Friends: A Love Story (11 page)

 

Meanwhile back at the ranch, poor Ahren was getting whipped. She was completely in the middle. She caught all the drama from my classmates and had to hear about how much fun I was having. Plus, she had to do all her class work and walk Bottom morning, noon and night by herself. “Courtney, when are you coming back?” she'd ask me.

On top of everything else, in my infinite wisdom, I decided to audition for a movie just to “stay sharp.” Richard Wright's
Native Son
was being cast and they'd been looking all over the country for the actor to portray Bigger Thomas, whose character was a mixture of innocence and manliness. I walked in, did the audition and was told by the producer, “We have been auditioning all over the country for this role and, baby, it's yours!” I was shocked! I went from being Bigger to being a baby again. “No, I'm not really even doing this. I'm in school,” I told the producer and director.

“Well, this role is yours,” they told me. “You'd better call somebody so you can do it.”

“Well, I gotta call my dean.”

“Well, you better call him then.”

My head was spinning.

“Hey, Lloyd, guess what just happened?” I said to Dean Richards. “I just auditioned and I got this part. I mean, I was just auditioning to be auditioning. I didn't think I'd get the role. I gotta go back to school.”

He said, “Well, I think you know what to do. I'll see you in a week back at school.”

“Yeah, I know that's what I gotta do. But since I don't have an agent I just wanted to check in with you.”

“Okay, see you Tuesday.”

Then I called the casting director and said, “I can't do it because I've gotta go back to school.”

“You
what?
”

“Yeah, I'm in school and as soon as
Fences
is over, I gotta go back and finish my third year.”

“But this is
your
role! You can't turn it down.”

“Well, sir, I just did. I can't do it. I gotta go back to school.”

“If you turn down this role, you'll never work again. Do you hear me! You'll never work again in this town and you'll never work in New York!”

The man scared me real bad. I am so thankful that I had the presence of mind to tell him, “Talk to me in five years.” I hung up the phone. Then I ran over to Frankie's apartment and told him what had happened.

“Man, that was scary!” I told him.

“But whoever gets that role, it's gonna be good, Court!”

“I know, but I'm going back to school.”

“I know, so let's go out and celebrate your decision!”

I think that was on a Tuesday and
Fences
was closing on Sunday. In between I got a call from someone in the film(I don't remember who) saying, “You'd better call your dean. There's a way to work it out if you want to do the film.”

“What!”

I called Lloyd.

“Courtney, go ahead and do the film,” he told me.

“Huh?”

“Sometimes there are difficult choices we have to make in life,” he told me. “This is one of them.”

We talked a bit more and then we hung up. I didn't know that the movie people had called many of the drama school alumni and given them the impression that Lloyd was pressuring me to return to school and not allowing me to do the role. In turn he hadn't heard back from me, so he assumed I wanted to do the movie. Now I was back in limbo. Since my moral compass was shaky and I didn't have the greatest problem-solving skills, I depended on other people. I depended on
Ahren. I depended on Lloyd. I couldn't depend on my parents because they didn't know this arena. They said, “Court, this is what you want, isn't it? You got a film!”

“But, no, Mommy; I'm in school! I went there to finish and I'm half a semester away. That is what my dream was.”

“What do you mean? I don't understand….”

At three in the morning, as I was in the middle of packing for the return trip to New Haven, I dialed up Frankie.

“What should I do?”

“Court, man, this is up to you. I can't call it, brotha.”

I sat in the middle of my hotel room floor with tears rolling down my face. I called Ahren not realizing my classmates were still hounding her: “When is he coming back? When is he coming back? The show is closing on Sunday. He'll be back Tuesday, right?” Some of this was their resentment, but some of it was justified. They needed me to prepare for the Leagues scenes, where we partner up, choose scenes and then put a show together based on the scenes. It was the culmination of all our work, and for those folks who had gone to the drama school to get an agent, it was the most important acting opportunity of their lives. However, none of the scenes they were preparing could proceed without me.

“Courtney, what do you mean ‘you don't know what to do'? You've got to come back!”

“But Lloyd told me—”

“I don't know what's going on, Courtney. I can't take this! I'm in the middle of all these people asking me what you're going to do. These people are driving me crazy!”

