Dancing In The Dark

by Caryl Phillips

  “What’s the matter, Bert, you don’t like catting for women, or you don’t like colored girls, which is it?”

  Bert looked at him in fake surprise and arched his eyebrows.

  “Ain’t no other type of girl that I know of.”

  “Well I know some of these colored girls are sweet on you. And they got moist thick lips like they be putting soft rubber all over your body.”

  Bert laughed. “I already caught enough hell in my life and I ain’t got no interest in catching nothing else.”

  “You ain’t never heard of protection? It’s true that some of those female diseases gets ideas and likes to ease their way into a man’s body so we all got to be careful.”

  Bert smiled and shook his head, and then he took another mouthful of his whiskey. “First time I ever went with a girl I guess I wasn’t careful.”

  George tucked his shirt into his pants then leaned back and began to roar with laughter.

  “Man, bad luck sure knows where to find you. The first time?”

  His friend nodded and took another gulp of his whiskey. Then he turned and looked George full in the face.

  “These womenfolks are a strange breed. But I guess you already got that figured out.”

  George was halfway out the window when the man finally broke down the door and burst into the bedroom. George had one foot on the complex iron labyrinth of the fire escape and one foot marooned in the bedroom when, for some reason, he looked again at the man’s wife, who pulled the sheet up to her neck with melodramatic haste. For a moment it occurred to George that his blond conquest might actually be enjoying this drama, and then she screamed and George saw that the irate man had whipped out a pistol from some part of his person and he was pointing it directly at him. He heard the noise of the pistol before he felt the hot pain in his arm, and again the man’s wife screamed. George discovered himself on the sidewalk running, and although the husband didn’t fire again he knew that the humiliated man was standing above him and watching. It was only when he reached their lodgings, and began to pound vigorously on the door to Bert’s room, that George realized that he was light-headed and he was unable to prevent himself from slumping heavily to the ground. He peeled back his jacket and saw that his shirt was covered in blood, but he already understood that there would be no time to call for a doctor. His partner opened the door and peered down at a prostrate George who was trying to smile, but the pain was clearly cutting him like a knife.

  “We got to leave Cleveland tonight, Bert.”

  Bert helped his friend to his unsteady feet and into the room, and he pushed the door shut behind him.

  “What happened, George? We got to find you a good colored doctor. Looks like you already lost a lot of blood.”

  George collapsed onto a chair and shook his head. “Gonna lose a whole heap more if we don’t get the hell out of Cleveland.” Bert handed his friend a damp cloth with which to stanch the wound.

  “We have to find you a colored doctor on the way out of town. You hear me?” George nodded, his face now knotted in pain. “That white woman’s husband catch up with you?”

  George looked up at his partner, but Bert already knew the answer to the question.

  Detroit, 1896: And the first time he looked at himself in the mirror he thought of the embarrassment and distress that this would cause his father and his heart sank. Down through his body like a stone, down toward those long, oversized boots that announced him as a clown. How could a West Indian do such a thing to himself? The first time he looked in the mirror he was ashamed, but he understood that his job was to make people laugh so they did not have time to ridicule or hurt him. And so he made the people of Detroit laugh. No longer Egbert Austin Williams. He kept telling himself, I am no longer Egbert Austin Williams. As I apply the burnt cork to my face, as I smear the black into my already sable skin, as I put on my lips, I am leaving behind Egbert Austin Williams. However, I can, at any time, reclaim this man with soap and water and the rugged application of a coarse towel. I can reclaim him, but only later, after the laughter. As he looked at himself in the mirror he knew that he had disappeared, and he understood that every night he would have to rediscover himself before he left the theater. The first time he looked at himself in the mirror the predicament was clear, but just who was this new man and what was his name? Was this actually a man, with his soon-to-be-shuffling feet, and his slurred half speech, and his childish gestures, and his infantile reactions? Who was this fellow? Sambo? Coon? Nigger? However, the audience never failed to recognize this creature. That’s him! That’s the nigger! He looks like that. And that’s just how he talks. And he walks just like that. I know him! I know him! But this was not Egbert Austin Williams. This was not George Walker. This was not William E. B. DuBois. This was not Booker T. Washington. This was not any Negro known to any man. This was not a Negro. And the first time he looked in the mirror his heart sank like a stone for he knew that this was not a man that he recognized. This was somebody else’s fantasy, and unless he could make this nobody into somebody, then he knew that eventually his eardrums would burst with the pain of the audience’s laughter. The first time he looked at himself in the mirror his heart sank. In Detroit in 1896.

