It’s impossible to be in the night-club business for six months and never make a penny. Absolutely impossible. I’ll never believe it happened to me.
Somehow it seemed as though the harder we worked, the worse the weather got. There were weeks in February and March when the weather would break clear and warmer on Wednesday and I’d tell the waitresses who had never been paid, and the friends who had gone to a finance company for me, and the head cashier who had taken a second job to give me liquor money—I was right, baby, here we go now, this is the weekend this beautiful thing happens. Then Friday would smash down on us with snow and sleet and 10 degrees. There were nights I was so tired and confused and half crazy that I thought the winter was a giant trick created just for me, a way for God to test my soul.
I’d go up on stage and be funny and develop and try not to think of what I was going to say to the bill collector at the side table when I came down again. By March I couldn’t afford to advertise any more, or pay my room rent to Ozelle and William, or the club rent to Sally Wells. The Underwoods themselves were sinking deeper into debt over me, and Sally Wells was laying out money for my heat, electricity, water, license, and taxes. The night-club acts haven’t been paid in so long that they’re hassling with me and with each other. The husband and wife team is splitting up, and the girl singer is fighting every night with her boy friend, and the only thing I can give these people is hope and free liquor. But the hope is wearing thin, and my friends are pawning their clothes to pay my whiskey bill. And behind everything else is the realization that I have to hit by May because I don’t want my baby born in a city hospital. There were nights when I ran across the street for another half-pint that all I wanted to do was pass the liquor store and turn the corner and put my head down and lift my knees and salute the lamppost and take off, just keep running, Greg, just keep running.
I never sent Lil a penny, and by April I couldn’t afford to call St. Louis any more. Then the Underwoods’ telephone was turned off for nonpayment.
Some of my friends began to turn against me. I couldn’t blame them. You can’t keep saying “Tomorrow” to a man who borrowed $500 for you and now his paycheck is being garnished and he might lose his job. You can’t say “Tomorrow” to Thelma Isbell, a woman with three children who might be put out of her apartment, to people who are going to lose things they pawned for you. But you say tomorrow and you say next week, and then tomorrow and next week roll around and you have to explain it to them all over again. The snow is going to melt and the sun is going to come out and the Apex Club is going to have a real, live crowd again, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. You say it when Ozelle is sick, and William is laid off, and the waitresses’ children are hungry. You say it when you’re lying on the floor, too weary to put up your hands just enough to keep your friend from punching you in the face again. Just lie there and wish you were dead and know you couldn’t be that lucky. And know that as bad as things are, they are ten times worse for Lillian, living with strangers in a strange city, waiting for a baby whose father never calls.
The second week in May, a man walked into the Apex Club with a gun. There were six customers in the club that night, and they jumped up and ran out. The waitresses and the bandsmen and the acts flattened out against the walls and froze when he walked around the tables, kicking chairs out of his way and waving the gun at the girl behind the money drawer. I came down off the stage and walked right up to him and looked him right in the eyes.
“Look, mister, you don’t know what I’ve been through, or you wouldn’t come in here with that gun, you’d come in here with money.”
He looked at me as if I were crazy, and he motioned me out of his way with the gun. I didn’t move. I was crazy. “Listen, mister, one of us has to die tonight. What I’ve gone through all winter with this place, you need to pull a gun and shoot me to run me out of here. God Himself couldn’t run me out of here, and He’s tried.”
The man looked at me and shook his head. He had been down to the nitty-gritty himself, I guess, because he put his gun back in his pocket and said he was sorry. He turned and walked out.
I scuffled up enough money that week to have the Underwoods’ phone turned back on, and the first call that came through was Dolores, and she said the baby was due in another week. She had taken Lil to the City Hospital for an examination. I put down the phone and I sat next to it for a long time, as if there were someone I could call to say: “Give me another month or so on this, just a little more time and the weather’ll break and the crowds’ll come out to Robbins, and I’ll be able to take care of this thing right.”
I went to a friend of mine that day, Pat Toomey, a man I had been avoiding. “I know I owe you some money,” I said, “but a man has two ways of borrowing. He can ask and he can tell. I’m telling you. I need bus fare to St. Louis. One way. My baby’ll be born next week.”
“I didn’t know you were married, Greg.”
“No one knows.”
