Lady Sings the Blues - Billie Holiday [49]
Sometimes he would bark and raise hell and try to keep Mom from going to work in the morning. She knew he was trying to tell her she shouldn’t open up that day. And that dog knew what he was doing. She’d stay home and, sure enough, the Board of Health or somebody would be around to make trouble and there was nobody there.
Rajah would go off by himself without any damn leash and go in Central Park to take a bath. The cops and the SPCA people would try to catch him, but he could outwit them any time and come highballing to the apartment, up the stairs. He could do everything, almost ring the bell.
He could even make it all the way from the Bronx to my place on 104th Street. We could have thrown away our telephones, Mom and me. With Rajah we didn’t need them.
Mom loved that dog. And the day he died Mom said he was all she had to live for and she wouldn’t last long after. And she was so right.
After Joe Guy and I had been together a while we tied up professionally too. We decided I would have my own band and Joe would be the leader. We sure went for the greasy pig when we started that one. But it looked like a big deal in the beginning. I’ll never forget the day we went off on the road for the first time. We bought this big beautiful white bus. Painted on the side of it was “Billie Holiday and her Band.” We were all set to leave; we were supposed to pick up all the cats in the band at the Braddock Hotel on 126th Street, near the stage entrance of the Apollo. It seems like all musicians stayed there. We were all packed up and ready to split when we got a telephone call from Mom.
She wanted to see the bus. “You can’t leave without me seeing your pretty new bus.” So off we detoured to 99th Street. When we got there, Mom invited everybody off the bus to come in and have chicken sandwiches. Then she offered everybody a drink. Then when she got everyone off the bus she had to get in and look it over. Then she started putting up a few fancy little curtains in the back of the bus to dress it up. Then she’d get outside again to see if they were hung straight.
It was the first time out for me and Joe as band leaders and we didn’t know enough about it to keep a platoon of Boy Scouts together, let alone grown men. The cats began wandering off to the nearest bar or candy store. I’d get everybody collected, count noses, and find one cat was missing. While I was finding him, two more would sneak away. Anyway, we were three hours behind schedule before we could cut loose from Mom.
I’ll always remember her as she stood there on the corner waving to us as we pulled off. Beaming and smiling, she looked like little Miss Five by Five with the most beautiful face you ever saw on a woman.
It was only a few days later in a Washington hotel that I suddenly knew I was alone for good. I don’t believe in ghosts or spirits, but I believe what happened that night. We had finished the last show at the Howard Theater and Joe and I went back to our hotel. We were just sitting there when suddenly I felt my mother come up behind me and put her hand on my shoulder. And I knew she was dead.
I turned to Joe. “Mama just left and she’s dead,” I told him.
“You’re crazy,” he told me. “You must be blowing your top.”
“You listen to what I said,” I told him, “and goddamit you better be good to me because you’re all I’ve got now.”
The next morning when we got to the theater for the first show I could see everybody was ducking me. Our road manager had gotten June Richmond, who has her own club in Paris now, Baby White, and somebody else to stand by and take my place in case I fainted. I saw everybody acting strange, so I just walked up to the road manager and told him Mama was dead and I told him exactly what time she died the night before.
He blew his top, raised hell with everybody backstage. He swore somebody must have told me. But nobody had told me nothing.