Lizzie’s break at the Turf Club deluded her about the realities of making it in New York. She thought to move up quickly from the grinding late-night schedule at Big Ed’s, to advance in classiness and pay she didn’t have to share. She got her first move up in street numbers, from 133rd to 141st with a gig as a background dancer in a new floor show at Rhone’s, featuring Queen Opal Roberts, the talk of Harlem for her incredible record sales and her signature number, “Jazz Baby.” Remembering how her sassiness turned off Black Patti, at the first rehearsal Lizzie took the opportunity to approach the notoriously temperamental star. “Miss Roberts, Your Majesty, I just want to say I am so honored to be working with you.”
Although she was much better at improvisation than set patterns, Lizzie concentrated to learn the routine and picked it up faster than the other two dancers. She had it set after the first take, but saved her energy for the run-through with the star. Midway through the set, Miss Roberts sent a message backstage, “Tell the bitch I said turn it down seventy-five percent.” In the third day, Lizzie lost the other twenty-five and was replaced.
“Fired from a show ain’t even opened yet. That’s great! That’s just great!” Sparrow grumbled, his jagged gestures emphasizing his dismay. He kept her spirits up, though, preparing her for an audition with the colored songwriting producers Tolbert and Cobbs. In the wake of the groundbreaking Broadway success of Shuffle Along by the rival quartet of Miller, Lyles, Sissle, and Blake, the duo Tolbert & Cobbs were thinking to make their own colored splash on the Great White Way. “The show called for fifty showgirls and live ponies,” Sparrow told her as they entered the audition hall. “Surely you can manage not to upstage a horse.”
Lizzie got her period the fateful day of callbacks. She knew her friend from down south’s penchant for rendering no pain, then swinging back with a vengeance when she least expected. After sitting in a backstage hallway with a hot water bottle and slugging down a borrowed swig of modine, the cramps were still bad, sucking all of her thoughts and energy toward the pain. She balled her fist and determined to persevere.
She didn’t make the cut of the “Shimmy Town Strut.” She forgot the lyrics and sang scat, when it was not yet popular. More regrettably than that, she got the toss less for talent than her uncommon look—“Too short! And that hair,” Cobbs scowled, “what color is that?”
The girl beside her scoffed out the side of her mouth, “Marhiney red looks to me. Put some bleach in your bathwater, baby. Get rid of some of them freckles. At least tone ’em down some. Lord!”
Lizzie blessed her back, “You honky-tonk, country-ass cunt!” and flew at the woman, grabbing a head full of hair as they tumbled off the stage. Sparrow jumped from his seat in the back of the theater and ran to pull her off in the first of his experiences with her explosive temper. His hand over her mouth, he strong-armed her around the waist, her legs kicking and arms flailing as she grunted every expletive she could conjure, waving the chorine’s torn-off tap pants as a victory flag.
“What the fuck is buggin’ you?”
“I got cramps, shit!”
“That still ain’t no reason to go bananas!”
“If they didn’t like my dancin’ I can see it. If they didn’t like my singin’, well all right. But somebody say somethin’ bout my color, I’ll kick they ass.”
“What are you talkin’ about?”
“ ‘What color is that? What color is that?!’ I’ll show him what color, I’ll knock that muthuhfuckuh black and blue! I don’t care who he is!”
“Sweets, he was talkin’ about your tapsuit. Cobbs hates green.” They sat in a café, sharing a cup of coffee. “Listen, when I hit the numbers, I’ma back your show, your very own, but you got to calm down.”
“You bet too much. Waste your money.”
“I’m bettin’ on you. The Chestnut Filly. You’re unique, Lizzie Turner. Takes time for people to understand that.”
“Don’t nobody else seem to think so. I’m so tired of people judgin’ me.”
“Then you in the wrong business, baby. Besides, you the worst judge I know.”
“I am not.”
“Got something to say bout everybody.”
“Do not.”
“How much you wanna wager?”
It being Monday and her night off from workin’ the Turf, Sparrow took Lizzie to the Crystal Palace weekly “Sashay,” a transvestite ball competition, where the audience was the judge. Greeted by the male-clad pianist and singer Rene, their task would be not only to choose the most beautiful costume, but also to discern which one of the bevy of tall parading figurines was actually a woman. Sparrow thought the rowdy faux atmosphere would cheer her up. Her mind blurred by the morphine-laced tonic Sparrow had given her, Lizzie sat distractedly figuring out how to live on the two dollars a night and the tips she was making. Hardly enough to take care of the kid and still look for a place. Rents in Harlem were twice as much as anywhere else and she would still need childcare. Best make peace and stay with Elma, maybe get a bigger place together. Even though I can’t stand huh huzbin, Elma’s still good with the kid. No way I’m ever gonna let Cinn stay with Mama and Mah Bette. Old clothespin lady.
Over these thoughts, a melody floated in from the pit band accompanying the parade of sequin-clad performers. The tune was without lyrics, but Lizzie immediately recognized it. She blinked back to consciousness and looked toward the bandstand. Osceola? . . .
“Me and Ossie wrote that song!” When she stood up, Sparrow got a bad case of déjà vu. “Say! Where’d you get that song! Stop the music!”
“Lizzie . . . sit your ass down. You don’t wanna make no scene in here. These is drag queens! Hey!” He caught the back of her dress as she flew toward the pit and snatched the sheet music from the nearest music stand. On the jacket: “The Cotton Patch Rag” by Mitch Jackson! The conductor reached up and grabbed the music back with one hand while furiously keeping time with the other, just as Sparrow spied two hefty bouncers headed their way, the tall bronze beauties strutting and fluttering, their eyes popping darts. Only his fast talking kept them from getting tossed out instead of “escorted.”
“Look, you got to calm down.”
“For what! That’s my song! Me and Ossie wrote that—”
“You know if I had a nickel for every chippie come sayin’ that’s my song, I wouldn’t have to play the numbers. I’d be a millionaire.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I’m not saying that. But, but, but it happens all the time. ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band,’ Irving Berlin’s biggest hit, his breakthrough. Scott Joplin swore he wrote that, tried to sue. What’d he get? Nothin’, but the clap.”
