Josephine Baker's Last Dance Read online

  “Let’s go,” she said to Helen, pulling on her arm.

  “But he’s coming toward us—”

  “Now!” She broke into a run, and Helen followed, down Market Street, all the way past the Rosebud Café. Josephine knew how to run from trouble: Mr. Scott, her school’s truant officer, hadn’t caught her yet. Helen, panting, begged her to stop, but she kept going, knowing the man was still watching, that her red hair bow and Helen’s white dress flashed like beacons among the green fatigues of the military men making their way to the red-lighted brothels and stride pianos, the dancing girls and festive riverboats with floating dance floors, where well-heeled customers fox-trotted and one-stepped and tried to do the Breakaway, rolling and jazzing down the Mississippi River. When the men reached the docks and the ticket sellers turned them away, they’d recall that it was Thursday, and that Colored Night on the riverboats was Monday. But there was plenty of fun to be had on Market Street any night of the week.

  The stranger had surely lost them now in the crowd of soldiers, ladies of the night stepping forth from doorways, and musicians carrying their instruments on the way to play somewhere or already playing outdoors, banjos and trumpets and fiddles and guitars and washboards and spoons and coffee cans and harmonicas and blocks of wood and rattles and trombones and saxophones and even a piano that somebody had rolled out onto the sidewalk, making it feel like a party.

  The stranger’s face flashed in her mind: trouble. But he’d forgotten her by now, lost in the perfumed cloud that would have converged around him as soon as he’d arrived on the scene. A looker like that wouldn’t be alone for a minute. She thought of those green eyes and a thrill ran up her spine. When she and Helen stopped to watch a fire juggler she scanned the crowd, and, not seeing him anywhere, felt her spirits drop. But no matter. It was time to head to the Concordia, where there’d be plenty of boys.

  The hall was already jam-packed when they arrived and the dance band was in full swing, horns calling out their invitation to shimmy and jump. On the floor men lifted their partners into the air and swooped them between their legs; women snapped their fingers and did the splits and shook their breasts and wiggled their hips to the beat. Josephine and Helen watched from the balcony, then moved down for a closer look.

  “That trumpet player is on the make,” said Helen, trying to act sophisticated in her childish dress with eyelet trim.

  Josephine had her eyes on the dancers, watching their feet, memorizing the steps, imagining how she would do the dance, what she would add: a twist here, a kick there, noting how a woman in a bright blue dress let herself be lifted and flipped over her partner’s head before sliding down his back, how she kept herself completely relaxed all the way to the floor before springing up and spinning around to catch his outstretched hand.

  The music rose and soared and shouted and hovered on the edge of exultation, throwing off facets of sound the way she’d seen water shoot sparks of light at night from the riverboat wheels. Was there anything more perfect? Josephine felt a quickening under her skin, and the current in her blood made her body quiver and jerk, her fingers snap, her feet shuffle.

  “Let’s dance.” The voice in her ear, intimate and low, spun her around, and when she saw him she laughed: the tall, honey-skinned, green-eyed man she’d seen at Union Station, standing so close she could feel him touching her even though he wasn’t, his fingertips poised at her elbow to escort her onto the floor, his eyes gazing into hers. He steered her through the tangle and began a jitterbug, asking if she knew the steps, and of course she did, but soon ceased to follow them as her feet found other, more interesting ones, kicking and flying and tapping and spinning.

  When she saw him looking at her with that green intensity she crossed her eyes, playing, and enjoyed his baritone laugh. “Hot stuff,” he said. And when the music slowed she let him pull her close, her head barely reaching the center of his chest, his hand on the small of her back exerting a small and pleasurable pressure.

  “You found me,” she said. He smiled, and she noticed a missing molar in his upper jaw.

  “I never lost you,” he said. “Willie Wells knows a good thing when he sees it. I laid eyes on you at the train station and been watching you ever since.”

  A shiver ran up Josephine’s spine, and she pressed herself to him more closely. His arm tightened around her waist, and they stood nearly still, clinging to each other, until the music stopped.

  A hand grabbed her right shoulder and yanked her out of his embrace, and there stood Mama in her red dress, pointing a wagging finger at her.

