The Tumbling Turner Sisters

by Juliette Fay

  “Congratulations,” I said to Tip.

  He shrugged. “Least I’ll get to bed a little earlier.” But you could tell he was happy.

  We went on, and then Tip went on, and then we had about two hours before a new audience arrived and we had to perform again.

  “Where’d you learn to dance like that?” I asked him offhandedly, after he’d collapsed onto his trunk, wiping beads of sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief.

  “On the road,” he said. A cloudy answer, mostly made of air.

  “The road taught you?” I said dryly. “Must have been some road.”

  “Well, now.” He gave up a little chuckle. “It wasn’t the road itself, as much as the people on it. My aunt and uncle. They’ve been on the road most of their born days.”

  “Your parents didn’t mind you going off with relatives like that?”

  “Didn’t mind at all. Weren’t alive to mind.”

  The fresh news of an old misfortune is a tricky thing. You don’t know how much it still stings. “Sorry for their loss,” I said carefully.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I only knew my father, so the other wasn’t quite as grievous.”

  Kit had wandered over and nudged her way onto Winnie’s chair with her. “How’d he pass?” she asked. It was rude, but I hoped Tip would answer.

  He didn’t say anything at first, just stared off as if remembering.

  “Unpleasantly,” he said finally, and picked up his copy of Variety.

  9

  WINNIE

  Everything is copacetic.

  —Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, dancer and actor

  The last show of the night was stupendous! The audience practically came in clapping, and every act made them cheer. After Tip’s performance, the whole place erupted like Mount Vesuvius, but it was the colored section up in the gallery that made the most noise. They whistled and stomped, and their applause went on a little longer than the rest.

  Tip came offstage grinning so widely we could see the pink of his gums. His joy was instantly contagious, and we smiled right along with him, and then shooed him back out onto the boards to take another bow. The applause crested again, and he raised a hand, gazing briefly to the upper reaches of the theatre, and bowed once more.

  He came off shaking his head in happy wonder. The next act was the xylophone quartet, and they shot him angry looks as they scrambled onstage with their unwieldy instruments. I could understand their displeasure—Tip was an awfully hard act to follow—but I hoped that in their hearts they were a little bit happy for him, too.

  “You slayed them!” Kit whispered to Tip. “You blew the roof off!”

  Kit was picking up vaudeville jargon faster than any of us, and we burst out laughing at the sound of it. The stage manager scowled at our noisiness from his post on the opposite stage wing.

  “I gotta buy a postcard,” Tip whispered. “My aunt will lay an egg when she hears!”

  “Where are they now?” Kit asked.

  “Only the Good Lord and TOBA knows,” he said. “I’ll just send it to their hometown post office, and they’ll pick it up one of these months.” He saw our blank looks and said, “You never heard of TOBA? Well, I guess you wouldn’t. It’s the Theatre Owners Booking Association, the colored circuit down south. Chitlin’ Circuit, we call it.” He gave a dry little smirk. “Call it some other things, too.”

  He sat down on his trunk and started unbuttoning the white spats that covered the ankles of his tap shoes. I felt disappointed that we had finally gotten him to talk a little and the momentum might now be lost. But there was little to do but pack up and head to the hotel. We followed him out, and he turned left in the direction of the refinery.

  As we turned in the opposite direction, Kit asked, “Where do you think he’s staying?”

  Nell gave her a sideways look. “Somewhere they allow Negroes.”

  The next day, everyone was in a chipper mood, anticipating another grand reception from the good people of Wellsville. I should say, everyone except Mr. and Mrs. Pepper (which seemed unlikely to be their real name). They were as sullen as ever.

  The mood shifted dramatically, however, after the stage manager trotted over and said, “Jones, you’re back to closing. Peppers, you’re second. Mr. Kress’s orders.”

  “But why?” I blurted out.

  “Too much noise from the crow’s nest last night.” The man’s eyes remained trained on his notes. “Mr. Kress says he doesn’t want the place turning into some sort of colored free-for-all.” He glanced up quickly in Tip’s direction, gave a brief apologetic shrug, and hurried off to the other wing of the stage to assume his post.

