house, Memphis. And, Esther, don’t you think for a minute that this doesn’t apply to you, too.”

  The girls murmured, “Yes, m’am.” But Memphis did manage to pull her share of the prize money from her pocket.

  “Look, Mama. This is what we won last night in the talent contest at the Ebony Club. A hundred dollars! We were the best. Professional!”

  “That’s true, Mrs. Minor,” Esther blurted.

  “Well, I don’t care if it’s a million dollars! You don’t know what you’re getting yourselves into. Just ask Cinnamon what it’s like. Her mother, my sister, is as good an example as you can get. Traipsing around the world, ignoring everybody and everything near and dear to a decent woman!”

  Cinnamon heard the reference to her mother and her back went rigid. “Mama El, would you please leave me out of this. Memphis made her own choice. I was home in time, so I’m not in this mess. Please, Mama El.”

  “Here, Mama, take the money. You and Papa go out for a fine night on the town or get something for the house. Don’t you see I can help out now?”

  Elma’s face hardened and she felt her voice coming from the pit of her stomach, “We don’t want your money. We want you decent! Now get out of my sight! Get to your room and get out those hussy clothes and face paint right now! You too, Esther.”

  Memphis decided not to fight with her mother. She put the money away and headed for her room. Esther thought it might be a good time to get to her own house. Elma pushed her toward the phone. “Esther, act like you got some sense and call your mother before she calls here looking for you again.”

  Cinnamon was amused at the terrible trouble her Mayfield Sisters were in. She waltzed downstairs to check with Elma about whether or not she was presentable for the panel at Juilliard that morning. “How do I look, Mama?”

  “Why, you look lovely, Cinnamon. I’ve got salmon, grits, and eggs ready for you, right here.”

  “No thank you. I can’t sing on a full stomach.”

  “Nobody said for you to eat everything in the pot, just enough to keep your energy up for the audition. You gotta eat somethin’.”

  “I’ll eat just a little bit. Salmon and grits always reminds me of Nana and Ma Bette. That’s a good omen. Yes, sirree. That’s an omen. Don’t you think?”

  “I won’t have you dragging me into the magic that Ma Bette haunted the Charleston wharf with, nor will I let you be putting spells on those jurors at Juilliard. Just trust in the Lord and the glory of your God-given voice and everything will be fine.”

  Meanwhile, Memphis and Esther, who were terribly hungry, came to the top of the stairs.

  “Cinnamon, Cinnamon, can you come up here for a minute?”

  “Not till I finish eating.” She might have added not till I finish my daydreams about that Baker Johnson. Thoughts and tickles about Baker Johnson mingled with phrases from Madame Butterfly and Carmen.

  “You want some coffee, Cinnamon?”

  “No, Mama El, thanks, but I’d really prefer tea and honey. I’ve got a huge day coming up. Oops, I’ve got to go right now. I can’t be late for Madame Olivetsky. She’ll have a fit.”

  “Well, I think that woman works you too hard.”

  “But Mama El, she’s the best. And she only takes the best. Doesn’t care what color they are.”

  “I know that, sweetheart, I just hope she’s done right by you.”

  “I love her, Mama El, but not as much as I love you.”

  “I’ll be praying for you all day, Cinnamon.”

  Cinnamon rushed to gather her things and was out the door.

  With Cinnamon tended to, Elma shouted upstairs, “You two come on down here for some breakfast. I want to hear all about last night.” Memphis and Esther ran towards Elma’s voice, hungry and full of chatter.

  “Oh, my little black cherub, how glad I am to see you on this day of opportunity for you. Come, come, let’s get you warmed up for this morning, no?” Madame Olivetsky was almost as excited as Cinnamon. After going through scales in virtually every key Madame Olivetsky could think of, she asked Cinnamon for her arias.

  “Remember to breathe and enunciate, then bleed the next phrase into the last, like magic.”

  Cinnamon sang from Madame Butterfly and Carmen. Then . . .

  “Excellent, excellent,” Madame Olivetsky cooed. “I see no way they could deny you, a girl with such talent, such depth.”

