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THE HEART OF A WOMAN |
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CHAPTER 3 There is an awesome reality to Rent Day. It comes trumpeting, forcing the days before it into a wild scramble. My rent day seemed to come due every other day, and Guy always needed just one more pair of jeans. The clothes I had to have were eternally in the cleaners, and staples disappeared from my kitchen with an alarming regularity. I could get a job singing, but I didn't have an agent. Harlem theatrical representatives sought light-skinned Cotton Club-type beauties for their traveling revues. Midtown white agents would only book unknown black entertainers for out-of- town or night gigs, stag parties or smokers. I knew one white New York club owner who had been a loyal friend to me, but with my recently acquired new level of black dignity I refused to go pleading to him for work. I found a job on my own. The little club on the Lower East Side was a joint where people came when they didn't have any other place to go. There was a long bar, diluted drinks, dinner-plate-sized tables and no dressing rooms (I changed in the women's toilet) and the work itself embarrassed me. I sang in the club for two miserable months. People I admired were doing important things. Abbey and Max Roach were performing jazz concerts on liberation themes. Lorraine Hansberry had a play on Broadway which told some old truths about the black American Negro family to a new white audience. James Baldwin had the country in his balled fist with The Fire Next Time. Killens' And Then We Heard the Thunder told the uncomfortable facts about black soldiers in a white army. Belafonte included the South African singer Miriam Makeba in his concerts, enlarging his art and increasing his protest against racial abuse. And I was still singing clever little songs only moderately well. I made the decision to quit show business. Give up the skintight dresses and manicured smiles. The false concern over sentimental lyrics. I would never again work to make people smile inanely and would take on the responsibility of making them think. Now was the time to demonstrate my own seriousness. Two weeks after my firm decision, I received an offer to appear at the Apollo Theatre, and the idea of rejecting the invitation never occurred to me. The Apollo, in Harlem, was to black entertainers the Met, La Scala and a Royal Command Performance combined. Pearl Bailey, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Duke Ellington had played on that stage. Frank Schiffman, the manager, sat in the darkened theater listening to rehearsal. Tito Puente's big band with Willie Bobo and Mongo Santamaria dropped dancing notes in the air like dust particles in a windstorm. Schiffman sat rigid in the first row. I rehearsed my songs with the band, spurred on by the timbales of Willie Bobo and Mongo Santamaria's conga. I enlarged on my initial interpretation of the music, singing better than I was usually capable of. Schiffman didn't move or speak until I started to rehearse "Uhuru," an audience-participation song which I used as an encore. "No audience participation in the Apollo." His voice was as rusty as an old iron bar. "I beg your pardon?" Always get siditty when you're scared, was my policy. "Were you speaking to me?" "Yeah, no audience participation in the Apollo." "But that's my act. I always use 'Uhuru' as an encore. The word means freedom in Swahili. Babatunda Olatunje, the great Nigerian drummer, taught it to me-" "No audience participation-." "Is that your policy, Mr. Schiffman? If so ..." A few musicians rustled sheet music; others talked in Spanish. "It's not a policy. The only policy in the Apollo is 'Be Good.' I'm telling you no audience participation because Apollo audiences won't go along with it. You'll die. Die on the stage if you try to get this audience to sing with you." He gave a little laugh and continued, "Most of them can sing better than you anyway." A few musicians who understood English laughed. Many people could sing better than I, so Schiffman had told me nothing I didn't already know. "Thanks for your advice. I'm going to sing it anyway." "It'll be a miracle if they don't laugh you off the stage." He laughed again. "Thank you." I turned back to the orchestra. "I don't have sheet music, but the song goes like this .. ." I didn't expect Schiffman to know that my life, like the lives of other black Americans, could be credited to miraculous experiences. But there was one other thing I was sure he didn't know. Black people in Harlem were changing, and the Apollo audience was black. The echo of African drums was less distant in 1959 than it had been for over a century. One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street was to Harlem what the Mississippi was to the South, a long traveling river always going somewhere, carrying something. A furniture store offering gaudy sofas and fake leopard-skin chairs shouldered Mr. Micheaux's book shop, which prided itself on having or being able to get a copy of any book written by a black person since 1900. It was true that sportily dressed fops stood on 125th and Seventh Avenue saying, "Got horse for the course and coke for your hope," but across the street, conservatively dressed men told