“Well, he's telling me to do the movie. I'm going to do it.”

“I can't believe you, Courtney! I can't believe you've done this.”

I returned to New Haven a couple of days later. Ahren was a mess because she couldn't take the pressure anymore. I tried to talk to her but she was in tears. “I don't know you anymore….”

That broke my heart—it broke my heart. I was struggling
with the same question and didn't have the emotional tools or support I needed to figure it out.

“Ahren, I'm going to talk to Earle and work it out. There's got to be a way to work it out.”

“Okay, Court….”

So I went to talk to Earle and explained the situation.

“How am I going to deal with this? How can I work it out so I can do the movie and come back in the summer finish up my last semester? How can I do it?”

He said, “Courtney, you can't. You're out.”

“Whaat!” My lip trembled. My jaw shook. “I thought there was a way to work it out.”

“Courtney, you can't do a movie and come back. If you do the movie, you're out.”

“But what if I don't do the movie?”

“Did you sign anything?”

“No.”

“Well, if you didn't sign anything then just call 'em and tell 'em you don't want to do it.”

“Can you call them as my representative? Somebody's got to represent me. Somebody's got to speak for me.”

“All right,” he said, then turned around and picked up the phone.

When someone on the other end answered, Earle identified himself and the situation and said, “He doesn't want to do it,” then hung up the phone.

“Finally, somebody has got my back,” I said, then broke down in tears.

Earle took the flack for me for three days as a variety of people in the movie industry caused the phones in the dean's office to ring off the hook. There were thirty to forty nasty messages left on our answering machine. They called my parents and threatened them. My mother took to her bed. Ahren and I had to get out of New Haven. We escaped to New
York. After several days the furor died down. We returned home and by then they had recast the part. The movie, which starred Elizabeth McGovern, Matt Dillon and Oprah Winfrey, did poorly and disappeared.

What Earle did in that moment was one of the greatest things anyone has ever done for me. I'll never ever forget what he did in speaking up for me. Shortly after he stood up for me, Earle lost his voice. A lifetime smoker and a drinker, he developed cancer of the larynx and they took out his voice box and installed a mechanical device.

 

When I returned to school the following week, everyone knew everything that had happened. Our voice teacher called a special meeting. She was the emotional center of our class. She said, “People need to say what they want to say and air out their feelings.” She moderated, but the whole class lit into me.

“I just think that it's unfair that…”

“You just think that you're better than everyone else.”

“You're getting special treatment because you're black.”

I just sat there and let them vent. Eventually I was given the chance to speak.

“I was just auditioning to stay sharp. I didn't think I would get the part.”

“Oh, that's what happened?”

“Yeah, they gave it to me on the spot!”

Why did I say that?

“Everything you do just comes out right.”

“Well, I don't think it's right that you're just getting so much.”

“Blah, blah, blah, blah…”

Ahren came to my defense. “He just did what any of you would do. He merely went on an audition.”

Eventually everyone hugged and cried and as a class we came back together. We came out of the experience energized
and ready to prepare for the Leagues. And in spite of my public humiliation, I was glad to be back with my classmates.

The Leagues didn't go well for many of our classmates. On the train ride to New York everyone was very excited. The ride back was painful. Many people were devastated, knowing they'd never work again. Ahren and I had done well, however. We both got agents and were poised to go.

Graduation from drama school was a blur. Shortly before the ceremony, Ahren stumbled across a long list of 1-900 phone calls on our phone bill.

“What are these, Courtney?”

At my birthday party a few months earlier, one of my friends had given me a present.

“Here, Court,” he said, handing me a slip of paper.

“What is it?”

“Your birthday present.”

I looked at it. It was only a number.

“What is it?”

“1-900-blah, blah, blah.”

“But what
is
it?”

“Call it up and see!”

Later, I called.

“
Whaaat?
This is
crazy!
”

I started calling it all the time. I was on that telephone ten times a day. It was impersonal and it was safe. I had been calling them whenever I was feeling down. Now I was exposed. It was embarrassing. Everything I knew about pornography was that it was secret.

