The Book of Harlan

by Bernice L. McFadden

“You’ll see,” her friends hummed.

  And yes, Gwen would.

  * * *

  By the end of the summer, Harlan was little more than a cobweb in Gwen’s memory. The last time she had seen him was at the final rehearsal before the recital.

  He’d followed her to the subway station as usual, asked for her telephone number for the hundredth time, and Gwen had replied, just as she had so many times before, “I told you, we don’t have a telephone, and even if we did, the answer would still be no.”

  “Well, good luck this weekend,” he said as Gwen started down the steps of the station.

  Gwen had looked over her shoulder. “Won’t you be there?” she heard herself ask before she was even aware the question had formed in her mind.

  “Nah,” Harlan replied, “the house band will be playing for you.”

  Gwen had tried to cloak her disappointment with a smile, but Harlan seemed to see through the screen. Grinning, he tipped an invisible hat and wished her well.

  “Break a leg.”

  Chapter 40

  Other than job hunting and church, Gwen’s life moved along quietly and uneventfully, until Halloween Eve cast its eerie eye over the land, raising goose bumps on America’s flesh.

  On October 30, 1938, Ethel walked to the far corner of the living room and switched on the Zenith console radio. It was the proud centerpiece of their home.

  Ramón Raquello and his orchestra were performing “La Cumparsita” from the Meridian Room of the Park Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.

  “Tango!” Gwen squealed. She grabbed Irene, and the two tangoed from one end of the living room to the other.

  Aubrey applauded. Irene and Gwen bowed and curtsied.

  “You two are so foolish,” Ethel laughed. “Now come. Sit and eat.”

  When a special broadcast interrupted the soothing music, the family fell quiet as they listened to the newscaster’s description of fluorescent gas explosions on the planet Mars.

  “Mars?” Ethel clucked.

  The music resumed, and so did their dinner conversation. Ramón Raquello’s orchestra segued into the romantic “Star Dust.” Aubrey winked at Ethel, who side-eyed him bashfully.

  “You want another piece?” she asked, pointing to the platter of chicken.

  “A piece?” Aubrey smiled furtively. “Maybe later.”

  Ethel flashed him a coy look before lowering her eyes.

  Irene didn’t miss her father’s insinuation. Her eyes darted to Gwen. Had she caught it too? The expression resting on Gwen’s face suggested otherwise. Irene sighed with relief.

  Once again, the music was interrupted. The newscaster’s voice took on a level of anxiety: “We have arranged an interview with noted astronomer Professor Pierson, who will give us his views on the event.”

  Aubrey set his fork down; his face darkened with concern.

  “How do you account for those gas eruptions occurring on the surface of Mars at regular intervals?”

  “Mr. Phillips, I cannot account for it.”

  “By the way, professor, for the benefit of our listeners, how far is Mars from earth?”

  “Approximately forty million miles.”

  “Forty million miles,” Irene gasped. “That’s a long way.”

  The music resumed.

  After dinner, Ethel and her daughters carried the platters and plates into the kitchen. Aubrey slid back from the table, crossed his legs, and stared at the radio, his head slightly lolling to the music.

  Above the rush of water and the clatter of silverware came the newscaster’s panicked voice: “A special announcement . . . a huge, flaming object, believed to be a meteorite, fell on a farm in the neighborhood of Grover’s Mill, New Jersey, twenty-two miles from Trenton.”

  “What he say?” Irene asked, looking fearfully at her mother.

  “We take you now to Grover’s Mill, New Jersey.”

  Ethel turned off the water and followed Irene and Gwen back into the living room.

  “The ground is covered with splinters of a tree it must have struck on its way down.”

  Ethel wrapped her hands around her neck, Irene clenched her teeth, Gwen moved to her father’s side.

  The newscaster declared that something large, gray, and snakelike was wriggling out of the shadows.

  “Oh Lawd!” Ethel cried out, dancing back from the radio.

  An unearthly screech hurtled from the radio speaker. An explosion followed, and Aubrey’s heart skipped three full beats.

  The radio air went dead.

