Lady Sings the Blues - Billie Holiday [41]
It’s a cinch to see how it all begins. These poor bitches grow up hating their mothers and having the hots for their fathers. And since being in love with our father is taboo, they grow up unable to get any kicks out of anything unless it’s taboo too. And since Negroes in America walk around with big “Do Not Touch” signs on them, that’s where we come in. And I’m telling you it can be a drag.
Sometimes simple little mess-ups like this take years to unravel; and that’s how these doctors with the couches make their loot.
Brenda was always trying to do something for me—and when she ran out of ideas for things she could do for me she would try my mother.
Mom had always dreamed of having a real honest-to-God restaurant of her own with a framed license on the wall from the Board of Health. She wanted to give up that combination fried-chicken parlor and after-hours soup kitchen for Local 802 and go legit. Mom was always after me to invest some loot in this project. But I never could see it and never seemed to have enough loot. She had saved a few hundred of the bucks I had cleaned out of the Basie band shooting crap on the bus, but that wasn’t enough.
One night Mom was campaigning for her damn restaurant when Brenda was at the house. Right off she offered to be an angel for the project.
It was her way of keeping tight with me, but it was what Mom wanted. So she started planning and eventually ended up with a place of her own, Mom Holiday’s, on 99th Street near Columbus.
I didn’t fight it because it kept Mom busy and happy and stopped her from worrying and watching over me.
It wasn’t long before I was sorry. Going legit couldn’t change the Duchess. Nobody could just be a customer. They were all people and she loved them. Half of Local 802 was soon hanging around. All you had to do was say you were a musician or a friend of mine and you could get anything in the joint.
Cats could come in, order themselves a big feed, then give her a story instead of money. Then sometimes Mom would give them some change on the way out. She was always giving change for money she never saw.
The best paying customer she had was me. Every time I went in the place I paid for something.
One time she’d have a long face on, waiting for me.
“The Board of Health was here,” she’d say. “They said we got to have two toilets.”
The damn Board of Health could pass by thousands of Harlem tenements with no damn toilets at all, then land on the Duchess and tell her she had to have two.
So it would take a few hundred bucks for that. Then the next time I’d turn around she’d say, “The Board of Health was here again. They say I can’t fry hamburgers in a pan any more. I got to have a griddle.”
So I handed over another few bucks for a griddle. Fifty for this. And forty for that. I don’t know how much it cost me to keep the Board of Health happy, but it was plenty. And I never got back a quarter.
I only tried once. And neither me nor Mom ever forgot it. I needed some money one night and I knew Mom was sure to have some. So I walked in the restaurant like a stockholder and asked.
Mom turned me down flat. She wouldn’t give me a cent. She was mad with me and I was mad with her. We exchanged a few words. Then I said, “God bless the child that’s got his own,” and walked out.
I stayed sore for three weeks. I thought about it and thought about it. One day a whole damn song fell into place in my head. Then I rushed down to the Village that night and met Arthur Herzog. He sat down at a piano and picked it out, phrase by phrase, as I sang to him.
I couldn’t wait to get it down and get it recorded. I told him about the fight with Mom and how I wanted to get even. We changed the lyrics in a couple of spots, but not much.
This one will gas the Duchess, I thought. And it did.
GOD BLESS THE CHILD*
Them that’s got shall get
Them that’s not shall lose
So the Bible says
And it still is news
Mama