Some Sing, Some Cry

by Ntozake Shange

  Sparrow didn’t care for him at all. “Boss likes a little fruit with the fruitcake, seems to me.”

  She nudged Sparrow in the ribs. “He’s artistic.”

  “I got the ick part. I thought you didn’t like all that touchy feely stuff.”

  Lizzie turned to him, her hands on her waist, her hip jutting out. “You’re upset.”

  “I’m not upset.”

  “You’ll still get five percent. We still got a contract.”

  “No thanks, sweet thing. You go upstairs to Axleton and the sign says, ‘Nigguhs, unless you singin’, playin’ piano, or shinin’ shoes, there be the doah and it’s closed.’ I’ll be right there when they fire your ass again.”

  Haviland returned. “They’ve put my pictures in the back. ‘Too disturbing,’ ” he said with feigned dismay. Lizzie observed two well-heeled, pearl-clad Sugar Hill babies coming their way. Haviland casually put his arm over her shoulder. “Here come my couch nannies,” he said slyly. “Do me a favor. Act like you’re my girl.”

  “Haviland, there’s something you should know. I dance and sing and shake my tail in a nightclub . . . Well, really, it’s a speakeasy.”

  He looked at her in surprise and rapture. “Tonight?”

  “Oh, oh, oh, baby . . .” He was there every night. Sketching her form, kissing her neck, ranting in the cab rides to wherever, “To heck with all this genteel, never show the dirt routine. To prove humanity, you must strip it of anything false and pretentious, make it real and from the gut. When I paint a world is created. We need to radicalize the movement! New Negro—Show them the Fire of Black Folk! You do that with your dancing. You do that with your soul, Mayfield Turner.” He kissed her and they both fell backwards.

  That night and every night. Most often he came by himself. Sometimes he brought friends. To Haviland’s Harlem crowd of poets and painters, Lizzie was exotic, authentic, and his effort to be egalitarian, noble. The mix was a floating crew of journalists, radicals, and mystics from the Village. Big Ed put his foot down at first. “It’s policy. No whites allowed.”

  Haviland’s friend Vee-Vee interceded, “But we’re not white. We’re Reds and pinkos, my brother—comrades in struggle.”

  Vreeland Hurskman’s Midtown West 58th Street penthouse doorman announced them through the gold-trimmed phone receiver, all the while eying Lizzie because he knew Sparrow. The six-foot-tall, buck-toothed dirty-blond Dutchman greeted them at the door. His high round collar draped over a red embroidered kimono. “Ah, the Yamma Mama and the colored Corbusier.”

  “If you must call me something,” Haviland responded as the couple stepped inside the spacious apartment, “at least make it original.”

  “My dear, ignore this young pug and come with me.” Vee-Vee draped his long arm around Lizzie and like a strong Norse breeze scooted her down the hallway to the living room that looked out upon the glowing city.

  “Fair weather friend,” Haviland laughed.

  “What do you want me to do? All of my old friends have been deported.”

  Lizzie’s relationship with Haviland was easy from the start. Electric. Made the gossip columns. “Another cultural rising star lost to the cabaret life. The Hopeful and the Harlem Hottie!” She had grown to enjoy Haviland’s absurd circle of radicals. If you could see me now, Mama, you would prob’ly think this was the worst group of friends I could find. Well, good. The woman in the fox cape from the soiree turned out to be rich, filthy rich, Southern rich. Her daddy’s political influence was the only obstacle to Vee-Vee’s boat ticket. To the consternation of her father, she had married an Indian, who now carried a smudge stick through the hall. Lizzie danced to his droning chant, dropping in on bits of poetry and inebriated conversations.

  “You’ll never get it published unless you’re more fair-minded toward the white characters,” Vee’s companion, Anna, pleaded with a young, aspiring Negro novelist.

  “It’s not whites but blacks I want to reach,” he protested while hoisting several clams casino onto his napkin.

  “What are you, a moron? Did you not comprehend anything?” a downtown journalist hollered into the phone. “Perhaps if he didn’t split his infinitives, you could explain yourself better! That’s the heart of it.”

  “Lizzie, come close,” Vee-Vee beckoned. “Tell your painter boyfriend about the music. Music is more in touch with the people. Painting just hangs on the wall. Holds you captive. Music you can listen to while doing something else. You can dance to it, can even join in.”

