Southern Ruby (41 page)

That night's show was an extravaganza, with comedians, singers, magicians and the dance band booked to play until four in the morning. Tickets were five times the normal cost and had been reserved weeks in advance, but the maître d' promised to squeeze in a table for Clifford when he arrived. I wanted him placed near the stage where he could get a good view of my act, but I didn't intend to reveal I was Ruby until after my performance.

My gown for my final routine was silver satin embellished with rhinestones and sequins, with sleeves fashioned like angel wings. The song was a jazzed-up version of ‘Angel Eyes'. In the dressing room, I attempted to add more false lashes to my eyelids but my hand shook so much I ended up poking myself in the eye. A vein was pulsing in my temple and I had to breathe in and out slowly to make it disappear. My gaze constantly returned to the clock on the wall. At quarter-hour intervals I found myself imagining what Clifford would be doing at that moment: eating dinner with his family; dressing for the club; stepping into a cab. When the hands reached ten-thirty I couldn't sit still any longer. I opened the door to the hall and called the stage manager. The band was playing ‘There'll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight'.

‘Is my guest here?' I asked.

‘Yes, he arrived about ten minutes ago. Real nice gentleman. He seems to be enjoying the show.'

Not since the first time I'd performed at the Havana Club had I been so jittery before going on stage.

‘You want something?' Annie asked when she came in to help me with my headdress. ‘Can I get you a drink? Or a Miltown?'

A lot of performers at the club took ‘happy pills' to steady their nerves. But I wanted to meet Clifford with a clear head.

‘No, I'm fine,' I told her. ‘It's the biggest crowd we've ever had, that's all.'

As I climbed the stairs to the wing, my legs trembled as if I were heading towards the gallows rather than the stage.

‘Give it your best,' the stage manager told me. It was what he always said.

I swallowed. Was I really going through with this? My throat tightened with panic but I resisted the urge to flee. I glimpsed Leroy waiting with the rest of the band for the cue from the stage manager. He grinned at me. I had to do this for him as well as out of decency to Clifford.

All conversation ceased when I stepped onto the podium. I couldn't bring myself to look in Clifford's direction though I was aware of him in my peripheral vision. My number was sultry, with a lot of slinky struts and shoulder rolls and holding my arms out to simulate flying. Only when I was down to my underwear did I allow myself a glance at Clifford. He was watching me intently but his face was expressionless. I couldn't tell what he was thinking.

When I returned to my dressing room, my heart was pounding and my hands and feet had turned to ice. I removed my wig and stage make-up, before taking off my performance lingerie and changing into a blue silk faille dress so I could reveal myself to Clifford as Ruby. How horrible would those first moments be? Would he get mad and make a scene? Or say nothing and walk away? Or even worse, would he resent being made a fool of and tell Maman?

The last scenario was so terrifying that I nearly backed out of telling the truth at all. I could simply go out the stage door, come in the main entrance and say I was late because I'd been held up at the telephone exchange. A knock at the dressing-room door made me jump. I opened it, expecting the stage manager,
but instead I found the nervous-looking maître d' with Clifford standing behind him.

‘I'm sorry, Miss Jewel, but your guest insists on seeing you right now.'

I was breathing so rapidly I could hardly get my words out. ‘It's all right, Claude.'

Clifford brushed past the maître d' and shut the door behind him. I braced myself for an ugly scene. Somehow, despite my full costume and under the lavender lights in a different setting and doing something nobody would expect Ruby to do, Clifford had recognised me.

His gaze travelled from the costumes hanging on a rack to my dressing table covered in brushes and pots of colour. He picked up a powder puff and examined it before sitting down in a spare chair and squinting at me. ‘Explain this to me, Ruby, because I can't get a handle on it. What's going on?'

The calmness in his voice was unnerving. ‘How did you recognise me?'

He regarded me for a moment before answering. ‘Did you think I wasn't going to? It doesn't matter what a woman does to her hair and clothing, a man will always recognise the woman he loves.'

I sat down at my dressing table. His solicitous tone made me realise that Clifford truly loved me; maybe not passionately, but sincerely. I straightened my shoulders and looked him in the eye.

‘I didn't know any other way to show you what I do for a living. Working at the telephone exchange wouldn't have been enough to get us out of the debt we were in. I had to save Maman and Mae from ruin, only I had to ruin Ruby in the process.'

He shook his head as if he were mystified. ‘Is that what you believe — that you are “ruined”? What does that mean anyway?'

That the conversation wasn't going in any direction I had expected made my head spin. I struggled to explain what I had always assumed without question. ‘It means that I can never marry well.'

‘Marry well,' Clifford repeated. He stood up and paced around the room. ‘What does that mean?'

I flinched. ‘What does that mean? It means marrying someone with standing in society . . . from a good family,' I said.

‘Is that what you wanted, Ruby? To marry someone with a position in society?' he asked, his voice hardening. ‘What about respect and companionship? Aren't those things important to you too?'

I wrung my hands, wrestling with beliefs I had always accepted without question.

