I felt doubt, concern. Okay, I was fucking losing it and called my mother, sobbing, from a pay phone behind the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on 46th Street: “Mama, Mama, everybody wants to be a star up here in New York!” Who knew all these other people were gonna be here, chasing the same dream as me? “Oh my God. It’s all too big, Mama,” I wailed. “There are so many of them and they’re all so good.” Part of me wanted to give up and run home. But quit? Me? Fortunately, the bigger part of me knew I was on the right track.
One of my first auditions was for an out-of-town production of Daddy Goodness, starring Clifton Davis. It was a musical based on a play by Richard Wright, the brilliant author of Native Son. At the audition I met Sheryl Lee Ralph, the wonderful actress and activist, who remains a good friend. At age twenty, Sheryl was strikingly beautiful. And she still is today at age ninety-three! After the audition we went off together to Howard Johnson’s in Times Square to kill time before contacting our answering services for what we just knew would be a call-back. I ate apple pie à la mode. Sheryl ate a banana split. Neither of us got the gig, but we bonded that day, vowing that we’d become stars on Broadway and in the movies. Years later, I was one of Sheryl’s bridesmaids when she married her eighth husband (okay, it was her second husband!).
I was living temporarily with my college boyfriend, Miguel, and his mother in Brooklyn, in their fourth-floor walk-up above a karate dojo on the corner of Flatbush Avenue and St. Marks. Miguel was, perhaps, to this day, the one true love of my life. We had been together during my first two years at Webster, but it was off and on because my love life in college had a lot of moving parts.
But I always found my way back to Miguel. He was born and raised in the Dominican Republic. He was a brilliant man who held two master’s degrees, and when we met, Miguel was at Webster working on his PhD—in math no less! I loved Miguel for his intelligence and his delicious accent, especially the way he said my name: Yenifer. He was about ten years older than me but a very healthy man. And ladies, I do mean very healthy. I recall how his skin tone blended with mine—together we were a beautiful caramel macchiato. Miguel was the first vegetarian I’d ever met. I found him fascinating.
Once he got his PhD, Miguel went back to live with his family in New York City while I finished my last two years of college. We maintained a long-distance relationship, and I stayed with him a few times during my junior and senior years when I went to New York for auditions.
After we’d been a couple for some time, Miguel said something that stayed with me: “Yenifer,” he said, “joo have theezs great ability to get zee attenshoon of zee people, but den, joo say no-thing.” I thought, “So what? I am an entertainer, not a teacher.”
Miguel’s mother, Andrea, did not speak much English, but she treated me like a daughter and sure could cook her ass off. She made plantains and concón, a traditional Dominican dish of the delicious crust of rice scraped off the bottom of the rice pot. If you’ve ever had concón, you understand why thinking about it still makes my mouth water after all these years!
Miguel and I went into Manhattan a lot. He’d play chess in Washington Square Park. I loved that he won most of his games, being a genius and all. But with my short attention span, it was tough for me to sit and watch something as boring as chess, so I would wander off and go watch the street artists in the middle of the square. I liked their raw, natural style. It was there that I first met Phyllis Yvonne Stickney, who later played my daughter Alline in What’s Love Got to Do with It. She was so captivating, talking politics in her red, black, and green turban. I have always been attracted to intelligent people. I find them fascinating because I just didn’t pay as much attention in school as I ought to have; if it wasn’t about music or movies, I really didn’t see what it had to do with me.
Many of my outings with Miguel were punctuated with a visit to Mamoun’s, the falafel joint on MacDougal Street that has become a Greenwich Village institution. We’d stand in line arm-in-arm, pressing against each other, laughing and talking as we waited our turn to squeeze into the hole in the wall for our delicious falafels drenched in tahini sauce. The few sticky tables were usually taken, so once we’d ordered and paid, we would sit on the bench out front, stuffing our faces and wiping tahini from the corners of each other’s mouths. Once, Miguel noticed the cook who had served us leaning against the building smoking a cigarette. Disgusted that a smoker had touched his food, Miguel threw what remained of his falafel in the trash. I loved that Miguel kept his body pure (and I made a note to continue hiding my nicotine habit from him!). We had a beautiful, loving relationship, but we fought a lot, mostly because Miguel wanted to marry me.
