Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr.

by Davis, Sammy

  I stirred my coffee slowly, planning how I’d break it to her. There was no way to soften it. “Darling, I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to make the movies this afternoon….” Surprise and disappointment flicked across her face. “I don’t know how I forgot but I’ve got to go uptown with Finis and drum up those ads. There’s a deadline and I’ve got to do it today or we blow it with the printer.”

  “Oh. Well, it’s pretty cold out today, anyway. Hey, listen, I hope you have some luck up there.”

  “Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll have a movie projector and a screen sent up here and right after the second show we can see two, even three, pictures if we feel like it instead of just one.”

  I called Finis, and kissed May good-bye. Paul was putting on his coat. I gave him a look. “ ‘And wherever little Mary went,’ right?”

  “That’s it, daddy.”

  I did a slow turn-around. “A former San Francisco policeman, a square with flat feet, gives me a ‘That’s it, daddy’? You’re getting pretty hip for only a month in the business.” I smiled. “Stick around here, baby. I don’t exactly need you where I’m going.”

  The broad smile of welcome from the owner of the large laundry, the delight that all his employees had seen me coming to visit with him, paled when he heard what I wanted. “I’m sorry, Sammy, I’m not in a position to make a contribution.”

  “I don’t understand … don’t you approve of what Martin Luther King is doing?”

  “Of course I approve.” He shrugged uncomfortably, “I suppose what it comes to is they have to fight their own battles down there. I’m up here and I’ve got my family to worry about. I’ve got my own problems.”

  He owned a fleet of taxicabs. He shook his head, “I’ve got no money to send down South. Hell, let them send some up here.” He gave me a wise-guy grin. “Then I can tip the headwaiter at the Copa and get a good table.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means what you know it means. Like last week I was fool enough to tell my wife, ‘Hey, let’s go down and see Sammy. That place must be okay if he’s there.’ Like, they waltzed us in and hustled us back to where we needed a telescope t’see you. Like, I looked to see who was up front and there was no chocolate there, daddy. None. So, when your Dr. King gets finished in the South tell him our equality can use a little repair work, too. Maybe then I’ll have a few hundred to spare.”

  “You ever been to the Copa before that?”

  He laughed. “Never before and never again.”

  “But you figure that when you walk in they should put you at the ringside, right? You go down there to spend your big fifteen dollars and you expect to get what they give the man who comes in once every week and spends maybe five thousand a year in there? Why? ‘Cause you’re colored? You want kid-glove equality? ‘Hey, treat him carefully ‘cause he’s colored.’ ”

  “I’ll try a few years of that.”

  He owned a five-and-ten. “History, son, read your history and then tell Dr. King he’s a fine man but he’s wasting his time. Just look around you. The Irish came over and the door opened wide. The Italians came over and the door opened wide. The Germans, the Russians—everybody came over and the door opened wide. And who opened the door, son? We did, smiling ‘Yassuh.’ ”

  He owned a trucking company.

  “But it is your problem, sir. Just like it’s my problem. He’s down there fighting for us as a people. Isn’t it unthinkable that we don’t support him as a people? Can’t you see that Martin Luther King is to us what Moses was to the Jews?”

  He smiled, but it was plastic. “Why don’t you get it from them?”

  “Don’t knock ‘em. I’ve been up here for hours trying to get money from colored people to help colored people, and I can tell you there’s plenty we could get from the Jews, and not just money.”

  He smiled unpleasantly. “Like what?”

  “Unity. Pride of heritage. They believed in themselves. They didn’t just sit around complaining, ‘We’re as good as anybody else,’ they went out and proved it. And there’s less of them than us so how come we’re flat on our backs and they’re up and swinging?”

  “Supposing you tell me.”