  For once Cinnamon left Madame Olivetsky’s with compliments ringing in her ears. She had a few minutes before the audition. The school was on Claremont Avenue, near the river in Upper Manhattan. She decided to walk a while through Riverside Park. The winter air would relax her, keep her lungs open and her mind clear. The bare trees swayed in the wind. Cinn could almost see the future spring blossoms dancing from their limbs, leaving halos of pastels round her head. She missed the comfort of the South, the warmth of her grandmother’s parlor. Auditions and the waiting time before performance always riled her.

  That first year in Charleston, the first time she was asked to perform at the highbrow Episcopal church, her grandmother, so proud, had made her a dress of powder blue chintz and organza. Set against her skin, it made her glow. She stepped in the powder room to sneak one more look at herself and overheard two girls chattering in the stalls.

  “Songbird, they say, the bird girl. Look like uh ugly old black bird, uh fat black crow.”

  “Well, you know her mother was a tramp. Ain’t no telling who her daddy was, black as she is, could be the Devil.”

  Her grandmother’s spirit steeled her then. “What do you mean you don’t feel like singin’. All these people waitin’? You look at me. You look at me!” Those piercing blue eyes, white streaks in her still-abundant hair giving her the countenance of the American eagle. “Don’t you ever let anyone throw you off your course. These old biddies ain’t worth nothin’, ain’t got nothin’ to do but pick at you like some rice birds pickin’ at grain. Don’t know nothin’, ain’t been nowhere, ain’t goin’ nowhere either. You are from New York. Your mother is a star in Europe. Your father was a war hero. And your great-great-grandmamma held a lot of respect in this town. In the middle of this Depression, people come from all over the country to honor her. What those girls got? Nothin’ but talk. You have a voice. Now go on out there. Everything gon be all right.”

  Buoyed by her grandmother’s words, Cinnamon joyfully climbed the steps to the main building of Juilliard, wondering what kind of art the young men and women passing by were studying. Imagine being surrounded by others seeking the best, the most beautiful, not pretty, but beautiful truth from themselves all day long. Cinnamon was close to tears as she approached Room 311, where the audition was to be held.

  Her performance went splendidly. All four judges were smiling as they took notes and whispered to each other. Cinnamon tried to cram her two years of study with Madame Olivetsky into each note. Her phrasing was impeccable, her passion great. The committee actually clapped after her performance. One of the judges said, “Miss Turner, you’ll be hearing from us. And thank you so very, very much.” They shook hands and Cinnamon was out the door, flying, it seemed to her, on the power of her own breath.

  “You’ll be hearing from us,” that’s what the man said. Cinnamon heard his voice in her head as she made her way through the crowds on Broadway. She wanted to tell everybody, everybody in Harlem, everybody in the Bronx, everybody in New York. Everybody! “I’m one colored girl who’s going to sing opera. Yes, I am, I am.” It occurred to her that she wanted to tell Baker Johnson more than anyone. How peculiar. See a man one night and want to share your greatest joy with him.

  23

  A few weeks later, Cinnamon was headed from one choir coaching job to the next when she walked by that neighborhood variety store—the HELP WANTED sign was still there! If only she could bundle all of her part-time jobs into one consistent positio
n of employment. Confident and hopeful, she went to the personnel office to inquire about the position. If she was to go to Juilliard she would need a way to earn a living. The store clerk ignored her. Finally Cinnamon said, “Excuse me, I’m here about the pianist position in the sheet music department.”

  “What about it?” the clerk asked without looking up.

  “I’d like to apply for it.”

  “Oh, you can’t. I mean you might as well not. We don’t hire colored. Except for the stockroom and ain’t no openin’s there.”

  Cinnamon looked quickly around the store. The clerk was white. All of the store employees were white, but all of the customers in the store at the time were Negro. “What do you mean you don’t hire colored?” Cinnamon snapped.

  “No need to get uppity, missy. It’s company policy. Can’t help you.”

  “Uppity?”

  “Just fill out the form,” the clerk sighed. “When there’s uh opening for a sweeper or a cleaning woman,” he said snidely, “we’ll call you.”