“I don’t care bout that. That low-down, lyin’ Mitch Jackson stood right up in my face when Ossie told him we—”
“ ‘That’s my song! That’s my song!’ Ain’t gon get you nowhere. You wanna do somethin’ about it, write the publisher.”
“I ain’t writing nobody about my own damn song!” Lizzie jerked away from him and, turning her ankle, stomped, “Ow! Damn! You’re fired!”
“I thought that was your specialty.” Sparrow watched her hobbling zigzag disappear around the corner. “Go easy on the tonic, Slim.”
She stayed in the streets two days. Sipping the tonic until it was gone, a wandering nomad, she stumbled from speakeasy to dance hall to buffet flat, chased by her own memories, afraid to sleep. Through a haze of cheap booze and freely offered miscellaneous drugs, she searched a netherworld of anonymous bodies, looking for Osceola. A smell, a taste, a hand, a knee, eyes. “Wake up. Let me see your eyes.” When she last saw Osceola’s body, he looked asleep. The bleeding was internal, Roswell had said. “The wound just opened up inside.” Hers was the same. If only we had been able to talk, just to talk.
She wouldn’t let anyone else prepare his body. She told Diggs, her voice flat and determined, “I’ll do this.” When he asked, “Would that be appropriate?” she snickered. “People already presume we been inappropriate. I don’t think a little bit more matters.” Sensing her cousin’s hesitancy, she softened, “I’m the closest he got to family,” and added, “Osceola and me snuck in this same room to hear Jim Europe on your new Victrola.” Roswell retreated, taking that last bit of laughter. The escapade had been their last joyful time together. So much had transpired for both of them in the thirteen months that followed.
His hair was cut different. His face had matured. Always so dramatic, never veiled, his face had never seemed conflicted until he saw her on the stoop that day. A face now without expression had been so alive, always with intent, alternately challenging and courting, their fighting mixed with play like young cubs wrestling to test and prepare. She picked up his hand and cupped it in hers. His knuckles were bloodied and bruised from the fight, but his fingernails were shaped and polished with a clear glaze. He had just treated himself to a manicure. She had envied those hands for their span of twelve notes. They had been her connection to the culture of men who made the music, the secret society of mentors willing to take on a youngblood like Ossie, dismissing her childhood aspiration as rebellion that would pass when she settled down. Ossie, the proselyte, defied the order and showed her the techniques just plucked from itinerant elders, willingly challenging his own mastery by exposing it to her boldness and innovation. She never appreciated the beauty of his hands until she held one feather-light and curled around her palm. Still warm. At Musicians’ Hall he would have had the best-lookin’ hands. She caressed his palm, kissed his lifeline which extended across it, then laid the hand back by his side.
She smiled to herself, remembering the last time they played at Pilar’s dance hall, rousting Jocelyn from his favored seat, only time they beat him in a cuttin’ contest. The Professor gloated as he bested the contestant before them, “Ain’t a person alive good enough to beat me tonight.” Ossie held back as she approached the bandstand, blurted out the challenge, “Yeah, but two of us is!” She had grabbed his hand, pulling him up.
They played as a duet that night, Osceola Turner and Lizzie Winrow, their four youthful hands with pint-sized virtuosity, making up for Jocelyn’s famed long-fingered, thirteen-note stretch. It got so good, Lizzie lost her shoe. She kicked her right foot up and planted it on the keys, ticklin’ the top notes with her toes. Osceola did the same, his left foot slammin’ on the deep bass notes while he carried the boogie with his fingers. The crowd went wild, sloshing beer and throwing down shots, clamoring over their wagers, hootin’ and carryin’ on—a literal stomp. Jocelyn damned near jumped on the bandstand and slammed the key cover shut. “Puttin’ yo dirty toes on my ivories! Get on outta here!”
“Took four hands and two feet, but we bested Professor Jocelyn that night, huh, baby? The two of us.”
She removed his uniform, still pressed and proud beneath the scuffs and footprints of the brawling thugs he had battled outside the streetcar. She pulled his tee-shirt over him from behind. The clothing clung to him as the last trace of warmth departed his body, his weight falling into her. She held him to her, shook her head to dispel the expectation of a return embrace, then laid him back down. She was startled by the fresh scars from his war wound. Mimicking the explosion that caused them, the shiny, keloid welts of molten flesh crisscrossed his torso in jagged furrows of trauma and the rapid, sloppy sutures of a beleaguered base camp surgeon. She ran her hand along the filigrees of stitches. She could scarcely imagine, but then she could.
By comparison, the place where she had nicked him in the arm with her tambourine, a tiny, clean half-inch scar, seemed a mere birthmark. She had flung the instrument at him when he started seeing a neighborhood girl who was known for giving it up. He had stood Lizzie up for rehearsal, then tried to escort both girls home after their last set at the St. John’s Island Harvest Social, dropping Lizzie off first. She screamed and cried a fury, less at the knowledge that he had a girl and more at his denial of it. Lizzie had no interest or enthusiasm for such activity. She fancied herself indifferent to human touch, instead finding sensuality in movement, the pulse of a rhythm in her body, a melody in her ear, the vibrato in her throat as she sang or the embrace of cool creek water on her naked skin as she dove beneath the surface. She, who loathed human touch, now found herself holding him with longing. He had kissed her just before he left, sending a shock of sensations through her body.
While Yum Lee washed and pressed his uniform, she searched Osceola’s duffle bag for some good underwear. Beneath the dress he had brought her from Paris, she found a stack of music charts, their songs transcribed. She leafed through the titles—Zombi Stomp, Cotton Patch Rag, Tamarind Trot and the Geechee Town Ball, Gulley Bird Rag, Strut Miss Lizzie—her lyrics scratched beneath the mad scramble of notes, not simply for piano, but for a whole band. Osceola had learned to write music and arrange it! Just as he had vowed, he had gone off to war to find Jim Europe and returned a disciple.
