Almost Famous Women

by Megan Mayhew Bergman

  Moments later the girls file onstage as a short man in a crisp suit hollers, “The best of the Big Band era! Right here in Rocky Mount! On your feet for the International Sweethearts of Rhythm!”

  Ruby watches the girls flesh out the bandstand in their white suits, waving politely in their nicest costumes, the ones they save for the best-paying gigs. There’s thunderous applause, a sea of white faces in front of them, men with freshly combed hair, women in high heels and pearls. Mink stoles in summer. Ruby wants to be onstage and feels a part of herself go with the band. She imagines the ivory keys beneath her fingers.

  Anna Mae, Hepburn-thin and elegant as ever, nods her head to the audience. She has a lush black feather in her hair, a white dress that wraps around her neck, and a brooch on her collar. “I have a question for you,” she says into the microphone. “Do you want to jump tonight?”

  The audience claps their hands. Someone whistles.

  “I said do you want to jump, children?”

  The audience roars and the trumpets kick into gear, the drums, the bass. The sax players turn their bodies in synced-up rhythm. The horns are loud and clear. God, it’s a sort of high when they nail a song, Ruby thinks, really nail it. If only I could be part of that flow, part of that sound.

  The night starts well, high energy like the best of them, but the crowd is full of hecklers, men yelling things like “Hey, sweetheart, up there on the drums,” and “brown sugar.”

  Ruby feels unsettled. She can see everything registering in Tiny’s eyes. Just get through it, she thinks. Just get through it and onto the bus and everything will be fine, just fine.

  “When I think of something southern . . . ,” Tiny begins.

  Ruby starts to get nervous. Has Tiny been drinking? Maybe she’s just tired. She gets tired sometimes.

  “I think of corn bread, chittlins . . .”

  Tiny isn’t the kind of person who needs to drink. Or is she?

  “Hey there, black girl!” a man in a blue suit shouts, huge smile on his face. He holds his drink up to toast Tiny, sloshing small, clear drops of gin onto the floor.

  “Hey, fella,” Tiny shouts, looking down and gesturing with her trumpet. “It’s not about being black. It’s not about being a girl, though I like girls. It’s about playing your goddamn music. Blowing your goddamn horn.”

  “I don’t mean no harm,” he says, his face twisted into what Ruby thinks is false contrition. He ain’t sorry, she thinks.

  Anna Mae is moving for the microphone, but Tiny grips it. “Sure you don’t,” she says. “Just like your brothers Klu . . .”

  Rae Lee heads for the stage, Ruby not far behind her. Vi rises from behind the bandstand. But the man gets to Tiny first. He leaps onto the stage and goes for her, pulling her off the side of the stage, his arms underneath hers, and suddenly he is dragging her large body. Tiny’s heels make a terrible sound going across the dance floor. She’s still clutching her trumpet.

  Ruby tries to get there. And she does, just not in time to stop Tiny from smashing her trumpet into the man’s face, flinging it backward, connecting again. Ruby gets there only in time to grab the trumpet before Tiny goes for his face a third time. Ruby knows once Tiny starts she won’t stop, and if she doesn’t stop—

  What happens to women like us? Ruby thinks. Her back is sore. She’s been sitting in the same position on the cement floor for a while, holding Tiny’s head in her lap. She has a busted lip and a cut above her eye, and all they’ve given her to stop the bleeding is a dirty-looking rag.

  Tiny sits up gingerly, touches her lip with her fingers. “Two girls like us,” she says, cracking a smile. “We can make it on our own.”

  Not in this world, Ruby thinks, but she’s not in the mood to disagree. “We sure can, sugar,” she says, sighing. “Grab your horn and let’s try.”

  “We’re going to do better than try. I can pack a joint.”

  “Well, grab your horn.”

  “Are you driving?”

  “Find me a car,” Ruby says, clasping her knees as if she’s going to rise up and go somewhere. “Find me a car and I’ll take you anywhere. Let’s go to Chicago.”

  “I don’t want to go to Chicago. I want to go to Memphis.”

  “Memphis then.”

  “Where’s my horn, anyway?”

  Ruby shrugs her shoulders and stands up. She doesn’t know. The naked bulb hanging from the ceiling of the jail cell flicks on and off.

  “Anybody got a cigarette?” Ruby asks through the bars.

  The guard does, but he’s eating a chicken sandwich. Ruby can smell it and she’s starving, really starving. He throws one cigarette, and then another at her.

  “But ain’t nobody got a light,” Tiny says, cigarette already in her mouth. “Not for us.”

  “Sing for it,” the guard says, laughing. “Give me a torch song.”

  “Not for you, baby,” Tiny says. “Not for you.”

  She gets up and flops down on the single cot in the cell. There isn’t any room for Ruby.

  Got what I wished for, Ruby thinks, leaning against the cinder-block wall, which is strangely cool against her back. I’m finally alone with my girl. Got her all to myself.

