Celeste's Harlem Renaissance (9 page)

I opened my journal again and wrote, “Dear Poppa, I miss you so!” with hearts drawn around the word
Poppa.
When I wrote him last week, I didn’t say what I was going through. Now that he was in Coopers sanitarium, I knew he had enough to deal with. He’d sent us an official letter from the sanitarium that said only that he was there, nothing else. I wondered what Coopers was like. I hoped he would write and tell me. But I also didn’t share my problems with him because I was afraid he’d tell Aunt Society, who’d be pleased as punch that I was suffering.

Our dark little room made me feel like I lived in a cave. Or was down in a coal mine like Big Willie was. What were my friends Swan and Angel Mae and Evalina doing? Nobody but Poppa had written to me. I missed Raleigh!

I glanced at the broom in the corner. Our dirty dishes from yesterday still sat in the sink. The bed was unmade. More work! As I pulled Dede from under the bed, I wished I could play downstairs in the lobby beside a sunny window or on the porch, even if it was cold. When I opened the case, inside was Miss Pinetar. All this time I’d forgot about her. I screwed the stick into her back and placed the paddle on my knee. First I tried singing “Over There,” Poppa’s favorite war tune, then “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” our national Negro anthem that we sang in church and school all the time. And then my own “Forsythia.”

“Hey, Cece, that you?” Gertie stood in our doorway gawking, with her thumb in her almost toothless mouth. “Grandma sent me over here to see what you doin’.”

“I’m trying to enjoy myself,” I said, irritated at her interruption, and reminded myself to ask Aunt Valentina how to lock that door. “Go away. I’m busy.”

“No, you ain’t. You’re just singing and thumpin’ on that doll thing.” She strutted right into our room, and flopped onto the bed beside me. “Lemme see her.”

“Keep back or you’ll wind up with a nub at the end of your arm.” I raised the paddle to smack her hand. “But since you’re in here, be quiet and listen.”

“Just let me touch her.”

“Not with those saliva-coated germy fingers.”

“Then let’s go buy a bag of candy. You got some money?”

“I can’t leave the house, all right? I got to clean the room, so you need to go back over to Nine-A. Now.”

“Ole stingy thing.” She flounced out the door, adding, “And you don’t do
nothin’
fun!”

She was right, but sharing my things with her wouldn’t change that. Still, I felt a bit guilty for being so mean. She was probably lonely, too, with just her grandmother to play with. Too bad! After closing our door, I set down Miss Pinetar and lifted Dede to my chin.

A few hours later Aunti breezed in, humming and smiling. Still in her fine coat and hat, she sat down on the bed. “How’s your day been?” she asked. Before I could answer, she said, “I’m sure you want to know why we’ve been working so hard.” I nodded, listening carefully. She breathed in deeply, making her chest heave. “Before you came up here, I ran into some bad luck — long story. But your helping me work has kept a roof over our heads. And I can pay you. Hold out your hand and close your eyes.”

The Lord had heard my prayers, I thought. I shot out my hand and pinched my eyes shut so tight I saw little red dots. I felt something hard drop into my palm. Silver dollars? Slowly I opened my eyes and counted five nickels in my hand. Twenty-five cents? I tried not to frown, but my eyebrows squeezed together anyway. Sweatshop money, for true! I got more for scrubbing the Smithfields’ three front porch steps.

“I know it’s not much,” she said, “but things are really hard and I want to give you something.”

“I don’t mean to sound sassy, Aunt Valentina, but I don’t understand. You’d come down home in your fancy clothes and bring us presents and spend money left and right.” I paused, and when she stood up I leaned back out of slapping distance. “You talked about traveling around and going to musicals and singing and dancing in them. Now you’re half killing my hands and knees and back with this sweatshop work, just like Aunt Society said you would.”

“What? What?” She crossed her arms, frowned up so hard the powder almost flaked off her cheeks. Then she sighed. “All right. Look. You’re right and you’re wrong. Let’s go for a walk — not to scrub floors, just walk — and we’ll eat, and I’ll explain.”

I nodded, wondering if she was going to trick me and we’d end up hauling lumber or something. I slipped on her sweater and my coat, and we left the room. For once the day was warm. And for once we walked slower. I noticed buds on the few trees we passed. Aunt Valentina wrapped her arm around mine, and that was a good sign, too.

