Some Sing, Some Cry

by Ntozake Shange

  Abbott began to feel uneasy. He was against the war, but had planned on going if called. “I understand your position, Bethany, but I’d have to check with the whole group before I give you an answer.”

  “All right, that’s fair,” Bethany smiled and followed him.

  Abbott went to walk into the dressing room, but found it locked. “Open this damn door, y’all. I got to talk to you two.” Abbott heard some noises and repeated, “Open this damn door or I’ll break it down!”

  Abruptly Tokyo opened the door, her nose powdered with cocaine. James was straightening up the mirror and razor blades where they were cutting the rock. Abbott knocked James out with no compunction. He shut the door in Bethany’s startled face and grabbed up all the drug paraphernalia he could find. Then he took his sister’s face in his hands and wiped it clean. By now Tokyo had begun to weep, her frail body shaking in her big brother’s arms.

  James pushed himself up from the floor. “You don’t understand, man, she needs that snow. She can’t stand all the pressure, the press, the money. I was helping her, I swear.”

  “Some help you are, now look at her, an ordinary dope-fiend! Come on, Tokyo, I’m taking you to get some help.”

  “But, Abbie, we’re booked solid. The agents will—”

  “Did you hear me, James? You did this, now you clean it up.”

  Abbott got Tokyo out of her stage makeup and into some street clothes. They went swiftly out the stage door toward his VW bus, where Bethany was faithfully handing out anti-war pamphlets. Once Tokyo was in her seat, Abbott started the bus. He asked seriously, “Tokyo, is there any more of that coke on you? I have to have an honest answer.”

  Tokyo shifted her eyes a little. “Maybe a little,” she said meekly and reluctantly handed over the last of her stash to Abbott, who threw it out the window.

  “You’ll be fine, angel. Don’t worry about a thing.”

  “But what about the tour, Abbie? We got a hit. Did you hear that crowd?”

  “Don’t worry about the tour. You’re going to get well.”

  “And just where am I supposed to do that?

  “Don’t worry about that either. Uncle Jesse and Aunt Mabel will be happy to see you.”

  “Oh no! Let me out this car!” she said, her knee spasmodically jerking. “Well, can I at least have a drink?”

  Abbott thought a minute and figured maybe some alcohol might bring her down from the agitated high she was on. He was still on the South Side, so he slipped into a corner store and picked up two bottles of Cuervo Gold Tequila, then he was back in the bus. He’d gotten two go-cups and poured one shot for Tokyo and one for himself. “All right, easy now,” he said as he watched his little sister start to guzzle her drink as if she were already a seasoned pro. “Not too much. We’ve got a long way to go.” He thought of all the things he could have said to James and Tokyo, that the only freedom for black people was liberation and they were busy enslaving themselves to cocaine and booze. But he could hear Tokyo sardonically replying, “How you gonna be liberated when you’re headed for the white man’s army?”

  He tried not to focus on his low draft number. Focus on a battle you can win. He needed to get Tokyo to Alabama. If she could stay clean for six months, maybe she could learn to live another way before she returned to the stage. “Springtime in the South will do you good,” he said as he looked over at her. She had already nodded off, her mouth open and her head leaning against the pane.

  It was April. Abbott got his sister out of harm’s way in the nick of time. That summer grim-faced police with helmet shields and bullhorns and trucks stacked with troops in battle fatigues, their rifles drawn, patrolled the city’s broad avenues, flying glass crackling under their feet, everywhere fire and the ricochet of bullets. Beneath busted streetlights, preachers and civic leaders pleading with people to go home. The mayor screaming, “Shoot on sight!” (A command never rescinded.) Whole blocks ablaze, the hospital floor so slippery with blood, the mop couldn’t sweep it up fast enough. The jails couldn’t keep track of the scores of looters, the stores picked clean, the alleys strewn with plunder—shoes, liquor, pork chops, radios, cigarettes, and busted canned goods snaked through them. Futile sirens and false alarms screamed from all directions block to block, the fire hoses’ white arcs of water like spit in the wind. From the South Side neighborhoods of Woodlawn and Inglewood to the West Side communities of Lawndale and Humboldt Park, Black Metropolis was ablaze. And through the broken panes of project windows, Tokyo Walker’s number one hit “Jump Up!” bellowed with new meaning.

