Some Sing, Some Cry

by Ntozake Shange

“Get outta here, you crazy Commie,” Snooks snarled. “You’re un-American.”

  “What’s un-American about democracy?”

  “It’s subvoy-sive,” Snooks said with emphasis, “you lousy nigguhs just don’t wanna work.”

  “How can you say that about your own kind?” the man asked calmly, with no hint of malice or ire, more a teacher than agitator. “Two hundred fifty major defense industries refuse to employ Negroes. That’s subversive! Discrimination in Selective Service, in the training. The Negro wants a job just as badly as anyone else. All he wants is a decent chance to get one.” A riot of colors swept across the young man’s face; he had wild eyebrows as if his thoughts had set them afire. “Negroes need to join forces to fight for justice and equality at home.”

  “You got a death wish, bub?”

  “Liberty or death!” he laughed. “We can accomplish great things if we stand together.”

  “I went to see Marian Anderson,” Cinn spoke up. “On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. They say seventy-five thousand people attended, but I think it was more. The finest voice of the twentieth century, faultless timbre, made your body vibrate just to hear it.” Then amidst great protest from her guardians, Cinn got out of the car.

  Defying his proletariat impulses, the young man took her arm and escorted her toward the parade of picketers blocking the street. “This protest is just the beginning. Imagine a March on Washington, a hundred thousand people. A hundred thousand people demanding justice, equality! A. Philip Randolph, Adam Powell, all the Negro leadership is talking about it.”

  “I’ve met Reverend Powell,” she boasted, finding herself eager to impress the brash interloper. He walked with perfect posture, perfectly comfortable with her being a shade taller. Fingers trailed behind them like a Sicilian grandmother, Snooks driving the car two miles an hour alongside. As the couple’s walk proceeded, the protesters began to part. Word quickly spread that the car was on loan from the Jones brothers to a big shot from Harlem. Cinn spied a woman, one of the marchers, skitter up, then skitter away like a snow crab. After a few moments, her escort smiled. “I’m told I am in the presence of royalty. The ubiquitous grapevine has it that your father’s a policy king.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m brutally honest. It’s a flaw of mine.”

  “My uncle is a respected businessman, a respectable, legitimate businessman.”

  “I stand corrected. He’s your uncle.”

  “What business is it of yours?” She started back toward the car. “I didn’t come to Chicago to be insulted.”

  “Please don’t get back in the car,” he blurted. “You haven’t told me why you are here. What brings you to our fair, unfair city?”

  “. . . A short, a very short trip to Europe,” she laughed. “A graduation present. Hunter College. I’m on my way to Juilliard. It’s a—”

  “Music academy. Juilliard! I’m impressed.”

  “You know it, then.”

  “I’m from Chicago, not Neptune,” he joked. “What are you studying?”

  “Uh . . . music?” she said. “Please don’t ask me to sing blues, or jazz. Please don’t ask me why I won’t sing spirituals.”

  “Well, what do you sing?”

  “Ballads, art songs, lieder. I sing opera.”

  “When the world is at war?”

  “Opera is the only art form capable of that scope of human drama.”

  His eyebrows perked. “Ever sing a union song?”

  “Okay, that’s it,” Fingers interjected and grabbed Cinnamon by the arm. “Back in the car, missy.” He was a stocky man with a muscular clawlike grip. Before she could speak, she found herself unceremoniously shoved into the back seat, the car door slamming angrily behind her, the locks bolting shut with an exclamation. Snooks leaned on the horn, pounded it until the protesters began again to disperse. Cinn put her hands up to the closed window as the young man ran alongside the car. “At least tell me your name,” he said through the glass, “so I can tell people I met you when you’re famous.”

  As the car sped away, Snooks looked at her through the rearview mirror. “Sorry about that, miss, but Deacon, he don’t do unions.”

  By the time Cinnamon got back to New York, she had missed the first week of class. The pacing at Juilliard was fierce. Languages and diction classes, piano, music theory, lieder, intense choral work, even dancing the first year, and a bedeviling course entitled “The History of Singing”—all prerequisites before her beloved opera classes could commence. “Restate the rules—identify the composers and period pieces by ear—music history from Greek to Baroque—compare your notes again.” Cramming for her first semester review, Cinnamon closed her eyes to commit melodies to memory. Gregorian chants danced around Beethoven, then stumbled. She jolted. “No, no, no tritones! Better go over the translations again.” She attempted once more to synthesize the jumble of textbook highlights, sample questions, and class notes she had devoured the night before.