“I truly
was
a singer and dancer, until a couple of months ago,” she began. “I mean, I still am! For years I was the personal maid of Madame Mercifal Gutness, the German opera singer. I had my own room in her mansion. She let me drive her car. I ate the same exquisite foods she ate. Those seal and even real mink furs, the hats, the clothes, oh, I had some fine things! I traveled wherever she went. You got postcards from Chicago, San Francisco, Saint Louis, Atlanta. Madame said I was indispensable to her, and I thought so, too. And I was in musicals, twice as a maid and once as a — uh — servant — well, slave. Mostly, though, I helped her backstage. But that ought to account for something, shouldn’t it?

“Anyway, one day Madame heard me singing to myself, and from that time on, things went downhill. I was singing ‘Go Down, Moses’ and ironing her slips. Yes, I had to iron her slips, too, girl.”

“Did you sing better than Madame Mercifal?”

“Oh my, yes, always, and she knew it. But I wasn’t an opera singer. I couldn’t compete with her, even if I’d wanted to. We hardly had any Colored opera stars, besides the Black Patti and the Hyers Sisters. So very few, and far between. Anyway, sometime later, she heard I had won the leading role in a little ole five-cent Colored musical. Why, you’d have thought I’d got the starring role in
Romeo and Juliet
! She had such a hissy fit she was strangling on her own spit.”

“Which musical was it?”

“One nobody heard of.
Aunt Susie Honeysuckle.
I was supposed to be the kindhearted Colored washerwoman. But she contacted the producers and threatened them till they gave the part to her — get this — wearing brown skin makeup and a head rag. The clothes basket she was supposed to balance on her head kept falling off, and she was trying to sing Colored woman Southern with a German accent — oh, she was terrible. Whites play most big roles of Colored people, see. They don’t think we can portray ourselves in theater the way
they
want to portray us. That’s how minstrels got started with Whites wearing burnt cork on their faces and big white lips, and raggedy clothes, you know. Making fun of Colored people. Rich, mean-spirited Whites do stuff like that in the theater business all the time. They’re in charge of everything, or try to be. New York has its own brand of prejudice, just like North Carolina does, Celeste.”

I just said “Oh” to the part about prejudice. I was surprised — and not surprised — at her words. From the stories I read in newspapers, New York and Chicago and the north were supposed to be the promised land for us Colored. But from listening to Poppa and the Smithfields talk, I had heard about terrible things happening to Colored people in the north, too.

The play closed after only two performances. Madame Mercifal told Aunt Valentina that she’d fix things so she’d never get a job in a musical again, then fired her and kicked her out of the Gutness mansion.

Aunt Valentina sat down heavily at a trolley car bench to rest, and I plunked down beside her. “She was so jealous of my talent — well, of everybody else’s talents. I hear she has a young singer from Italy working as her maid now, and the girl’s about gone crazy. Madame should help aspiring artists, not hinder them.”

“She’s nothing like her name, is she?” My heart twisted for my aunt. To go from being so high on the hog to so low at the trough.

“In public she’s so gracious, but away from admirers she’s a witch. She was also jealous of my straight white teeth — she wore false teeth — my shapely legs, and my thick long hair. She hardly had any hair and wore wigs all the time.”

Aunti laid her hand on mine. “When I heard about your situation, I couldn’t let you go sharecrop for the Hugelburger sisters, but I couldn’t move to Raleigh penniless, either. I took a big chance, so here we are, in Harlem.”

“So that’s what happened,” was all I could say. We watched the trolleys pass us. Did that mean that if she got a better job she could save her money and move back home? Which was what I wanted, of course. “Aunti, the way you got treated was sort of how Aunt Society liked to treat me,” I said instead. “And she said so many mean things about you, like how you’re gonna go to the Devil’s Pit of —”

“Excuse me, please, honey, that’s enough.” She held up her hand. “I don’t want to hitchhike down to Raleigh and wring Society’s scrawny yellow neck over her gossip.” She stood up. “Let’s celebrate! I will find a better job, Cece, I promise you. I’ve been applying for all kinds of jobs at theaters, cabarets, restaurants. With you here I’ve an added incentive to find something better.”

I pulled Caterina Jarboro’s visiting card out of the sweater pocket and handed it to her. “She seemed very nice. She’s studying voice and piano and lives in Brooklyn, but she’s from Wilmington. Maybe she can help you.” Saying nothing, Aunti tucked the card into her purse. I stood up from the bench and we began walking again. I had another worrisome thought. “If you do get a job, wouldn’t ole Madame try to have you fired again?”

“I’ll worry about that after I get the job.” She tucked a loose braid back under her hat.

