Juba! (6 page)

“Well, just don't let that tongue of yours tie up knots that it can't get loose.”

“So do you think you can help me pull it all together?”

“We'll see,” Margaret said. “We'll see.”

I was lying in bed trying to make myself go to sleep, and Stubby was snoring away across from me, sounding like he was doing it on purpose. First he would give a couple of snorts, then a big noisy snort, and then a little wheezy sound would come out of him. Usually, him snoring didn't bother me, but now everything was working on my nerves. What Margaret had said didn't get under my skin that much, although I did think she got the flame under her kettle a little too high. What did bother me was how many people I was relying on to bring this show together.

Peter Williams said he wanted a forty-minute program, and
that wasn't much to think about when he was saying it, but the doing was something else. The only white dancers I knew up close were John Diamond and his friends. I didn't want any part of John Diamond, because I knew he would sabotage anything I did. As long as he thought of himself as the number one dancer in Five Points, I was going to be a thorn in his side. But when he didn't have his race on his side, as he did at the auditions, we were equals. And when it came to dancing, he was good, but I was still the best, and he knew it.

Food was going to cost money, and I wanted to pay the dancers, too. Artists need to make money for their art so they can see it's worthwhile, even if they love what they're doing. I thought a dollar for each would be right, but when Jack and I worked it out, using seven performers, it was getting shaky.

“So you're talking nearly half your money already,” Jack said. “And you haven't actually hired a dancer or singer yet. Remember, you need some money in reserve for emergencies, too. Or costumes. Or musicians.”

“You having doubts?” I asked Jack. “You thinking I can't pull it off?”

“No, just concerns,” Jack said. “Show business is a lot like stealing hams from a smokehouse. You stick your hand through a hole in the wall and grab a ham, and everybody thinks you're wonderful. If you stick your hand through the hole and the owner is waiting inside with a meat cleaver and
chops it off, then you're a chump. You have to decide if the risk is worth it.”

It was worth it to me. I hadn't had to deal with that many people before, but I was already thinking that if I did put on the show and it made people happy, that was something I could do someplace else.

I asked Fred Flamer to come to our room and talk it over, just to make sure I wasn't missing anything. I asked Margaret, too, and she said no, that she didn't go into men's rooms.

The meeting didn't go well. Stubby was saying yes to everything I said, and to everything I asked, and he wasn't even thinking about how much it was going to cost.

Fred Flamer was even worse. He kept sitting on the edge of Stubby's bed, nodding his head up and down and smiling, and I knew he was desperate for a chance to perform. I thought about asking him to “coon it up” for us, just to see if he would do it. That was wrong and I knew it, but to see anybody be so desperate was strange to me. Fred was a step away from giving up dancing, and he knew it.

“I'll take fifteen of the forty minutes,” I said. “Freddy, you can take seven, and we'll give the white dancers and singers eighteen minutes. What do you think?”

“Sounds good to me,” Freddy said. “You know I can fiddle, too.”

“We've got to work it out with Margaret, because she's
going to help us line up some good Irish performers,” I said. “We're going to have some rehearsals, and
everybody
has to show up. This is a chance to do ourselves some good.”

“You think Almack's is thinking about keeping us on for good?” Freddy asked.

Peter Williams hadn't said anything about permanent jobs, and I knew he wasn't going to be throwing around that kind of money every week. He had a greedy little mind, a taste for money, and an eye for where the money was hidden.

“I just think he wants to see what can be done,” I answered Freddy. “I've performed for him before, but most of what I was getting was jingle thrown out on the floor, and Pete wants part of that.”

When Freddy left, me and Stubby took the cart out to sell fish. Stubby was full of talk about getting real menus printed up, and I told him I didn't want to spend money getting anything printed for just one day. He looked disappointed.

We didn't sell much. Stubby talked to a black cook and asked her if he could borrow some serving plates for a party he was giving. She said he could if he was nice enough to her, and Stubby said he would be as nice as she wanted him to be. I don't think he understood that she was wanting some kissing and hugging. She was twice as big as Stubby, and just about twice as old, so he was going to have to cook up something special for those plates.

Back home, I was so tired. It seemed like every day I was getting more and more tired, and I knew it was because I had too many things to think about. Jack was disappointed that we didn't sell more fish, and he said so.

“You just got your mind on this one night, and you're letting the rest of your life slip away from you!”

That was right. I wasn't as hard up as Freddy, but I was feeling the same cold breeze he was feeling. A good chance only came along once in a while, and you had to jump on it when it came your way. If we didn't put on a good show for Pete Williams, everybody would know about it and it would be hard to get any kind of job dancing or singing.

I fell asleep on the bed and was surprised when I heard a banging on the door. I thought Stubby had left his key someplace. It wasn't Stubby, but Miss Lilly and Priscilla, the girl she called Cissy.

“I told Cissy you didn't bite, so there was no reason for her to be shy about telling you she was ready to sing for you,” Miss Lilly said. “Go on, girl, sing.”

Now, the thing is that nobody who did any acting or singing could do it just like that. You had to get yourself in the mood, or warm up, or put your lucky charm in your pocket, or whatever it took for you to be somebody else. That was what show business was about. For a few minutes or a few hours, you were somebody else, somebody with a strange kind of magic.

The girl had her head down and didn't move.

“You sing for Juba and then you come back over to Almack's,” Miss Lilly said. “You got a peck of work to do, girl.”

I watched as Miss Lilly started down the stairs, stopped, sent a mean look toward Priscilla, and continued on down.

“You want some tea?” I asked.

Priscilla shrugged, and I moved aside so she could come in. She stood in the doorway for a minute and looked inside, then stepped in.

