The Heart of a Woman Read online

  Schiffman sat rigid in the first row. I rehearsed my songs with the band, spurred on by the timbales of Willie Bobo and Mongo Santamaria's conga. I enlarged on my initial interpretation of the music, singing better than I was usually capable of. Schiffman didn't move or speak until I started to rehearse "Uhuru," an audience-participation song which I used as an encore.

  "No audience participation in the Apollo." His voice was as rusty as an old iron bar.

  "I beg your pardon?" Always get siditty when you're scared, was my policy. "Were you speaking to me?"

  "Yeah, no audience participation in the Apollo."

  "But that's my act. I always use 'Uhuru' as an encore. The word means freedom in Swahili. Babatunda Olatunje, the great Nigerian drummer, taught it to me—"

  "No audience participation—."

  "Is that your policy, Mr. Schiffman? If so . . ."

  A few musicians rustled sheet music; others talked in Spanish.

  "It's not a policy. The only policy in the Apollo is 'Be Good.' I'm telling you no audience participation because Apollo audi­ences won't go along with it. You'll die. Die on the stage if you try to get this audience to sing with you." He gave a little laugh and continued, "Most of them can sing better than you anyway."

  A few musicians who understood English laughed. Many peo­ple could sing better than I, so Schiffman had told me nothing I didn't already know.

  "Thanks for your advice. I'm going to sing it anyway."

  "It'll be a miracle if they don't laugh you off the stage." He laughed again.

  "Thank you." I turned back to the orchestra. "I don't have sheet music, but the song goes like this . . ."

  I didn't expect Schiffman to know that my life, like the lives of other black Americans, could be credited to miraculous experi­ences. But there was one other thing I was sure he didn't know. Black people in Harlem were changing, and the Apollo audience was black. The/echo of African drums was less distant in 1959 than it had been for over a century.

  One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street was to Harlem what the Mississippi was to the South, a long traveling river always going somewhere, carrying something. A furniture store offering gaudy sofas and fake leopard-skin chairs shouldered Mr. Micheaux's book shop, which prided itself on having or being able to get a copy of any book written by a black person since 1900. It was true that sportily dressed fops stood on 125th and Seventh Avenue saying, "Got horse for the course and coke for your hope," but across the street, conservatively dressed men told concerned crowds of the satanic nature of whites and the divinity of Elijah Muhammad. Black women and men had begun to wear multicol­ored African prints. They moved through the Harlem streets like bright sails on a dark sea.

  I also knew that fewer people giggled or poked the sides of their neighbors when they noticed my natural hair style.

  Clever appliance-store owners left their TV sets on the chan­nels broadcasting U.N. affairs. I had seen black people standing in front of the stores watching the faces of international diplo­mats. Although no sound escaped into the streets, the attentive crowds appeared. I had waited with a group of strangers one night near St. Nicholas Avenue. The mood was hopeful, as if a promise

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  was soon to be kept. The crowd tightened, pulled itself closer together and toward the window, as a small dark figure appeared on all the screens at once. The figure was that of an African wearing a patterned toga, striding with theatrical dignity toward the camera. The sidewalk audience was quiet but tense. When the man's face was discernible and the part in his hair distinct, the crowd began to talk.

  "Hey, Alex. Hey, brother."

  "He's a good-looking thing."

  "That African walk like God himself."

  "Humph. Ain't that something."

  The man's mouth moved and the crowd quieted, as if lip reading. Although it was impossible to understand his message, his air of disdain was not lost on the viewers.

  One fat woman grinned and giggled, "I sure wish I knew what that pretty nigger was saying."

  A man near the back of the crowd grunted. "Hell. He's just telling all the crackers in the world to kiss his black ass."

  Laughter burst loudly in the street. Laughter immediate and self-congratulatory.

  Schiffman had been in Harlem since the beginning of the Apollo. He had given first contracts to a number of black perform­ers who went on to become internationally famous. Some people in the area said he was all right, and he had black friends. He understood who was running numbers, who was running games and who was square and respectable. But he wasn't black. And he was too mired in the Harlem he had helped to fashion to believe that the area was moving out of his control and even beyond his understanding.

  "Uhuru" was definitely going to be my encore.

  Fortunately my first show was at one o'clock on a Monday afternoon. About forty people sat staggered in an auditorium which could hold seven hundred. Tito Puente's big band echoed in the room with the volume of an enlarged symphony orchestra. The comedian delivered his jokes for his own amusement, and the

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  small audience responded as if he were a favorite nephew enter­taining in the family living room. The tap dancer sent a private message in heel-and-toe code, and the audience sent back its answer in applause. The male singer sang a Billy Eckstein-like arrangement and he was well received.