  Ruby closes her eyes and begins to drift away, the cigarette falling from her lips. It’s been a long time since she’s slept, a long time since she’s fallen asleep without the roar of the road underneath her.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Robert de Montesquiou once said of the painter Romaine Brooks that she was a “thief of souls”—perhaps this thieving is what happens when an artist uses a real subject as inspiration. The stories in this collection are born of fascination with real women whose remarkable lives were reduced to footnotes. Many of these women came to light only because of intrepid biographers like Carol Loeb Shloss, Joan Schenkar, Kate Summerscale, and Meryle Secrest, who sourced photographs, letters, and interviews before they were lost to time.

  I’ve never been comfortable with writing historical fiction, though I love reading it. When forming these stories, I kept with me Henry James’s notion that all novelists need freedom, and I gave myself permission to experiment, and to be honest about my inspiration. These were stories I wanted to unlock from my imagination after a decade of reading and research. I wanted to talk about these women; I daydreamed about their choices as I was building my own life, one that seemed tame in comparison. I did not want to romanticize these women or dwell in glittering places; I’m more interested in my characters’ difficult choices, or those that were made for them. I’m fascinated by risk taking and the way people orbit fame. I wanted to explore the price paid for living dangerously, such as undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder in women who served in World War I.

  Suffice it to say, the world has not always been kind to its unusual women—though I did not intend these stories to serve as cautionary tales.

  While I absorbed facts about these women’s lives, I did not stay inside the lines; each of these stories is unequivocally a work of fiction. The women at the heart of my stories lived. And in my imagined events I have drawn upon their real lives and personalities and involved a few of their famous friends and lovers. I have, however, placed them in events and surrounded them with characters of my own creation. I’m indebted to the following resources for planting the seeds that became stories:

  The Pretty, Grown-Together Children: I heard a whisper or two about the Hilton twins while living in North Carolina, then came across an entry about them on RoadsideAmerica.com.

  The Siege at Whale Cay: I devoured Kate Summerscale’s incredible, must-read biography of Joe, The Queen of Whale Cay. Further research has led me to the exceptional Time Life photoshoot of Joe and Whale Cay, as well as videos of Joe’s races, which can be found at http://www.britishpathe.com/search/query/carstairs. I also found inspiration, though not philosophical agreement, in Helen Zenna Smith’s novel about the female war experience, Not So Quiet . . .

  Norma Millay’s Film Noir Period: A friend turn
ed me on to Nancy Milford’s biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Savage Beauty, and like many young women I was perhaps, at first, fascinated more by her biography than by her work. When I was a resident at the Millay Colony for the Arts at Steepletop in 2007, I became acquainted with the wild stories about Edna’s sister Norma, and found myself returning to her in my imagination, particularly the fact that she was an actress in her own right, with the renowned Provincetown Players, and inhabited her sister’s estate for decades. Norma was a true force, and it was her presence I felt so keenly at Steepletop. Other resources include Cheryl Black’s The Women of Provincetown, Daniel Mark Epstein’s What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Collected Poetry, and her Collected Letters edited by Allan Ross MacDougall.

  Romaine Remains: I came across this haunted, unusual figure in many books about Paris: Wild Heart by Suzanne Rodriguez, Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation by Noel Riley Fitch, but most important, Meryle Secrest’s (out of print) biography of Romaine, Between Me and Life, titled after Romaine’s sentiment that her dead mother stood between her and living happily. I have framed prints of Romaine’s line drawings, which I cut from Whitney Chadwick’s catalog of Romaine’s work, Amazons in the Drawing Room. Chadwick points out an element of Romaine’s work that made a deep impression on me—the unusual depiction of “heroic femininity.”

  Hazel Eaton and the Wall of Death: Let me be intellectually honest here—Internet rabbit hole.

  The Autobiography of Allegra Byron: I first heard of Allegra when I studied at Oxford for a summer, and also read Benita Eisler’s Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame. Furthermore, Dolly Wilde’s fascination with Byron and her similarities to his daughter are pointed out in Oscaria, the privately printed book of remembrances about Dolly. Both girls were given over to convents at an early age, which was not particularly unusual at the time but could not have been a welcome experience. Allegra’s story took off in my head years later, after I had children of my own, and could get more inside the head of a toddler.

  Expression Theory: I saw a stunning photograph of Lucia Joyce in a hand-sewn costume, which led me to Carol Loeb Shloss’s biography, Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake. I found myself curious about the moment family members decided Lucia was deeply troubled; throwing the chair took on significance.

  Saving Butterfly McQueen: I don’t remember how I first heard of Butterfly, but when I found out that the Gone With the Wind star was an atheist, and had hoped to donate her body to science, I was intrigued, and couldn’t help but imagine the waves of patronizing conversation she must have endured.

  Who Killed Dolly Wilde?: Joan Schenkar’s biography of Dolly Wilde, Truly Wilde, opened a door in my imagination, perhaps because she invited her readers to do just that, ending the introduction this way: “I have only been able to bring her to you complete with missing parts. It remains for you to do what Dolly could have done so beautifully for us all: Imagine the rest.” Other sources include Oscaria, the private volume of recollections Natalie Barney had printed in Dolly’s memory, which I am thankful for Bennington Librarian Oceana Wilson’s help in obtaining access to. Additionally, Neil McKenna’s The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde and Richard Ellmann’s biography.