  “What in the hell are you doing here? These dances are no place for a thirteen-year-old.” Josephine glanced over at Willie Wells, but he had disappeared, thank goodness. Her mother went on, saying she ought to beat Josephine’s ass right there and then. Josephine met her eyes, daring. She was as tall as her mother now. She could knock her right off those high heels, could rip that bursting-at-the-seams dress right off. She’d do it, too, if Mama dared to touch her in front of all these people.

  “And who were you mashing up against?” Behind her, Helen stared at the scene, slack-jawed. Helen’s mother would never confront her in a public place like this—but Mrs. Morris wouldn’t be at the dance hall, anyway, not without her husband. Others were watching, too, now that the band had taken a break. Josephine wished the floor would crack open and swallow her mama whole, or Josephine herself.

  “A grown man, and a soldier! And you acting like a common tramp.”

  Oh, dear Lord, please make her shut up! Josephine rolled her eyes so everyone could see that Mama was crazy, her words not to be believed. She put a hand on her own hip, mimicking her mother.

  “Like mother, like daughter,” she said.

  She should have expected the slap, would have known it was coming if she’d taken a minute to think before speaking. Instead, she cried out in surprise and pain, eliciting gasps from the crowd. She lifted her hands to catch the blood from her lip split by her Mama’s ring, wary of spoiling her new dress as she walked through the room, her head high, looking straight ahead as she headed for the exit, avoiding all eyes in general and those of one man in particular, and so not noticing how he craned his neck and whistled at her ass as she stomped out the door.

  HER MAMA FOLLOWED her home from the Concordia Club and promptly kicked her out of the house, telling her to not even think about coming back.

  “I’ll turn you in to that truant officer. He’ll send your ass to reform school so fast it will make your head spin.”

  Josephine rolled her clothes into a ball and wrapped them in her scarf, then walked, sobbing, for what seemed like hours before ending up at the ice cream parlor. She thought to curl up inside the doorway, out of the wind, until Mr. Dad came down in the morning to open up the shop. But as soon as she’d settled down, huddled under her thin coat, a light in the store came on.

  She tapped on the window. He opened the door, his eyes gleaming. He took her by the hand and pulled her inside. “We need to warm you up,” he said, and led her up the stairs to his apartment, where he pushed her onto the bed and put his hands all over her, tearing off her clothes and breathing like he was running a race.

  In the morning, he stayed in bed while she scurried into the bathroom to wash her sore privates, and watched as she pulled on her clothes.

  “Come on back to bed,” he said. “I’ve got something for you.”

  “I’m late for school.”

  “Aren’t you the conscientious student?” he said.

  She didn’t bother to answer. He knew she hated school, hated being the oldest kid in her class after being held back a grade for missing so many days, hated being talked to like she was stupid when really she didn’t care, not even about history, she would never be one of those fair-skinned queens with blond hair and fancy dresses like in the books. No books showed dark-skinned queens and kings, even though Mrs. Wilson had told them Cleopatra was a Negro. Her teacher was the only good thing about school, tellin
g stories that the books didn’t contain, reading aloud newspaper articles about America’s sending its colored soldiers to fight with the French in the Great War so white American soldiers wouldn’t have to mix with them. The teacher shared letters and articles she’d clipped from the St. Louis Argus. Here, what matters is not what color you are, but the kind of man you are, one letter had read, the author writing of whites and coloreds fighting together in France, sleeping side by side, eating together at the same table, sitting together in the theaters and nightclubs of Paris, using the same bathrooms. Josephine had listened, entranced: We are equals here.

  Why couldn’t they be equal in the United States? Two years ago, in East Saint Louis, Josephine had seen white people shooting Negroes for getting factory jobs they wanted for themselves. In Chicago, Arkansas, and Washington, DC, the newspapers spoke of the “Red Summer,” smeared with Negro blood. “Oh, Lord, why didn’t you make us all one color?” Daddy Arthur had moaned while the stench of burning buildings and flesh rolled over the Mississippi, while hundreds ran across the Eads Bridge into Saint Louis, escaping death. Hearing about France, though, Josephine thought Daddy Arthur wrong to blame God. The problem wasn’t the darkness of Negro skin, but the blackness of the human heart—or, at least, of the white American heart.