  I walked onto the stage wearing my sky-blue chiffon gown and the blue high heels, dyed to match.

  The first few calypso songs elicited only polite responses, but when I sang a Southern blues, long on moaning and deep in content, the audience shouted back to me, "Tell the truth, baby." And "Sing, tall skinny mamma. Sing your song." I was theirs and they were mine. I sang the race memory, and we were united in centuries of belonging. My last song was "Baba Fururu," a Cuban religious song, taught to me by Mongo Santamaria a year earlier when I had joined Puente on a tour of six Eastern theaters. Speaking only a few words of English, Mongo taught me the song syllable by syllable. Although he couldn't translate the lyrics, he said the song was used in black Cuban religious ritual.

  That first Apollo audience consisted of grandparents, raising the children of their own absent children, and young women on welfare, too good to steal and too timid to whore, and young men, made unnecessary.

  The Afro-Cuban song ignored hope and laid itself down in despair. The blue notes humped themselves and became the middle passage. They flattened and moaned about poverty and how it felt to be hated. The Apollo audience shouted. They had understood. When I returned and announced that my encore was another African song, called, in Swahili, "Freedom," they ap­plauded, ready to go with me to that wished-for land.

  I explained, "If you believe you deserve freedom, if you really want it, if you believe it should be yours, you must sing:

  "U hu uhuru oh yea freedom

  U hu uhuru oh yea freedom

  Uh huh Uh hum"

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  Willie Bobo, Mongo and Juliano set four-four, five-four and six-four times on conga, timbales and Caracas, and I started singing. I leaned back on the rhythms and began

  "O sawaba hum O sawaba hum O sawaba hum "

  I joined the audience on the refrain:

  "Oh yea, oh yea freedom uh huh uh hum uh hum uh hum."

  The audience sang passionately. They were under my voice, be­fore my voice. Understanding beyond my own understanding. I was the singer, the entertainer, and they were the people who were enduring. They accepted me because I was singing the anthem and carrying the flag.

  By evening of the first day, I saw the power of the black grapevine. During the six o'clock show someone screamed from the audience, "Sing Freedom, Sing Freedom." It was my encore, so I had to sing the routine of planned songs. The audience clapped until I returned. I began, "If you believe you deserve freedom. If you . . ."

  "Uh huh uhum yea freedom uh huh uhum yea freedom uh huh uhum yea freedom uh huh, oh yea free-dom."

  The audience had it and gone.

 
"Just a minute. Some of you all know the song, but let me explain it to the folks who don't know."

  A voice from the audience screamed. "All right, but don't wait for slowpokes. We ready to sing."

  I continued with my explanation and the drums began. The audience pounded out the rhythm, moving it, controlling and possessing the music, the orchestra and me.

  "Uh, uh, oh huh. O yea, freedom, Uh huh. Uh huh"

  As the song ended the small crowd thundered a hot appreciation. Even as I bowed, I knew the applause was only in a small part for me. I had been merely the ignition which set off their fire. It was our history, our painful passage and uneven present that burned luminously in the dark theater.

  For six days and three shows per day, the tumultuous response was repeated. On the last day of the run, John and Grace brought Guy, Barbara and Chuck Killens. I watched the three teen-agers from a curtain peephole. The comedian's routines were beyond their understanding, the singer's laments about unrequited love didn't catch their concern. The tap dancer made his complicated routine seem too easy. When I went on stage the exoticism of seeing a familiar person in an unfamiliar setting did not hold their attention past the first few minutes. Before I finished my first song, I looked down and saw the three mumbling among them­selves. When I finished, however, the children joined energeti­cally with the audience on "Uhuru," not so much singing the music as screaming the words. Guy's cracking lopsided voice pierced high above the ensemble sound. Schiffman had been right and wrong. Some people sang better than I, but no one laughed me off the stage.

  After the Killens and Guy left my dressing room, I prepared for the last show. I knew I would never again make an appearance as a singer. There was only one Apollo Theater, and no other place had the allure to melt my resolve. While the run had given me

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  stature among my New York acquaintances, its real value was in the confidence it gave me. I had not won world-wide fame, or gained stunning wealth, but I was leaving show business at the right time: stepping down from the pinnacle of the Apollo stage. And an I-told-you-so imp had grinned behind my eyes all week long. Apollo audiences had been filling Frank Schiffman's ears with "Oh yea, oh yea, freedom," so he hadn't spoken to me since opening night. It was going to be an hallelujah time when he gave me my check. I finished the set and waited in the wings while the audience yelled for my return. I went back to the microphone and began, "Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This last piece needs audience participation. It is a song from Africa. It's called 'Uhuru,' which means freedom. I'd like the people of this side of the theater to sing, uh uhuru, oh yea freedom"—the drums began to roll in a quick promise—"and this side . . ."