  Seconds turned into minutes, and then, suddenly, soft piano music.

  It went on like that—minutes of comforting music, interrupted by horrific reports of destruction and mayhem.

  The listening audience was informed that aliens from Mars had journeyed forty million miles, through a multitude of galaxies, landed in New Jersey, and were steadily moving toward New York City.

  Seven thousand troops had been deployed, but only 129 had escaped slaughter. The other 6,871 soldiers had been burned to death by the aliens.

  Irene emerged from the bathroom in time to see her family drawing curtains and stacking the dining room chairs in front of the apartment door.

  Afterward, they huddled on the couch, joined hands, and recited the Lord’s Prayer.

  * * *

  Uptown, Sam retrieved his loaded gun from the shoe box beneath the bed, released the safety, and joined Emma on the settee in the dark parlor, leaving Harlan locked away in his bedroom, drinking himself numb.

  All across America, people took shelter in closets, in sheds, and dank, dark basements.

  Other people—the believers, the stupid, the curious—took to the streets with binoculars, offerings of fruit, buttered toast, waving signs that read: WELCOME TO EARTH. WE ARE YOUR FRIENDS!

  The next day, they’d all feel foolish when they learned that the broadcast was a hoax, nothing more than a dramatization of the novel The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

  Many of those foolish-feeling people, including the ones who’d been so terrified they’d soiled themselves or piled into their cars in an effort to escape the inescapable­—many of them would call for the head of the person who perpetrated the fraud.

  In the end, Orson Welles would not give them his head, just an apology for the prank that catapulted him to fame.

  * * *

  The real monsters were much closer than Mars. The real monsters were right across the Atlantic. They did not have black serpent eyes or tentacles; they were two-legged, two-armed, beating-heart beasts who were methodically scaring all of Europe to her knees.

  The terrified people of Europe didn’t have to watch the skies for monsters or flaming objects because the monsters were their neighbors, and synagogues were burning right there on the ground.

  PART V

  THE World’s Fair

  Chapter 41

  In July of ’39, on the day commencing the onset of Negro Week at the World’s Fair, a short white man dressed in a gray suit jacket, black shirt, and white slacks walked into Mary Bruce’s dance school.

  Mary was in her office going over invoices and new applications. The smell of cigar smoke alerted her to the fact that she was not alone. She stepped silently into the studio, her right hand shoved deep into the square pocket of her navy-blue smock, fingers tightly gripping the wooden handle of her small pistol.

  From her vantage, Mary could see the ceiling light’s reflection twinkling on his highly polished black shoes and dark, oily hair. He was admiring himself in the wall of mirrors when Mary made herself known.

  “May I help you?”

  “You Mary?” he said to her reflection.

  “May I help you?” she asked again.

  He turned to face her. “Are you Mary Bruce?”

  “Yes, I’m Ms. Bruce. And you are?”

  He thumped his cigar. “Mike Todd,” he announced smugly.

  Mary watched the ashes scatter across the floor.

  When she didn’t respond, he rep
eated himself: “Mike Todd. You know: Mike. Todd.”

  Mary’s index finger stroked the smooth metal of the gun trigger. “I heard you the first time, Mr. Todd. How can I help you?”

  He made a sound in his throat. “Mike Todd. Hot Mikado?”

  Mary frowned. “Hot who?”

  “Hot Mikado, on Broadway? That’s the musical I produced. Surely you’ve seen it.” He pulled a business card from the inside pocket of his jacket and held it up for Mary to see.

  Her eyes quickly scanned the gold-embossed letters. “Oh, oh yes,” she announced gaily, loosening her grip on the gun. “I have seen the show. Twice. What a lovely production.” Mary took the card and slipped it into the pocket alongside the gun.

  Hot Mikado was the Negro spin on Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera The Mikado. Bill Bojangles was the star of the production; his show-stopping performances had garnered rave reviews from audiences and critics alike.

  Mike Todd offered a smile wide enough to swallow his face, then thumped another pile of ash onto the floor.

  “Excuse me a moment,” Mary said, turning and walking back into her office. She returned holding a heavy crystal ashtray which she set atop the piano.