  But her current events class happened only once a week, when a new issue of the Argus came out. The rest of the time, school meant reading, writing, and arithmetic, Josephine’s least favorite subjects. She got restless, her mind wandered out the window and down the street to the Booker T, where she wanted to be, where she was in demand: Tumpy, I need you! they called, and Where’s my Tumpy? Ma Rainey called her “Miss Do-It-All”; Eddie Green said she was the only girl in the world funnier than he was; Bessie Smith paid a dollar for Josephine’s massages. She fit in at the Booker T; she belonged.

  Without a word to Mr. Dad, she went down the stairs and out the door. She wasn’t going to school; she hadn’t been in two weeks. She was headed to the boarding house room of Miss Clara Smith, the star of the current Booker T revue, for whom she had worked as personal dresser the past six weeks. Josephine’s duties entailed putting Miss Clara’s costumes in the right order and helping her get ready for each new scene. She knew which pieces of clothing went on first, and which next, and how to adjust the feather in Miss Clara’s hair, and which jewelry went with what. When a button came off, Josephine sewed it on. When an earring went missing, she crawled like a bloodhound on the dressing room floor, backstage, and all over the stage until she found it. She’d tried to get into the Booker T when Mama had kicked her out last night, once she’d stopped sobbing and could finally think, but the last show was over and the lights were out, the theater looking as dark and cold as she’d felt inside.

  She pushed open the door to Miss Clara’s room and saw her lying dead to the world and snoring, her purple hair staining the pillowcase, orange-lipsticked mouth opening and closing like a fish’s, yellow teeth clacking and grinding. Josephine’s sleep-deprived body ached to join her, so she slid under the covers. Miss Clara opened her arms to Josephine, who fell asleep instantly in her idol’s embrace and dreamed of following her around the world. With no home to chain her down and no mama to tell her what to do, she could go anywhere she pleased.

  The thought cheered her until, after the show that night, everybody went out where she couldn’t go, and she had to find somewhere to sleep. As she trudged up the stairs to the apartment over the ice cream shop, her stomach clenched like a fist.

  She had no home now except Mr. Dad’s.

  TWO WEEKS HAD passed with Mr. Dad when Josephine heard a banging on the door and her mother’s voice calling her name. At last! Josephine flung the door open, ready to rush into her mother’s forgiving arms, but Mama’s face stopped her like a slamming door.

  “I want you to come home. Now.”

  Josephine grabbed her clothes from a drawer in Mr. Dad’s plus the wad of bills he kept in his underwear drawer, and followed her mother out. The cold snap that had taken everyone by surprise had covered the trees, grass, buildings, and streets with an eerie hoarfrost. Josephine stepped carefully to avoid slipping on the wooden sidewalks, but her mother grabbed her hand and yanked her hard, making her stumble.

  “I don’t have all day,” she snapped, pulling her coat more tightly around her body with her free hand. “The whole neighborhood is talking about you. Thirteen years old and living with a man older than I am. A disgrace to our family.” Mama clamped her wrist as though Josephine needed to be dragged away from the disgusting Mr. Dad. If not for Mama’s grip, Josephine would run ahead of her, all the way home.

  As they entered Mill Creek, people Josephine knew came out on their steps, some calling “hey,” but most just staring as if she’d grown another head.

  “You have ruined me,” Mama said between her chattering teeth. “I was glad to see you go—glad, you hear? You’re as wild as an animal. I can’t handle you anymore, and Arthur won’t, he says you’re not his young ’un and that you come by your wickedness honestly.” Josephine would end up pregnant, just like her mother, he’d said, making another mouth to feed in a household already stretched to its limits. But Mama and Aunt Jo and Grandmama Elvira had worked out a solution, and Josephine would do what they said or Mama would kill her, so help her God.

  They found Aunt Jo and Elvira drinking Coca-Cola at the kitchen table and sharing a laugh that ended when she and her mama walked in.