concerned crowds of the satanic nature of whites and the divinity of Elijah Muhammad. Black women and men had begun to wear multicolored African prints. They moved through the Harlem streets like bright sails on a dark sea. I also knew that fewer people giggled or poked the sides of their neighbors when they noticed my natural hair style. Clever appliance-store owners left their TV sets on the channels broadcasting U.N. affairs. I had seen black people standing in front of the stores watching the faces of international diplomats. Although no sound escaped into the streets, the attentive crowds appeared. I had waited with a group of strangers one night near St. Nicholas Avenue. The mood was hopeful, as if a promise was soon to be kept. The crowd tightened, pulled itself closer together and toward the window, as a small dark figure appeared on all the screens at once. The figure was that of an African wearing a patterned toga, striding with theatrical dignity toward the camera. The sidewalk audience was quiet but tense. When the man's face was discernible and the part in his hair distinct, the crowd began to talk. "Hey, Alex. Hey, brother." "He's a good-looking thing." "That African walk like God himself." "Humph. Ain't that something." The man's mouth moved and the crowd quieted, as if lip reading. Although it was impossible to understand his message, his air of disdain was not lost on the viewers. One fat woman grinned and giggled, "I sure wish I knew what that pretty nigger was saying." A man near the back of the crowd grunted. "Hell. He's just telling all the crackers in the world to kiss his black ass." Laughter burst loudly in the street. Laughter immediate and self-congratulatory. Schiffman had been in Harlem since the beginning of the Apollo. He had given first contracts to a number of black performers who went on to become internationally famous. Some people in the area said he was all right, and he had black friends. He understood who was running numbers, who was running games and who was square and respectable. But he wasn't black. And he was too mired in the Harlem he had helped to fashion to believe that the area was moving out of his control and even beyond his understanding. "Uhuru" was definitely going to be my encore. Fortunately my first show was at one o'clock on a Monday afternoon. About forty people sat staggered in an auditorium which could hold seven hundred. Tito Puente's big band echoed in the room with the volume of an enlarged symphony orchestra. The comedian delivered his jokes for his own amusement, and the small audience responded as if he were a favorite nephew entertaining in the family living room. The tap dancer sent a private message in heel-and-toe code, and the audience sent back its answer in applause. The male singer sang a Billy Eckstein-like arrangement and he was well received. I walked onto the stage wearing my sky-blue chiffon gown and the blue high heels, dyed to match. The first few calypso songs elicited only polite responses, but when I sang a Southern blues, long on moaning and deep in content, the audience shouted back to me, "Tell the truth, baby." And "Sing, tall skinny mamma. Sing your song." I was theirs and they were mine. I sang the race memory, and we were united in centuries of belonging. My last song was "Baba Fururu," a Cuban religious song, taught to me by Mongo Santamaria a year earlier when I had joined Puente on a tour of six Eastern theaters. Speaking only a few words of English, Mongo taught me the song syllable by syllable. Although he couldn't translate the lyrics, he said the song was used in black Cuban religious ritual. That first Apollo audience consisted of grandparents, raising the children of their own absent children, and young women on welfare, too good to steal and too timid to whore, and young men, made unnecessary. The Afro-Cuban song ignored hope and laid itself down in despair. The blue notes humped themselves and became the middle passage. They flattened and moaned about poverty and how it felt to be hated. The Apollo audience shouted. They had understood. When I returned and announced that my encore was another African song, called, in Swahili, "Freedom," they applauded, ready to go with me to that wished-for land. I explained, "If you believe you deserve freedom, if you really want it, if you believe it should be yours, you must sing: "U hu uhuru oh yea freedom Willie Bobo, Mongo and Juliano set four-four, five-four and six-four times on conga, timbales and caracas, and I started singing. I leaned back on the rhythms and began "O sawaba huru I joined the audience on the refrain: "Oh yea, oh yea freedom The audience sang passionately. They were under my voice, before my voice. Understanding beyond my own understanding. I was the singer, the entertainer, and they were the people who were enduring. They accepted me because I was singing the anthem and carrying the flag. By evening of the first day, I saw the power of the black grapevine. During the six o'clock show someone screamed from the audience, "Sing Freedom, Sing Freedom." It was my encore, so I had to sing the routine of planned songs. The audience clapped until I returned. I began, "If you believe you deserve freedom. If you ..." "Uh huh uhuru yea freedom The audience had it and gone. "Just a minute. Some