  It was in Detroit that he first persuaded a disapproving George that this might be a good idea. It was in Detroit that he first betrayed his father. It was in Detroit that he first pushed his hands into the pot and worked the oily substance onto his fingertips. There was a moment’s hesitation as he felt the cork slither between his delicate, oversized fingers, and then he began to smear his warm face with the cold potion. Only when he was sure that it was spread evenly across his face did he dare look up and stare into the mirror. He needed to make sure that the edges of the makeup met his hairline. He needed to give himself a consistent tone of blackness, and then he drew on his lips so that they grew beyond his own, swimming out toward his cheeks and down his chin. His lips were the final touch. He erased himself. Wiped himself clean off the face of the earth so that he found himself staring back at a stranger.

  The irate woman bursts into his dressing room without knocking and she noisily demands her money. A surprised George looks up at her.

  “You finished already?”

  The woman holds out a purple-gloved hand and snorts. “Finished what, child? You better talk with that man.”

  George pulls a thick roll of bills from the back pocket of his street pants.

  “Five dollars is what we agreed on, right?”

  She takes the money and tucks it into her notebook, all the while pursing her lips in disgust.

  “You said you wanted me to do something special for him seeing as he’s acting all lonesome and everything, but you better let that boy know that we Detroit girls don’t appreciate you out-of-town boys acting in this fashion toward us. He don’t want something this fine, then his ignorant ass only needs to say so. No need for the man to be running off his mouth in my face like I ain’t nobody. I deserve some mannerly treatment, don’t you think?”

  George looks the tan girl up and down and slowly a smile breaks out on her face.

  “Sugar, I like how you is looking at me. Give me two dollars more and you can taste what your partner didn’t want.” George laughs and turns from her. “You know,” she begins, her voice now shrill with anger, “the two of you all deserve each other. Coming into my town like you all is big and mighty but you ain’t nothing but a pair of broke-down little boys masquerading as men.”

  She slams the door as she leaves, and a resigned George shakes his head. He knows that his partner will be sitting by himself in his dressing room, furious with George for having arranged for a girl to visit with him. But the truth is he couldn’t think of anything else that he might offer Bert to help him out of his depression. For the past week, since he began to use the cork and play the simpleton to George’s straight man, his mood has clouded over, which makes no sense for despite George’s unhappiness with Bert making a blackfaced coon of himself
he has to admit that they are now making more coin than they ever did. But Bert is struggling with what he calls his “new character,” and George had hoped that a girl might help. She was a gift, a present. He had not meant to anger his friend.

  Ada looks around the spacious apartment at 107 West 132nd Street and she hopes that George will appreciate it. Afternoon light streams in through the large undraped windows and a perturbed Ada convinces herself that this is a good place for her to begin to make a home for herself and George. Bert and Lottie have already moved out of Marshall’s Hotel, and Ada has now decided that she and George will follow them uptown to Harlem. Somewhat reluctantly George has agreed to marry her, but Ada remains optimistic for she understands the seasonal changes that can quickly, and unpredictably, affect the spirits of men. She knows that George will still keep a room at Marshall’s, although he will not tell her, but Ada is determined and she will simply pretend that she knows nothing about George’s room, and she will quietly absorb the humiliation and wait patiently until the wind changes direction.