  “Thank you,” Todd muttered.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “You got a nice place here.” His eyes roamed around the studio. “Real nice.”

  Mary knew his type. Short in stature, sky-high ego. Worse yet, a Chicago man. Mary had detected the accent as soon as he opened his mouth—Chicago was her hometown too. “Thank you,” she said.

  Todd set the cigar in the ashtray, folded his arms over his chest, and rocked back on his shoe heels. “I’ve heard good things about this place. And you. You know?”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. An associate of mine was at the recital at Carnegie Hall a few months ago.”

  “Last spring,” Mary corrected.

  “Yeah, whenever it was. Anyway, he said you got some real talented dancers.”

  Mary nodded gracefully.

  “I trust this person. We’re like family, you know? So when he say’s you’ve got talent, I believe him.”

  Again, Mary nodded.

  Todd unfolded his arms, made a reach for the cigar, decided against it, and instead thrust his hands into the pockets of his slacks. He looked down at his shoes, staring at them for so long that he seemed to have forgotten that Mary was even in the room.

  The seconds ticked off; the silence was suffocating. Mary cleared her throat and the man snapped back to life. “Mr. Todd, I’m sure you didn’t come all the way up to Harlem to commend me on my dancers.”

  He scratched the back of his head, glanced at the cigar. “Nah, I wouldn’t come all the way up here just for that,” he chuckled. “I did want to tell you that I’m bringing Hot Mikado to the World’s Fair.”

  And what does that have to do with me? Mary resisted shrugging her shoulders. “Well,” she breathed, “that’s exciting news.”

  “Okay,” Todd spouted, “so you’re on board then?”

  Her eyes widened. “On board for what? I don’t even know what it is you’re talking about.”

  He winked at her. “Ha! I just wanted to make sure you were listening!”

  Mary smirked.

  “I want the best dancers in the city to perform in the show, and since you have the best dancers in the city, I want your dancers to be a part of my World’s Fair production.”

  The light in Mary’s eyes set off an explosion in Todd, and he was off, pacing the floor, hands flailing, breathlessly sharing his vision.

  “In addition to Hot Mikado, I’m going to have three cabarets and a dancing campus—”

  “Dancing campus?”

  “Yes, a big stage with nothing but dancing, all sorts of dancing. A communal-type thing, professional dancers and amateurs all on one stage . . . ” He rambled on excitedly, pausing only to puff on his cigar. At the end of his soliloquy, he tilted his head back and blew four smoke rings into the air. “So what do you think about that?”

  There were countless thoughts spinning through Mary’s mind, but only one toppled from her mouth: “It sounds expensive.”

  Todd nodded. “Oh, it will be very, very expensive—and worth every cent.” He looked at his wristwatch. “Well, Mary, it seems I am late for my next appointment. I hope I didn’t take up too much of your time, I get real excited about things and then . . .” He trailed off for a moment. “Sometimes I don’t know when to reel myself in, you know?” He offered his hand. “It was a real pleasure meeting you, Ms. Mary Bruce.”

  “And you, Mr. Todd.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said, hurrying toward the exit.

  “I’ll look forward to hearing from you.”

  The door closed noisily behind him.

  Mary brought her hand to her forehead. She felt weak; Todd had sucked all the air out of the room.

  Suddenly, the front door swung open again. Todd stepped in and pointed his cigar in her direction. “Oh!” he exclaimed. “I forgot to tell you that I’d like you to choreograph one of the shows.” He shoved the cigar back into his mouth and walked out.

  Mary watched the door warily. When it remained closed, she twirled across the floor, squealing.

  Chapter 42

  Not the same type of weariness her father felt when he was a younger man, picking beans and fruit beneath a merciless Southern sun. Not even the fatigue he experienced now, after a day of pushing a mop as tall as an average-sized man across the lobby’s marble floor, washing windows, polishing brass banisters, fixing leaky pipes, painting, and any other number of things the landlord wanted him to do, and any other number of things the tenants asked of him, including running errands to the corner store. Some days, Aubrey was so tired he had barely enough energy to smile at his wife and daughters.