  The Peppers exchanged smug looks and retired to their little corner of bird paradise. The rest of us stood there stunned.

  “It’s not right,” said Nell. “You deserve the deuce, Tip.”

  “He deserves to headline!” said Gert. “That fat old female impersonator doesn’t hold a candle. If I have to listen to him squawk out the “I Don’t Care’ song one more time, I’m going to scream back that I don’t care, either.”

  Mother said, “Now, girls, Mr. Kress is the manager and we can’t get on the wrong side of him. Besides, not every type of audience understands that in polite society you can’t just—”

  “Mother!” Gert said sharply, and we all fell silent in its wake.

  Finally it was Tip who spoke. “Ladies, I thank you for your kindness. All I want is a chance. That’s why I came up here, for a chance to be seen by all kinds of folks and maybe even make it into the big time one day. That was never going to happen on the colored circuit, and I’m just happy to get a spot—any spot. So as long as I’m still on the bill, I’m all right with it.”

  Well, you shouldn’t be, I thought. But what good would righteous fury do him? No good at all. In fact, it could cause him far more trouble than anything.

  If there was any small upside to Tip’s demotion, it was that he seemed to feel a bit more free to talk with us. What harm could it do, after all—he was already in the worst spot on the bill.

  “How come your trunk’s so big?” Kit wanted to know, bouncing little Harry on her knee like a pot full of popcorn.

  “So it fits my springboard and table,” he said. “They fold up, you know.”

  We did not know, and he showed us how the table legs were hinged, and the springboard had a stick of wood wedged into a notch between the two boards at the attached end, which created the spring. When the piece was taken out, the boards lay flat. He kept his clothes in a rucksack inside the trunk, and carried them to and from whatever lodging he could find. “Some towns have a nice colored section, with restaurants and small hotels. Some just have a bad neighborhood. It’s better to leave the trunk and props locked up in the theatre at night so no one takes a notion to carry them off.”

  “Where did you get the idea for them?” I asked. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Oh, I can’t claim to have invented it. Lot of tappers use some kind of platform in case they play somewhere low rent. Grange hall or something where there’s sawdust on the floor, or even hay. Can’t hear the tapping if the boards aren’t cleared.”

  He wanted to know how we’d gotten into the business, and Mother rewrote history—or at least changed the adjectives—saying we’d always been keen to perform, and Nell made the foursome complete by coming back into the fold after Harry’s death. “He was a fine young man, full of promise,” Mother bragged. “And he was friendly with Negroes on the battlefield, too!”

  Nell looked away, and I put a hand out to press her knee, both for comfort about poor Harry, and commiseration over Mother’s grandiosity.

  Tip took her pronouncement in stride, merely commenting, “You don’t say.” I imagine he’d heard white people assert their lack of prejudice before, and I wondered what it must be like to know it was often only true when such open-mindedness was convenient.

  “How old were you when you learned to tap like that?” as
ked Kit.

  “I was about eight when I went to live with my aunt and uncle. They started me right off with bottle caps between my toes. Best way to learn, barefoot so you can feel everything. Plus it saved money on shoes. When I was good enough, they added me into their act.”

  “Is that how you got your name?”

  “That’s right. Given name’s Hezekiah, but my uncle’s not much on the Bible, and he said it was an askin’-for-a-beatin’ kind of name.” Tip chuckled. “He might’ve been right—I didn’t keep it long enough to find out.”

  And so we passed a pleasant day, trading stories, stopping only to perform.

  That night I had dreams of flying. This wasn’t unusual for me, since I spent a good deal more time in midair than most people. But these particular dreams were of running and leaping higher than I ever had before, vaulting to dizzying heights.