  “For one thing they helped each other. You read a lot about Israel, but how do you think it happened? When Hitler burned six million Jews the lucky ones in America and in England didn’t say, ‘I’m up here and they’re down there.’ They built Israel for Jews who needed it, people they’ll never meet. I’ve been to their fund-raising dinners and I’ve seen them stand up and pledge from fifty dollars to as much as half a million from one man, and raise millions for a cause that was far from their homes, but, mister, it was close to their hearts.”

  “You comparing being Jewish to being colored?”

  “Don’t look at me like that. Obviously we can’t match them in money, but we can match them in sentiment. And that’s all we need. I’m talking about a theory that’s as basic as ‘united we stand, divided we fall,’ as sure as breaking a hundred matchsticks one by one between your fingers but being unable to break them with a hammer when they’re bound together. How can we be so stupid as to let ourselves be hated as a race and not at least fight back as a race?”

  He owned a nightclub. All he’d give was complaints.

  “In other words you wanta sit around and bitch but you won’t help the man who’s risking his life to improve things for colored people all over the country?”

  “Colored people never did anything for me. All I ever got outa being colored is more room on the subway ‘cause white people didn’t wanta sit next to me.”

  He owned a large bakery. “Why should I give money to a hopeless cause, Mr. Davis?”

  “How can you call it hopeless when in the last ten years there’s been more advance in human rights than in the hundred years before?”

  He looked at me patiently—as though he were explaining something to a white man. “How can you hope for human rights when you know they don’t figure us as human?”

  “But that’s exactly the point Dr. King is making. Every time a redneck pours ketchup on the head of one of the sit-ins somebody who never cared one way or another leans a little closer toward us. I’ve seen it in my own life. People get you to the ground and kick you and kick you—but eventually some of the people who stood by watching it step forward and say, ‘Hold it. Get off his back. Nobody can be that bad.’ And then they’re thinking in your direction, they’re open to you.”

  “I must say you’re very persuasive.”

  “Isn’t it a pity that I should have to be?”

  “But I’m afraid you’re also an optimist. You’re counting on people feeling bad when they see what’s happening to us, people whose ancestors came over here looking for freedom and the first thing they did was go out and get themselves slaves.”

  He owned a wholesale meat company. He stood behind his desk and leaned toward me. “No, I do not approve of what he’s doing.”

  “Are you telling me you don’t want integration?”

  “Not the kind he’s goin’ around beggin’ for.” The man’s eyes narrowed. “Smarten up, Mr. Davis. The only integration you’ll ever see in this country is when ofay blood runs in the gutter and mixes with good colored blood.”

  I felt an un-funny laughter building up in me. Only I would walk in on a Muslim and ask for money to support Martin Luther King. I stood up. “I think you’re dead wrong but you’re entitled to your opinion.”

  He laughed. “You think I’m a Muslim, don’t you?” He shook his head. “The Muslims are wrong. They want their own country, but I say this is our own country. So I’m not looking for separate states where we can set up shop by ourselves.” He smirked. “And you know if this government ever did give us our own state they’d give us Alaska.” He sat down in his swivel chair. “Before I owned this business I worked for one like it and I broke my back for six days before I got a week’s pay. And I never figured I owed my boss a thank-you when
he handed me the envelope. You read me? Well, that’s how it is for rights. I don’t want no godamned white man sittin’ around in an office my taxes are helping pay the rent on, deciding if maybe he should give me what the law says is mine. If the good Reverend wants to get on his knees and pray-in and sit-in that’s his privilege, but I’m not paying for it. You want money from me? Then come up here some day and tell me you’re putting together a black army to fight for what’s ours and I’ll show you the kind of money you never even dreamed about.”

  He owned a hotel. He smiled uncomfortably. “Sammy, I’m the first one to say something should be done….”

  “But by somebody else, right?”

  He owned a supermarket. He was an old friend and he was embarrassed. He struck back defensively. “Where do you get your nerve coming up here telling me how to be colored? Why as far back as I can remember you’ve been ashamed to death that you’re colored.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  He laughed in my face. “Sure. You were proud of it.”

  “No.”