I couldn’t marry him or anyone else. I had already taken a husband—New York City itself. We were the perfect couple. I’ve always been dramatic, and New York matched my “extra-ness.” The city was extreme, and so was I. Everything about New York seemed over the top like me. Y’all know I’m loud. The entire city seemed to vibrate at my frequency, propelling me to reach for more, more, more! This was the relationship I wanted—though I loved Miguel deeply, his proposal didn’t stand a chance.
Through the decades, New York City has remained a magical, fascinating adventure for me. The people, the conversations! For instance, nearly thirty years after I first arrived in New York, I was sitting in the lobby of the Public Theater, studying my ass off for my role playing opposite Meryl Streep in Mother Courage and Her Children. A young black man, who I think was a summer intern, approached me in the lobby. Without saying so much as “Excuse me,” he sat down next to me in a huff and growled, “Why do black women get so mad when they see us walking down the street with a white girl?”
I slowly turned toward this handsome, ebony boy and said, “Do you really want to know the answer to that question?”
He said, “Yeah, I really want to know. I get sick of that shit.”
I said, “Well, it might have something to do with this. For decades, black men were lynched, often for allegedly looking at a white woman. Our mothers’ mothers cut the black bodies of their sons and husbands down from the trees. But we black women did something we didn’t have to do before we buried them. First, we washed their bodies.” I let my words sink in and continued.
“So, little boy, when you see a black woman walking down the street, you tilt your hat and acknowledge her existence. If only for the fact that first, we washed you. And next time you sit down next to me, you say, ‘Excuse me, Miss Lewis.’ Now get the fuck on where you’re going. I’m studying Brecht, little boy.”
About two years later, I was again living in the city temporarily, this time during my run as “Motormouth Maybelle,” the black mother character in Hairspray. I was provided a nice one-bedroom apartment with a great view on the twenty-eighth floor of a high-rise that had a pool on the lower level. It was all very movie star on Broadway, if you know what I mean.
Every day of that sweltering hot summer seemed to serve up at least one quintessential New York experience. I’ll never forget the day I rode the Circle Line tour boat past an astounding public art exhibit where they had erected a waterfall underneath the Brooklyn Bridge. Another memory of that New York summer is the reaction of the passengers when I rode the N Train between shows in my Motormouth makeup, which of course was shocking up close in that garish light. And, I will definitely never forget the time I decided to do my own laundry and inadvertently found new meaning in the phrase “separate the whites.”
Although any sane person who was singing and dancing in eight shows a week would have someone else handle her wash, I’m a clean freak and find it highly disturbing to stare at a load of dirty clothes. So, I decided to truck on down to the third-floor laundry room and do it myself. I separated the whites into a basket and used pillowcases for darks and light colors.
I stood in my sweats and house shoes at a bank of four elevators, waiting in the middle. When an elevator door opened to the far left, I scooped up the basket, ran over, and plopped it in the door’s path
to keep it open. I asked the older couple in the elevator to wait a second while I grabbed the other two bags. I ran to get them, but as I turned back, I heard the woman say loudly: “We’re not waiting for you.” With that, she kicked my laundry basket out of the elevator, its contents spilling out onto the floor.
I began to rumble like the Northridge earthquake of 1994. Truth be told, I was overdue for a phone session with my therapist, Rachel, and was carrying a lot of pent-up anxiety. When I saw the basket fly out of the elevators, I launched my body between the elevator doors in one rage-fueled leap to stop them from closing. Then, while keeping my eyes on the couple’s eyes, I knelt down, and ever so slowly placed my whites, one by one, back into the basket. White sock by white sock. White towel by white towel. White crotch-less panty by white crotch-less panty. When finished, I straightened up, stepped into the elevator, and let the door close. I pushed “3,” turned to face the white couple, and in a normal, even tone of voice, said, “Well, that was rude.” The woman snapped back. “Look, we’re in a hur . . .” Before she got the entire statement out of her mouth, I was about a half-inch from her nose. Drawing on vocal cords that had been reaching the back row of the theater, I roared, “Shut the fuck up. You lost the right to speak when you kicked my shit.”