  A High-Grade Bitch Sits Down for Lunch: When my mother-in-law passed away in 2009, it took me two years to read her favorite book, West with the Night. My mother-in-law was brave and athletic, a horsewoman, a young pilot, and a motorcycle-driving veterinarian—like Beryl Markham, a boundary breaker. I now teach Beryl’s memoir, and celebrate the fact that it’s one of the few books where we see a woman portrayed as an active hero of her own adventures with the absence of a central love story. While Beryl was a record-breaking pilot and author (not without authorship controversy, mind you), she was also Africa’s first female certified horse trainer, a feat that required grit, fearlessness, and athleticism. I like to see women working in literature, using their bodies.

  I also read biographical work on Markham from Mary S. Lovell and Errol Trzebinski, as well as Juliet Barnes’s The Ghosts of Happy Valley.

  The Internees: While researching an article about environmentalism and makeup, I came across an anecdote about the boxes of lipstick from Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin, who helped liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. Later, a friend, Henry Frechette, sent me the picture of Banksy’s visual reinterpretation of the internees wearing lipstick. This, to me, is an unpretty and profound take on fame and femininity.

  The Lottery, Redux: I was asked by McSweeney’s to write a “cover story” of a classic, and I chose Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” because it’s the first short story I remember reading, and I drive past her house in Bennington often. I knew I wanted to give homage to it with a matriarchal lineage in mind, and the idea that we pay for the mistakes our forebears make.

  Hell-Diving Women: Oxford American asked me to write an essay on the International Sweethearts of Rhythm for their annual music issue. I had the pleasure of losing myself in research, and then finding out that the band played long ago in my hometown of Rocky Mount, North Carolina. After the article I found myself still dwelling on the material, and wanting to write a story. For further research, see D. Antoinette Handy’s (out of print) biography on the Sweethearts and Jezebel Productions’s short documentary Tiny and Ruby: Hell-Divin’ Women (the name of Tiny and Ruby’s post–World War II band).

  There are other books which have enriched my imagination, including but not limited to: Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy by Carolyn Burke; The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall; Women of the Left Bank by Shari Benstock; Nightwood and Ladies Almanack by Djuna Barnes.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to the editors and journals who published these stories, particularly David Haglund at PEN, Caitlin Horrocks and David Lynn at The Kenyon Review, Sven Birkerts and Bill Pierce at AGNI, Dave Daley at FiveChapters, Desiree Andrews, formerly of Tin House, Beth Staples at Ecotone, and Daniel Gumbiner at McSweeney’s.

  My gratitude to my phenomenal agent, Julie Barer, and the rest of Team Barer, William Boggess and Gemma Purdy, who are as talented as they are supportive. Thanks to my brilliant editor and friend, Kara Watson, and the rest of the Scribner team, for being enthusiastic about another round of stories.

  And all kinds of thanks to my family, particularly Mom, Dad, Emily, Evans, Sarah, John, Bob, and the rest of my tribe in Shafts-bury, like Tammy and Kathy, who help keep the ship afloat. It is a strange and beautiful ark, with toothless cats and old dogs.

  To my husband, Bo, thank you for your equanimity, support, and love. And my ferociously smart daughters, Frasier and Zephyr, there is very little peace in your toddler ways, but endless inspiration. We are bolder together.

  © BO BERGMAN

  MEGAN MAYHEW BERGMAN is the author of Birds of a Lesser Paradise. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Best American Short Stories, New Stories from the South, McSweeney’s, Tin House, and Oxford American, among other publications. She writes a sustainability column for Salon and lives on a small farm in Vermont with her veterinarian husband, two daughters, and many animals.

  MayhewBergman.com

  MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

  SimonandSchuster.com

  authors.simonandschuster.com/Megan-Mayhew-Bergman

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Scribner eBook.

  * * *

  Join our mailing list and get updates on new releases, deals, bonus content and other great books from Scribner and Simon & Schuster.

  CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

  or visit us online to sign up at

  eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com

  Scribner

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters,
places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Megan Mayhew Bergman

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Scribner Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Scribner hardcover edition January 2015

  SCRIBNER and design are registered trademarks of The Gale Group, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, Inc., the publisher of this work.

  The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

  Interior design by Jill Putorti

  Jacket design by Tal Goretsky

  Jacket art © akg-images

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  “The White Stag” by Ezra Pound, from PERSONAE, copyright © 1926 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

  “Little Fish,” from THE COMPLETE POEMS OF D. H. LAWRENCE by D. H. Lawrence, edited by Vivian de Sola Pinto and F. Warren Roberts, copyright © 1964, 1971 by Angelo Ravagli and C. M. Weekley, Executors of the Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  These stories have appeared previously in print: “The Pretty, Grown-Together Children” (PEN America); “The Siege at Whale Cay” (The Kenyon Review); “Romaine Remains” (AGNI); “The Autobiography of Allegra Byron” (FiveChapters); “Expression Theory” (Tin House); “Saving Butterfly McQueen” (Ecotone); “The Lottery, Redux” (McSweeney’s).