  Alelia arrived from Birmingham just as Tokyo was on her way there. Alelia had decided to stay with her aunt Cinn and uncle Lawrence while she finished her studies at the University of Chicago. Her uncle, who was on the faculty, convinced her that a history degree was a wiser choice than folk music. Her parents, having already lost Joshua, thought her increasing militant style too dangerous for her to stay in the South. As Ma Bette would say, “Out of the fryin’ pan into the fire.” She wound up more often on the streets of Chicago than in class. She found the Chicago-style architecture invigorating and the style of the people even more fascinating. She loved the museums and long strolls down Michigan Avenue. That’s where she made her spending money. With tie-dyed hand-cut tee-shirts, embroidered bell-bottoms, and a cup, she camped out on the steps in front of the Art Institute, mixing all kinds of popular folk songs with those she had written herself. In between song sets, she passed out anti-draft and anti-war flyers. Some folks smiled, others spat at her as unpatriotic. To some, a freedom fighter, to others, a traitor.

  Her activities worried her aunt Cinn to death, until Lawrence reminded his wife of her own youthful street-singing stint as Madame Butterfly at the five and dime. He championed his niece’s commitment, and when she led a campus protest rally, he brought the whole group deep dish pizza.

  When she’d first arrived Alelia had looked for traces of her mother, Memphis, in Cinnamon, but couldn’t fathom any. Alelia imagined that her mother’s house would be jumpin’. Cinnamon was constantly, quietly poring over operatic scores or giving private voice lessons in search of the next Leontyne Price. Her aunt was bewildered and annoyed by her vegetarian foods and her back-to-nature white friends, who conserved water by not flushing the toilet. Occasionally, Cinn tried to tell her about her mother. How she saw Memphis being born, their singing group, the Mayfield Sisters, but then Cinn would drift off. She didn’t have many pictures. A group shot from the wedding. No recent ones. Lawrence stayed out of it. “I like studying our people’s history in a general sense,” he said, “not specific.”

  So Lia sang on the streets of Chicago and found a kind of family there. She thought she’d find an ally in Abbott or James, but James was desperate without Tokyo and the band. And Abbott would soon be off to the war. She got Abbott alone once in a café off Madison. Low draft number or not, she had to convince him that he had alternatives.

  “Abbie, how can you consider killing people you don’t even know?”

  “There is nothing for me to do but get these white folks off my back. They shot Malcolm, they shot Joshua, they shot Fred Hampton.”

  “Abbie,” she interjected, “they did not shoot Malcolm. Two black men did. You can’t blame all white people for—”

  “How can you say that, Lia, when your own brother was gunned down before our eyes?”

  The question stunned her. My brother, my beautiful brother . . .

  “If I stay here, they’ll shoot me, and I them,” Abbott continued. “I have no choice, Lia. If I’m just another nigger for their cannon fodder, so be it. All I want is to play my horn, and I don’t want to do it in jail.” Only then did Abbott look up. Lia had not been listening. “It’s all right. Joshua’s all right,” he said, softening. “Nobody can hurt him now. And I’mo be all right, too! Grand-Nana says I got the luck. Mah Bette done marked it so!’ ” he joked, capturing his great-grandmother Dora’s inflection. “Come on . . .” he coaxed his cousin to smile. �
��There’s a big AACM concert tonight, you know.” At Lia’s look of ignorance, Abbott took on his father’s stern professorial tone, “Art Ensemble of Chicago? Only the cutting edge of avant-garde jazz, born and bred on the South Side. We could still get tickets. I got a few weeks of freedom left and I wanna make the best of it.”

  Alelia thought a moment and said, “Only if you promise to come see Richie Havens and Taj Mahal with me.”

  Abbott rolled his eyes, but nodded yes. His huge Afro bobbed in the wind like the smooth jazz rhythm of Ramsey Lewis’s left hand. There were things Alelia and Abbott shared. They sometimes quibbled about Johnny Taylor or Stevie Wonder, not bitterly but with humor, about what black music should sound like and why. In the days and weeks before Abbott was deployed, they wandered South Side Chicago jazz clubs and West Side blues bars, cruising through smoke and sawdust. One night, the blues guitarist Buddy Guy, seeing Lia’s guitar case, invited them to sit in. Alelia took in a good deal more of what she thought folk singing was that night. She decided while listening to Guy’s meteoric chord changes and his wailing plaintive call, conjuring all that she knew and loved of the South and her journey in a riff, that the blues was in fact the penultimate folk music, music of the folk, acoustic or not. She heard, too, in the mournful trepidation of Abbie’s horn, a foreshadowing of his coming orders to Vietnam.