  He stopped laughing. “You admit it?”

  “What’s there to be proud of? Do people with green eyes walk around being proud of it? If they do they’re idiots. There’s nothing to be proud of just ‘cause your skin happens to be brown, white, or polka dot. But I’m going to be proud of it someday, when we find something more important to draw us all together than just mass hatred of the white man.”

  “Name me something better.”

  “The respect for ourselves that we want from other people. We don’t have it, but when we make ourselves heard and felt as one solid force saying, ‘We helped build this country, we contributed to all the arts and sciences….’ ”

  “Sure,” he was nodding bitterly, “we carried bricks into every building in America. That’s a lot to be proud of, being America’s pack mules.”

  “Someday we’ll take pride even in that. There’s no glory attached to being born in a tenement. Not while you’re living there. Only when you can look back on it from a penthouse. When I lived up here I hated it. But I don’t mind talking about it now. It glorifies me to say, ‘That’s where I started, but look where I am.’ That’s how it’s going to be with our people. Someday it’s going to get written in history, in big letters: ‘These are the people who beat the odds. They started from behind but they pulled together and here they are.’ ”

  “You’re dreaming.”

  “You’re wrong. It’s starting to happen now. We’ve got a Martin Luther King going for us and he’s going to light up enough lunch counters ‘til we can all see what he’s doing, and then we’re all going to get behind him so solid, so strong that there’ll be an honest to God social revolution. We’ll start sticking together, pulling each other up, and when we do we’re going to raise ourselves so high that it’s going to be impossible for anybody to see us by looking down.

  “Someday the whole world is going to look at the mass Negro and see him on a financial, educational, and social level with the white cats who had it all handed to them. And if I don’t live to see it, at least my kids will. They’re going to walk down the street wearing their brown skin as a badge of honor.”

  He spoke softly. “Do you really think it can happen?”

  “We have to believe it will.”

  I’d talked myself hoarse, walked from one end of Harlem to the other and all I’d collected was a crowd. As the cab headed downtown Finis said, “It’s inexcusable.”

  “It’s horrible and it’s heartbreaking, but I’m not sure how inexcusable it is. Losing gets to be a habit, baby. People need success.” I looked out the window at what we’d come to accept after three long centuries of disappointment. But, every lunch counter and bus stop was arguing that there can be light where thirty million people had come to believe only in the certainty of darkness. The day was coming when we’d no longer be strangers to hope, when there would be no shame in having been the laborers of yesterday because we’d be the architects of our own tomorrow.

  I was sitting on the floor in the living room, watching a Laurel and Hardy picture and cleaning my pipes. May picked up a magazine and put it down without opening it. She picked it up again and opened it, obviously trying to get interested but in a minute she put it down. She lit a cigarette and sat back on the couch and I could feel her concentrating on Laurel and Hardy, forcing herself to watch as if she were bound to the couch by a seat belt. As though I could hear the fibers tearing I sensed the moment before she stood up abruptly, crushed her cigarette into an ashtray, leaving part of it still burning, and strode out of the room.

  When I walked into the bedroom she was putting on her boots. “I’m going for a walk around the block. I’ve got to get out of here for a while.”

  I glanced out the window at the falling snow that was being blown into deep drifts on the sidewalk. She was putting on a coat. “Darling, don’t you like your mink coat?”

  She was startled. “Of course I do. I love it.”

  “Then how come you haven’t worn it yet? You certainly ought to wear it today. It’s cold out there.”

  She shook her head and seemed surprised that I didn’t understand. “I’m saving it to wear with my husband.” She kissed me goodbye. “I won’t be long.”