“What are you
doing?
” she demanded. “You're spinning
out of control!
”

I knew it was wrong. But with my father hiding
Playboys
at home and telling me nothing about sex or relationships, I'd had no mooring on these issues. It was nothing, I told her. Just something a friend had told me about. I promised not to call them again.

Making things worse, our moving-to-New-York money was almost gone because Bottom had developed bad skin and he needed expensive veterinary treatments. And the
Native Son
fiasco had put a serious strain on our fragile relationship. We were used to sharing each other with other people. But in the process we might have lost each other. In front of our parents we acted our way through it. They were just so happy. Their children were graduating from Yale. We were not just actors, we were Yale drama school graduates! But we were just hoping we could make it through the day. Behind the scenes we were asking: Should we stay together? Should we break up? Should we move to New York together? “I don't know if it's the right thing, but I don't know what to do if I don't go with you.”

C
harles and I moved into the one-bedroom, fourth-floor walk-up apartment across from Central Park on 105th Street between Central Park West and Manhattan Avenue. Compared to where we lived in New Haven, the apartment was small. In the bedroom, there was only about one foot around the perimeter of the bed. The kitchen looked like an old Italian farmer's kitchen with a big industrial sink. Roaches came out of the faucet—little baby roaches, not big palmetto bugs. I could deal with them; they weren't big or as bad as the bugs I was used to in Florida. They just aggravated the hell out of me because they came out when company was over. Across the street was a raggedy, run-down, abandoned building. It had bats in the belfry. Now I think it's a beautiful condo.

At the time, I was twenty-four years old. I wasn't looking to marry Charles, but we did have a relationship. Needless to say, my mother wasn't happy about it. “Oh, you're shackin' up now,” she said about our living arrangements. I knew what I was doing fell outside the Bible and what I'd learned in church. But I was growing and exploring and figuring things out, so I lived with him anyway.

As soon as we moved in, I scoured the
New York Times
and
started talking to my friends from Yale and Negro Ensemble about what jobs were available. I got my first job out of the
Times,
booking spa services at Georgette Klinger Salon on Madison Avenue. Back then, Georgette Klinger was a big name in facials, salons and spas. There are a whole lot more salons and spas now, but back then she was
it
in New York City. For five days a week and one weekend a month, I worked in this little hallway with phone banks and huge schedule boards. We couldn't wear pants even though we weren't seen by the clientele. Folks would call and request a treatment from Ms. Galeana, Ms. Ivanca, Ms. This, Ms. That. The women were all from these European countries with one sister from Jamaica. To get to work I had to take two subway lines to get to the East Side, then walk a few blocks. I would start early in the morning and worked until six. In between, I'd get forty-five minutes for lunch and one ten-minute break. For that I got paid $225 a week, every other week. It was like slavery, but compared to some of the other women, I was doing well. I made more because I was an American. The Iranian girl who trained me made $200 a week for doing the same thing.

I would go to auditions on my forty-five-minute lunch break. Oh, Lord, the stress! Oh, the tears! I'd come in and my agent would call and say, “You have an audition at 3:20 p.m.” Then I'd ask Ms. Whoever was the head of the phone bank—she was always well coiffed, white-blond hair, little glasses, very sophisticated-looking—I'd say, “I would like to take lunch at three today.” It would usually take around twenty minutes to get to the audition. Going downtown was one thing, but if I had to walk crosstown about two or three avenues, that's where the stress came in. And you'd get there and, of course, your audition would be running behind. If I was lucky, it would only be five or ten minutes behind. Sometimes it would be a half hour. There were so many times when I was late returning to work.

“You are late! You're late. Coming back late is unacceptable.
Blah, blah, blah,” Ms. Coiffed would scold me. But she knew what I was doing; nobody else who worked there was trying to be an actress. They knew this was my survival gig—a means to an end. Later that day the same Ms. Coiffed would tell me, “Oh, Angela, you are going to be a big star!” It was very schizoid. She'd chastise me on the one hand then praise me on the other. It was too much stress—all this trying to get to the audition, get back in time, missing the audition because I got there late, having to leave the audition early or rush through it so I could get back to work without getting reprimanded, then later that day get applauded because “one day, you're going to be a star!” Depending how I was feeling that day, I would fuss under my breath or go into the bathroom and cry. Sometimes I'd feel very discouraged. I'd wonder, Is it ever going to happen? Am I ever going to get a chance to be an actress? Will I remember what to do if I finally get a job?