  “Music,” she threw her hip suggestively, “is seduction.”

  “Brilliant! The brilliance of art, in a word, seduction. In the music seduction begins!” Vee-Vee put on a new plastic 78 of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and lifted Lizzie clear off the floor. “Rhythm will change the world, Lizzie. Watch, I’ve been practicing my Black Bottom.” His rumbling steps shook the chandeliers.

  Lizzie led the party in a dance demonstration—ballin’ the jack, grizzly bear, slow drag into a hug and rubbin’ crawl. The revelers fell out on the couches and chaises in randomly formed couples and combos. “Rhapsodic!” shouted Vee-Vee, his pink face a glimmer of sweat. “Who wants gin?”

  Fanning herself with a 78 record, Lizzie eased her way toward the open door off the kitchen. Haviland followed and laced his arms around her waist. She turned to him. He nuzzled her neck with soft sensual kisses. They danced away from the crowd, up the back spiral steps to the roof terrace and the crisp black night, the city dazzling around them. Her heart and body wanted him, but she was afraid. His warm hands grabbed her by the hips and slipped under her panty and garter, drawing her toward him, breathing her in with his kiss. Her arms wilted around his shoulders as he licked and bit at her neck and the small lobe of her ear. She caught his hand and drew it up toward her face, intertwining their fingers. He just as fluidly wound her arm around behind her and trussed it to her back, grabbing her ass. She couldn’t move her arm. She started to panic. She couldn’t move. This is Haviland. He loves you. But she couldn’t move. Just then the door flew open from the kitchen. One of the waiters had stepped out for a smoke. They separated. She straightened her clothes.

  The waiter eyed them through the cigarette smoke with a disapproving smile and tilted his head to get a better look. “Lizzie Winrow? That you? Cain’t be!” She realized immediately that she knew him from down Charleston way. She thought she had put enough space between her and Charleston to forget it. Still, here it was back again, actin’ familiar. “Thought that was you. Mighty my, livin’ high you is. Wait’ll I tell— How yoah mama doin’? How yoah—”

  “I don’t go by that name anymore,” she interjected. “It’s Mayfield Turner.”

  “Lizzie May Winrow!” the waiter continued, ignoring her correction, “I told ’em I knew you! Didn’t b’lieve me. Lemme show ’em I know somebody. Know somebody highfalutin’.”

  She took Haviland’s hand and followed the waiter into the kitchen. Smile with too much knowin’. Best pal along and get this joker gone. When they entered the kitchen, the West Indian cook was squawkin’ over the sink, the pipes clunkin’ back like drums. His scowl announced he didn’t think too much of Lizzie and her kind. His preachin’ confirmed it. “Tink you can make the world over wit poetry and paint. Change the world true culture. A&P got twenty-four stores, only treeee black errand boys.” He held up three sudsy fingers, then plunged his hand back into the sink. “United Cigar Store with thirteen stores, got no black employees at tall.”

  “Hanaisse, what is you fussin’ bout now?” the waiter pleaded, embarrassed.

  “You people need to get serious. You piddle away your lives with idle talk, cavortin’ wid the white man when you should be seeking independence. Come to the rally, my brethren. Marcus Garvey returns!”

  “Yeah, from the federal pen.” The waiter had a good laugh.

  Hanaisse returned to his dishes, mumbling, “Our great leader was framed. Set up by the United States government. They deport him. You don’t see them doin’
nothin’ to those pinkos upstairs.”

  The waiter leaned back against the counter, “Now, why you wan’ say somthin’ like that. Them pinkos is yoah paycheck.”

  The frenetic man paused. “That’s the trouble with all of yuhs. Tink it’s funny. Tink you got somethin’, ain’t got nuttin’. Mark my words.”

  Lizzie and Haviland took the opportunity to slip away. Standing in the door frame of the servants’ entrance, she turned toward Haviland’s touch and spied Ray unloading boxes from the freight elevator.