That gave me a chance to move to a safer subject. “I love your hair, so thick and pretty. Wish mine was again.” My dirty hair needed to be washed really bad. It hadn’t been since January, and I knew it smelled awful. Aunt Society didn’t like to wash hair in the winter. She said having a wet head in the winter gave you pneumonia.

“Thanks, doll. I’ve worn it like this since — since I left Raleigh. I’ll never cut it again, not for anything. Long hair runs in our family. We’ll get yours back up to snuff.”

At that good news, I grabbed her hand. We bounced along, swinging our arms. Aunti said we were going to eat at Café Noir Le Grande right around the corner on Lenox Avenue, which was one of her favorite streets. “This is where I pick up those delicious little cakes and oxtail soup, visit with friends, and hope to get job leads. Almost everybody who eats here is an artist, actor, writer, something in the arts.”

I’d never noticed this tiny café before, tucked back among the taller buildings, but I’d only been on Lenox Avenue at night. Going into this strange place full of folks should have made my tummy do a pretzel dance, but the smell of good food wouldn’t let it. A tall brown-skinned man in a shiny yellow shirt, black neck scarf, and black suit buzzed over to Aunti and whirled her around. “Mademoiselle Valentina! I’m so fortunate that your beauty has again graced my presence.” He leaned over her hands and kissed each one, like I had seen stars do on the Royal Theater movie screen back home. I giggled behind my hands.

Aunt Valentina curtsied. “Monsieur, you are too kind,” she said, and kissed him quickly on both cheeks.

“And who’s this
jeune fille
with you?”

Flustered, I stepped behind my aunt, but she kept moving. I took a deep breath and glanced at him sideways. Those foreign words sounded like French ones I’d heard in songs on the Westrand. He had green eyes! A green-eyed Colored Frenchman? Was I supposed to curtsy, too?

“My lovely niece, Celeste Lassiter Massey,” Aunti said. “Celeste, this is Monsieur Jacques Le Grande, noted playwright, a good friend, and owner of this fabulous establishment.”

When Monsieur Le Grande took my left hand, bowed over it, and kissed it, I almost fainted. “
Enchanté,
” he said. “Welcome to the Café Noir Le Grande, the center of Harlem, where true artists gather.”

“Especially those like me, who have no money,” Aunt Valentina added.

Heart pounding, with the feel of his warm lips still on my hand, I squeaked out, “Hello, moan — moan sewer.”

“Monsieur is one of my very best friends, Celeste, from
waaay
back,” Aunti said, pronouncing “monsieur” slowly and precisely.

“Mademoiselle, I would give you the rings of Saturn and the moons of Mars if I could. But food’ll have to suffice for now.” He snapped his fingers and a man in a white apron hurried over. “Please bring my beautiful guests anything they wish,” he told the man. “And prepare a take-home plate of today’s desserts.”

Monsieur Le Grande pulled out our chairs and, after planting another kiss on Aunti, strutted away. In his yellow and black clothes, he flew around like a bumblebee the size of an airship. “He kissed my hand!” I whispered to my aunt. “Is he really from France?”

“Lordie, no. His real name’s Roy Lee Estill, from the cotton fields of Hampton County, South Carolina.” Aunt Valentina laughed over the voices, laughter, and music around us. “But that’s a big secret. After the Klan ran him out of South Carolina, he popped up in New Orleans and learned how to cook Creole. He pretends to be French to draw in business. It works, too.”

“He acts like he’s sweet on you.”

“No, baby, he’s sweet on himself. That’s just how he is, and I’m grateful. Hear the music? Look there, where it’s coming from.” She pointed to a raised platform in the corner of the room, where a man in a white tuxedo plucked out songs on a gold harp. A white and gold piano sat behind him. “That’s Andre. He plays that piano, too. Doesn’t he sound grand?”

“Now that’s
really
grand,” I whispered. I knew Momma would have loved to play on that piano. When Aunti picked up the menu, I did, too, but I couldn’t read it because it was in French. Aunti smiled and ordered our lunches, which turned out to be roast chicken, glazed sweet potatoes, buttery cathead biscuits, gravy, green beans with almonds, sweet tea, and my favorite, pecan pie. Now I knew two words connected with chicken and eggs —
poulet
and poached!

I concentrated on eating. It seemed to taste better here than in our little room at the boardinghouse. As we ate, a woman in a white uniform and head wrap, with an armful of newspapers, headed for our table. Tiny red, black, and green flags stuck out of her uniform pocket. Was the woman a Red Cross nurse about to ask us to give blood? “One God, One Aim, One Destiny,” the woman said as she handed Aunti a newspaper called
Negro World.