The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (59 page)

I was unable to resist Babe’s friendliness. Reluctantly I took the balled-up black leotard from my handbag.

“That’s it?” Astonishment narrowed her voice into a shriek. The other women looked up for the second time since I’d entered the dressing room.

As usual when I was embarrassed, I responded with an angry stiffness. I said, “Well, I
am a dancer
. I might not have a fancy costume, and I may not have a routine, but I can dance. So don’t try to make me look small.” I looked around at each woman as I fought back mortification. The dancers resumed picking at their flesh privately, like cats licking their fur.

Babe said, “Wait a minute. Don’t get your ass on your shoulders. They’ve never had a colored girl work here. Why don’t you try it? I used to work at the Pirates Cave down the street and my best friend was Pat Thomas. She’s colored, too.”

I thought I am expected to stand here embarrassed and listen to that old “colored best friend” lie again. I rolled my leotard and put it in my bag.

Babe said, “I got an idea. What size are you?” I told her.

She said, “I’ve got a G-string and bra made out of rabbit fur. I’ll let you wear it, just for the audition, and you can be Jungle Bunny.”

That was out, and I told her so emphatically.

She said, “Boy, you sure are sensitive. I didn’t mean no harm.”

I said, “I didn’t mean to scream at you.” After all, she had been kind.

“Well, let me think.” Her face worked as she looked at me. She shouted, “I know, I know.” She bent quickly and began fumbling in an open suitcase on the floor. She pulled out a blue satin set of panties and brassiere. Both pieces were studded with rhinestones and trimmed with blue-dyed feathers. “Try these on.”

I undressed while the other women finished their make-up, their faces averted from me. I looked closely at the seat of the panties, and although they seemed clean I didn’t pull it too close.

Babe said, “Boy, you got yourself a pretty figure,” then she draped yards of blue tulle over me that floated and fell to the floor. “Now
you’re Alice Blue Gown. That’s your routine. You know the song? It’s a waltz.”

The first tuning-up notes of a rhythm band reached the dressing room and the dancers started like robots jerking to attention. They picked up their purses and rushed to the stairs. Babe trailed them.

She whispered, “They only want four girls and we are five. I hope you get the job. Be real sexy. And don’t leave your purse in the dressing room.” She turned and raced for the stairs.

The figure in the mirror was strange to me. A long, mostly straight brown body clothed in a cloud of blue gauze. I would never be able to dance with all that material playing around. I took it off, folded it and laid it on Babe’s tote bag. I tried to bring the lyrics of “Alice Blue Gown” out of my memory. I couldn’t remember and I knew I couldn’t waltz without a partner. I went upstairs wearing the bra and G-string.

Four white men sat murmuring in the shadows in the back of the club and four black men were playing “Tea for Two” on the bandstand. Rusty moved across the square polished floor, ridding her body of veils and indifferent to the music. Finally, as the music stopped, she was still as a statue and almost as pale. No hint of sexuality touched her body. And no applause appreciated her performance. She left the stage.

The acrobat took over next as the band began “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” She wore a tasseled green G-string and brassiere and somersaulted, double-somersaulted, back-flipped, held one leg up over her head, showing the green patch that covered her vagina. As the last notes faded in the air she spun and jumped, ending in a perfect split. She jiggled short rises and allowed the floor to kiss her. There was no response from either the men watching or the men playing.

Jody walked onto the stage to the strains of “Besame Mucho.” She wore black tulle, corseted to her body by a sparkling black waist cincher. Her black-stockinged legs and black patent shoes raced across the floor. She rushed from one side to the other, throwing wicked come-hither looks and tossing her wisps of clothes into the audience. When she finished, clad only in a black G-string and bra, she turned her back, pooched her behind up and looked over her
shoulder with a pout. The music had ended, but she waited to her own drummer, then went around collecting the discarded clothing and went downstairs.

When Babe walked onto the stage, the four men fell silent. She nodded to the musicians, put one hand on her hip and held her basket aloft with the other.

