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Jorie lifted a handful of hair and said, “But I mean, pet, you can sing. Have you ever sung before?”

Don said, “It's obvious you have. But professionally?”

When I was growing up in Stamps, Arkansas, Momma used to take me to some church service every day of the week. At each gathering we sang. So I knew I could sing. I did not know how well. Our church was bare because the parishioners were poor and our only musical instruments were tambourines and our voices. I had never sung to piano accompaniment, and although my sense of rhythm was adequate, I had not the shadow of an understanding of meter.

Jorie said, “But, my dear, if you can sing like that you should take my place at the Purple Onion. You'll be a smashing success. I mean they will simply adore you.”

“How many songs like that do you know?”

“How many musicians will you need?”

“What about gowns?”

“Can you have an act together in three weeks?”

My God. My world was spinning off its axis, and there was nothing to hold on to. Anger and haughtiness, pride and prejudice, my old back-up team would not serve me in this new predicament. These whites were treating me as an equal, as if I could do whatever they could do. They did not consider that race, height, or gender or lack of education might have crippled me and that I should be regarded as someone invalided.

The old habits of withdrawing into righteous indignation or lashing out furiously against insults were not applicable in this circumstance.

Oh, the holiness of always being the injured party. The historically oppressed can find not only sanctity but safety in the state of victimization. When access to a better life has been denied often enough, and successfully enough, one can use the rejection as an excuse to cease all efforts. After all, one reckons, “they” don't want me, “they” accept their own mediocrity and refuse my best, “they” don't deserve me. And, finally, I am better, kinder, truer than “they,” even if I behave badly and act shamefully And if I do nothing, I have every right to my idleness, for, after all, haven't I tried?

Jorie said, “Of course you won't get the mint or probably half of what you're making now. But, my dear, if you're not working after next week, you may as well take this on. For the time being.”

They began to make me up. I had to change my name. And wouldn't it be super duper if I had another origin? Something more exotic than tired old Southern Negro. People were tired of the moss hanging from the magnolia trees and the corn pone and the lynchings and all that old stuff. Anyway, I couldn't compete with Josh White, or Odetta, who I thought was the greatest singer of American Negro folk songs, and who worked nearby.

Couldn't we come up with something gayer, less guilt-awakening?

Jorie, Don and Barrie, along with quick assists from Fred, poked around in their imaginations as I sat watching. It was three o'clock in the morning and they were like children amusing themselves with play dough on a rainy day.

Because I was tall, I should be very grand, possibly from a long line of African kings. And could I speak any African?

I had studied African dance with Pearl Primus, but I had never met an African face-to-face. In fact, in the Negro community of 1953 the phrase used to describe a loud and uncaring person was “as uncouth as an African.” I had lost a job in a leading dance school in Cleveland because I promised to teach “African primitive dance” to the children of the Black middle class.

No, I did not know any African. But I did speak Spanish. Jorie announced that she had an idea: I could be Cuban. That was it. I could be a Cuban who spoke little English, although I sang in the language. I should be torrid and passionate on stage, but haughty and distant offstage: “Rita, the Cuban Bombshell,” the Latin señorita whose father was a Watusi chieftain sold in Cuba.

They were casting me as the star in a drama and I had no real desire to refuse the role. I feebly wondered aloud what would happen if I was