  Cinnamon turned on her heel and stalked out the door, letting it slam behind her. Against her own will, Cinnamon pushed herself to go back into the store to buy something there for the last time: two cardboard sheets, some twine, and crayons. Right in front of the store, she knelt on the sidewalk and scribbled out a sign, then attached the two boards with twine and hung her handmade protest poster over her neck. DON’T BUY WHERE YOU CAN’T WORK! Inspired by the young Reverend Adam Clayton Powell’s protest campaigns in Harlem, she staged her own picket line, repeating the words with vigor as she walked back and forth in front of the store. The day was nearing rush hour. As a few onlookers headed home from work began to gather, she added a personal touch to the campaign. She sang Madame Butterfly at the top of her lungs.

  “Davver? Non piango più

  E quasi del ripudio mon mi duole

  Per le vostre parole

  Che mi suonan così dolci nel cor.”

  People looked at her funny. Some stopped to listen and moved on. A few scurried by with fright. Others shouted for her to carry on.

  “That’s the truth, girl!”

  “Sistah, you doin’ right.”

  Another voice said firmly, “I didn’t know you had it in you.” It was Baker Johnson with his trumpet case, smiling with pride at this determined young woman he had met in the back halls of a nightclub. Baker unpacked his trumpet and began to echo her phrasing. Cinnamon’s mood switched easily. What had been sung with a vengeance was now sung with tenderness. Baker Johnson surprised Cinnamon with his knowledge of the piece. So he wasn’t just another jazz musician after all. Protesting injustice, the two were discovering each other.

  While Baker took a solo turn, Cinnamon spoke to the small crowd. “Only allowed to clean and sweep, just because I’m colored? I’m not qualified to work in the music department?” She was about to launch into the next part of the aria when a colored woman looking quite grand approached. “Young lady, young lady, I don’t want to interrupt your demonstration, but if you are looking for a place to work—well, my name is Mary Cardwell Dawson of the National Negro Opera Company, and we’d love to have you and your accompanist here join us. We could use you. Why sell sheet music when you can sing opera like that? Here’s my card.”

  Cinnamon brightened with disbelief—what a day! When the lights went out in Walbaum’s and the locks were being put on, a policeman and a security guard came along to make sure those two crazy Negroes went about their business. Baker wanted to tell them where they could go, but Cinnamon calmed him. Said she had news. So he packed up his instrument and kept an eye out for any move the policeman and the security guard might make toward Cinnamon, but they seemed satisfied the two itinerant coloreds were moving on.

  “Cinnamon, whatever got in your head to protest by singing opera?” Baker asked as he took her signs off and hugged her gently to him. “What did those people do to you?”

  Cinnamon shrugged her shoulders. “Treated me like an ordinary nigger is what they did. It wasn’t even uh they, it was a single old white man, wouldn’t even look at me. But don’t even waste a minute on that old geezer. Guess what happened? You’ll never even believe it! I’m telling you, Ma Bette is working for me today! My Nana always said, ‘Your own people will open more doors for you than any other folks.’ My audition at Juilliard went perfectly, and then a woman tells me there’s a Negro Opera Company she wants us to work with. Isn’t that wonderful, Baker?”

  Baker took a step back. “Cinnamon, I’m already working. I work with Fletcher Henderson, or did you forget?”

  “Oh, no, I didn’t forget, but this is something we could do together.”

  “If you’d listened to Memphis, we could be together. She talked Fletcher into givin’ her a tryout spot. She’s such a go-getter. Might be singin’ with the band every night! The Mayfield Sisters,” he laughed, “all three of you are somethin’ else! Poor Esther’s got Todd Lindsey so enthralled, he wants her to marry him and raise five kids. They hardly even know each other.”

  “Oh don’t say that, Baker, cause then that would mean I hardly know you, and I feel like we’ve known each other forever.”

  “I know that’s right, but we’re married to our music and through the music we’re married to each other, you see?” Cinnamon didn’t quite see, but she let it slide. “Let’s head back to Harlem to Wells’ Restaurant,” he said. “I’ll treat you to some chicken and waffles, how’s that sound?”

  “That’s just what I need. I need to celebrate, Baker, don’t you think?”

  “Nobody deserves it more, angel face.”