  “Y’all acting like somebody died,” Josephine said, pressing her cheek into Aunt Jo’s plump skin and smelling her scents of laundry soap and butterscotch candy, and imbibing the cool papery roughness of her grandmother’s age-puckered cheek and the fragrances of tobacco and sage. Aunt Jo pulled a bottle out of her bag and handed it to Josephine, who joined them at the old wooden table.

  “Why did you go to stay with that man, Tumpy?” Aunt Jo asked. “Why didn’t you come to my house, instead?”

  Josephine didn’t know what to say. Why hadn’t she gone to Aunt Jo’s, or to the Morrises’ house, or anywhere else but Mr. Dad’s? She’d left the Booker T and wandered around, then ended up at the ice cream parlor. She’d wanted to sleep in the doorway, was all. But once she was there, she felt she had to stay, having given herself to him like the “trollop” her mama had said she was.

  Now her mama was speaking Willie Wells’s name, asking about him. These last two weeks, Willie had continued to meet her at the Concordia Club and buy her soft drinks and dance with her until the band stopped playing, then walked her almost, but not quite, to her mama’s house, where he thought Josephine still lived. His arms were strong, but how gently he held her while they danced, scooping her up and over his head as if she were a cloud. His gaze licked a slow flame over her belly. He called her Tumptation and Tumptress and kissed her until she gasped for air.

  After living with Mr. Dad, Josephine was probably “with child,” Mama said, which was the last thing they needed, that man had young ’uns running all over this neighborhood and never lifted a finger or gave a dime for their care.

  “That there is why they call him ‘Mr. Dad,’ ” Elvira said. Josephine sat back in her chair and took a swig of Coca-Cola, sealing off the bitterness with sugar and fizz. She hadn’t wanted to work for him, but Mama and Daddy Arthur had pushed her. And now Mama was fixing to force Josephine into something else.

  “Tumpy, that Dad fellow has made a woman of you,” Aunt Jo declared.

  “Now every man in Mill Creek will be sniffing around, trying to get a piece for himself,” Elvira said.

  “You are on the wrong path, child,” Aunt Jo said. “We’ve got to find you a husband.”

  Josephine would have laughed, but they weren’t even smiling. A husband? She was in the sixth grade.

  “I’m not getting married,” she said. “I’m going be a singer like Miss Clara Smith.”

  “You’re going to be a mama with a bunch of snot-nosed kids to take care of and no man to help you,” Mama said.
/>   “It takes one to know one,” Josephine said before getting smacked in the mouth again, which was what had started this whole mess. As she pressed her fingers to her stinging lips, her mama laid out a plan. Josephine would go to the Concordia Club with Willie Wells tonight, as usual, but this time she’d let him take her back to his room. In a few weeks, she’d tell him she was pregnant. If he was a good man, he’d marry her. If not, Daddy Arthur would show him the barrel of his gun, and he’d marry her then.

  Josephine felt like running away from this scheme, but to where? It wouldn’t be right to lie to Willie, she said, but Mama laughed and said this was no time to start having a conscience. She wasn’t pregnant, she insisted, but even her grandmama shook her head and told her it didn’t matter, that if she wasn’t carrying a baby now, she would be soon; that, having had a taste, she’d want more, and eventually some man would knock her up.

  “The taste of Mr. Dad makes me want to puke,” Josephine spat.

  “If you hated it so much, then why didn’t you come home?” Mama said. Josephine stared at her mother, speechless.

  “I hear he’s got a big one,” Elvira said, grinning.

  Josephine decided to try tears. She begged her mother not to make her do this and promised to be good if she could stay here. She would never let a man touch her again; she’d go to school every day; she’d find another job that paid more than the ice cream shop; she’d keep the house clean and help Grandmama cook supper at night and be the best daughter any mother could ever want.

  “You won’t be doing any of that,” her mother said. “The truant officer came here today looking for you, saying you’ve missed school for a month. You’d better get married, or they’ll put your ass in reform school. They’re getting all set to do it, he said. Only one thing can save you now, and that’s a husband.”

  CHAPTER 5

  1920