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“Only the guys in the band, as far as I can see. I'm the first Negro dancer they've had.”

“That makes it a little different, doesn't it?” Her voice had descended to a tone just above a whisper.

“I don't see that, Vonne.”

I had always wanted to believe that things were exactly as they seemed, that secrets and furtive acts and intents always made themselves known somehow. So I acted easily or uneasily on the face rather than the hidden depth of things. “I'm going there to dance and to make some money.”

She got up from the sofa and walked toward the kitchen. Our children's laughter floated out from a back bedroom.

“Aleasar made some spaghetti. Let's eat.”

We sat down at the wrought-iron dinette table.

I asked, “What worries you about my working down there?”

“I'm not worried, you can take care of yourself.” A smile widened her small mouth as much as it could. “All I want to say is what the old folks say, ‘If you don't know, ask’ But, don't let anybody make you do something you don't think is right. Your mother already raised you. Stay steady. And if that makes somebody mad, they can scratch their mad place and get glad.”

We laughed together. Our friendship was possible because Ivonne was wise without glitter, while I, too often, glittered without wisdom.

CHAPTER 7

The costume store gave me the sense of being in a zoo of dead animals. Rusty bear skins hung on one corner rack; their heads flopped on deflated chests and their taloned paws dragged the floor. Ostrich feathers and peacock plumes in tall bottles were swept in a confined arc by each gust of wind. Tiger skins were pinned flat against the walls and lengths of black feather boa lay curled in a glass-topped counter.

I explained to a heavily made up quick-moving black man that I needed some G-strings and net bras and rhinestones. He flounced around the counter with a feather's grace and scanned my body as if I had offered to sell it and he was in the market.

“Who are you, dear?”

I wondered if it was against the store's policy to trade with just anybody.

“I'm Rita. I'm starting to work tomorrow night at the Casbah.”

“Oh no, dear. I mean what's your act? Who are you?”

There it was again. I thought of glamorous Black women in history.

“I'm Cleopatra and … Sheba.”

He wiggled and grinned. “Oh, goody. Two queens.”

“And Scheherazade.” If I felt distant from the first two, the last one fitted me like a pastie. She also was a teller of tall tales.

“Then you'll need three changes, Right?”

He had begun to jot notes on a pad. I thought of Ivonne's advice and decided that since I really didn't know what I was doing, I'd better ask somebody.

“Listen, excuse me. I've never danced in a strip joint and in fact, the owners don't even want me to strip. They just want me to wear brief costumes and dance.”

The man's jerky movements calmed, and when he spoke, some of the theatricality had disappeared from his voice.

“You're new?”

I hadn't thought of myself as new since I was seven years old.

“Well, I'm new in the sense that—”

“I mean, you have no act?”

“Yes. I have no act.”

His body took on a stillness as he looked at me. “I will create your costumes. You will be gorgeous.”

He brought out beige net bras and G-strings and told me how to dye them the color of my skin by soaking them in coffee grounds. I was to sew brown shiny coq feathers on another for Scheherazade and gold lamé panels on a G-string for my Cleopatra number. He selected a stuffed cobra, which I was to carry when I portrayed the Egyptian Queen, and ankle bells for Scheherazade. Sheba was to be danced with no frills—a brown doe upon the hills.

He seemed to know so much about show business, I asked if he used to dance.

“I was a female impersonator in New York for years, dear. Just years. When I came out here and found I had gotten older, I got this job, and now I sell pretty things to the pretty young boys.”

I paid for the purchases and was grateful that the man hadn't laced sadness in his sad story.

“If you need anything,