  At Wells’, Baker and Cinnamon sat opposite each other, staring like one of them might disappear if they took their eyes off one another. They came up with a deal. If Cinnamon would sit in with him at the jazz club, then Baker would play with the opera company when his schedule allowed. Cinnamon agreed with this, thinking that Baker got the better part of the deal, but her heart wasn’t letting her argue the point. They’d come to some kind of arrangement. Chicken and waffles, swing and opera, and what she wanted all along, Baker’s attention.

  Everything was going smoothly until Baker said casually, “I didn’t know you were Mayfield Turner’s daughter.” At her look of surprise, he added, “Memphis told me.”

  “Yes, that’s my mother,” Cinnamon replied in a deadpan voice.

  “Well, don’t you have any plans to follow in her footsteps?”

  “No, I do not,” Cinnamon said in a voice suggesting that this conversation end quickly. I like shoes. I have no intention of bouncing around barefoot and naked with a bunch of bananas.

  “I guess I’ve said something wrong, huh?”

  “Yes. No, I mean—it’s just very complicated. I tend not to talk about my mother.”

  “But Cinnamon, with a voice like yours! Why, yours is the sweetest of all the Mayfield Sisters. They should kiss your feet, carrying them the way you do. You’re the natural lead. Even when you sing backup, your voice stands out. It seems to me you’d want to shout your mother’s name. Let the world know there’s another Mayfield Turner comin’.”

  “But that’s just it. I don’t want to be anything like my mother.”

  “The great Mayfield Turner who turned all Europe on its ears? Cinnamon, I bet folks would give their eyeteeth to see her daughter. You should be proud.”

  “She doesn’t even act like she has a daughter. There, are you satisfied? I may as well not have a mother. Now are you satisfied? Excuse me for a minute, please.” On the verge of tears, her face blazing red, Cinnamon ran toward the ladies’ room and put cold towels to her face. The wall she hid behind protected her from nothing. From the great Mayfield Turner—cards, money, checks. From Lizzie, my pal, my mama, nothing—no dolls, no visits to the zoo, no bedtime stories, no kisses good night, no “I love you, Cinnamon.” Pushing her feelings about Lizzie deeper and deeper down in her soul, Cinnamon decided to forgive Baker the inquisition. He simply didn’t know. To him, Mayfield Turner
was an icon, a music legend. To Cinnamon, Lizzie Turner had left an excruciating void, better left in peace.

  Cinnamon couldn’t bring herself to smile, but as she approached Baker she let him know she was not angry with him. “I’m sorry, Baker, I don’t know what got into me. When I talk about my mother I don’t know what’ll come out of my mouth. Forgive me, please.”

  “Cinnamon, I just didn’t know. I won’t say another word about your mother, I promise.”

  “You don’t have to be that dramatic, Baker. I need to let go of childish memories, that’s all. Besides, I already know that my life won’t be involved in that gaudy, vulgar Negro jazz life my mother’s chosen for herself. No, that’s not for me.”

  When Baker heard these words, his heart sank. What else did he have to offer Cinnamon, but exactly what she said she didn’t want—jazz? But oblivious to the sting of her remarks, Cinnamon went on as if she had not meant that at all. “I intend to sing opera. Everyone laughs when I say that—everybody! But you don’t laugh at me, Baker. Maybe that’s why I love you so. What do you think?”

  She sounded like she loved him, she acted like she loved him, but clearly she was confused by her intentions toward him. “I think you are lovely, and I still say you’ve got the voice to top Memphis and Esther. Really,” he said, deciding he was up for the challenge. Cinnamon laughed and leaned toward Baker to kiss him, when he looked at his watch. “Time to go, honey, I’m almost late for the gig at the Savoy.”

  “Uh-oh. We’d better figure out how to adjust our schedules or we’ll both be out of work. Let’s get goin’,” Cinnamon said.

  He hugged her tightly as they zigzagged down the street. Dodging and shouting at passersby, he joked, “From opera to swing, we swing! From Puccini we swing over to Verdi, from Verdi we swing to Wagner! We swing!” Cinn’s bell-like laughter in counterpoint.