She ran her fingers along the black flagged dots and measured bars, an archeologist of her own hieroglyphics or a blind man, understanding for the first time how the raised markings on a page represented a language and permanence that sound and memory could not offer. All her life, she had been the bold one. She had been the one to push, but now he was teaching her, leading her through the music they had made together. Here, in these charts, she could see his confidence grow with corrections and occasional splotches giving way to clear, unfettered, spirited strokes. Like the mirrored surface water of Oshun catching both her own reflection and a glimpse of Agwe’s ocean depth, there was in the deep, rich India ink notations in his hand something of him and something of hers, indelibly intertwined.
As she sat there, contemplating a world without him, a slow bluesy rhythm slid from her lips, a song from deep within her body, a simple range of notes that flowed into each other, more a chant than melody, her voice floating on the wind. She rocked to and fro to her foot’s slow scrape and step on the plain wood. An economy of gesture compressed emotion and held it taut till it broke over her in a wail. The sun well set, her sweat-soaked arms swept him into an embrace.
After she had washed him down, she swathed his body with scented water and oiled him with the treatment he used to like so much in her hair, trying to preserve the deep red hues of his graying skin. Her body heavy with life growing inside her, she heard only the quality of the silence—the archipelago of treble notes, water wrung from the washrag into a tin pail while outside the carpenter’s hammer in fragmented four-four time crafted a new pine coffin. The baby stirred in her womb. She placed his hand on the point of pain. Where two children had snuck in to hear Jim Europe on a new Victrola two short years before, inseparable friends skipped lovers to become wife to husband. “I make this your child. Our child, Osceola Turner.”
With the soft hiss of the radiator, and the tingling filament of a bare electric light, her memory of Ossie ebbing, she breathed in the morning and sat up in the strange apartment. The wallpaper was moldy with mildew spots, the bed creaking and stained. Except for maybe the slope of his shoulder, the young stevedore passed out beside her looked nothing like her love. Wake up. Open your eyes. She slipped into her dress and coat and broken shoe and walked out to a gray, empty street toward the subway. Sittin’ in the depot in the pourin’ rain/ Waiting for anothuh mornin’ train/ To carry me far from where I come from/ Carry me way from what I done done/ Nobody here even know my name/ Nobody here even know my shame/ Don’t know how I keep goin’ on/ When everythin’ I done loved done gone/ I say, everythin’ I done loved keep dyin’/ Seem even the day—Cain’t stop cry-y-y-y-y-in’ . . . For the first time—doubt.
Raymond’s fist clamped around the slingshot. “He says your sister taught him.”
Elma sighed as she wiped her brow and continued stirring the evening meal of okra in tomato sauce, sipping it for taste. “I wouldn’t put too much stock in that. Mrs. Marrano’s kids are all a bit hooligan.”
Ray leaned toward her and shook the makeshift weapon in Elma’s face. “It’s made outta his mama’s garters.”
Elma turned to him, bemused. “That’s the way she used to make them, all right.” She closed her eyes and breathed in the aroma familiar from her youth.
Ray walked away and returned. “One of her many talents. That kid coulda took my eye out.”
“Taken, it’s taken, Ray,” she said softly as he paced behind her.
“Comin’ in all hours of the night. Sleepin’ through half the day.” They talked over each other, the argument escalating.
“So do you.”
“I work!”
“So does she. She works in a nightclub, Ray.”
“That’s what you call that two-bit dive? You don’t see? Your ears too delicate to hear it?”
“What, Ray, what?”
Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he mumbled loud enough to hear, “Fornicatin’ and whore mongerin’, that’s what!”
Elma slapped the serving spoon on the counter and turned with her hand on her hip. “Stop it, Ray! I won’t let you say that. Lizzie’s a sensible girl, a good girl.”
“Oh give me a break. Dress hiked up to her knees.”
“It’s the style, ’sides, who says you should be looking?!”
“Parading around. It’s disgraceful!”
“To whom?! Who in this neighborhood cares?”
“You said your sister needed a place to stay. All she was looking for was a place to dump her kid!”
“Leave Cinn out of this. She’s no trouble. She’s a help to Jesse, as if you cared a damn!”
“What are you sayin’, huh? What are you sayin’?!”
“Lizzie’s had no breaks, no money, no father!”
“She’s a tramp! Your poor sister in mourning.”
“What do you know about it?! What do you know about it?!”
“War widow hasn’t shed one tear.”
“Have you? Have you?!”
“This is my house!”
“Your house?”
“I’ll not have it. Not under my roof. Walkin’ around actin’ the whore!”
He threw the slingshot in Elma’s direction.
She whipped around. “That’s my sister you’re talking about. At least she’s bringing some money up in here.”
Raymond paused and laughed, ran his fingers through his hair. He walked away, stuffing his hands in his pockets.
Elma nursed her throbbing temple. “What is wrong with you?”
He had come so close to punching her. A trembling booze-laced swipe across the face. He couldn’t believe how close he had come.
When Lizzie showed back up at Big Ed’s, he didn’t want to take her back. “Miss Big Time—too big for me! I got a business to run. Think you can show up when you want to?”
“Give me a break, Ed.”
“I done gave you a break and you break mah heart. Already replaced you. Hot young thang from Kansas City Sparrow brought in.”
“Sparrow?!”
“You think you the only show in town? Eye fo’ talent got more n one eye. Toah up the place, she did.” Big Ed walked ahead of her, talking over his shoulder, wheezing from his weight. “Juss gon run off, gon be a big star—told you I’d school you. Lesson number four hundred twenty-two.” He turned and waved a fried wing in her face. “Nevuh spite the hand that feeds yuh. You can eat chicken or you can eat crow.”
“Come on, Ed. I need this job.”