  Tokyo was on a wholly separate journey, as was James, now her manager. Tokyo is becoming an R&B star, “Jump Up!” still toppin’ the charts. James has become a businessman. Abbie’s becoming a soldier. Joshua’s gone. Where does that leave me? Alelia had a dream that night that she walked toward the east, toward the morning sun and jumped into it. When she awakened she had made a decision, the same decision her great-aunt Lizzie had made so many years before, Paris! In Paris was her destiny.

  All Alelia had to do was find an empty corner and begin to sing and francs dropped into her guitar case like manna from heaven. She was staying in a hostel which suited her needs and was meeting people at an alarming rate. One day she walked through the Tuileries Gardens and four handsome Senegalese fellows stopped her and invited her immediately to a nearby café, where they were soon joined by some Haitians, Congolese, and Ivorians for a grand salon. Though everyone spoke French, there were several side conversations in Swahili, Mende, Hausa, and various patois. Lia thought the African students delightful, though a bit aggressive. She decided to sing, using her guitar for both accompaniment and shield. Her performance was such a hit, the group insisted she accompany them that evening to a Martinican nightclub. “Il y’a une bande superbe, qu’il faut que tu l’écoutes et qu’ils t’écoutent à toi aussi! Quelles mains splendides, et cette voix—si belle ta voix!” they told her. “There’s a great band, which you simply must hear and they must hear you! Viens, viens avec nous, c’est la première fois que tu fréquentes la boîte! Le Club, viens! Come!”

  Just before her night out on the town, Alelia made up her mind to go to see her mother and her great-aunt Lizzie. My very own mother after all these years! Memphis would see her and they would talk, no matter what. The bright sun belied the nervous tension in Alelia’s soul. After changing at the hostel, she grabbed an album Abbott had given her by the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Les Stances à Sophie. She would ask her mother’s opinion. A prop to ease their first encounter.

  Memphis was house-sitting at Lizzie’s apartment near La Place de l’Opéra, that much Cinnamon had told her when she gave her the address. Alelia had done her best to look nice. She put henna on her hair and she had done her chestnut eyes in exotic colors. In a pastel striped A-line mini-sundress, she rang the bell labeled Mayfield. When the buzzer rang and the door opened with no questions, she simply walked in. The doorman momentarily glanced up from his newspaper and went back to reading. The wrought-iron elevator door was exquisite but the ride was very, very slow. As she went up floor by floor she felt herself sweating, her mouth dry, but she and her guitar finally made it. Alelia knocked delicately on “Appartemente #8,” the entire eighth floor. Without so much as a “Who is it,” the door swung open onto the most opulent of environs. Velvets, silks, and oriental rugs, mahogany tables, mother-of-pearl inlaid chests, a grand piano, a harp, and wonderful light. The woman who opened the door, Memphis herself, took one look at Alelia, grabbed her and held her tight. “Alelia, child,” she whispered, “I knew you’d come for me one day.”

  Memphis stepped back from the bewildered Alelia and made a full circle around her, eyeing every aspect of the young woman. “My, you are just as Cinnamon told me, a wholly new creation and so lovely.”

  Alelia thought she should say something and blurted, “Mama, I’m a singer.”

  Memphis smiled and made her way to an easy chair near a decanter of burgundy. She gestured to Alelia to take a seat and have a glass with her. Alelia could hardly find her seat in the chair she was so busy looking at the photographs on the wall—Mayfield Turner with all the jazz greats for decades, from Louis Armstrong to Josephine Baker, Brick Top, Bud Powell; literati—Langston Hughes, Baldwin; heads of state—wearing Ike’s helmet, standing on her tiptoes with de Gaulle. It was Lizzie’s collection, half a century of memories. She set down her untouched drink on a finely carved glass table and just sat there staring at Memphis.

  “Why don’t you take out your instrument and sing, child? Let me hear you.”