  Rehearsals for the Cane Break were a grueling eight hours a day, but until the show opened her big move downtown meant a cut in her income by two-thirds. Seven dollah and NO tips! So Lizzie kept working at the Turf Club. This time she wasn’t going to give up her spot until she knew she had a bona fide hit. She found Sparrow lingering at her dressing room curtain. “Doorman at one of yoah Nordic friends told me, said, ‘Saw your gal, hangin’ out at the penthouse with the Communists, drinkin’ Fifth Avenues.’ ”

  She brushed past him and plunked herself on the dressing room stool. “What you want, Sparrow? And what’s the idea, snoopin’ on me?”

  “Just checkin’ up on my investment.”

  Stretching out her long legs, Lizzie flexed her ankles and grunted a dismissive laugh, then leaned over, exhausted. “Well, Mr. Biltmore, just gimme a bounce and get outta here.”

  Sparrow pulled a small vial of his custom elixir from his pocket and rolled it between his fingertips. “Only thing you seem to need me for now.”

  “Oh please.” She snatched the vial from him and quickly snorted a couple of hits from the cap.

  “So this fellah, Have-A Man,” he continued.

  “It’s Haviland,” Lizzie retorted, nearly throwing the vial at him.

  Sparrow caught it agilely. “I’m just askin’ does he know you got a shorty? Does he know you got a kid?”

  “You wanna get me fired, nigguh?” Sparrow’s eyes widened in shock. Her sharpness had stung him. She began to change for her next number, softening. “You yourself told me the day I met you I can’t get no work with no shorty. Mr. Meeks made that abundantly clear. He wants his yellah gals fleshy and fresh.”

  “I’m not talking about no job, or no Cappy Meeks. I’m talkin’ bout your life, Slim. All I’m saying is that a man that loves you wouldn’t care. Does this guy love you?”

  “You’re my manager, Dakota Sparrow, not my man or my father,” she snapped. “Do me a favor, stick to show business and keep your nose outta mine.”

  He raised his hands and retreated in surrender as Lizzie turned to the mirror to check her makeup. The visage staring back at her was tense in the eyes, irritated at Sparrow’s question, furious with her inability to answer. Truth was she didn’t know how she felt about Haviland. She would see other chorus girls so easily seduced, so comfortable with their bodies, enjoying themselves with casual encounters or wild sweeps of romance. One married a horn man. One engaged to a preacher. Loads of sugar-daddies, white and colored. Heartache to headache as far as she was concerned. She was fond of Haviland. She was with him almost every night, jostling from party to party. They would fondle in the corner, nibble on lips, dance a Southern grind or a hot speed ball and jack. He would sketch her form, visibly titillated by her near naked costumes and suggestive undulations. His hand was graceful and light with pencil and charcoal, but when grasping her arms, holding her, he was awkward, arrhythmic and fumbling. When it came to true intimacy she withdrew into herself, knowing this was not what she wanted, not who she wanted. How to love a man was supposed to be a natural knowing, but she didn’t have it. This secret knowledge had been stolen from her. Deke Turner had robbed her of it. Runnin’ off her father and truest friend, then catching her on the stair to the cellar, he had stolen her capacity to love. Even my own child. The heat of her dance belied the fact that she was hard, cold, and empty inside.

  “Mayfield, tell me you ain’t leavin’! Don’t hurt me,” a customer shouted as she strutted onto the Turf Club dance floor for the final set. “Doll, you breakin’ my heart!”

  “Baby, I don’t break hearts,” she retorted, “I collect ’em.”

  After the set, she took the subway to Midtown to get a couple hours sleep before rehearsal started at the Cane Break. She couldn’t believe that two years after hitting New York she was still squatting with Elma and Ray. The arrangement suited her. Ray was rarely there, and Elma doted on her niece. Cinnamon’s companionship had been a great help with Jesse’s development. He was walking fine now, and even if Cinn was the only one who could understand him, he was at least talking—a slow warbling near baritone in that squat little body. He followed his cousin around like a puppy. Lizzie couldn’t get a better arrangement than she had. Still Sparrow’s query ate at her. That and his concoction wearing off made her edgy, her calf muscles twitching involuntarily. You’re tremblin’, damn.

