Gather Together in My Name - Maya Angelou [45]
R.L. said in his slow voice, “Okay, Rita, break a leg.” Show-business talk. I grinned. “You, too.”
And we hit the stage.
The first moment's unreality was caused by the lights. I couldn't see the audience, and I thought about the first time when I panicked and froze to the stage. Maybe this was happening again. Maybe I had frozen, I couldn't tell if I was moving. But suddenly I heard the clap of taps breaking, exploding through the band's arrangement, and I found I was on the far side of the stage and it was time for me to break. I was dancing, my feet and body were doing the right things. With that I let go, just let the orchestra push, prod and pull me. I surrendered every memory I had to oblivion and let myself dance. Each time I danced near R.L., I laughed out loud at the perfect glory of it all. The music was my friend, my lover, my family. It was a pretty day on a San Francisco hill with just enough high to remark on details. It was my son laughing when I entered his room. Great poetry that I had memorized and recited to myself in a warm bath.
The band was playing the closing riffs and R.L. took my hand. We danced to the edge of the stage and bowed. The audience applauded moderately, except for Mother's table and a bravo from where Bailey sat near the door. I never knew whether the great disappointment came from having to stop dancing or from the fact that the audience didn't jump up, run screaming for the stage to touch my victory. But in the dressing room I began to drown in a depression sea. Neither the flowers Bailey sent nor Mother's smile saved me. Two more shows to do that night and by the last one I was questioning whether I was cut out for show biz … whether or not it was too coarse for my pure and delicate nature, too commercial for my artistic soul.
All the area's drunks and sporting people caught the last show and I was again intoxicated. They shouted, “Shake it, baby,” “Dance, baby, dance,” made noise, stumbled around from table to table, and the sense of gay activity helped Poole and Rita and the orchestra to re-create the earlier magic.
The patrons may not really have noticed the very tall, big-nosed dancing fool up there, but their vitality locked me into a love of performing that continued for many years.
Except for a few “casuals” (one-night performances in convention halls), the talent of Poole and Rita was going largely unappreciated. We refused the itinerant offers to perform at stags. I said I would never dance nude for a bunch of white men to gape at me. R.L. agreed and tried to appear possessive, but probably the larger truth was that we couldn't work up a “Beauty and Beast” routine. Neither did I have the attributes to portray Beauty, nor did he have the body to dance Beast. We would have been ludicrous.
The gigs at the Elks were bright splatches in the dull landscape. In black communities there is a counterpart to the white segregated secret society, B.P.O.E. (Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks). We call ours the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World. I had been initiated into the mysterious organization as a teenager and had once won prizes in its oratorical contest, and now our dance team was hired at the hilarious and good-fun dansants.
The middle-aged ladies, usually stout and dressed more attractively than the women whose houses they cleaned, patted me after the shows and admired my leanness.
“Honey, you sure know how to shake that thing.” A big pretty laugh. “I used to shake it like that, but them days is gone forever.”
Then they would run their palms down my side.
“Bet your momma is proud of you. I bet you she is.”
And she was. And I was proud of myself.
“Blue Flame” and “Caravan” were my favorite dance arrangements because R.L. laid out most of the time and I danced barefoot in little balls of blue ostrich feathers and Indian bells at my ankles. I tried to imitate Frances Nealy, a beautiful black woman who had played an Egyptian dancer in a forties technicolor movie. A few Dorothy Lamour hand movements and Ann Miller's