Celeste's Harlem Renaissance (14 page)

Just when everything seemed hopeless, Keen-Eye the detective exposed the crooks, particularly Mr. Peck and Mr. Jenkins. Mr. Harry became the new mayor and won Miss Jessie’s hand,
and
her daddy’s money. Everybody sang, danced, and lived happily ever after.

By the time the show went on the road, I figured I’d know as much about it as Aunti did. Maybe I could be Aunti’s understudy, just in case she got sick. That thought made me laugh. Aunti’d go on the road even if she had to crawl. Humming low, I imagined that Miss Pinetar was a real girl, and she and I were dancing with the chorus.

“What in the world are you doing?”

I jumped. Miss Lottie stood in front of me, pointing at Miss Pinetar. I hid my doll among the folds of my comfortable old long skirt. “Nothing, ma’am.”

“You were performing my song. I like how you did it, fast and snappy. Little doll just jumping! You gave me a good idea. Watch.”

She went back to the stage area singing “I’m Just Wild About Harry” and danced like she really was wild about her man. She lit up that whole room! Everybody applauded when she finished, including Aunti. “That girl Celeste is the reason for all of that.” Miss Lottie waved at me. “I plan to do it this way from now on. Thanks, Celeste.”

I scooched down in the seat, my cheeks burning, as folks nodded and smiled at me. Clapping, Miss Lottie came over to me. So did Aunti, but she didn’t say anything. “Do you have musical theater in your veins, too?” Miss Lottie asked.

So I can end up scrubbing floors all night? No, indeedy! “I want to be a doctor, ma’am.”

“Oh, I see. Most young ladies say they want to be in the movies, or be teachers, nurses — and mothers, of course.”

“Celeste’s very ambitious,” Aunti said. “You know we young women today have our goals set high. But she doesn’t want to be an actress.” She pursed her lips.

As we walked back home, Aunti was quiet. She didn’t mention how I had helped Miss Lottie, so I didn’t, either. Did Aunti think I was butting into a leading lady’s business? I was pleased, though, that Miss Lottie liked my idea.

When we reached the boardinghouse, I checked the mailbox. A letter from Angel Mae! I tore open the large brown envelope, and inside were also letters from Evalina and Swan. About time! I began reading Angel Mae’s letter right then on the stairs. “Dear Cece,” her letter began. “May this letter find you in the best of health and the purest in mind, thought, and deed. I am the same. If you wondered why you haven’t heard from us, we wondered about you, too. Neighbors from blocks around had wrote on your envelope ‘wrong address’ before it finally got to me.”

I fanned myself with my hand in relief. Well, no wonder! I must have been in a big hurry — or tired — to have written it wrong. I read on. Did I eat caviar all the time? How did I like living in a mansion? Both questions made me snort.
How about octopus instead of caviar, Angel Mae?
Had I heard from the
Brownies’ Book
magazine people yet about our stuff? I kept forgetting. Maybe Aunti could take me to the NAACP office and check on our poems like Mr. Johnson had suggested. I carefully refolded and replaced Angel Mae’s letter in the envelope.

Swan’s letter was about the Great Negro State Fair, October 25 through 29. Mrs. Bracy planned to hold cooking classes this summer for girls our age, so they could enter the fair’s exhibits. Swan said Mrs. Bracy wanted to know if I’d seen the Statue of Liberty yet. “Evalina yearns to rear a pig to show at the fair, but her folks say no, so she’s having spasms about it. Nobody else is. We have to smell and dodge enough mule, dog, cat, duck, and guinea hen poop already around here. Pig poop, too?”

Evalina’s was the shortest. Her handwriting looked like worm trails in the dust. She mainly wanted to know about Big Willie. “Has he got to the coal mining camps yet? My my, you wrote a lot about him. Is he gonna be your beau? Those coal mines are dangerous places. They’re always caving in or blowing up and lots of men get killed. Men also get into big fights with each other and sometimes the state or the president has to call in troops to break things up.”

She wrote that she hadn’t seen Poppa or Aunt Society since I left. “I miss you and wish you were here so I could give you a thousand hugs and kisses. Love, Evalina. P.S. Momma won’t let me raise a pig for the fair.”

I missed her, too. I missed everybody. Would I never get back home to see them? Would I ever see Big Willie? Would he and his triplet brothers and sister return to Eagle Rock in time to come to the fair? I tried not to think about coal mine disasters and the fights.