  The train made its way downtown toward Hell’s Kitchen, each stop acquiring a new crew of day shift workers—porters, doormen, maids, elevator operators. Feeling the pulse of the tracks beneath her, watching the randomness of life like a movie at the Bijoux, Lizzie studied postures, expressions, relationships, imagining sketches and choreography to distract herself. A young colored man in clean pressed overalls boarded at 110th Street. His brown paper bag lunch in tow, he looked eager and ready for the new job. He held on to the pole and leaned forward as if he would drive the car faster toward his destination. His lean frame and Indian color reminded her for a moment of Osceola. Suddenly he bolted, his body seized, jumped backwards, and slammed onto the floor, his back arched, and his fingers curled into grotesque frozen sculptures. His irises rolled up and the whites of his eyes became slits. He convulsed wildly on the floor of the car as if shot through with lightning. The train halted in the darkened tunnel, the lights of the car flickering. The conductor ran from his booth. He was joined quickly by another entering from the adjacent car.

  “There’s a man here on the floor taking a fit,” said one to the other.

  “Well, can we move on to the station so other trains can pass?”

  Passengers hurried away, sneaking glances over their shoulders, leaving Lizzie, the two train workers, and the helpless man. Unsure of the appropriate action, the conductors encircled him.

  “Some kind of epileptic fit,” the first repeated.

  “Well, can we get him off the train?”

  They were stuck just as she was, debating an action, while the poor young man continued to gyrate and froth at the mouth, his unseeing eyes fixed on her. She sat watching the strange dance before her, studying it. The man’s body gradually slackened. How she wished she could shake like that, shake her body every part of it, shake off this demon.

  She determined then and there that before the relationship went any further Haviland should know she had a near four-year-old child. She decided to introduce her high-class, legit beau to her family. Cinn’s birthday was coming up. She would throw a party.

  Elma immediately delighted in the idea. But for Sparrow occasionally fetching her for a gig, Lizzie had never brought any of her friends home. “Cinnamon will be so thrilled.” The following Saturday, while the Cane Break finished up the costume fittings, Lizzie was to have the day off. She thought she would be able to sleep in a bit, but by the first light of morning, Elma dragged her sister to the teeming immigrant market of Delancey Street in lower New York, where they would get the first crack at the bargains and seconds.

  Elma splurged on a new tablecloth and a porcelain-faced doll from Poland for Cinnamon’s gift. Lizzie bought a Mah-Jongg set. The ancient Chinese game, a momentary rage in the city, had proven too complicated for American tastes, which tended more toward checkers. At the intersection where the Delancey market met Chinatown, there was an ample selection on display for resale. Lizzie wasn’t actually interested in playing the game. Rather she thought it would lend an air of class and worldliness to the apartment. She didn’t have much to make the place feel like her own
. The colorful white, green, and red dragon tiles and the Chinese script reminded her of Yum Lee’s awning and the markings on the shirt boxes she and Ossie had been charged with sorting by street address and delivering. To her touch the ivory tiles felt like the loose piano keys at Pilar’s.

  When it came to Cinnamon’s party dress, Lizzie took the lead. “No hand-me-downs for my baby. Cinnamon Turner’s gonna travel first class!” The two sisters headed to Macy’s department store on 34th Street. As they headed up the escalator to the children’s section, they twittered about their mother’s story of her first day in Charleston, repeating the story in unison, “Yessiree, I saw that sewing machine and lost my mind. I had never even seen a department store, but that day, I walked right in the front door!”

  “I can see her now,” Lizzie continued, “nose stuck up and those country slew feet pointing east and west.” When Lizzie got to the part about her mother’s mistaking the screech of curtain rings for a chicken hawk, she folded her arms, flapped them at the elbows, and crowed. Elma simply shook her head in dismay. Even as Lizzie mocked their mother’s lack of sophistication, she was more country and uncouth than Eudora Winrow had ever been. Customers turned and glowered at the two of them. Elma tried in vain to shoosh her sister’s animated reenactment, apologetically acknowledging the silent rebuke coming from several corners. Lizzie put her hands on her hips and hollered at her detractors, “Can I help you with somethin’? Ain’t you never seen a chicken hawk before?”

  Elma discreetly moved to another row of dresses. True to form, her sister ambled over, contrite.

  “They act like they ain’t never seen a colored woman shoppin’.”

  Elma ignored her and held up a powder blue pinafore dress with a white organza collar and sash. “What do you think of this?” Then she looked at the price tag. “Oh. Maybe not . . . but the color would be just beautiful on Cinnamon. I do believe Mrs. Marrano’s daughter still works here,” she continued. “She might let us use her employee discount. She has offered before.”