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“Really? Oh, that's too bad. The company is in Montreal now and we leave for Italy in four days.”

There really was no contest. I wanted to travel, to try to speak other languages, to see the cities I had read about all my life, but most important, I wanted to be with a large, friendly group of Black people who sang so gloriously and lived with such passion.

“I don't have a passport.”

“We are being sponsored by the State Department.”

I thought about the school I had attended which was on the House Un-American Activities Committee list.

He said, “Don't worry about your passport. We can get a special dispensation. Do you want to join Porgy and Bess?”

“Yes, yes.” Yes, indeed.

“Then come to the office and we'll get you straightened out. You'll leave tomorrow afternoon for Montreal.”

I telephoned Saint Subber and explained that I had been offered another job. He asked me if I would give up a new Broadway show for a chorus part in a touring company.

I said “Yes.”

CHAPTER 16

My mind turned over and over like a flipped coin: Paris, then Clyde's motherless birthday party Rome and my son's evening prayers said to Fluke, Madrid and Clyde struggling alone with his schoolwork.

I telephoned home again. Mother was pleased and gave me a load of phrases to live by. “Treat everybody right, remember life is a two-way street. You might meet the same people on your way down that you met going up.” And “Look to the hills from whence cometh your help.” Lottie said she was proud of me and that I had it in me to become great. Wilkie told me to hum a lot, place my voice in the mask and always drop my jaw. And to keep in my heart the knowledge that there was no place where God was not.

I asked to speak with Clyde. Using a tack I loathed, I talked to him as if he was a small child with faulty English. He asked when I was coming home and when was I sending for him. His voice became faint after I said I was not coming the next week but soon. Very soon.

Yes, he'd be a good boy. Yes, he would mind Grandmother and Aunt Lottie. And yes, he knew I loved him. He hung up first.

When I called Ivonne she told me to stop crying, that Clyde had no father, so it was up to me to make a place for both of us, and that that was what I was doing. She said she would go over to the house as usual and see him and take him out. After all, he was not with strangers but with his grandmother—why did I worry?

The past revisited. My mother had left me with my grandmother for years and I knew the pain of parting. My mother, like me, had had her motivations, her needs. I did not relish visiting the same anguish on my son, and she, years later, had told me how painful our separation was to her. But I had to work and I would be good. I would make it up to my son and one day would take him to all the places I was going to see.

I had been given a précis of the DuBose Heyward book on which George and Ira Gershwin had based their opera:

Porgy, a crippled beggar, lives in the Negro hamlet of Catfish Row, North Carolina. He is loved by the town's inhabitants, who eke out their meager living by fishing and selling local produce.

When Crown, a tough stevedore, kills Robbins, Serena's husband, in a crap game, the white police descend upon the hamlet to find the culprit. Sportin' Life, who runs the gambling and other nefarious money-making schemes, escapes into Ruby's house, but Bess, Crown's beautiful and worldly woman, is rejected by the community's women and is nearly captured in the raid. Just as the police dragnet is about to close in on her, Porgy opens the door of his hut and Bess finds safety. Porgy falls in love with Bess and she accepts his love and protection, swearing that she will stay with him forever. Crown escapes from jail and comes to claim Bess at a picnic which Porgy does not attend. Bess is sexually attracted to her old lover and goes away with him for three days. Porgy goes to look for her. When she returns to Catfish Row, Porgy is away and the local women scorn her. Sportin' Life courts her, gives her cocaine and