  The girl waits for him by the stage door, a slender nymph whose young body looks like it could never support the weight of an overcoat. As he approaches the girl steps forward to block his path and George stops.

  “It’s your child, Mr. Walker. I’m asking you, please, you have to do something to help me.”

  George looks rapidly about himself. “Not here,” he hisses. “Not here where people can see.”

  The girl touches his arm, her top lip quivering and water in her eyes. “Mr. Walker, I know you’re serious with the dancing lady. Everybody knows that. I seen you together with her and I ain’t fixing to make things difficult for anybody. But it’s your child, Mr. Walker and I need me some help.”

  George looks at the girl, who has at least shown the good sense to steer clear of Marshall’s. He remembers her, and the disturbing cesarean zip that marks her stomach. He will help her, but she will have to wait until after the weekend. Between now and then he is occupied with plans for his wedding.

  Bert soon learns to walk the twenty paces from his door to Metheney’s Bar. At first people try to talk to him for he is, the pastor aside, the best-known colored man in the neighborhood. However, they soon recognize that he is not a talking man and so they let him be. Metheney’s is a place for men who are serious about their drinking and their solitude. This is not a place for playing numbers, nor is it a place for bragging, or cursing, or womanizing. In Metheney’s, king alcohol makes no man sing. A man comes to Metheney’s to be by himself, and none more so than Mr. Williams, who sits on an undersized wooden chair at a small brown table in the far corner. There is just one chair, to prevent people from making a mistake, and as he leans forward light from the street spills over Mr. Williams’s hunched shoulders and splashes down onto the table and into his tumbler of whiskey. The barman is both tall and broad, with a roll of fat at the back of his neck. He scratches at his stubbled face, dragging a finger, like a plump brown matchstick, across his cheek and down toward the apex of his chin. Later, when Metheney wakes up and comes down to replace him, the barman will go to his rooming house, but only after he has visited the barbershop and encouraged the man to scrape off the fur with a dull razor. He will leave Mr. Williams alone, but he will make sure that the man’s glass is full before he steps out and onto Seventh Avenue. Right now he watches the local celebrity, who always sits by himself. Sometimes Mr. Williams brings in one of his seemingly endless supply of books to read, but most of the time he just sits and smokes cigarette after cigarette, his noble head clouded in tobacco. At the end of the day Bert needs time to think about what he is doing. He needs time to consider and reconsider everything that he has done, and to turn his short life over in his mind and think and drink and drink and think for there is nobody with whom he cares to talk. Not George. Not Mother. He sits and thinks and drinks by himself and colored people respect the fact that this is his way. He remembers the first time he played with a crudely assembled white medicine show out west. Waiting in the cold outside a restaurant that it was impossible for him to enter alone, hoping that a fellow performer from the company might walk by and say, “Hello, young Bert! What are you doing here?” Maybe walk in with him and give him a chance to make himself at home. But nobody came by. Back in those days, Christian charity seemed to be forever in short supply. He takes another long drink and signals to the barman for a refill. The man always offers to leave the bottle on the table for him, but Bert understands that it would not be right. After all, he would not want to disappoint his father. A nervous crease of a smile wrinkles his lips whenever he thinks of his father, way back across the country in California. He watches the barman push the stop back into the top of the bottle, and he notices that the man’s face is rough with stubble. Most likely he’ll soon visit a barbershop where talking is encouraged and easy topics are pursued with vigor. The many ways that a colored man might prevent himself from contracting syphilis. Whether skin-lightening creams really do work. Whether a plate of tripe fried in batter with hot biscuits and bacon on the side beats out a night spent removing silk slips and panties from a whole harem of willing young ladies. He watches the barman move back behind the bar, and then he looks closely at the other solitary drinkers, who all seem to relish this quiet place that throws them back upon themselves. Funny, he thinks, what men will do to release themselves from the burden of human companionship.