  I wiped some of the frost off a window and caught sight of her as she turned the corner at 59th Street. Paul was a few yards behind her. The frost was re-forming on the glass, blurring the outside, reducing the world to the rooms of our suite. It had been more than ten days of confinement to the club and the hotel and her only breaks from that routine were when she went out with Jane. This walk had been the first sign she was cracking. There’d been some casual questions like “How come we don’t go to Danny’s?” and “What’s the Harwyn like?” and I’d covered with trumped-up reasons why we had to be at the hotel: an interview, exhaustion—always something, but I was afraid she was beginning to suspect that I was deliberately not going anywhere with her, that we were in hiding.

  She stamped the last of the snow off her boots, her face pink from the cold, smiling, as though she’d opened a safety valve and all the pressure and tension had been released. I helped her off with her coat. “How was it?”

  “Beautiful. There’s hardly anybody on the streets and the snow is so fresh …” She saw the hot chocolate I’d ordered for her. “Heyyyyyy … I was just thinking I could use something like that to hit the spot.”

  I felt the handle of the pitcher, wrapped a napkin around it, and poured some for her. I scooped up a huge bunch of whipped cream on a spoon and flipped it onto the top of her hot chocolate. She finished one cup, poured another and went for some more whipped cream. I said, “Easy on that stuff. It sticks. If you’re worried about keeping your figure after the baby is born, don’t make it tougher than it has to be. Would you rather have an extra spoon of whipped cream or look good in your Jax slacks?”

  She stared at me accusingly. “You think I’m getting fat!”

  I stared back, stunned. “Darling, am I crazy or did you ask me to help you diet?”

  She put down the spoon. “Boy oh boy it’s rotten that you’re always right. Why can’t I be right sometimes?”

  “While you were out I got four tickets for Camelot for the matinee tomorrow.”

  She sat back in her chair, savoring the moment. “You mean my husband and I are really honest-to-God saying to heck with meetings and stuff and going to a matinee? And of Camelot.”

  I woke up afraid. I felt it physically, like whirring motors in my stomach, down my legs, and an ache in my heart for her when she finds out she’s not a beautiful girl going out to a matinee with her husband, she’s a “nigger lover.” It was out of the question to risk it. I knew I couldn’t keep her a prisoner forever but I had to wait until I could be sure that she was emotionally prepared for whatever we might run into, until I was certain that we have enough background together so that the threads of our marriage can absorb the shock of the kind of abuse that was waiting f
or us outside. She was moving around quietly, believing I was still asleep. She’d washed her hair and had a towel around her neck. I didn’t move. I heard her open the bedroom door then close it softly behind her.

  Her mink coat was hanging outside the closet door. Under it was an orange dress and pink beads. Her boots were on the floor directly under the coat. It was one o’clock. It seemed like a long time before I heard the door opening.

  “Sammy?”

  I rolled over. “Mmmmmmmmm?”

  “It’s one-thirty.”

  “Give me five minutes, darling, just five minutes.”

  I heard the phone ring in the other room. “Sammy, that was Jane and Burt. They’re on their way over. They said the traffic is very heavy and we should be downstairs or we’ll miss the overture.”

  I rolled over, keeping my eyes closed, “Five more minutes …”

  “But Sammy, if you don’t get up now we’ll miss the show.” I could smell her perfume. I didn’t want to look at her and see her all dressed and ready with her make-up on. “Well, if you’re this tired you’d better sleep for another hour or two. We can see the show some other time.” I was aching to tell her, “Darling, I don’t want to sleep away my day. I love you and I want to see you happy. I don’t want to keep your beauty locked in a closet. I’d give anything to be able to take you to the show as we’d planned, to take you everywhere, but I don’t dare.”

  I stayed in bed long after she’d left the room, certain I’d done the best thing, yet, what was it costing? Incident by incident, disappointment by disappointment, would it become so unpleasant for her that eventually, layer by layer, it would wear away the love?

  I stood in the doorway of the living room, wearing a robe and pajamas. May got up from an arm chair and hugged me.

  I held her tight, then kissed the palm of her hand. “I’m sorry.” Jane and Burt were on the couch. “I’m sorry, guys. I just couldn’t have gotten out of bed if my life had depended on it.”