The band played “All of Me” and the woman became a sexy, taunting twelve-year-old. She pranced about the stage offering illicit sex. She stuck out her tongue in a juvenile tease, then changed the purpose by sliding it around her lips insinuatingly, curling it over the corners. Her eyes were hard and wise and her body ample and rounded. Her breasts jiggled and her hips quivered with promise. She stripped to the red G-string and cones which covered her nipples.

When the music stopped, she stood still, looking out toward the men. Her face wrinkled in a strange smile. She had been sexually exciting and knew it. Within seconds, they began their murmuring again, and Babe collected her discarded clothes and waved at the musicians, who grinned in response. She passed me saying nothing.

I waited in the dark, not quite knowing if I should introduce myself or just go up and start dancing, or be sensible, race downstairs, put my clothes on and go home.

A voice shouted, “Where’s the colored girl?”

I nearly answered “Present.” I said, “Here.”

“Well, let’s go,” the voice ordered.

I walked onto the stage and the musicians stared their surprise. The drummer beckoned to me.

“Hi, honey. What’s your routine?”

Certainly not “Alice Blue Gown.”

I said, “I don’t know.” And added, “I can dance, but I need something fast to dance to.”

He nodded. “How about ‘Caravan’?”

“That’s fine.”

He spoke to the other players, counted down four and the music began. I started dancing, rushing into movement, making up steps and changing direction. There was no story, no plan; I simply put every
dance I had ever seen or known into my body and onto the stage. A little rhumba, tango, jitterbug, Susy-Q, trucking, snake hips, conga, Charleston and cha-cha-cha. When the music was finished I had exhausted my repertoire and myself. Only after the low talking resumed in the rear did I realize the men had stopped to watch me and that the other women had dressed and were sitting at a small table in the dark.

The drummer said, “Baby, you didn’t lie, you can dance.” All the brown and black faces smiled in agreement.

I thanked them and went downstairs with pride to change clothes. Babe passed me on the stairs, carrying her bag.

She asked, “How did it go?”

I said, “O.K. What about these things?” meaning her G-string and bra.

She said, “Bring them up with you. I’ll just put them in my purse.” They would have fit comfortably in a cigarette package.

I said, “O.K. In a minute.”

The big bartender stood over the table after I joined the other dancers.

He said, “Rusty, you, and Jody and Kate and—” He turned to me. “What’s your name?”

I said, “Rita.”

“—and Rita. Start tomorrow.” He looked at Babe. “Babe, try again. We had you here last year. The customers like new faces.”

He went back to the bar. The three women got up silently and walked over to him. I was embarrassed for Babe, and when I handed the costume to her I wanted to say something kind.

She said, “Congrats. You’ve got a job. You’d better go over and talk to Eddie. He’ll explain everything. How much, hours and the drinks.”

I said, “I’m sorry you didn’t make it.”

She said, “Aw, I expected it. All these guys are down on me since last year.”

I asked, “Why?”

She said, “I got married. My old man is colored.”

I went to join the others, and the bartender said, “O.K., Kate, you and the other girls know the routine. See you tomorrow night. You.”
Although he didn’t look at any of us, he meant me. The bartender was a fleshy man with large hands and a monotone voice. His thin, pink skin barely covered a network of broken veins.

“You worked around here before, Rita?” His eyes were focused on the edge of the bar.

“No.”

“You been a B-girl?”

“No.” I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Salary is seventy-five a week and you work the bar.”

I began to get nervous, wondering if I should tell him I knew nothing about mixing drinks.

He continued, “If you hustle you can clear ten, fifteen bucks a night. You get a quarter for every champagne cocktail a customer buys for you and two dollars off every eight-dollar bottle of champagne.”

Eddie had given the spiel so often he no longer listened to himself. I began to pick meaning from his litany. I was expected to get men to buy drinks for me and I would get a percentage. Ten extra dollars a night sounded like riches, fur coats and steaks. I rattled around twenty-five cents into ten dollars and choked on the idea of forty cocktails per night. If I told the man I didn’t drink, I’d lose the job.

“We use ginger ale and sometimes 7-Up with a lemon twist. And we got the fastest waitresses on the street. Show time is eight o’clock. Six shows a night, six times a week each one of you girls dance fifteen minutes a show.” He shifted his head, the spiel was over. I backed away, but he stopped me. “Uh, Rita, you belong to the union?”

