Gather Together in My Name - Maya Angelou [12]
I agreed to her terms and paid her for the first week. Before I left, the baby struggled awake in her arms. She began a rocking motion which didn't lull him. His large black eyes took in the strange face and he began to look around for me. A small cry found its way to the surface before I came into his vision. Once he had assured himself that indeed I was there, he hollered in earnest, angry that I had allowed him to be held by this unknown person, and maybe even a little afraid that I'd given him away. I moved to take him.
“Let him cry.” Mother Cleo increased her rocking and bouncing. “He got to get used to it.”
“Just let me hold him a second.” I couldn't bear his loneliness. I took his softness and kissed him and patted his back and he quieted immediately, as a downpour of rain cuts off.
“You too soft. They all do that till they get used to me.” She stood near me and held out her arms. “Give him to me and you go on and get your job. I'll feed him. You bring diapers?”
I nodded to the bag I had dropped beside the door.
“Hush baby, hush baby, hush baby, hush.” She had started to croon. I handed the baby to her and right away he began to cry.
“Go on. He'll be all right.”
He yelled louder, splitting the air with screams. She contrived a wordless song. His screams were lightning, piercing the dark cloud of her music. I closed the door.
CHAPTER 10
The nightclub sat on the corner, a one-story building whose purple stucco façade was sprinkled with glitter dust. Inside the dark square room, a bar dimly curved its way from the door to a small dance floor in the rear. Minuscule round tables and chairs jammed against one another, and red bulbs shone down, intensifying the gloom.
The Hi Hat Club had almost too much atmosphere.
Music blared and trembled, competing with the customers' voices for domination of the air. Neither won, except that for a few seconds during the lull between records, the jukebox sat quiet up against the wall, its green and red and yellow lights flickering like an evil robot from a Flash Gordon film.
The customers came mostly from the underworld, though there was a scattering of young sailors among them. They all jockeyed and shifted, lifting glasses and voices in the thick air, which smelled of Lysol and perfume and bodies, and cigarettes and stale beer. The women were mistresses of decorum. They sat primly at the bar, skirts tucked in, voices quick or silent altogether. On the street they had been as ageless as their profession, but near the posturing, flattering men, they became modest girls. Kittens purring under the strokes.
I watched them and understood. I saw them and envied. They had men of their own. Of course they bought them. They laid open their bodies and threw away their dignity upon a heap of come-filled rubbers. But they had men.
In the late evenings, boosters and thieves wove their paths among the night people, trading, bartering, making contacts and taking orders.
“Got two Roos Bros. suits. Thirty-eight. Black. Pinstripe and nigger-brown. Tag says one-ninety dollars … they both yours for an ace fifty.”
“Gelman shoes. I. Magnin dresses. Your woman'll catch if she wear these threads. For you, four dresses for a deuce.”
Depending on the evening's take and the sweet man's mood, the thieves were given money by the pimps which had been given them by the girls which they had saved by lying down first and getting up last.
The waitresses, in a block, were the least interesting of the club's inhabitants. They were for the most part dull married women, who moved among the colorful patrons like slugs among butterflies. The men showed no interest in them, leading me to believe that