  The next morning, I asked Tip to show me how his springboard worked. We went into the dim hallway, where there was room to run and bounce. The first few times I went sprawling when I landed, but with Tip giving me pointers, I quickly learned both to control the height of my bounce and to anticipate how to place my feet when I came down. We soon worked out a simple but impressive move: I vaulted from the springboard, flew through the air, and dove into my sisters’ waiting arms.

  Gert used it to perfect her no-handed cartwheel, legs winging up, head suspended precariously a few feet from the floor until she twisted and landed on her feet. The first few times she tried it, the momentum was too forceful, and she went careening past her desired landing point and crashed to the floor, but Gert being Gert, she persevered.

  “Fearless,” commented Tip, nodding appreciatively, his dark eyes taking her in.

  I saw her pause, and the barest blush rise to her cheeks. Knowing my sister, I doubt if any assessment could have pleased her more. Tip had unwittingly struck the perfect chord.

  The next vault she attempted had a rather calamitous ending: she ran right into Tip and they both fell to the floor. Mr. Pepper was carrying his birdcage out to the back alley to clean it, and was just in time to see the two of them sprawled together, arms and legs a tangle, and he tut-tutted at the impropriety of it.

  Tip jumped up like a jack-in-the-box. “I’m sorry, Mizz Gert, I’m so sorry,” he implored.

  “It was my fault.” Her cheeks were red even through her makeup. Embarrassed, she smiled a little too hard as she waved his apologies away. “Besides, you don’t practice a tumbling act without a lot worse falls than that.”

  His concern was understandable. A white woman in a horizontal position with a colored man was far beyond what most people found acceptable, no matter how innocently they’d come to be there. “You sure you’re all right?” he said. “I didn’t mean for—”

  “Of course you didn’t.” She ironed her face into composure “Now, let me ask you—where can we get one of these springboards? It’s perfect for our act.”

  “I made it myself from scrap wood. I could make you one. I could do that easy.” He was still jittery, and my heart went out to him.

  Mother gave him the money, and he went to the lumberyard down the street for the supplies. I think he was just happy to get away from us. Spending all day with a flock of white women can be a bit much for any man, but the color of Tip’s skin made it far more complicated.

  He came back with a paper sack of hardware and a couple of boards that were smaller than his own. “Y’all don’t weigh that much,” he said. “And I thought a smaller rig would fit better into your trunks. Then I got to thinking about those trunks of yours, and how much easier it would be if they had wheels like mine. So I picked up a couple of sets. I can return them if you aren’t inclined, though,” he added quickly.

  We were delighted at the idea, and went the few blocks to the hotel to retrieve our trunks. Tip had tools with him in case the need for repair arose, and he set to work right away. We were even able to use the newly made springboard during our last performance of the evening.

  As I flew through the air, I heard a little gasp go up from the crowd, and they applauded loudly when I landed in my sisters’ arms. I felt terribly grateful to Tip. I had never had a Negro for a friend before, and he proved to be as thoughtful and generous as anyone I knew.

  Everything was going so well.

  Perhaps a little too well, in some people’s estimation.

  10

  GERT

  Being a star has made it possible for me to get insulted in places where the average Negro could never hope to go and get insulted.

  —Sammy Davis Jr., singer, dancer, and actor

  I had no intention to launch into him like that. I’m almost certain of it. But when it happened, and he caught me up in his arms, twisting as we barreled downward so that his back hit the floor instead of mine, a rush of excitement swept through me the likes of which I’d never felt before. God help me, but the memory of landing on his broad chest is still a secret thrill.

  And I pay for that thrill every time I think of it, with the guilt of what happened next.

  We were dawdling—or I was anyway—after our last performance of the night. I just wanted a few more moments to talk with him, to see his eye catch mine as we chuckled over some silly thing or another.

  Fearless. If any man had ever even noticed that about me before, they’d certainly never complimented me on it. I got “doll” or “knockout.” The occasional “live wire.” Roy just loved how hardworking I was. (Course he did. He’d pegged me for an employee as well as a wife.)

  I was so caught up in enjoying Tip’s company that I paid no attention to the stupid bird people and how the husband disappeared for a while after their act.