of you all know the song, but let me explain it to the folks who don't know." A voice from the audience screamed. "All right, but don't wait for slowpokes. We ready to sing." I continued with my explanation and the drums began. The audience pounded out the rhythm, moving it, controlling and possessing the music, the orchestra and me. "Uh, uh, oh huh. As the song ended the small crowd thundered a hot appreciation. Even as I bowed, I knew the applause was only in a small part for me. I had been merely the ignition which set off their fire. It was our history, our painful passage and uneven present that burned luminously in the dark theater. For six days and three shows per day, the tumultuous response was repeated. On the last day of the run, John and Grace brought Guy, Barbara and Chuck Killens. I watched the three teen-agers from a curtain peephole. The comedian's routines were beyond their understanding, the singer's laments about unrequited love didn't catch their concern. The tap dancer made his complicated routine seem too easy. When I went on stage the exoticism of seeing a familiar person in an unfamiliar setting did not hold their attention past the first few minutes. Before I finished my first song, I looked down and saw the three mumbling among themselves. When I finished, however, the children joined energetically with the audience on "Uhuru," not so much singing the music as screaming the words. Guy's cracking lopsided voice pierced high above the ensemble sound. Schiffman had been right and wrong. Some people sang better than I, but no one laughed me off the stage. After the Killenses and Guy left my dressing room, I prepared for the last show. I knew I would never again make an appearance as a singer. There was only one Apollo Theatre, and no other place had the allure to melt my resolve. While the run had given me stature among my New York acquaintances, its real value was in the confidence it gave me. I had not won world-wide fame, or gained stunning wealth, but I was leaving show business at the right time: stepping down from the pinnacle of the Apollo stage. And an I-told-you-so imp had grinned behind my eyes all week long. Apollo audiences had been filling Frank Schiffman's ears with "Oh yea, oh yea, freedom," so he hadn't spoken to me since opening night. It was going to be an hallelujah time when he gave me my check. I finished the set and waited in the wings while the audience yelled for my return. I went back to the microphone and began, "Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This last piece needs audience participation. It is a song from Africa. It's called 'Uhuru,' which means freedom. I'd like the people of this side of the theater to sing, uh uhuru, oh yea freedom"-the drums began to roll in a quick promise-"and this side .. ." "Damn, why don't you do your act, girl? If you can't sing, come back on Wednesday. That's amateur night." The man's voice came from the balcony, strident and piercing the dark theater like an unexpected light. My heart thumped, and I couldn't think of a thing to say. A few giggles from around the room encouraged him. "Anyway"-his voice was meaner and louder-"anyway, if you like Africa so much, why don't you go back there?" The only thing I knew was I would never get off the stage. Hell's eternity would find me rooted in front of the mute microphone, my feet glued to the floor. The baby-blue spotlight blinding me and holding me forever in that place. A grumble began in the balcony and was joined by sounds of displeasure on the main floor. I still couldn't move. Suddenly a lemon-sour voice from the front rows shouted, "Shut up, up there, you bastid. I paid money to come in here." Some "yeahs" and "that's rights" popped up in the theater. They angered my detractor. He shouted, "Go to hell, you old bitch. I paid for this shit too." "Aw, cool it, goddammit. Let the woman sing," a man's bass voice ordered from the rear. "Yeah." Another man spoke from the balcony and sounded dangerously near to the heckler. "Yeah, you don't like it. Get your ass down on the stage and do what you can do." That was it. Either there would be a bloody fight with cutting and shooting or the heckler was going to come on the stage, take the microphone and make me look even more foolish than I thought I was. I was surprised to realize that the drummers were still playing. The woman, my first defender, lifted her voice ... "Freedom, freedom, freedom." She was in tempo but the melody was wrong. More voices joined, "Freedom, Freedom." The drums rolled on like an irate river. "Freedom, Freedom." The singers in the audience increased. "Freedom." The entire main floor seemed to have joined the drums. They had taken my side and taken the song away from me. The bass voice cut through the music, "Sing girl, goddammit, sing the goddam song." I sang "O sawaba huru, O sawaba huru. Oh yea. Oh yea, freedom." We didn't sing the song Olatunji had taught me, but we sang loudly and gloriously, as if the thing we sang about was already in our hands. My closing show reminded me of Mother's advice: "Since you're black, you have to hope for the best. Be prepared for the worst and always know that anything can happen." When Schiffman gave me my check, we both grinned.
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