“Like I care. I’m dockin’ yuh pay. Twenty dollahs. You in the last set. We got competition. Rash of clubs. Coal Pit. Dreamland. Every nigga with a basement think he got a club. You all that, make it up in tips. Well, don’t stand there. Get snappin’. Got fifteen minutes.”
The hot young thang from Kansas City had taken Lizzie’s spot in the dressing room. She would have pitched the girl’s makeup on the floor had Sparrow not been there to intercede.
“What do you want?” Lizzie demanded.
“You might thank me for saving your spot.”
“Yeah? How do you figure that?” She simultaneously rummaged through a heap of costumes on the floor and wiggled out of her street clothes. “Dog bite it, where my kicks?”
He dangled her silver slippers from his index finger. “Lookin’ fuh these? Big Ed’s main act, a complete no-show. You should be out of more than a pair of tap shoes.”
She snatched them from him and leaned against the counter to put them on. He slapped his knee. Lizzie sucked her teeth as she looked away and contritely extended her pointed foot for him to fasten the buckle. “I . . . apologize, okay? I had troubles . . . of a personal nature. A row with Ray,” she confessed as she proffered her other foot. “Boy, I would get outta that place if I could.” She stood up and slipped into her costume, oblivious to Sparrow standing there.
He leaned on the door frame watching her. “I’m the one should apologize.”
“How you figure that? I’m the one lost the gig,” she said. “Can’t seem to keep one.”
“I shoulda warned you about the tonic. You ain’t got the constitution. Ease the pain but cause some other. Make you do things you regret later. Don’t wanna get yourself hooked on that. I worried about you.”
“Well, don’t.”
“I can take care of myself,” they spoke in unison, her serious, him mocking. She turned for him to zip her up. He whispered in her ear, “When I hit the numbers, gon set you up right. Back your own revue.”
“Oh, please. You ain’t got pot to piss in neithuh. You’re addicted to them numbers. Just throwin’ your money away.”
“Take a chance on me, then.”
“You need to see Miss Kansas City ’bout that. I already told you. I just shake my tail. I don’t leave it nowhere.”
Big Ed stuck his face through the change curtain. “Cops just come by. Don’t come in tomorrow. Having a little accident. Stagin’ a fire. Best take your costumes lest they get a little smoked up.”
“First you wanna fire me for not showin’ up,” Lizzie protested, “then you tell me don’t show up. Jesus, get me outta this joint!”
It took her an extra half hour to pack up her stuff. The morning was already bright when she curled up next to Cinnamon. With her knees pulled in, Cinn took up a full cushion’s length of Elma’s couch. Lizzie snuggled under the covers and tried to cradle her daughter in the crevice of her shoulder. Cinnamon frowned and grunted, stretched in her sleep and did a full turn. As her shallow breathing settled back into heavy slumber, her chubby fingers kneaded her mother’s breast, still playing the piano game.
Lizzie had barely shut her eyes when Elma’s morning kitchen clatter awakened her. Lizzie shielded her face from the brightness of noise and sunlight coming from the kitchen. Cinnamon stood in the door frame eating a piece of toast, the red jam decorating her cheeks. Her baby was growing. Her wispy edges had given way to full plaits, two stubborn ram’s horns of hair. “She up, Mama El.”
Mama El? Lizzie swung her feet to the floor. When’d that start? A wave of toxins sloshed across her brain. She pitched forward, lowering her head between her legs.
Elma bustled into the small living room, her hard-soled shoes slapping against the bare wood floor. She shoved a cup of black coffee under Lizzie’s nose. “You nearly scared us to death! Gone two days again. Lizzie, I can’t take this!” Cinnamon dawdled behind Elma, clutching a piece of her dress, sucking on two of her fingers.
“Can we talk about this later? I need to get some sleep.”
“You need to get on your knees and pray.”
Lizzie bounced to the floor on her knees, scrunched her eyes, and held up her hands in supplication. “Dear Lord, please let me get two hours sleep before auditions this afternoon.”
“Go to church with me on Sunday.”
“All right already, Jesus!” She turned her face to the crack in the couch and threw the coverlet over her head.
Elma started to speak, but held her tongue. “Come on, Cinnamon. Let your mama get some rest.” Elma retreated to the kitchen, Cinn trailing behind her. Elma was encouraged by Cinnamon’s interaction with Jesse. Her son now was making sounds, and movement, though slight and spasmodic, was evident in his arms and legs. His mouth still seemed lazy, staying open dripping saliva, but his eyes, which used to be expressionless, now followed Cinnamon’s running form and even seemed, on occasion, to make and hold contact with her. She had found in the paper news of a specialist, “Neurology.” Just a paragraph at the end of the article mentioned his work with premature infants, who were sometimes slower in development. She had not considered that Jesse’s birth at seven months might have something to do with his condition. She didn’t know if the doctor would even see them now that he was three—if he would see them at all, the family being colored—but she was determined to find out. An office on Park Avenue. She would need money for that. More than Ray was making. After the fiasco with Landry, he had managed to join the carpenters’ union, passing for Irish again, but starting over with the least seniority. She had to find more money. She was thinking of asking her mother, but she was afraid. Afraid of Dora’s response and of Raymond’s.
Cinnamon and Jesse are getting along real fine. Elma composed a letter to Dora and Mah Bette in her head as she uncoiled her hair. Maybe I should write Francina, too.
She ran her fingers through the braid parts to loosen them and flipped her hair over the sink. She let Cinn stand on the stool beside her to watch. The ritual of washing her hair took hours. Snatches of thought flowed through Elma’s mind as the water flushed through the rivulets of locks, which were thickest at the nape of her neck, the ends curling around the drain. Cinn’s diligent little hands delighted in the silkiness and suds and the stories. “You should have seen it when I was a girl, Cinnamon. First year of college. We were forbidden to speak, not even to hold hands with a fellah. This hair, it ran down my back, so thick I could sit on it.” The little girl’s eyes widened with wonder, her fingers clutching the strands. Elma felt every move, remembering how Benna used to play with her braids and Gabby ask to comb it. She wrung the hair out like a thick slippery towel. You’re losing it, day by day. Broken bits all over the floor. Sweep, sweep it up ’fore somebody catch your soul, Mah Bette would say. Your crown and glory. Comin’ in white.