The old man stepped toward me as if to reach out and protect the woman. But if there was a first blow to deliver, it wasn’t coming from me. I never strike first. I had sense enough to remember that there are cameras on elevators. The man stepped toward me. I turned my head and with eyes blazing, and through clenched teeth, I said, “Don’t you move.” He went rigid. I continued in a low, level tone. “You lost your right to do anything when you let her kick my shit.”
Ooooh baby, that was just the introduction to my diatribe!
“What are you people made of?” I shouted, my voice amplified in the small cabin. “After the Holocaust, after 9/11, after the Middle Passage . . .” I realized they didn’t know what the Middle Passage even was. That made me madder, so I really went in. “Have you no souls? Have you not heard of the Brotherhood of Mankind?!” I berated them for the duration of the twenty-five-floor descent, probably for close to a minute. I’m sure it felt like hours for the couple, who stood stiffly, their eyes wide. At one point the elevator stopped and the doors opened. A young, executive-type Asian woman stepped forward, but sensing the tension, quickly retreated, whispering, “I’ll wait for the next one.”
As we reached the third floor, I yelled, “And, another thing!” The doors opened right on time as I gathered my laundry and cheerfully exited the elevator with, “Now, y’all have a nice day.”
Later I learned that the couple reported me to the concierge, describing me as a “crazy maid.” But the joke was on them. The staff knew and loved me and figured out for themselves what had taken place. They told me that particular couple treated everyone disrespectfully as a matter of course.
Before leaving for the evening’s performance, I found an anonymous note taped to my door that read: “The couple who were racist toward you this morning are in suite number 2908. Handle your business, Miss Lewis.” It felt good to have the support of the building staff, but I decided to let it go. You’ve got to choose your battles, and I had a show to do.
That night on stage in Hairspray, I sang my asssss off performing “I Know Where I’ve Been,” the showstopper about the Civil Rights Movement, thinking about racism, segregation, and my own experience that day having to “separate the whites”!
THREE
DON’T TELL MAMA
About a week after I first arrived in the Big Apple, Miguel left for the Dominican Republic to care for his sick grandmother. That was fine with me because I was feeling a bit cramped by his requests for marriage. Miguel’s departure spurred me to say goodbye to his mom’s apartment and move into a small one-bedroom with Mark Alton Brown and Robert (Bobby) Cesario. Mark and Bobby were friends from Webster University whom I met during my first week there. I’d walked into the busy dining hall sporting Afro puffs and a checkered pantsuit and spied two men sitting together. I sashayed over to where they were seated and without so much as introducing myself, I leaned over and put my elbows on their table so my face was level with theirs. “Which man in this cafeteria do you think I slept with last night?” I asked, glancing around the crowded hall, allowing my gaze to land on Miguel.
Both Mark and Bobby fell in love with me in that moment. At the same time, they fell in love with each other. For the next two years at Webster and then throughout our lives, the three of us have been thick as thieves.
Mark and Bobby were already juniors when we met at college and they had moved to New York City about two years before I arrived. Like me, Mark and Bobby had showbiz aspirations. But when I moved in, Mark was scooping ice cream at Häagen-Dazs and Bobby was pounding the pavement for acting jobs.
I’d been living at Mark and Bobby’s place on Broadway and 101st Street for just a couple of days when I decided to hike the thirty or so blocks downtown to one of my favorite places for a cheap delicious meal. The Upper West Side of the late 1970s was a gritty neighborhood rich with an abundance of dive bars, diners, and coffee shops. At Gray’s Papaya on the corner of 72nd Street and Broadway, I could get a couple of hot dogs slathered in mustard and a little relish along with a sweet, fruity beverage for around two dollars.