  The Minor household was still crowded. Although Dr. Hadjo had moved on, and Adelle had taken over the walk-in closet space, Cinn still shared a room with Sissy and Memphis. The Lohans were moving soon to the new Abraham Lincoln Homes, but they were leaving Miss Tavineer.

  The outside world kept intruding. She dreaded the daily subway ride to Manhattan. Ironically, the nearest stop to her exclusive school on Claremont Avenue was in the heart of Harlem. The rain seeping through her coat, men with their hands, she couldn’t stand it. Just because I’m Negro, they got cause to think I’m loose, there for the pickin’, that they got cause to put their hands on me. Buddy, you better not even think about it. Cinn bounded the steps to the train platform and paced the length of the walkway, her short breaths punctuating the brisk fall air. When she reached the opposite side, she would rake herself for her seeming incapacity to control her volatility. Hop the train to Toogalou. Or roll on over to old St. Lou.

  When she actually got to Juilliard, she was stunned by the competition. Just like Hunter, practically everyone was on scholarship. All had been the local favorites, hand-picked by private vocal teachers; winner of the Texaco contest and the Wolfe Fellowship, recommended by Toscanini, sang for Shostakovich. Ballet training, stagecraft. Her well-heeled classmates were paying five hundred dollars’ board while she was still taking buses and subways.

  The Manhattan-bound train navigated the corner screaming like her insides. She had slept three hours, two and a half maybe, and now she was going to be late. Of all days, German diction class. “Ah, yes, our Aida.” She could anticipate his mocking tone. It was no secret, her German language professor, Dr. Marintz, thought her ambition misguided. “Your physiognomy is not suited, your articulation sloppy.” She sensed his Aryan irritation at her very existence. There were two other Negro students in the entire voice program, she the only brown-skinned one. A fourth youth disappeared after the first week. Marintz didn’t want her to be there and let her know it. She was too ugly, too dark, and too tall. Duet work was impossible. No tenor wanted to sing with her. They all wanted a white partner. The cafeteria staff was smug. She bagged her lunch. It was her duty to endure.

  Her full scholarship came at great cost to her psyche. She had to be excellent at everything. Under Madame Olivetsky’s tutelage, she had become fluent in Italian, French, and German—all phonetically—then studied them in college. She had been performing since childhood and had entered her first opera competition at fifteen, yet she could feel it. No one wants me here. Why did they admit me? She loved the singing, but she loathed being judged. The experience roiled her every time. No matter how many medals, how many ribbons and certificates. Always the same. The only Negro.

  She read through the assigned chorus part, talking to herself, “I need to keep working. I have to lose these pounds. Get down to size—brown dress, purple, green? Which will make me look smaller?” If she lost some weight, perhaps there would be less of her to cause irritation. Though she was well beyond her classmates in her grasp
of Italian and French, Marintz seemed to think her African mouth incapable of clearly enunciating German. Before the whole class, he would stop and correct her at every turn of phrase. He would spend minutes suggesting how she should work her lips to attain the correct fineness of tone. Really he just wanted to possess them, to wallow in their succulence, but she just didn’t get it—a pass for a pass. She didn’t perceive herself as attractive. It never occurred to her that anyone else would. Nor would she allow that men of culture might confuse their authority with sexual privilege. Being a Negro opera aspirant at Juilliard and the daughter of “the apricot dipped in honey” were liabilities enough. Marintz’s cutting remarks made her even more competitive.

  The afternoon session with Madame Olivetsky did not go well either. The department had announced the spring student opera would be Carmen. All year, she had taken secondary assignments in the choir, the perpetual understudy in the yearly recital. They know I could ace out Notrovny and Gordon and any other soprano in the department. She was determined to land Carmen. What excuse could they have? She’s a gypsy for Christ’s sake.

  Cinnamon hated to displease her mentor, to be reminded that she was a special case, yet again. “I said I was not taking any more students. Certainly, no colored. I’m not taking any new students, I say, but I will hear you and I marvel. Where does a voice like this come from at sixteen? I say . . . And where has it gone, enh, where is it today?” The old woman patted her brusquely on the arm. “Once more, please.”