Pat gave me the money and I went right down to St. Louis. The first thing I did when I got off the bus was walk three miles to the Red Cross office. I gave them my name at the desk, and took a seat. While I was waiting to be called, I looked over the Red Cross workers at their desks and picked out a nice-looking, gray-haired lady. She had a warm, friendly face. She would understand. I’d make a deal: if the Red Cross lent me money so my baby could be born in a private hospital, I would give them half of everything I’d ever make in my life. The weather is going to clear and then I’m going to hit it big, starting next week, and you can’t afford to turn this deal down.
“Mister Gregory?” It was a man, in the far corner.
I sat down and I explained the situation. I told him I had a night club in Chicago, that I was an entertainer temporarily broke, and that the baby was due the next week.
“You know, Mister Gregory, we have a very fine city hospital right here in St. Louis, and your wife will be well taken care of. Let me give you the address.”
I didn’t tell him that I knew the address, that I could remember the day a doctor slapped me and cursed my Momma in that very fine city hospital. How could I explain to him, a man I was begging from, that I didn’t want my kid born in a city hospital?
“Thank you, sir,” I said. “Thank you very much for your time. I guess you’re right.”
I walked out of the Red Cross office, and around the block and down the street, walking and praying and thinking and suddenly I had an idea. I started running. When Ron was at Notre Dame he got a hernia, and a doctor from St. Louis operated on him for free. I ran to a phone booth and started looking through the book until the name came to me. He had an office across town. I ran right over. And paced in front of it for two hours until I had the courage to walk into the office of a white doctor who didn’t even know me. He was sitting there with a pleasant smile.
“I’m Dick Gregory, Ron Gregory’s brother, and . . .”
“Why, of course, I remember Ron, you know that day he took the mile at the . . .”
We sat there and we talked, and I talked about Notre Dame as if I had built that school with my own two hands, and I talked about Ron as if I had lived in his soul. Whenever we were ready to stop talking I’d talk some more, just to put off begging from a white man I didn’t even know. He must have sensed it on my face, or forty-five minutes was just as long as a doctor could take.
“By the way, is there anything I can do to help you?”
“Yes, sir. I have a wife here in St. Louis that’s going to have a baby next week. I have no money.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. “How much do you need?”
The world stood still and turned beautiful, and I remembered when I was a kid and had a wallet, and an angel came down and whispered something, and I was so happy and bursting inside I could never have believed man had ever fought a war or hated or been cruel.
“I said how much will you need, Mister Gregory?”
“I don’t know, Doctor. How much does it cost to have a baby?”
He called his nurse in. “Would you call the hospital and make an appointment for . . . what’s your wife’s name?”
“Lillian Gregory.”
“. . . for Lillian Gregory. Tell them she’ll be in next week, and that they should hold the bill for me.”
“Doctor, I don’t know how to thank you, I . . .”
The blood was running through my veins again, and I wanted to kiss him and hug him and give him all the joys and pleasures I ever had in my whole life. When I got out on the street again I talked to the trees and the birds and I nodded at the police car and I ran all the way to my sister’s house and I couldn’t wait for the elevator so I ran up eleven flights of stairs and burst into the apartment and grabbed a wife I hardly knew and hadn’t seen in almost four months. “Hey, baby, let me tell you what happened today.”
She sat there, her face shining. “Oh, Greg, oh, Greg,” and I was talking fast again. I told her what to do and where to go and how she was going to be all right. Now, baby, I’ve got to find some money to get back to Chicago and open up the Apex Club tomorrow night. Somehow she understood, even though she shouldn’t have had to.
I went by my aunt’s house, and they started screaming at me, what a disgrace you are, doing a woman like you’re doing. I tried to explain to them this thing I had, that it was bigger than you and me and my wife and the baby. They started screaming again, and I had to leave my aunt’s house running. I got some bus fare for myself and some carfare for Lil, and I went back to Dolores’. My sister was home and she took me aside. Lil wasn’t eating, she wasn’t talking or doing much of anything. She sat around the house taking care of Dolores’ kids and sleeping and crying, sleeping and crying. Lil was crying when I left the apartment, and as I slammed the door behind me I heard her scream, “Please don’t leave me again.” I went back into the apartment and into the room where she was sobbing on the bed, and she looked up and said: “I’m sorry, Greg, please forgive me.” All the way back to Chicago I tried to figure out how a woman could understand what a man was trying to do the way Lil understood. And she didn’t even know me yet.