At the market that morning, maneuvering through the crowd, she had followed a young family, two women with several children, one child asleep in the second woman’s arms. As Elma stepped behind the group at the curb, the sleeping child calmly opened her eyes. They were a deep dark blue like Eudora’s. The women tried to steer the children through the crowd. Elma reached to help and felt dizzy, queasy, a slight pressure on her bladder. An elderly woman approached her. She spoke in another language, Polish perhaps. Elma didn’t understand the words, but their substance was clear. She was pregnant again. The young woman gathered her chicklets together and instructed them to stay close, crossing the street. This one will have eyes like Mama’s.
Dread mixed with hope. I will go to the hospital for the birthing this time. Perhaps if I had before. This one will go right. No more death. Mr. Rosario, from the family across the street, wore a red tie to protest his wife’s inability to bear children who lived. He wore it like a banner of mourning, driving the poor woman to hysterics. But Ray was silent, distant, withholding of both love and condemnation. He simply stayed away. Need to get on your knees and pray. You need to find yourself another church home.
After the embarrassment of Ray’s dismissal, Elma refused to attend Bethel at its new site. To her great consternation Ray swore he would never set foot in any church again. In concern for his hurt pride and in empathy with his anger, she had been lax in finding another place of worship. I’ll go to the Catholic church round the corner if I have to. Roof of God’s house over your head. The Madonna too had lost a child. Standing over the sink, she began to sing, “It’s me, Oh Lord, it’s me, Oh Lord, standin’ in the need of prayer!”
“Think I’m kickin’ up my heels, havin’ a good time. Eighteen hours a day, two-three gigs strung together! No hot water, damn!” Lizzie’s angry feet clomped up the stairs, the just opened bottle of bleach spilling over her hand, a towel haphazardly wrapped around her, the ends of her headscarf flapping in her face.
She found Elma combing through her long black hair, still damp, Cinnamon chattering beside her, “Tell me about the dance when you met Uncle Ray. When you paid the piano.”
“It’s played not paid, and why ain’t there no hot water whenever I need it?” Lizzie shouted, her arms flailing, the bleach for her freckles splashing to the floor.
“Lizzie, you know how long my hair takes,” Elma crooned plaintively as she tried to see her sister through the tangled mane over her eyes. “You know, forever. I used a whole bottle of soap.” She pointed with the comb to the row of neatly torn muslin strips on the table. “Still have to wind in all those rags. Ray likes me to look like Mary Pickford.”
“Oh grow up. That chippie is a hundred years old. You should cut it. Be modern!”
Lizzie stomped out of the apartment, slammed the door behind her, and sat on the steps. Miss Tavineer poked her head out of the lower apartment to see if the coast was clear. Cinnamon scooted from the apartment above and, balancing herself along the wall, quickly conquered the steep stairs winding toward her mother. Lizzie’s frowning face rested in her fists. Cinnamon’s strong, pudgy fingers tugged at her arms. “Mommy, Mommy. Pay piano on my tummy.”
“Mommy don’t wanna pay piano. Mommy cain’t pay piano. That’s the problem. But you know what? Your daddy used to say one man’s problem is another man’s opportunity. We gon get you a real piano, Cinnamon Turner. And a telephone!” she hollered over her shoulder at the shut front door. “Why I got to have the only fam’ly stuck in the nineteenth cint’ry?”
Lizzie regarded her recent calamities as a temporary loss of her luck, a missed fortune, as one would arrive at the subway platform just as the train pulled away. A dash of anger with a kick of her shoe, a few expletives, and complete confidence that another train with your letter on it would follow shortly. She didn’t need prayer. A true god would not rob Osceola of his future. A real god would not snatch Jim Europe from his victory tour, wouldn’t let her father vanish, or make her pregnant by a bastard like Deke Turner. A rightful god wouldn’t give her a child she wanted to love and hated to look at. Any moment could draw her back in. To the rage. Any setting—a lonely crossroad, an abandoned depot, a crowded sidewalk, a department store counter, a bank teller’s line, a bus stop—could set her off. At any moment—like no hot water! No burden of a three-hundred-pound cotton sack or lash across her back, but the wounds, nonetheless, could reopen and stretch into ugly, daggered, stinging gashes, emptying her of anything but fury. Toughened with methods minus the understanding, Lizzie kept moving. Never slow down, never get caught, never surrender. She stepped onto the street and hollered up to the window, “God helps those that help themselves!”
Her suitcase of costumes and sheet music weighed on her arm like a coffin. It was only mid-day, too early to head back uptown to Big Ed’s. She told her feet to take her somewhere. They pointed downtown, discovering random Manhattan worlds along the way. She spotted the great Bert Williams standing beneath a Broadway marquee, deep in thought, his long arms laced behind his back. Least I’m not the only one with troubles. “Though his kind I wouldn’t mind much havin’,” she talked back to herself, “Ziegfeld Follies, now that I wouldn’t mind.”
The library was flanked with banners announcing a new exhibit related to the unearthing of Tutankhamen’s tomb. “The Sun King, buried a thousand years,” she read. “You and me both, buddy. Tut, tut, tut,” she scatted. Her feet echoed with body music, a listless ball-and-jack blues. Miller and Lyle’s Colored Revue Runnin’ Wild had a matinee. “Best seats a dollah fifty . . . shit, a whole night’s pay.” She wandered on, contemplating her next move. “Tut, tut, tut. Lizzie May Winrow’s inna rut, runnin’ wild, goin’ nowhere.”