Aunti, who hadn’t said much to me since coming home, asked about the letters. I offered to show them to her, but she declined. “Maybe you’ll get one directly from your aunt. That’d be one I’d like to see.” She winked at me, picked up her tortoiseshell comb, and began loosening her thick black braids. I wondered why she’d want to see a letter from Aunt Society, who was her sister-in-law. To see if Aunt Society had written about her? Or did she mean that the old bat would never write to me?

Each day in April was busier than the day before. After rehearsal we went on to scrub floors almost every night. Sometimes after rehearsal or scrubbing we stopped at Café Noir Le Grande, where Aunti whispered with Monsieur and we picked up food. All that walking and working made my arms and legs more muscular, but I was so tired I’d still fall asleep at the table.

On the rare days we didn’t work, Aunti would let me stay home from rehearsal, too. But then I washed and ironed our clothes, cleaned our room, and slept. When I could, I wrote in my journal, studied my textbooks, or played Dede downstairs on the front porch in the fresh spring air. I was disappointed about not being in school, but how could I have gone to school all day and worked half the night?

I longed to go to that branch library Aunti had pointed out, but I hadn’t because I was afraid I’d get lost. Though I felt a little more comfortable here, this little part of Harlem was still bigger than all of Raleigh, it seemed.

If I didn’t keep our door locked when Gertie was visiting her grandmother, she’d barge right into our room. “Lemme play that fiddle,” she’d begin. I’d tell her no, and rush around the room snatching things out of her hands, like my brush, my violin, Aunti’s hats and furs, and so on. “Well, ain’t you got nothing I can play with?”

“No. Go read a book or something.” I’d stand in front of the bed so she couldn’t jump up and down on it.

“I can’t read. Gimme a nickel for some candy.”

“You eat too much candy as it is. That’s why you don’t have any teeth. You should eat fresh fruits and vegetables.”

“Vegetables is weeds and I ain’t eating no weeds. I ain’t got good teeth because a hant comes along at night, gets on my back, twists my head backwards, and pulls ’em out as soon as they grow in.”

“Now, that’s a falsity if ever I heard one. Sit down in that chair there and behave or else go home.”

Gertie’d sit down for a minute and start picking at her nose, or her braids, which was why her hair usually stood straight out on her head, no matter how many times her grandmother rebraided it. Finally she’d clump back out the door. “Do, Lord, remember me,” I’d breathe.

When Aunti got home, I’d tell her whatever Gertie had said or done. “Gertie’s momma is a real dumb Dora,” she said. “She fills that child’s head full of tales about witches and voodoo and stuff. I truly believe Gertie has a vitamin deficiency that causes her teeth to be so rotten. I don’t know why they don’t take her to a dentist or a doctor.”

“If Miss D made her eat those greens instead of playing with them, she’d get more calcium and her teeth would stay in her head,” I said.

“Probably so, but she’s got her grandmomma wrapped around her little bossy finger. Miss D lets Gertie do anything, partly to spite her daughter-in-law.” Aunti slapped her mouth gently. “Hush, Valentina. You didn’t hear me say a word of this, Celeste.”

“Yes, ma’am. I mean, no, ma’am.” I laughed.

The closer May neared, the slower
Shuffle Along
seemed to shuffle. The producers were still trying to find a Broadway theater to premiere it in on May 23. In a couple of weeks the cast was supposed to hit the road for Washington and Philadelphia, but folks were still trying to finish hammering the sets and to piece together costumes. I heard Miss Lottie tell Miss Jarboro that some costumes were leftovers donated from other musicals. When Aunti and some other ladies were given Oriental-looking dresses to wear, they were puzzled as to how Asia was part of the play. So Mr. Blake and Mr. Sissle composed a song with an Asian flavor, added it to the show, and told Aunti and the ladies to perform it in their kimonos. They did, and the rehearsals went on.

But worse for me, the closer the time came, the sooner Aunti would leave me. I’d be an orphan in New York!

May arrived. I thought up dozens of reasons why I should go on the road with Aunti and why I shouldn’t stay behind, but none of them worked. She started to sound irritated with me. On the afternoon she was to leave for Washington, I waited, nervous and full of dread, for her to return from rehearsal. And then be gone.

Aunti sailed in the door. “We got to hurry and get me packed ’cause Jim’s downstairs waiting. He’s rounding up folks to take them to the train station.”

When she swept off her hat, I threw my hands to my mouth. Some awful thing had happened to her head. Half of her hair was missing!