It was another miserable weekend in Chicago, raining from Friday to Sunday. This time, it didn’t matter too much. I had met a man who reached for his wallet, and my kid wasn’t going to be born in a city hospital. On Wednesday night, Dolores called and told me everything was fine. Lil had been thoroughly examined and had been admitted to the hospital that afternoon. The baby was due at any time. Everything was working according to plan. I felt great. My stomach quieted down.
The phone rang again on Thursday evening.
“Richard?”
“Yeah, is . . .”
“Richard, to the last day you live you’ll never be forgiven what happened to this woman, you’ll . . .”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your baby’s born, Richard.”
“Is that right? Wonderful! How’s Lil?”
“She’s here in the house, Richard, and the baby’s here in the house, and both of them laying there on the floor . . .”
“But Lil’s at the hospital, she’s . . .”
“They sent her home, again, Richard. They said . . .”
“You call the ambulance?”
“Yeah, they on their way, Richard, you . . .”
“Let me talk to her, Dolores . . . Dolores?”
“Richard, she just lying in there, lying on her back on the floor, lookin’ up at her baby. The hospital told me to put the baby on top of her stomach . . .”
“Dolores, oh, God, Dolores, is she really there on the floor?”
“Yeah, Richard.”
“But I thought she was in the hospital.”
“She was there all night, Richard, all night long. They acted kind of funny to her, and she’s such a strange woman, that Lil. She wasn’t having labor pains so they told her she could go home, and she came home and then she had the pains and she was all alone in the house and she didn’t have no cab fare, honest to God, Richard, she didn’t have no cab fare, and she just . . .”
“Dolores?”
“I can’t hear you, Richard.”
“Dolores, did she holler much?”
“She hasn’t said nothing. I’ve had three babies, Richard, and I always hollered, but she didn’t say a word. I came home, Richard, and if I didn’t go into the room I wouldn’t know she was in there having her baby on the floor . . .”
“I can’t believe it, Dolores, oh, my God . . .”
“The ambulance’s here, Richard . . .”
I hung up the phone, and the next thing I knew I was running through the rain, just running like a crazy man, and I ran around a corner and right into a guy I knew from the University track team, Brooks Johnson. We both fell down on the sidewalk. Before we got up, I said: “Would you loan me ten dollars?” He never asked why, just reached in his pocket, and then I was up running again, from the South Side down to the Loop, and I caught the St. Louis bus just as it was pulling out. I fell asleep the moment I sat down, and slept for seven hours, all the way to St. Louis. Then I ran to Dolores’ house.
“Richard, oh, Richard, the elevator was so small they had to stand her up on the stretcher going down eleven floors with the baby against her stomach . . .”
“Where is she, Dolores?”
“Homer G. Phillips.”
The City Hospital. The old place haunted me down after all. I went right over there, marched up to the desk, and told them I wanted to see my wife. Where is she?
“What is her name, sir?”
“Mrs. Richard Gregory.”
“Certainly, sir. She’s on the fourth floor. Let me give you a slip of paper so you can visit your daughter.”
Lil was in a ward with twenty other women. Some of them were tossing and groaning, and I was scared to go in. I finally did, and Lil looked up at me, and all she said was: “Hi, Greg, I’m sorry.”
“Oh, Lil, don’t be sorry for nothing. It was . . . oh, God, Lil, are you all right?”
She smiled. “I’m just fine, Greg.” She waved her hand to make me come closer, and she whispered: “Greg, would you mind saying something nice to the lady in the bed over there? I’ve been telling her all about you.”
I did, and then I went up to see my baby girl, and then I spent some more time with Lil, and then I looked at my baby again, and then I went back down to the fourth floor.
“It’s Friday, Lil, I got to go back and open up the club.”
“I understand, Greg. We’ll be all right, don’t you worry.”
When the bandsmen walked into the Apex Club that night, I was standing by the door and I told every one of them that I was a Daddy and if they wanted to hold onto their jobs they better bring gifts for my baby. I walked around that weekend in a daze, sometimes proud because I was a father, sometimes ashamed because of what Lil had gone through all alone. On Tuesday I went back down to St. Louis with a hundred dollars worth of baby gifts and fifty dollars I scuffled up for Lil. It was the first time I ever brought anything to my wife. It felt like fifty million dollars to a guy who had let his wife pay for the ring and the blood test and the license and the bus fare out of town more than four months ago. For the first time I began to feel like a husband and a father.