  Alelia mustered a small smile and glowed. She took her guitar from the case and tuned it, cleared her throat, and adjusted her lanky frame to the plush velvet divan. She sang Nina Simone’s “Safronia” and Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.” Then she threw in a blues song ’bout the 1927 flood that hit New Orleans. Memphis closed her eyes and felt her daughter’s voice seep through every vein of her body. What more could a mother ask for than a child of conviction and a creator of beauty? Then Memphis moved to the piano and played a few notes from “La Vie en Rose.” Immediately she and Alelia sang together and the spirit of Piaf filled the room. Memphis jumped to her feet shouting, “Brava, brava! Come, you must have dinner with me.”

  “I can’t tonight, b-b-but soon, yes!”

  “Yes, darling, and Lizzie will join us. She’ll be back in Paris in a couple of days. Your Aunty Liz will love you!”

  With that said, Alelia soberly took her leave, hugging her mother like a newborn with tiny warm tears welling in her eyes.

  Later that night she met her new friends Mamadou, Zaid, Doudou, and Malik and off they went. She’d seen small cobblestone streets in Charleston, but it was nothing like Paris. The group turned off a thoroughfare into what Alelia surmised was an alley and stopped abruptly, as if they had arrived somewhere and were looking around to find it. Just as she began to question the rashness of her actions, her newfound friends pushed open a thick wooden door that looked like the entrance to a cellar and were met with damp intense heat and rhythms that were irresistible. Down, down, down they went, many, many stairs, around curves and into a darkness that approached Zaid’s skin tone, Alelia simply trusting this was the right thing to do. At last she caught sight of figures dancing, the moves ever so sensual and so familiar her face brightened.

  The Africans spread out like fireflies in search of partners. Alelia headed toward the sound. In every sense of the word, the music was live! She had to get closer. She wiggled and smiled her way through the sweating crowd, meandering through what seemed the entire African Diaspora, and came upon the wildest-looking band she had ever seen. It was like Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsies, only they were black and French. Alelia couldn’t stop smiling. She was especially taken by the guitarist who sang “All Along the Watchtower” and played like a genius.

  Raoul Johnson was angry that night and he played with fury. His father Baker and he had just had a huge row over his wanting to quit his studies and leave France “to find himself.” “First you say I’m not Algerian. Then you say I’m not French. I can’t be American. I’ve never been there. I’m black, you can look at me and see that. You think it’s safer for me in a Paris subw
ay than one in New York?” he ranted. “I don’t want to be everybody in the world. I want to be someone from somewhere!” He played one of his own compositions to close the set, “Another Dienbienphu for You,” he said in English. The crowd, only there for dancing, barely heard him, but Alelia did. During the band break, Alelia, who was not shy, asked Raoul in her best Parisian French if he’d care for a drink, which he slyly agreed to. “A song like that deserves a toast,” she said with a seductive Southern accent. Raoul’s smile widened. Not hard to look at and she’s American!

  “You know, you’re quite remarkable on that guitar,” she said as they sipped on two Belgian beers. “I play, too, but folk songs, anti-war songs.”

  This intrigued Raoul. He was truly delighted by a woman who knew something about who she was and about the music. They had another beer, and soon Alelia had him looking for one of Tokyo’s pop hits on the jukebox. Though Raoul’s band played till daylight, Alelia waited and danced with many strangers, her body taking on whatever African beat was set. Raoul was plotting. He was a man. He was Baker’s son.

  After the band had been paid and had packed up, Raoul asked Alelia where she was staying. When she told him a hostel, he laughed and said gently, “Not tonight.”

  Raoul walked Alelia to a presentable pension where they got a room. Though the sun had risen, the full moon was still rising in their souls. Raoul asked her to sing something as he began to undress her. A bit taken aback, she protested she hadn’t brought her guitar. He offered her one of his. She softly sang Miriam Makeba’s “Thula Thula Mama.” Raoul’s body melted as if the lullaby were for him. He took Alelia in his arms and lifted her to her feet. Naked in the austere pension, they were a kaleidoscope of passion. Eventually they found themselves against a wall, the table, the bed, the floor, lust without boundaries, more a coming together of seekers. They felt they’d been looking for each other all their lives. Two separate journeys became one. They could make music and they could make love in secret humorous unmasked ways. Alelia vowed to herself she’d never leave Raoul’s side and he promised to never let go of her. And they didn’t.