  Cinnamon practiced her introduction, hands neatly folded one over the other, her spine snapped penny-bouncing straight. “Cinnamon Turner. Today I will sing a selection from Bizet’s Carmen.”

  “Ah! J’étais vraiment trop bête!” Ah! I was really too dumb! she sang. “Je me mettais en quatre et je faisais des frais.” I put myself on all fours and I went to such pains. “Oui, je faisais des frais, pour amuser monsieur!” I went to such pains! “Je chantais! Je dansais! Je crois, Dieu me pardonné,” I sang! I danced! I believe, may God pardon me, that a little more, and I would love him! “Taratata! Taratata!” That bugle!

  “Stop, stop!” The old woman interjected. “Baroque you can sing with all that precision, but Bizet you must feel! Carmen is a woman who refuses to give up her way of life for the man she loves. She risks her life to be free.” Madame Olivetsky almost lost her balance. Cinnamon caught her by her thin, birdlike elbow as she jostled the music stand. Suddenly, her faithful teacher broke into tears. “I’m so sorry, my dear. My family in Prague, I have lost touch with them. Things are happening in Europe, frightening things. I am afraid I may never see them again.” Cinn had not thought of Madame Olivetsky having a family. She was embarrassed by her self-absorption and her obliviousness to her mentor’s growing concerns. Affairs in Europe she had tried not to think about. What does she mean, never see them again? Regaining her composure, Madame Olivetsky patted Cinnamon on the arm. “My dear, you are technically proficient, but you are not letting through your spirit. You must release it to find your power. You cannot approach Carmen with technique alone. Bizet was passionate! Bizet wrote only one great opera, died at thirty-six. If you insist on singing Carmen, please do not sing it if you cannot find its soul.”

  The fortune-telling theme in Carmen made Adelle come into her mind. Adelle, sipping her tea in the corner windowsill, studying the leaves collecting in the bottom. She told the girls once that she could read the future. “Until I seen my own mother’s death,” she whispered in her ominous Jamaican lilt. Adelle had said to Cinn, “You tink you an artist?”

  Cinn stopped by her uncle’s barbershop. It was full of customers. She felt distance, never comfortable with the working-class language. “So I told the nigguh . . .” Deacon smiled with pride as she entered. “Gentlemen, this is my niece, Cinnamon Turner. She’s a student at Juilliard.” The audience grunted that they were impressed, if only by his intonation. “She is my brother’s child—Osceola. Her mother’s a big star in Europe.”

  Cinn blushed, disheartened by the reference. She had put the abysmal European trip and her encounter with Lizzie out of her mind. “I just stopped by to say hello.”

  “Come. Sit awhile.” He put his arm around her and beckoned an assistant to take over for him.

  She confided in him how she didn’t feel like she belonged. “Anywhere! At school the white students are always yapping at me, whispering, wishing I weren’t there. In the Bronx, I stood on the corner singing Madame Butterfly! People thought I was a lunatic. They called the police! At home, even at home, it’s not my home.”

  Iolanthe proposed that Cinn take an apartment in one of the buildings she and Deacon owned. “That way you would be right down the street from us and one subway stop from the school. Our driver could drop you off. You could even walk.”

  Elma and Raymond wouldn’t have it. “A young woman? Livin’ alone? In Harlem?”

  “Mama El, Uncle Deacon and Iolanthe are willing to sponsor me. It wouldn’t cost you anything.”

  “How do you really know he is any relation but by his sayin’? Haven’t you been happy here with us? No!”

  “But Mama El, I really do need to be able to concentrate. Other girls at the academy have their own apartments.” After much cajoling and pleading, with Cinn’s sincere efforts to seem her most mature and confident, Elma folded one hand over the other and rocked on her heels. “We’ll see.”

  She moved over the winter break. Elma and Raymond came along to inspect. Doorman, marble lobby, sleek, crisp art deco design. She left behind the scrapbook Sparrow had given her at her one and only birthday party. For a while Lizzie had sent back pictures. For a while Cinn had pasted them in the book along with random articles, notices, and water-stained postcards. She took only the few pages of Osceola’s sheet music that she had collected on the sidewalk that cold birthday night. Left behind in the room she shared with Memphis and Sissy, the dusty leather-bound album now bulging with withered yellowed tongues.