‘If marrying well was your chief desire in life, I don't think you would have sacrificed it even to save your mother and your maid,' he said. ‘I think you're a woman who lives by her heart. You love them and that's why you did what you did. A woman who wants to marry well doesn't risk her place in society by turning up at a meeting supporting integration, does she?'

‘I don't know,' I replied, rubbing my forehead. ‘I've never thought about it like that. I only did what I felt was the right thing to do.'

Clifford sat down again with his hands on his knees and sucked in a breath. ‘Marrying well by New Orleans standards would have tied me to Jackie Fausey and her family forever.' He smiled faintly. ‘I don't want that. I want a woman with both passion and compassion, and I've found her in you, Ruby.'

I was so confused that I wanted to cry. I'd thought that revealing myself as Jewel would send him running, but he seemed even more enamoured than before.

‘But if anyone finds out what I do for a living, it will ruin you, Clifford. It will destroy your credibility for a cause you care deeply about.'

‘That word “ruin” again,' he said with a sigh. ‘Would it have been better for the cause if I'd married Jackie? Do you know what she said to me? “I don't care if coloured people are equal to us in intelligence or even in God's eyes. We need people to be our maids and clean our shoes and do all the jobs we don't want to do. That's why we have to keep niggers in their place.”'

I stopped wringing my hands and sat back. There was a lot more to Clifford Lalande than met the eye. I wanted to know about what happened with Jackie but I was aware of the whispers in the corridor outside. There was nothing people at the Vieux Carré Club loved more than gossip, and I was sure the maître d' had told everyone that I had a wealthy man in my dressing room, something I'd never done before, and that he was my special guest for the evening. I dreaded to think what Leroy might make of it.

I'd intended to reveal to Clifford what I did for a living but not about Leroy. But he'd opened his heart to me and he deserved the truth. ‘Clifford, I couldn't tell you what I do in front of Maman — I hope you understand? She comes from a different world from us. If she knew that I'm dancing for money, it would destroy her. But . . .'

‘But what, Ruby? There's something else you want to tell me, isn't there?'

I stared at my lap and nodded.

‘Is there someone else?'

I looked up at him but I couldn't bring myself to respond, and Clifford took my silence as my answer.

‘Well, lucky guy!' he said, blowing out his cheeks and running his hand through his hair. ‘At least it explains your attitude to me. Why doesn't your mother know about him?'

I bit my lip before answering, ‘He's coloured. That's why Maman doesn't know about him, and that's why I came to the meeting. I love him and his family, and I want a good life for us all.'

Clifford stood up and started pacing again. ‘Good God, Ruby! Do you know what you're doing?'

Here it comes
, I thought.
All this talk about equality is fine until a white woman actually goes and falls in love with a Negro man
. I was ready to admonish him for his hypocrisy, but when I looked into his face I didn't see anger in his expression, only concern.

‘Ruby, you are too many decades ahead of your time,' he said. ‘But if you love him, he must be a fine man.'

I had a sudden desire to unburden myself to Clifford. It was as if he understood things about me that I didn't understand myself.

‘I don't know what to do,' I told him. ‘I know we aren't safe here, but I can't leave Maman. He loves his family too.'

Clifford shook his head. Although his disappointment weighed on his features, there was no bitterness in his voice when he said: ‘I wish I could advise you, but I can't. Be true to your heart, Ruby, that's the best any of us can do.' He moved to the door and when he opened it, a burst of music and laughter sounded from the club. Before stepping into the hallway he turned back to me. ‘If ever you need my help, you come to me, Ruby. Do you understand? I mean what I'm saying. If ever you need help, come to me.'

After that night at the Vieux Carré Club, I didn't need any more proof that Clifford was a gentleman, but when he wrote a note to Maman explaining that he had to leave town for some time and would call on her when he got back, I knew that he'd done it so the break between us wouldn't seem so sudden.

Leroy was astounded when I explained who Clifford Lalande was and why he'd come to my dressing room.

‘You turned away a rich white lawyer to be with me?' he said, grinning to show he was glad. ‘You wouldn't have had to work any more, and you wouldn't have to sneak around with me.'

‘I like sneaking around with you,' I told him, placing my hands on his shoulders.

But he didn't take my words as a joke. ‘We've got to figure something out,' he said. ‘We can't be playing around and pretending any more. I'm serious about you and you're serious about me. We've got to decide what we're going to do.'

Leroy was right. We were going to have to do something, because staying together in New Orleans was impossible. Only a few days earlier, the
Louisiana Weekly
had published a story about a coloured girl whose tongue was cut out after she named her white rapists; and another about a father shot in front of his children for writing to the Governor and requesting better streetlighting in his Negro neighbourhood. In the next few months things continued to deteriorate all over the South. The Reverend George Lee, a NAACP volunteer, was shot for helping coloured people in the Mississippi Delta register to vote. Even though several witnesses saw the white culprits drive away in their car, the police didn't charge anyone and no investigations were made.

‘I heard from the funeral director in Belzoni that the Reverend's face was shot off and had to be sewn back on,' Pearl told us one Sunday when we gathered for lunch. ‘But the County Sheriff passed off the death as a car accident and the hundreds of shotgun pellets lodged in the Reverend's face and neck as dental fillings!'