“I know, I know, I said I’d never do it,” she told me when she saw me gawking at her head covered with short ringlets. “But they told me if I wanted to stay in the show I’d have to cut off my braids. Short hair is all the rage anyway now, so I had Lottie whack ’em off.”

After setting several bags on the table, she pulled three braids from her purse. They wrapped around her arm like black ropes. “I’ll have somebody make us hair brooches from these.”

I touched the short hairs clinging around her neck. I remembered how lost I’d felt when my own hair broke off, thanks to Aunt Society. “I bet you miss them already. It’ll grow back, won’t it?”

“I’ll be praying every day that it will,” she said. “It’s all right. Well, no, it’s not all right, but sometimes you got to sacrifice to get what you want, Celeste.”

Eyes shiny, Aunti stroked her shorn braids.

“Hey, Miss Valentina!” Gertie yelled from the hallway. I closed our door before Gertie could come or peep in. “Grandmomma wants to know when Cece’s coming over, and when you leaving.”

“In just a few minutes,” Aunti told her through the door.

“Cece gonna bring that doll?” Gertie wanted to know.

“Maybe,” I said. Aunti charged about grabbing up and dropping shoes, picking up and setting down cosmetics and soaps. She rummaged through boxes on the floor and through dresses on the wall.

“You got some candy over there, you bring that, too,” Gertie went on.

“We’re trying to get me packed,” Aunti yelled. “Go home.”

After she left, I touched Aunti’s braids again. “Gertie’s gonna drive me into hysterics every moment you’re gone.”

“You’re a big girl, Cece. You know how to deal with her. Where’s my blue cloche hat? The one with the three peacock feathers?” She had me rummaging with her until we finally situated in four suitcases what she thought she wanted to take. Packing in advance would have made so much more sense, but that wasn’t Aunti’s way.

“Look, when you get tired of Gertie, come back over here during the day and lock the door so she can’t get in. But sleep over there at night. I hardly ever lock things when we’re home, but you never know who might wander in uninvited from the street.”

“All right.” I wanted to say one more time that it’d be even better if she’d let me go with her, but I knew it was useless to say that now. As nervous as she was, it might upset her. I packed up my sack of licorice, my new secondhand brush and comb, my toothbrush, and a few other things in one of Aunti’s smaller bags. “You know, if Gertie’s too bad, maybe I could turn Miss Pinetar into one of those voodoo dolls Miss D talks about, and put a spell on her.”

“Ha! Wouldn’t that be something? But don’t say that around Miss D.” Aunti’s muffled voice came from her last forage among her clothes. “She believes in that stuff.”

“I know. It’s a blasphemous thought. But exciting.” I shoved Miss Pinetar and her dancing stick and paddle into the bag. Since she was made of wood, I couldn’t stick her full of pins, anyway, but maybe her dancing might keep Gertie calm. “Lord, please don’t make me have to sleep by Gertie tonight,” I said aloud. “She probably still wets the bed.”

We set Aunti’s bags in the hallway, then turned toward Miss D’s open door just as she came toward us. She saw me first and started to smile, but then she saw Aunti’s bare head. “No, no, you didn’t!” she shrieked, throwing her arms up in the air, then pressing her hands to her chest. She fell back in a chair.

“Ripsey, that’s too much drama. It’ll grow back. My people’s got
good
hair.” Aunti handed Miss D a piece of paper. “Look, here’s the address of the theater where we’ll be performing. I don’t know where I’ll be sleeping until we get there and find a place. I’ll leave a message with Mrs. Tartleton.”

We helped carry Aunti’s bags down to the lobby and out to a rickety truck where Mr. Jim stood smoking a cigarette and tapping his foot. “Shake a leg, girl!” He snatched up the bags. “Whoa, woman! You must have packed every piece of clothes you got!”

Aunti hugged me. “Will you be back in time for Mother’s Day?” I asked. “It’s next Sunday.”

“It depends on how the show’s coming along. You be good. Bye!” She hugged Miss D, then climbed into the truck and they rattled away.

“Well, there she goes,” I said sadly. I hated to see people leave me behind.

Miss D nodded. “She was sure glad to go, enty?”

We headed back upstairs. I dropped down in an overstuffed chair near the door with my bag, swinging my foot, looking around, while Miss D gathered up combs, hair oil, and her other tools to do battle with Gertie’s hair. Her apartment was L-shaped, much bigger than Aunti’s mouse hole, and was neat and homey, with a window. All I could see out the window was a brick wall of the building next door, but at least a little sunshine came in.