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“I'm with Porgy and Bess. I am a dancer-singer.”

“Uh-huh.” I could see her defenses relax. “When did you get in?”

“About two hours ago.”

She nodded, appreciating that her place had been my first stop. She turned and lifted her hand. A waiter came scuttling to her.

“Take mademoiselle to a table.” She said to me, “Go and sit down. I'll be over to talk to you pretty soon.”

The club had thick carpets and heavy chandeliers, and the waiters dressed as handsomely as the customers. Bricktop was a Negro woman away from the United States thirty years, and still her Southern accent was unmistakable. I was even more amazed when she later told me she wasn't Southern at all, but had come from Chicago.

When she finally came to my table, she asked where I was from.

I said, “San Francisco.”

“How do you feel, being so far from home?”

I said, “There is no place God is not.”

Her face crinkled in a little-girl grin. “Oh, you're going to be my baby. Did you know that I've converted to Catholicism?”

I said I hadn't heard.

She leaned across the table, her eyes sparkling. “I have friends who ask me why. They found out I go to Mass every day and they're shocked. I say, ‘Look, for thirty years you saw me running in and out of bars every day and you never tried to stop me and it didn't shock you. Why do you want to stop me now?’” She sat back in the chair and smiled smugly. “Don't you reckon that stopped them?”

She invited me to the club whenever I wanted to come and promised to cook a dinner of black-eyed peas. “I know where to find them in this town. Fact is I know where to find anything and everyone in Rome.”

I looked around the room at some famous American and European faces, and at the line of people waiting inside the doorway for tables. I didn't doubt that Brickie had the keys necessary to open the Eternal City.

CHAPTER 27

After a few weeks in Rome I received a disturbing letter from Mother. Wilkie had moved out into his own studio. Lottie was looking for a housekeeping job because Mr. Hot Dog was losing money. And Mother was planning to become a dealer in a Las Vegas Negro casino-which meant there would be no one to take care of Clyde, who missed me more than ever. He had developed a severe rash that resisted every medical treatment. I wrote immediately saying I would be home in a month. I was obliged by union rules to give two weeks' notice, but since we were in Europe, it was only fair to allow the company four weeks to find another dancer-singer.

I went to Bob Dustin and explained that I would be leaving in one month and what a pleasure the tour had been. That evening he came to my dressing room, took a seat and looked at me solemnly.

“I am sorry, but I've got bad news for you. Since you're handing in your notice, we do not have to send you home. You'll have to pay your own way. And you'll have to pay your replacement's fare, first class, from wherever we find her.”

The fares could come to over a thousand dollars! I had not seen that amount of cash since the war when I had kept the keys to my mother's money closet.

Bob left me alone with my tears. I told Martha and Lillian, who sympathized but had no money to lend me. Desperation began to build. I had to go to my son, but how could I find the money to do it?

Bricktop answered the private phone number she had given me. “Well, now, stop crying and tell me what's the matter.”

I told her how I had left my son and that my family was down on its luck and that I needed to have another job to earn my fare home.

“That's nothing to cry about. I've heard of dancers crying because they were worked too hard, but never because they weren't worked enough. Put your faith in God, and come down here this afternoon to rehearse with my pianist. You can start tonight.”

For the next two months I not only danced in the opera and sang at Bricktop's but also found daytime employment. Some dancers at the Rome Opera House asked me to give them classes in African movement. I charged them as much as they could afford and watched