I went to the cupboard and took down the tin we kept the tea in. Empty. “You want some water?”

She shrugged again.

“You like working at Almack's?” I asked.

“I owe him a lot of money,” she answered. Her voice was soft and a little breathy. “The way I'm working now and paying him a little every week, I'll never get finished.”

“That's about how half the people in the world work,” I said. “I know people who owe their bosses so much money, they got to borrow their pay every week.”

“He wants me to dance with his customers,” Priscilla said.

Dancing with the customers at Almack's, when the sailors fell in from the ships or when the workers from the warehouses drifted in with their smells and heavy feet, was a rough and tumble business. Men who most women would not have looked at twice began to think they were something
special as they ran their hands over the women or tried to kiss them. All the time, Pete and his staff would be peddling booze and pushing the girls out on the floor if they sat down for more than a minute. It was a scene you didn't want to see.

“You can sing?” I asked.

“Some,” she said.

It wasn't the answer I was looking for, but I sat on our one chair and put my palms up. “Let's hear you,” I said.

Her voice was weak, and she came near the key some of the time, but most of the tune got away from her. And she looked so sad.

I could see why Pete kept her around the club. She was still young, and she was light-skinned, which was what he was looking for, and most of all, she didn't have any spunk in her. He could push her around and get her to do what he wanted, and that was all that mattered to him. He'd make his money and go to sleep happy. His dealing with a slave trader made sense.

Lilly was another story. She was bringing Priscilla to me to see if I could do something with her. Why any woman would want to be with a man like Peter was a mystery, but I guessed that some women just stuck with who they found themselves with. Lilly had a good heart, and a little bit of influence with Peter, enough to push him in the direction of improving Almack's but not enough to protect the women in the place.

Priscilla finished singing the song, and I told her I would talk with her later.

“I didn't do too good, did I?” she asked me.

“I'll find a place for you in the show,” I said.

“You're trying to wear four hats and you've only got one head!” Jack said when I told him about Priscilla. “Be careful you don't find yourself out in the rain getting wet.”

“Jack, what does that mean?” I asked.

“You're trying to pull off a show, you're trying to raise this man's club to something it ain't, you're trying to show off your talents, you're trying to save this girl, you're trying to get blacks and whites together on the same program, you're trying to help Stubby set up his catering business, and you're trying to elevate the colored race,” Jack said. “What more are you going to do, train some monkeys to knit sweaters?”

“That's more than four things,” Stubby said. “First you said he was trying to pull off a show, that's one thing—”

“Stubby, I can count,” Jack said. “I'm just trying to say he's doing too many things.”

“What kind of business did you say I was in?” Stubby again.

“Catering,” Jack said. “That's when you cook for parties or private people and bring the food to them.”

Stubby was very interested in the catering business and
was getting Jack to explain it to him. Jack kept looking over at me, but he was being patient with Stubby and explaining how the event could help him, too.

I felt a headache coming on because I knew Jack was right. The pressure was getting to me, and I was reaching in too many directions. Some decisions had to be made, and most of all, the decision about what I was going to be doing in the show. Everybody had their own interests, and I couldn't let them run around me and not let my light shine. I decided to make a list of people who were going to be in the show, and what they wanted. The first thing I needed to do was to see if Margaret was really going to get some Irish dancers or if I would have to go find them.

Margaret had her hair up with strands tied around paper. She looked like pictures of clowns I had seen in books.

“What are you looking at?” she asked me. “You've never seen a woman with her hair up before?”

“Looks fine to me,” I said.

“You're a little scared of women, aren't you?” Margaret said. “You don't like to be around us, right?”

“That's not true,” I said.

“So what do you want?” she asked.

“You said you could get some Irish dancers, and I just wondered . . .”

“If you tell them what they're going to do, it's easier than just saying come and dance for some black fellow,” Margaret said. “And they want to know who they're dancing for. You're black, Peter Williams is black, and other dancers on the program are going to be black. Don't forget that.”

“So why is race important?” I asked. “Dancing is dancing!”

“If it goes good, then everybody's happy,” Margaret said. “You want some tea? And if it goes bad, then they're dancing for niggers. Don't act with me like you were born yesterday, Juba.”

“How can I tell somebody how long they're going to perform if I don't know who's going to show up?” I asked.

“Well, you can have a show where everybody steps up and does their things for a few minutes, or you can have a story,” Margaret said. “If you have a story, then it's easy to get people to play a part.”

“What kind of story?”

“Can you read?” Margaret got out a notebook and opened it up. On the top it read
Little Red Riding Hood.
The next lines read
Scenes,
and they were numbered.

“I can read, but this is a children's story, right?” I said.

“Everybody's going to know it, including the dancers, and it'll start somewhere and end somewhere,” Margaret said. “There's an Irish version of it that all the young dancers will know. And you can make as much out of it as you want to if you know what you're doing. Take it with you and look it over. And don't forget to bring my notebook back.”

Margaret's Notes

Little Red Riding Hood

Scene 1—There is a great
FOREST
(Irish dancers), 3 minutes

Scene 2—Enter
LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD
Irish dancer through the
FOREST
, 3 minutes

Scene 3—Enter the
BIG BAD WOLF
, 1 minute

Scene 4—
BIG BAD WOLF
and
LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD
dance, but she is protected by the
FOREST
, 2 minutes

Scene 5—
LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD
starts to Grandmother's house, 30 seconds

Scene 6—
BIG BAD WOLF
starts to Grandmother's house, 30 seconds

Scene 7—
LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD
stops to play, 1 minute

Scene 8—
BIG BAD WOLF
sneaking through the
FOREST
, 30 seconds

Scene 9—Enter the
WOODSMAN
, 5 minutes