She noted Valentino had a new movie, The Sheik, but going to the cinema only brought back memories of sneaking into the Bijoux, poppin’ redhots in the balcony, gettin’ hot lips. Oh Ossie, how I’m to do this on my own? She was twenty-two and the world was passing her by. Other colored performers were making it. Cars, jewels, and maids, and what am I doing? Still making my own costumes! Sure, Sparrow always had an audition lined up, the next big revue. An out-of-town tryout like the last one. “Bombed royally in Camden, no less. Who the hell plays in Camden?” she said out loud. Like the rest of the crew, she had to make her way back to New York on her own. Back up to Big Ed’s, beggin’ for her spot. Just like her dancin’, she kept spinnin’ around and finding herself right back where she was.
The day was overcast and the air misty. Droplets floated upwards, the soft drizzle wreaking havoc with her marcel. “Damn!” She stopped to check the damage in the Macy’s store window on 34th Street. The mannequins were bedecked in the new flapper styles, flat breasts and skirts halfway up the leg, bowed square-heeled shoes. Being modern was going to cost her a whole new wardrobe. She could alter the clothes she had. At least she knew how to do that. Mama would be thrilled my sewin’ skills come in handy.
Through the glass she saw that copper, bouncing on his heels, across the street, just waiting to make his move. Ever since that day at Penn Station, he always had somethin’ to say to her. Them both bein’ redheads, each was easy to spot. She hurried along, weaving among the pedestrians, unconsciously arriving at her destiny, 28th Street, from the East to the West, the meat market of America’s music—cannibals all we be! Tin Pan Alley!
From each gold-plate-lettered window, upright player pianos competed with crooners sampling their wares. From show tunes to shimmies, carnival barking pitchmen competed, enticing any would-be buyer with the next great hit. True to its name, the strip of publishers and professional pluggers of sheet music sounded to the untrained ear like the din of a thousand tin pans. Lizzie was baffled by the myriad company monikers. She wondered which one that foul Mitch Jackson had been to and how many other songs of her’s and Ossie’s he had hocked. When if ever I see him, he’ll get a piece of what for, for sure! But she was hestitant. She battled with herself. These are Osceola’s and mine. How can I sell what belongs to both of us? Ours together.
The internal debate resolved when she spied Lew Leslie, choreographer and stage manager at Rhone’s and the new club called the Cane Break. He walked right past her into Axleton Bros., accompanied by three short, square-shouldered gents, their fedora hats pulled low over sallow white faces. Gangsters! I shouldn’t go up there without Sparrow. Oh what the heck! Everybody’s a little illegal.
She followed the quartet, catching the tail end of their conversation, “We gotta have new songs for the revue. The club just opening, it needs to be something the people ain’t heard before. Somethin’ Queen can cover. Snappy, like that,” snap, snap, snap.
“That be ‘Cotton Patch Rag,’ ” Lizzie blurted as she followed them through the door. Two fedoras whipped around, flaring their jackets, each with a trigger finger to the rib, poised to draw a weapon from a side holster.
Lizzie froze and blinked a lot. The sidemen dropped their hands to their hips as she patted her bangs to the side, blotting her brow. Leslie, a short, cosmopolitan Jew, sat on the edge of the desk, glinting through a funnel of blue cigarette smoke.
“I’m here to sell a song,” Lizzie continued. “I got just the one for you. Perfect for your revue.” He had a high forehead, big ears, and one blind eye. The other, sharp and instantly assessing, made up for it. “Mayfield Turner.” She stuck out her hand.
“This is Mr. Meeks and his associates, Mr. Edwards and Mr. McPherson. I’m—”
“Lew Leslie, I know. I auditioned for you once . . . a while back.”
“Yes, I recall. Tolbert and Cobbs. You had that rather unusual brawl.”
“Mm, well, today I have just the song you been looking for—as good as ‘Cotton Patch,’ if not bettuh.” She launched into an a capella teaser:
“Oh, oh, oh, baby
I musta been a little bit crazy
To think that I could talk to my baby
When she been cryin’ the blues
Oh, oh, oh, baby
My memory’s just a little bit hazy,
But I just was wonderin’ if maybe
It ever happened to you . . .”
“Not bad. I like it. Kinda snappy,” said the one called Mr. Meeks. His skin was bilious, she noted without looking directly at him, and his nose had been broken several times. She knew this to be Cappy Meeks, the East Side thug who had muscled his way into Jolly’s shop as well as much of Midtown and who now was huffin’ and puffin’ at Harlem. The former Calvin Murkowsky got his name for his penchant for capping his competitors and debtors in the knees. His clothes had gotten better and he had been taking skin treatments, but he had no lips.
Leslie flicked his cigarette. “That your portfolio?”
“My wh—? Oh, yes!” Lizzie responded and popped open the weathered bag and unbound her charts.
“Twine and waxpaper. Cute.” They were leering, making fun of her. Her blood was pumping so heavy she could feel her temples. “We don’t see too many chickies peddlin’ music, doll,” Meeks cracked. “How do we know you didn’t just rob those off your boyfriend?”
Lizzie glared at him and said flatly, “I wrote these with my husband. He was killed in the war. The lyrics are mine. The arrangement is his. The songs belong to both of us.”
“Touching,” Leslie said as he picked up the song titled “Crazy Love” to examine it, the ash of the cigarette threatening to fall.
“The war,” Meeks scoffed and sniffed, “that’s ancient history, sistuh. Things gotta be uptempo—you know, jazzed.” He snapped his fingers spasmodically.
“Tempo ain’t nothin’,” she clipped. “I mean you can always change that. One-step, two-step, foxtrot, tango—nothin’ but time. It’s the melody has to be catchy. Every single one of these is a hit. If you like ‘Cotton Patch,’ I know you’ll like these. I been workin’ ’em down at the Turf Club.”
“Turf Club,” one of the sidemen said without moving his lips. “They don’t allow no whites. Too exclusive.” His boss choked off his laugh with a glance.
“Open up a practice room, Lew.” Meeks’s off-hand command was crisp. “Let’s see what she got.”
“Anything for the war effort,” Leslie added snidely. “It’s Queen, you know, has to like it.”