  Just then that pompous windbag Kress came backstage. “Mr. Jones.” His tone made us all snap our eyes toward him, wondering what on earth had put a twist in his knickers this time.

  “Mr. Jones, it’s come to my attention that you have not been conducting yourself with moral steadfastness.” His glare suddenly took in my sisters and me. “All performers are expected to comport themselves with decency. Mr. Jones, I’m afraid I’ll have to dismiss you due to improper behavior. Your contract will be terminated after your final performance this evening.”

  Tip’s face went wide with shock, but then he buckled it down into firmness, and said, “Pardon me, Mr. Kress, but there hasn’t been . . . improper behavior. I’ve been a gentleman—”

  Kress let out a little scoff, as if a man like Tip could never hope to be in such a category.

  My fists curled at my sides. “He didn’t do anything except keep me from breaking my neck! If you want to blame someone, blame me!” Tip’s eyes met mine, and the gratitude in his gaze swept through me like a wave of warmth.

  Kress warned, “You are pressing your luck, Miss Turner.” I suddenly felt Nell’s hand on my arm, squeezing more tightly than I would’ve thought possible from someone so thin.

  He aimed himself back at Tip. “Jones, I have no interest in discussing your dubious social status. See me after the show and I’ll pay you for the days you worked. This is unreasonably generous on my part, but as an upstanding member of the business community, I won’t have it be said that I shorted anyone in my employ.” He raised his finger at Tip. “Assuming, of course, there are no further acts of indecency before the completion of your final performance.”

  “I’ll leave now.”

  “What’s that?” Kress demanded.

  Tip pulled himself to his full height, eyes boring straight into that weasel. “I said, I will leave now.”

  “Oh, no you won’t, boy,” snapped Kress. “There’s a show to put on, and you’ll leave when I tell you to.”

  A cold little smile flitted across Tip’s face, a look so menacing it nearly scared the daylights out of me. “I am no one’s boy. And I will come and go as I please.”

  My God, it was the bravest thing I’d ever seen. He had called me fearless, but my courage was nothing compared to his. His beauty nearly blinded me
.

  He turned then and began loading his few possessions into his trunk.

  “I won’t pay you,” warned Kress, his voice growing whiny as it dawned on him he was losing a battle that was so clearly stacked in his favor.

  Tip hauled the trunk up onto its wheels and tossed the rucksack onto his shoulder. “I wouldn’t take it anyway.” He nodded to us and strode down the hallway and out the door.

  11

  WINNIE

  Be awful nice to ’em goin’ up,

  because you’re gonna meet ’em all comin’ down.

  —Jimmy Durante, comedian and actor

  We walked back to the hotel in stunned silence.

  In our room, Kit suddenly blurted, “I just don’t understand what Tip did wrong!”

  “Nothing,” snarled Gert. “He did nothing wrong, so just shut up about it.”

  We got into our beds, and in the darkened quiet, the anger and confusion we all felt seemed to bounce off the walls around us. Gert was in such a state I didn’t dare provoke her by speaking. I wonder if she got a wink of sleep. I know I didn’t.

  With lead in our hearts, we trudged back to the theatre the next morning. I suppose each of us wondered what we might have done to save Tip from being fired. Gert had tried, but it was clear that Kress’s narrow mind had been made up well before he’d come backstage. He hadn’t even witnessed the so-called “act of indecency” himself.

  But someone else had.

  The Peppers had been absent during Kress’s tirade, spending longer than usual behind the theatre, purportedly cleaning their pigeons’ cage, a chore that had been performed by Mr. Pepper alone in previous days. It hadn’t occurred to us that they might be involved in some way. Now, their newly cheery faces suddenly made clear the source of Mr. Kress’s misinformation.

  “It was him,” Gert hissed, wild-eyed. “The man. He saw me fall into Tip, and reported it like it was Tip’s fault!”

  “I hope this won’t hurt our reputation with other managers,” Mother fussed. “It doesn’t seem right that we should be associated—”