“No.” I had never heard of a dancers’ union or a B-girls’ union.

“Soon as we reopen, the AGVA representative’ll be down here. Every girl has to belong to the union or we get blackballed. If you want to, we’ll advance your initiation fee and you can pay it back in two weekly payments.”

“Thank you.” I was beginning to like this man who talked like a villainous Edward G. Robinson, yet was too withdrawn to look directly at my face.

“I’m only the manager, but the boss thinks that you shouldn’t strip. The other girls are strippers. You just dance. And wear costumes like
you wore today.” The costume I had borrowed made stripping absolutely unnecessary. “Most girls buy their materials from Lew Serbin’s Costume Company down on Ellis Street. Last thing is this, Rita: we’ve never had a colored girl here before, so people might say something. Don’t get upset. If a customer gets out of line with any of the girls in a coming-on way, I take care of that, but uh, if they say something about your color, I can’t help that. ’Cause you
are
colored. Right?” He nearly looked at me. “And don’t go home with any guy or else the police’ll be down and close us up.” He turned his back and began typing on the cash register keys.

“See you at seven-thirty tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

A showgirl. I was going to be a star shining in the firmament of show biz. Once more adventure had claimed me as its own, and the least I could do was show bravery in my strut and courage in the way I accepted the challenge. It was time to celebrate. No bus could take me back fast enough to Ivonne’s house, where I had left my son. I stopped a taxi and gave the driver her address.

Ivonne grinned when I told her of my new profession and laughed outright at the salary.

“Seventy-five bones a week. What are you going to do with all that money? Buy a yacht?”

“It’s going to be more than seventy-five.” I told her about the drinks and the percentage. Ivonne had the talent of forcing her face absolutely still and looking so intently at an object that her eyes seemed to telescope. She sat a few moments registering my information.

“My. I know you’ll try anything once, but be careful. How many Negroes are working down there?”

“Only the guys in the band, as far as I can see. I’m the first Negro dancer they’ve had.”

“That makes it a little different, doesn’t it?” Her voice had descended to a tone just above a whisper.

“I don’t see that, Vonne.”

I had always wanted to believe that things were exactly as they seemed, that secrets and furtive acts and intents always made themselves
known somehow. So I acted easily or uneasily on the face rather than the hidden depth of things. “I’m going there to dance and to make some money.”

She got up from the sofa and walked toward the kitchen. Our children’s laughter floated out from a back bedroom.

“Aleasar made some spaghetti. Let’s eat.”

We sat down at the wrought-iron dinette table.

I asked, “What worries you about my working down there?”

“I’m not worried, you can take care of yourself.” A smile widened her small mouth as much as it could. “All I want to say is what the old folks say, ‘If you don’t know, ask.’ But, don’t let anybody make you do something you don’t think is right. Your mother already raised you. Stay steady. And if that makes somebody mad, they can scratch their mad place and get glad.”

We laughed together. Our friendship was possible because Ivonne was wise without glitter, while I, too often, glittered without wisdom.

The costume store gave me the sense of being in a zoo of dead animals. Rusty bear skins hung on one corner rack; their heads flopped on deflated chests and their taloned paws dragged the floor. Ostrich feathers and peacock plumes in tall bottles were swept in a confined arc by each gust of wind. Tiger skins were pinned flat against the walls and lengths of black feather boa lay curled in a glass-topped counter.

I explained to a heavily made up quick-moving black man that I needed some G-strings and net bras and rhinestones. He flounced around the counter with a feather’s grace and scanned my body as if I had offered to sell it and he was in the market.

“Who are you, dear?”

I wondered if it was against the store’s policy to trade with just anybody.

“I’m Rita. I’m starting to work tomorrow night at the Casbah.”

“Oh no, dear. I mean what’s your act? Who are you?”

There it was again. I thought of glamorous Black women in history.

“I’m Cleopatra and … Sheba.”

He wiggled and grinned. “Oh, goody. Two queens.”

“And Scheherazade.” If I felt distant from the first two, the last one fitted me like a pastie. She also was a teller of tall tales.