“It’s me has to like it first. What’s your name again, doll?” Meeks inquired.
“Okay, May, let’s see what you got.”
She had not anticipated success. She had no clue of what she would perform. Their heels echoed on the marble floors. A dissonant array of sounds wanting to be music richocheted off the walls and collided with a clatter of noisy, urgent, loud-mouthed voices. All male. Beyond a couple of silent, suspicious, mascara’d secretaries wearing too much powder, she was the only woman in the building.
They entered a room at the end of the hall. The door glass was frosted, the room was musty and close. It contained only a beat-up brown upright piano and a couple of folding chairs. No dancin’ routine here. One errant aerial kick and she’d be out the window. Instinctively, Leslie sat on the sill. His persistent cigarette ash folded over in an annoying defiance of gravity. The others leaned over the top of the upright as the last to enter shut the door behind him. She didn’t like the closeness. Memories swarmed in on her. “I play standing up,” she said, shoving the piano stool back toward them with her foot. “Have a seat.”
Lizzie placed her foot on the pedal and her hands on the keys and called down Osceola’s spirit. With the rhythmic, rising line and furious energy that would become her trademark, two hands turned into four. Lizzie Mayfield Turner blew them out of the room. The pure power of her sound surged with primary colors, a full orchestra jammed into eighty-eight keys. A wild left hand held down the bass line, while the right hooted, hollered, gurgled, and screamed. A trombone arabesqued and growled, the sax streamed diagonally across the keys. A muted trumpet whined over a clarinet’s hypnotic trilling, while her left-hand traps kept the rhythm’s frenetic pulse. When she kicked up her foot, her shoe flew off. The frosted door opened and its frame filled with astonished faces crowding in to see if they could believe what they heard. Lizzie Mayfield Turner coming into her stride, tickling the top notes with her toes.
When she finished, Meeks snapped his finger with impatience. “Shut the door, shut the door.” The listeners scattered before his associates could oblige. The quartet of men now encircled her as Meeks stepped forward. “How many you got there? I’ll give you fifty bucks for the catalogue. Fifty bucks.” His voice dipped as if she should be impressed.
Lizzie folded her arms around her stack of songs and held them to her chest.
“Fifty bucks for this song, dahlin’, plus royalties and a spot in your new revue at the Cane Break. As you can see, I can sing. I dance and I do comedy, too.” She laughed, slipping her foot back into her shoe.
Leslie, still implacable, finally flicked his cigarette in her direction, indicating she had a deal. “Bring your stuff down to the Ninety-One. Four o’clock.”
“Four o’clock . . . Say.” She stopped. “How do I know you just won’t walk off with my song and take it for yourself?”
“I’m a published songwriter, sweetheart. Sold over five hundred thousand copies. You want the job or not?”
“Four o’clock. The Ninety-One . . .”
“Forty-second and Ninth. So go on, get outta here before I forget how generous I can be.”
She walked out quickly, got around the corner, and swung around the lamppost. “Whewwww! Thank you, Jesus! I’m sorry ’bout everything I said!” She could barely comprehend her dramatic change of fortune. Walking up and down the avenue, waiting for four o’clock, practicing what to say, Don’t bother—every time you practice, you get it wrong—just improvise, she remained unnerved. What to tell Sparrow? What other songs to pitch? The afternoon sky darkened, and the anemic concrete-enclosed trees turned their leaves upward. The fine rain turned to pellets. Shielding her head with her suitcase, she ducked into the Times Square library.
She liked the floors—the banister’s glide, the sound of her cleats on the marble, sand spins without the sand. “Shh!” The librarian made an eye gesture to the security guard. To calm her nerves and think, Lizzie found a seat and grabbed a thick oversized book on reserve about the recent headline excavations in ancient Egypt.
Facing the clock, she randomly looked at the pictures, pausing at one rendering of the perfect combo—two fluted horns, a guitar with a triangle base, drums, cymbals, rattles, flutes, and shake dancers—all of them women. She studied the features of the headdress, the elongation of the eyes, the hunched shoulders and elevated hips. Oo, I could put charcoal around my eyes like Valentino. A new tune began forming in her mind, her body instinctively moving to the swing tempo in her head. Let’s see Queen Cleopaterah/ Could do a shake or shimmy or tap or uh/ Brand-new dance to make old Pharoah prance/ And rise up from his tomb . . . Marc Antony of ancient Rome/ Never had such things as this at home/ Just one look in his girl Cleo’s eyes/ And my oh my oh my oh my/ He knew that he was doomed/ Just one look at that Egyptian goyl/ Lathered and slathered in snake oil . . .
Laughing aloud to herself, she borrowed a slip of paper and a squat yellow pencil from the book request box and jotted down the beginnings of what she thought a promising new lyric. Talk, Camel walk . . . Sphinx, thinks? Oh, high jinks! Her freestyle rhymes filled up sheet after sheet of the tiny slips of paper until the pencil was worn to a nub. The librarian looked over sternly. Was the girl going to order a book or not? A rumble of spring thunder underscored Lizzie’s excitement. She wiggled in her seat and jostled her neck from side to side. A whole new routine. I’ll get my own spot, then my own revue! The universe responded with a bright burst of sunlight streaming through the library’s transom window. “The Devil was beatin’ his wife and she run off leavin’ a rainbow,” Mah Bette would say. The storm had passed. It was a brand-new bright day!
Lizzie gathered her things to leave, but she wanted that picture for inspiration. Who’d believe an all-girl jazz band in ancient Egypt! “Reserved.” Hmmm. She scanned the hall to see if anyone was watching and considered tearing out the page. Just ask old Emperor Caesar/ Who did whatever he knew to please her/ But soon as he professed his love/ His bubble bath became a bath of blood/ But nothing seemed to harm her/ Indeed she was a charmer/ Who could resist that Egyptian goyl/ Lathered and slathered in snake oil?