It was late evening. I stood on the filthy street corner jamming the second hot dog into my mouth and suddenly recognized a face in the stream walking by. It was Danny Holgate, the music supervisor for Eubie!, the hit show of the 1978–79 Broadway season. The previous November, I had flown to New York during my senior year to audition for the Eubie! national tour. At the audition, Danny had accompanied me as I sang “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” from Gypsy. I was so green it didn’t occur to me to sing a “black” song or even a song by the show’s namesake, Eubie Blake!
“Everything’s coming up roses, for me and for youuuuuuuuu,” I’d belted the iconic song, finishing the audition in a full backbend and holding the final note so long that Danny was forced to look around the upright piano to see when I’d finally release it. I didn’t get the gig.
I pushed myself into Danny’s path in front of Gray’s Papaya as I wiped my mouth with a damp yellow-stained napkin. “Danny! Danny! Remember me? Hi, Danny, it’s me, Jenifer Lewis—you don’t remember me, but I auditioned . . .” He interrupted me, “Oh yeah, you’re the one that did that backbend.” (Obviously, I’d made an impression.) “I think they need somebody in the show right now,” Danny continued. “C’mon, walk with me. I’m going to pick up some Chinese food.” I was nervous because I had mustard smeared on my blouse and he was a big, important person in the theater world.
Well, timing is everything. Turned out Eubie! was looking for a replacement for a wonderful actress named Gina Taylor. Long story short, on June 5, 1979, exactly eleven days after graduating from college, I made my Broadway debut in Eubie! at the Ambassador Theatre.
Broadway! I had never doubted that I would perform on the Great White Way. (No joke here, folks. That one’s too easy!) Mark Brown told me he cried when he saw my name on the marquee at the Ambassador because he knew I had dreamed of this my whole life. “It only took you eleven days, Jenifer.” I felt pride, amazement. But I also was keenly aware of the 8,030 days that had brought me there. (Yes, I did the math!)
Eubie! was a revue honoring the work of James Hubert Blake, the first African American to write, direct, and star in a musical on Broadway. The acclaimed musical revue starred Gregory Hines and Maurice Hines.
I barely remember my first Eubie! performance. I stood in the wings awaiting my cue, a little nervous but definitely not scared. My only concern was that I not disappoint my fellow cast members. I wanted them to see me as their peer. Suddenly I was on stage, singing and dancing in a hit show with some of the most talented entertainers on Broadway. After I sang my featured song, “If You’ve Never Been Vamped by a Brownskin, You’ve Never Been Vamped at All,�
�� I barely heard the applause. It was the faces of my castmates that told me I had done well.
I had stepped into a new world, the world of my dreams. I was the baby in the cast, but I felt safe with the veterans. I knew they were rooting for me. Even though I was not creating the role, I found ways to make it my own. Like, if the choreography called for two steps, I might take two and a half. Nothing to disturb my fellow actors; just a little something to put my stamp on it!
I was attracted to Gregory Hines (who wasn’t?), and we flirted a bit, but mostly just became friends. He was a big prankster. Once, as we performed a sophisticated Blake-Sissle song called “A Million Little Cupids in the Sky,” in which the choreography called for Gregory to hold me with my back to his front, I felt an enormous lump pressing against my ass as we swayed and dipped. I barely held my giggles as I realized Gregory was sporting a pair of rolled-up socks in his pants!
Performing in my first Broadway show was fun, but it was intense, requiring me to focus my entire being on my performance. Most days, I would wake up around three in the afternoon, eat, stretch, and in order to open my lungs power-walk to the theater. After warm-up and vocalizing, I was on stage and life began. Everything fell into place for me once the conductor raised his baton. It was exhilarating: the music, the dancing, the response of the audience. Nothing else existed when I was standing in front of that many people. I could feel the energy from their eyes, hear the thump of their heartbeats. In these moments, I could read their souls and sense their innermost emotions. When you are good, you will deliver precisely the right performance for the audience at hand. In turn, the audience will deliver your reward—applause and adulation. Whew!
The Mother of Black Hollywood Page 3