Lil was home from the hospital, and I spent three days with her, the first time we ever spent any time together as husband and wife. It was the first time I lay in bed with my wife, and touched my wife, and put my back next to my wife’s back, and closed my eyes and slept next to my wife. And she was so beautiful, she just lay there and told me how happy she was, and I couldn’t believe it.
I never will forget how I lay there and tried to tell her that I knew what she had been through, that I knew she had to hate me, that I didn’t blame her. She cried and shook her head and said: “Hate you for what, Greg? You’re going to be the biggest entertainer in show business some day, and you did what you had to do. Some day you’ll sit back and you’ll see we didn’t go through anything.”
I couldn’t believe this woman existed. We slept and we talked and we cried and laughed together for three days, and we began to know each other. So shy and bashful, that little girl I married, and now she was a woman. We talked about naming the baby. Michele Rene Gregory.
“You know, Greg, when I was lying on that floor I thought—Dick Gregory’s child is going to say: ‘Dick Gregory’s my Daddy,’ never going to say: ‘I was born on the floor.’ Just say: ‘Dick Gregory’s my Daddy.’ You can do anything you want to do, Greg—you know that and I know that—and don’t let anything stop you.”
I told Lil that I was thinking about quitting show business. Hell, I’m nothing but a peon, never worked in a big night club, never even been inside of one. She shook her head and touched my cheek. We held each other very tight those days and nights in St. Louis, and I began to discover who I had married, and I found out I loved her, and I learned, again, how a woman can give strength.
“Those things you told me about your mother, Greg,” Lil would say, “if she could do all those things for six of you, I can do anything you want me to do. I understand you can’t always come down here. I look for you every day, and when the day is gone and the week is gone, I just keep seeing you coming. And I know you’re on your way.”
I went back to Chicago that weekend, and the weather was clear and bright and warm, and the highways were dry and smooth and the Apex Club was packed. It was June and the long winter was over. Real live crowds now. The money was starting to come in. We’re going to hit, baby, because we suffered through the whole storm, and now the weather has broken. June went, and July came, and there were lines outside the door. Every time I stood on that stage I felt the monster seep right up me, and I was funny and every show was a masterpiece. I had spent six months in my own night club creating and developing my own comedy. The crowds came and the Apex Club was beginning to really hit.
I lost the night club in July.
Old lady Wells was very nice, but there was all that money I owed her, and she was getting on in years. There were some buyers looking over the place now. The place had a name. This was the time to sell. Sally Wells gave me a chance. There was the money I owed her for the licenses and the heat and the electricity and the water and the taxes. There was four months worth of back rent: fifty-six dollars a night times three nights a week four weeks to a month times four months.
“Has to be in by Sunday, Mister Gregory.”
That was it. There were no more tomorrows or next weeks, there were no more people to borrow money from. The last weekend the owners-to-be came out and looked the place over again, and smiled at each other at the size of the crowd. I remember giving my show while they walked around the room and talked to each other about how they would decorate the club when they took it over.
Well, we went out like champs. After the last show on Sunday night we threw a big party, and drank and danced and talked. But mostly cried. We had worked together through one of the worst winters in Chicago and we hadn’t made any money, but for six months, every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we could look forward to being somebodies, to being part of something ethical and honest and decent, a place where the customer was always treated right and the employees got respect, a night club that had never had gambling or prostitution or bootleg whiskey, a night club that—for us—had been something like a home.
It was early in the morning before that party broke up. I looked at those sad faces, and I made a speech. I thanked them for their faith. I told them what they had seen. A boy had turned into a man before their eyes. I told them, if you carry fifty pounds on your back and don’t weaken, you strengthen your back to carry a hundred, and then a thousand, and if that doesn’t break you, some day you’ll be able to carry the world. And walk with it. That’s how strong I feel.
At dawn, I walked down the steps of the Apex Club for the last time, thinking of all the trails I had made across the street, the people I had known, the lessons I had learned, the tests I had passed. Good-by, Apex, good-by, and thank you so much. There will be no turning back now.
I’m ready.