Meanwhile, Roc wasn't working; he was auditioning. He just didn't have that sort of coordination where he could focus on more than one thing. Even though he's a people person, I don't think he would have been any good at waiting tables or anything like that. He'd be talking and you'd still be waiting for your food. He was good at what he was good at, and that was acting. So he and another buddy, Reggie, put together a cabaret show at the West Bank Café. On weekends at 11:00 p.m. or later, they would perform scenes they'd made up then split the door—whatever the door was—with the establishment. He'd give me about twelve dollars a week. Well, that was the electric bill—at least it was something. But the rent still had to be paid. For a while all that responsibility fell on my shoulders.

One day someone told me that
U.S. News
and
World Report
was looking for an assistant. I was hired on the spot. At
U.S. News
I had one boss and one little desk. My job was to pull
Associated Press, United Press International
or
Sigma
photos to accompany the articles. I'd present a selection to my boss, he'd identify
which ones would run and I'd compile them and send them by FedEx to the main office in Washington, D.C. Sometimes we'd run late and I'd have to take a plane to D.C. to hand them in. That was kind of exciting. And now when I'd get calls for, say, an eleven-thirty audition at ten, I could tell my boss and he'd say, “Oh, leave now and prepare.” He understood that I was an actress and this job was just a stop on the way. I did my work. He let me go. It wasn't like a pressure thing. I was so happy.

One month after starting at
U.S. News
—it was the spring of 1984—I got my first job, as the understudy for
Colored People's Time
performed by the Negro Ensemble Company.
C.P. Time,
as I called it because I didn't like to say “colored people,” was a series of vignettes throughout history strung together, ranging from slavery to a Billie Holiday-ish character singing to the troops. When I called my mom to tell her I'd gotten this role, she was excited. She then told me what came to be the signature advice for every role I won: “Work hard and be nice!” At first I was trying to do both
U.S. News
and Negro Ensemble, but before long my boss told me, “Angela, it's not going to work out with the rehearsal schedule and working.” I started crying. In that short period of time the company had been so good to me, allowing me to prepare and go into auditions confident enough to get the job. Then I shook myself—Isn't this what you went to drama school for?—thanked everyone and headed out the door. Being selected to join the theater company I'd written my thesis about—a theatrical group with such an important legacy in the black community—was a tremendous honor I didn't take lightly. I was very aware that I was following in the footsteps of Ensemble alumni like Lorraine Hansberry, who wrote
A Raisin in the Sun,
which I performed a monologue from when I was a child, as well as people like LeRoi Jones, Louis Gossett Jr. and Phylicia Rashad. I knew God had given me a gift. I intended to care for it.

As understudy for
C.P. Time,
I had to learn all three women's
parts. That included singing, which I was not happy about. Singing always made me nervous. I consider mine an average voice; I don't think I can carry a tune all the way through. Of course, I grew up in the choir and was in gospel choir at Yale as a young adult. But to sing solo, no accompaniment, no choir—just you and your voice? I had never done that. In drama school I took a singing class and had to sing one song. I chose “Love for Sale” and never sung it to my teacher's or my satisfaction. I should have picked an easier song and worked on it and worked on it and worked on it. But I like to complete things and move on. So my confidence in that area was nil.

One girl I was covering was a real singer—Carol Maillard, one of the original members of Sweet Honey in the Rock, the Grammy Award-winning black, female a cappella ensemble. She was real encouraging and worked with me and taught me how to sing-talk a little bit. That worked out. You're playing a character and maybe the character doesn't have a voice like a canary. She sings okay but she's playing it, she's entertaining the troops. I also understudied L. Scott Colwell, one of the original members of Home, and Ahren Staunton, who came out of Julliard the year before me. Samuel L. Jackson and Charles Weldon were also in the play. I knew each of the women's parts “off book”—I knew them by heart. I didn't mess around. I studied the women, the inflections, their tones, their ways, how they played the scene. I was able to go on for any one of them at a moment's notice. Of course, none of them missed a beat. They might be late to the theater and I'd think, “Yeah!” ready to go on, but then they'd show up. Except Carol. Once she got sick and couldn't go on for two performances. I would get weak in the knees, play the part, then come off the stage and fall onto my knees.