“Please, continue what you were doing.” An ominous baritone voice bored into her from behind a towering stack of books. “I’ve been watching you for quite some time.”
She froze, considering should she make up a story or bolt. The source of the voice emerged from behind the row of shelves. He was a short, dark-skinned, delicate man with huge, almost brooding eyes. He was dressed in a sleeveless cardigan with an open-collar cream shirt. Instead of a tie, a silk scarf loosely looped around his neck. A fitted tweed jacket, shoes that looked like slippers, and no socks completed the look. His hair was thick and pressed back in a series of tiny, rebellious waves. He surveyed the cover of the book she held. “Sprechen Sie Deutsch? You read German?”
She closed the book and crossed her legs. “Yeah, sauerkraut,” she laughed. “A girl can’t look at the pictures?”
“Please do.” He placed another book on the table, pushed it in her direction, and gestured for her to open it. “I should introduce myself. But I think the proper thing is to wait for the lady to do so.” He was oddly shy and self-assured.
“. . . Lizzie May . . . Mayfield Turner,” she extended her hand.
“Haviland Remick.” He cupped both of his hands around hers.
High-toned to be so black. She liked that about him.
The book contained scores of charcoal and ink drawings, pastel sketches, and quick pencil studies. Faces, hands, shadows. Muscles moving swiftly. Head, house, light. A face in a window frame, a still-life bottle on a curb, a dancing couple, an estranged couple, the body proportions exaggerated. The work was not realistic, but sharp, with clean angles and curves, essential lines and emphasis where unexpected. As much as Lizzie wanted to talk to him, she didn’t want to lose the strains of melody floating in her head. “These are really good.”
He stepped backward, almost tripping as she complimented him. He was a contradiction, arrogant and insecure just like her. Lizzie liked that about him, too.
She turned the page. The last sketch was a half-finished, three-quarter charcoal profile of a young woman twisting a lock of her bangs and peering into a heavy tome, the open page of the book visible over her shoulder. The smudgings, line corrections, and scratching showed a tension between calculated labor and turbulence, a polish that erupted into a deliberate imprecision. Within the frame he had captured her movement, her thought, her essence. “You did all this in the little time I was sitting here?”
“One must commit like the flash of lightning on a darkening sky.” His whisper traveled across the room. The librarian looked up again.
Lizzie examined the drawing more closely. No one had ever made a portrait of her. “You didn’t have to make my lips so big.”
“One distinguishing feature among your many. The unusual is the beautiful.” He sat beside her, his shoulder probing her space. She shook her paper slips into a neat stack.
“I noticed you were writing,” he continued. “Are you a poet?”
She laughed one short staccato note through her nose. “Hell no.” The plosive startled him, but the thought had never occurred to her. “Uh, well I write songs. Show tunes, blues, rags and jazz n stuff.”
“The triumph of this century—Negro music!”
“Excuse me.” The librarian poked her pointy face between them. “If you two cannot be quiet, I’m afraid I will have to ask you both to leave.”
He didn’t blanch. “This is the public library, isn’t it?”
“Impertinence!”
“Every day, if I can help it. We’re New Negroes.” Lizzie pursed her lips to smother another chortle. The flustered woman turned on her heel and marched back to her desk, a fortress of wood with its parapets of returned volumes. “I’m used to standing out,” Haviland confessed. “It’s rather an addictive habit.” His voice tickled her ear. “I just got to New York yesterday. From Minneapolis. Friends are still putting me up on a couch.”
“Shoot. That’s an official New Yawk apartment. I’m sleepin’ on a couch, too. And I been here goin’ on two years. Where’s that at, Minneapolis?”
He winced at her sentence construction, but recovered. “North, far north. Half the state’s from Sweden,” he imitated the Scandinavian lilt, two trochees and a spondee. He handed her a printed flyer. “You must come to my show next week.”
“Show? Oh no!” She grabbed her things and flew.
Lizzie got to the audition three minutes late, winded and wide-eyed. The band was sittin’ around. Cappy had told the leader, “I got a new song for Queen.”
“But Cap, the show’s already set.”
“Well, un-set it,” he said, drawing his pistol. “I said, new song for Queen.”
To the band leader’s plaintive look, Leslie shrugged. His new silent partner was not so silent. “Give the kid a shot,” he said diffidently, “she’s got somethin’.”
Lizzie, meanwhile, was in the bathroom, trying to fix her rained-on hair, which had ballooned into a mushroom. “Oh, forget about it. Lipstick. Stockings straight—Go!”
Queen sat, jawin’ with her combo, the hot five. When Lizzie emerged, the seasoned players already had her music out, distributed and cleanly dissected. Queen looked up with her huge doe eyes. “I like that ‘Crazy Day Blues,’ and this Egyptian thing.” She sifted through the slips of library paper. “It’s different. Put a melody to that, I could do that,” she laughed sexily, the combo concurring. “Got another one?”
And so it was, her sheet music had auditioned for her while she was frettin’ and fussin’ in the bathroom. Leslie agreed to take Lizzie on, giving her a little feature part in the second act. She was to start in two weeks. “I’ll send my agent down to negotiate the details,” she said as she shook Mr. Leslie’s hand, barely able to contain herself. A little upset at the prospect of giving away her Cleopaterah, she was glad that Queen at least didn’t take her Strut. With that new gut the Queen’s got to her middle, the tempo’s too fast, anyway. Her speed-dancin’ days is ovuh! Lizzie was determined somehow to insinuate the Strut into her Cane Break debut. And from there, in no time, my own revue. When the ritzy places all closed down/ The dukes and duchesses comin’ uptown/ To see and hear the world-renowned—Mayfield Turner! She nearly skipped out of the hall delirious.
After she left, Queen Opal strolled over to Lew and Cappy. “I know about that gal,” the songstress cooed. “I tell yuh, if she act up just one time . . .” Miss Opal threw up her diamond-crusted fingers, then balled them into a fist. “Pow! I’ll knock that redheaded heiffuh clear into Sundie!”