  Cinn got home to her new apartment the second Saturday and found even more people than at the flat back in the Bronx.

  “That’ll be twenty-five cents please.” The pert chocolate drop with the wide, smiling dough face handed her a flyer. PRESENTING, MISS MEMPHIS’S MID-DAY DELTA THROW-DOWN. “I said that’ll be twenty-five—”

  “Listen, sistuh,” Cinn pronounced, “I live here.” She found Negroes with rumcokes in parts of the apartment she didn’t know existed, conversatin’ in the bathtub, surveying the dumbwaiter, dipping into the pot of okra and rice Mama El had prepared and which Cinn had planned to ration for the weekend. In the center of it all, Memphis!

  “Isn’t it great?”

  “Memphis, what’s going on here? Miss Tavineer?!”

  “Cinnamon, darling! Great partay! Woohoo!”

  Memphis scrunched her shoulders and giggled as Miss Tavineer slunk by, her skinny flat hips swiveling in a paisley print dress. She waved coyly at the girls with two fingers, the others wrapped around a Dixie cup, and smiled through her glasses askew on her nose, a pair of false eyelashes applied upside down.

  “I had to bring the old lady,” Memphis confessed. “I was supposed to be watching her while Mom did her civil defense class. We were doing makeup lessons.”

  Cinn tugged up both sides of her brassiere, preparing to give Memphis a piece of her mind, just as a partier grabbed her and swung her around. “Don’t worry. I take control. One two, one two,” as if she couldn’t count. She pulled herself away.

  “Memphis, these people have got to go.”

  “Oh come on, Cinn, lighten up. They’re just gonna crash till gig time.”

  “Memphis, have you lost your mind? I just got this apartment.”

  “Oh, nobody’s going to do anything to you. You’re everybody’s angel. This is art! This is the, the, the hottest small combo in New York. Why shouldn’t we have them in the house?”

  “The band, Memphis? Or the whole club?”

  “Isn’t it hot? A genuine jam!” Memphis finished ju
st as the trumpeter took his solo—Memphis’s ear peaked as spirit awakened in him colors he could not touch—blues, church music, the beauty parlor, Porgy courtin’ Bess in a call and response. He ended in a cadenza, then slid into a fast groove, “Ain’t gon fool yuh/ Poppa gon school yuh.” This fast-livin’ crazy cat, cross-dressin’ the music, raised the bar with a composition vamping off pre-existent melodies and such harmonic ingenuity, the notes just jumped off the page. Finding melody without, within, molecules of sound, the particles not mass, but energy. Visceral, cerebral head music, traveling up and down her spine like light. To Cinnamon Turner it sounded like radio static. “What is that noise?”

  Memphis begged, “Come on, Cinn. It’s a party!”

  “At ten o’clock in the morning?”

  “Cinn, we just got off work.”

  “What we? And what work? You’re supposed to be finishing high school!”

  “Why you have to harp on things? If you got an idea, you never let it go and never present it as if you understand it to be an opinion, that you might be wrong. I just don’t need to hear your opinion today of what you think I should be doing with my life. Cinn, Cinn, Cinn, that’s all they talk about. We expect great things,” Memphis ranted. “Best thing I ever get is a ‘That’s nice, dear.’ I’m gonna go out and shake my tail. ‘That’s nice, dear.’ I’m cuttin’ school. ‘That’s nice, dear.’ I showed my drawers at the Savoy last night. ‘That’s nice, dear.’ Everybody can’t have a rich uncle or get a scholarship like you.”

  “I can’t believe you. I worked hard to get where I am. You have a beautiful voice. You could get a scholarship if you wanted to.”

  “I don’t want to hear all that. That’s okay for you, but not for me. I just want to sing.”

  “Sometimes you sound so ignorant.”

  “Just cuz I don’t like that white folk shit makes me ignorant?”

  The last number of the set, the trumpet player slid in with a fast tempo, spare, liquid, melodic line, punctuated by irregular, dissonant chord changes, the linear melody metamorphosing into something rapid, precise, yet unpredictable, crisp, and intense. The trumpet soared, a cupped hand over the bell, pressing the structural limits of sound till the room was airborne.