  Metheney’s opens at noon, every day except Sunday. First, Clyde D unlocks the door and then he steps back so that the smell of the previous evening can pass him by and hurry on down the street. When it is good and gone he enters the gloom, knowing full well that Metheney will be upstairs sleeping off the night before. The man has never learned how to do much of anything except turn off the lights and stagger in the direction of the stairs, but sometimes he is carrying too much liquor to even manage this and he makes a bed of the floor. Once Clyde D came in early and found one of Metheney’s wooden-faced whores pushing bottles of liquor into a bag and ready to make her getaway. Clyde D looked down at the floor and he could immediately see that old Metheney was passed out cold. He imagined that the girl had already stuffed Metheney’s takings into her pocketbook, having previously slipped something into Metheney’s gin so that he wouldn’t hear nothing, or know nothing, and now it was down to Clyde D to put his unwashed morning self between the girl and the door and take back the man’s money. Keen to avoid a beating, the frightened girl suddenly offered Clyde D what rightfully appeared to belong to any man who was hungry enough to take it, but Clyde D recoiled from the sour bursts of her breath in his face, and then he snatched back the money and the liquor, before pushing the girl out into the street and setting about his business. After first sweeping the floor (careful to avoid Metheney), and then pushing back the tables and dropping the chairs into place, he stepped behind the bar, where empty bottles and filthy glasses were lined up and ready for his attention. Metheney stirred and rubbed a gnarled hand into his face and then, without saying a word, he dragged himself to his unsteady feet and lurched in the direction of the wooden staircase, which groaned under his weight. Mercifully, this morning, Metheney is already upstairs, no doubt still asleep, with his mouth wide open, and sprawled across one of his girls who specialize in late-night secondhand love. The first customers of the day usually wander in while the bar top is still sopping wet from Clyde D’s having wiped it down, and they take up their silent seats and order without having to say a word. During the early-afternoon hours it is best not to make too much noise, for Metheney does not like to be roused from his slumber, but there is usually little danger of this for Metheney’s is not a talking kind of place.

  By the time the evening regulars start to come in off the street, Mr. Williams is usually ready to leave. After all, for Mr. Williams, Metheney’s is little more than a fleet detour on his way back home from midtown business. However, on the days that he must perform, Metheney’s is a place that Mr. Williams might wander into for a late-aftern
oon drink before returning home to change his clothes. Before he leaves he looks up and sees two men in wide-brimmed hats who nod in his direction as they enter the premises, and then they respectfully ignore him. They watch as Clyde D reaches over and places their drinks before them, and they grope at the drinks without so much as a hint that they have a tongue in their now unshod heads. Eyes drift upward to where Metheney is now stirring himself, his clay feet banging against the floor as he lumbers to the corner and urgently relieves himself into an enamel pot so that the noise of the piss echoes like rain on a tin roof. This is all part of Metheney’s routine, and if he happens to have company, then Metheney’s clay feet will move more eagerly back in the direction of the bed, and at first slowly, and then with more vigor, the whole structure of the ceiling will begin to shake as the boss attempts to finish off what he had started the night before. Eyes return to drinks that are now levered toward open mouths. All is right with the world. Clyde D knows that soon it will be time for him to be replaced by Metheney, and he looks across as Mr. Williams slowly pushes his long frame upright. He can tell by the languorous way that he moves that tonight the local celebrity will be onstage in midtown. Tonight Mr. Williams will be a star on Broadway, a man whose pitiable gait is to be applauded. Shylock Homestead in Williams and Walker’s production of In Dahomey, telling a few hapless jokes and doing a little plaintive singing and some clownish dancing. But that will be later. Clyde D watches Mr. Williams closely and can see that the performer’s veins are already buzzing with the dull grandeur of whiskey. Mr. Williams stands tall in Metheney’s and reaches for his hat, and all eyes look up and silently bid him his daily farewell. They watch as he moves with deliberation toward the door, and as he opens it Manhattan rushes in to meet them, and then he shuts Metheney’s weather-beaten door behind him and all eyes return to the task in front of them. It will be a long night.