After we ended our run in New York, we traveled around New England, Pennsylvania, New York State, New Jersey and Ohio on what they call a “bus and truck” tour. We'd ride on
the bus, get to the place, do the show, finish at ten-thirty, get a bite to eat, maybe see the town, get in bed and check out at 9:00 a.m. Sam called me the “rack queen” because I could curl up and make the bus seats look like a queen-size bed. One of the guys in the cast was always giving me the eye. “Hey, girl, why don't you come over here and sit on my lap.” I played it off for weeks. Then one day I couldn't take it. I shouted, “I am not a piece of meat!” in front of everyone else. He was stunned. I mean, I wasn't trying to hurt anyone's feelings, but I wasn't interested—he was married! After that he stopped talking to me completely. At some point during our trip L. Scott schooled me, “The code of the road is silence”—meaning, that for the two or three months that you're doing regional theater, you're gone, you do things, you see things and then you come back home to your life. “Oh!” Today they say, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”

One day I approached the guy who had been hitting on me and said, “I'm just a mean ol' heifer, ain't I?”

“Well, I dunno. You know, you kinda, you know…I don't wanna mess with you…”

“I'm not really mad at you. I was just, like, getting tired of you pressin' me with that song.”

After that we were real cool.

While we were on the road, Charles was back in New York and had been offered a role in
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom,
a play by an up-and-coming black playwright named August Wilson. Although we weren't aware of it at the time, opportunities for black actors were about to open up. We would ride the crest.
Ma Rainey
had premiered at Yale Rep while we were in school. Now that it would be hitting the regional circuit, Charles was cast in it. To prepare himself, he had to travel up to Yale for rehearsals. After it toured, the play made it to Broadway, which was a pretty incredible experience for someone a year out of drama school.
Ma Rainey
was phenomenal and Charles was
phenomenal in it. Now, Charles didn't play the trumpet, he wasn't a musician. But his character, Levee, played the trumpet, so the boy learned to play the trumpet and brought it to life. He was really amazing! I have to give it to him—Charles was undeniable!

Once
Ma Rainey
hit Broadway, Charles had officially been introduced to the theatrical community. He isn't waiting tables or working at Georgette Klinger's; he's doing the play and life is lovely! After the performance, admirers would invite him out for dinner or drinks. And let me tell you, when folks who can afford to pay for dinner and a ticket to go to the theater are feting you, it can get very heady. It was a wonderful time, a very attractive time. I'd laugh and tell him, “Oh, you're just a fat rat in a cheese factory.” It was also the time when our relationship started to get
strange.

On Broadway a play typically starts at 8:00 p.m. You get there early, you're finished by 10:30 p.m., you may grab dinner or a drink or meet some admirers afterward, and then you're done. While Charles worked, I'd be up in the roach-infested apartment waiting for him to get home. At first he'd come in at maybe two in the morning. That was okay 'til it got to be night after night after night. After a while I would tell him, “What the heck is going on here? I ain't your roommate, I ain't your secretary, I ain't your mama and I ain't your sister.” Of course, Charles always had an excuse—this person or that person wanted to take him out. He had always been good at making something sound halfway believable and leaving you questioning yourself—of making you think that ol' jelly jar was a Ming dynasty vase. But it got to be where he said he had to be gone at odd times during the day and night. Or he'd come in at four in the morning. Or he'd be gone for two days at a time. He'd tell me stories, like he had to go up to Yale. Or he was using his producer Fred Zollo's apartment because he was writing a play about the life of Ira Aldridge, the African tragedian. Now, he really was into Ira
Aldridge at the time; he was reading his biography. But I wasn't sure that I bought his story that he was working at Fred's because our little funky, too-small, fourth-floor, roach-infested apartment wasn't conducive to writing. Especially when he couldn't give me Fred Zollo's number or tell me where his apartment was. Things were sounding mighty unusual.