  So not that kind of exhaustion, but certainly close to it, Gwen claimed.

  After Mike Todd’s visit, Gwen was one of the first dancers Mary reached out to. By September, Gwen was a key figure in Mike Todd’s Dancing Campus. In thirty-two shows a week, Gwen alternated between high-octane solo tap performances and dancing with a chorus of men and women who were required to coax the audience onto the stage to join them in the jitterbug, fox-trot, and Big Apple routines.

  During her breaks, Gwen visited the other Todd Production venues. The Streets of Paris and Gay New Orleans cabarets were amongst her favorites. The women who performed in those shows wore barely anything at all, save for towering plumed headdresses, sparkly thongs, and tassels that dangled from nipple-concealing pasties. One woman danced with a boa constrictor curled around her neck and torso; another skillfully manipulated two enormous fans constructed of ostrich feathers.

  Gwen longed to perform those erotic dance routines; in fact, she had spent hours in front of her bedroom mirror, dressed in nothing but underwear, perfecting every sensual move. But she knew that her performance, as good as it was, would never be seen outside her bedroom because her mother would never allow it. According to Ethel, women who flaunted their bodies in that way—onstage or elsewhere—were just one short step from becoming prostitutes.

  * * *

  It wasn’t in Gwen to tell lies.

  Ethel said, “If you lie, you’ll thief. If you thief, you’ll kill!”

  Those words rang in Gwen’s head whenever she set her mouth to tell an untruth. But she was eighteen years old now, done with school, holding down a job, and still her mother continued to treat her like a child.

  Boyfriend? What was that? The word better not even come up in conversation or Gwen risked being whacked across the mouth.

  Some of Gwen’s school friends were planning spring weddings. At least two were pregnant—Gwen was sure of it. They’d disappeared at the end of June and no one, not even their parents, would say where they’d gone off to. Other girls her age were going to dances and house parties. The only parties Gwen was ever allowed to attend were those held in the basement of the church she attended with her p
arents and ones hosted by trusted family friends who also attended their church.

  “So what, you’re eighteen,” Irene scolded Gwen whenever she heard her grumbling. “I’m twenty-four, living under the same roof, following the same rules, and you don’t hear me complaining.”

  Irene didn’t go anywhere but work and church, more than happy to stay home, puttering around the house behind Ethel. She didn’t have many friends to speak of, and those she did have were much like herself, content with Jesus being the only man central in their lives.

  Gwen was different; she yearned for something more, although she wasn’t completely clear on what that something was. What she was certain about, however, was that the longing was growing with every blessed day; and she was sure the growth would eventually split her in two.

  Perhaps it was this impending rupture that drove Gwen to say yes when the slender, cat-eyed dancer named Patsy invited her to a party in Harlem.

  * * *

  They heard the music before they saw the house—a tired-looking limestone structure with filthy windows and crumbling steps.

  Gwen hesitated at the door. “Who lives here?”

  Patsy rolled her eyes, caught Gwen by the arm, and yanked her over the threshold. “Does it matter?”

  Stationed inside the dark foyer was a young man with conked red hair and a face splattered with freckles. When Patsy and Gwen stepped inside, he pushed an open palm beneath Gwen’s nose. “One dollar.”

  Gwen looked at Patsy. “We gotta pay?”

  Patsy’s nodded and presented a five-dollar bill. “You got change?” she asked the man.

  Freckleface smiled, revealing a sparkling gold incisor. “Yeah, honey. I got change and anything else you want.” His eyes floated to Gwen. “She got you too?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “No, she has her own money. Don’t you, Gwenie?”

  In the hot, shadowy house, Gwen stood squinting into the parlor trying her best to make out the faces of the couples grinding their way through a woeful ballad. Hands riding high on rib cages or low on hips, the twosomes hitched themselves to the melody and slow-dragged their way through it. The boys groaned hungrily, tiny gasps rose from the girls like bubbles. Both male and female prayed that the song would go on forever; the virgins among them hoped to God that the real thing would be somewhere close to that dry-humping high.