  "Damn, why don't you do your act, girl? If you can't sing, come back on Wednesday. That's amateur night."

  The man's voice came from the balcony, strident and piercing the dark theater like an unexpected light. My heart thumped, and I couldn't think of a thing to say. A few giggles from around the room encouraged him.

  "Anyway"—his voice was meaner and louder—"anyway, if you like Africa so much, why don't you go back there?"

  The only thing I knew was I would never get off the stage. Hell's eternity would find me rooted in front of the mute micro­phone, my feet glued to the floor. The baby-blue spotlight blind­ing me and holding me forever in that place. A grumble began in the balcony and was joined by sounds of displeasure on the main floor. I still couldn't move. Suddenly a lemon-sour voice from the front rows shouted, "Shut up, up there, you bastid. I paid money to come in here."

  Some "yeahs" and "that's rights" popped up in the theater.

  They angered my detractor. He shouted, "Go to hell, you old bitch. I paid for this shit too."

  "Aw, cool it, goddammit. Let the woman sing," a man's bass

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  voice ordered from the rear. "Yeah." Another man spoke from the balcony and sounded dangerously near to the heckler. "Yeah, you don't like it. Get your ass down on the stage and do what you can do."

  That was it. Either there would be a bloody fight with cutting and shooting or the heckler was going to come on the stage, take the microphone and make me look even more foolish than I thought I was. I was surprised to realize that the drummers were still playing.

  The woman, my first defender, lifted her voice . . .

  "Freedom, freedom, freedom."

  She was in tempo but the melody was wrong.

  More voices joined, "Freedom, Freedom." The drums rolled on like an irate river. "Freedom, Freedom." The singers in the audience increased. "Freedom." The entire main floor seemed to have joined the drums. They had taken my side and taken the song away from me.

  The bass voice cut through the music, "Sing girl, goddammit, sing the goddam song."

  I sang "O sawaba hum, O sawaba hum. Oh yea. Oh yea, freedom." We didn't sing the song Olatunji had taught me, but we sang loudly and gloriously, as if the thing we sang about was already in our hands. My closing show reminded me of Mother's advice: "Since you're black, you have to hope for the best. Be prepared for the worst and always know that anything can hap­pen."

  When Schiffman gave me my check, we both grinned.

  I thought Godfrey Cambridge was one of the prettiest men I had ever seen. His features had the immutability of a Benin mask, and his white teeth were like flags of truce. His skin was the color of rich black dirt along the Arkansas River. He was tall and big and

  spoke English with the staccato accent of a New York-born descendant of West Indian parents. He was definitely the one.

  He was introduced to me at a Greenwich Village party. He said that he was an unemployed actor, and because I mistook his curiosity for romantic interest, I pursued. We exchanged phone numbers and when I called and invited him to dinner, he ac­cepted. Guy and Godfrey became a team in the first ten minutes. Guy enjoyed Godfrey's funny stories about his job as a taxi driver and his adventures auditioning for white musicals. We ate a four-course meal (I always used my cooking to enhance my sex appeal) and laughed a lot. After Guy went to bed, Godfrey and I sat in the living room listening to records and drinking cognac-laced coffee. To my disappointment, the jokes continued. God­frey talked about crazy passengers, egotistic actors and tyrannical directors, and each story led to a punch line which begged for laughter. The stories became more forced and time moved halt­ingly. Despite my availability, my cooking and my willingness, together we ignited no passionate fires.

  When I let him out of the house, he gave me a brother's kiss and I scratched him off my list as a possibility.

  The Harlem church was full, with standees in the rear. A few white people sat in the middle rows, stiffly, not moving, not turning to look at the black people, who buzzed like hived bees. Godfrey and I had come to hear Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. He had just been released from jail, and was in New York to raise money for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and to make Northerners aware of the fight being waged in Southern states.

  Five black men marched in single-file onto the rostrum, their solemnity a perfect foil for the raucous welcome of the audi­ence.

  The host minister introduced Wyatt Walker, a Baptist preacher whom I thought too handsome for virtue and too young for wisdom.

  He spoke, in a purely Baptist voice, of Alabama and the right­eous struggle for justice. Fred Shuttlesworth, another attractive minister, was introduced. I wondered if the SCLC had a policy of keeping the ugly preachers at home and sending only the good-looking ones to the North. Shuttlesworth leaned his thin body over the podium, jutting a black hawklike face at the audi­ence. His words were sharp and his voice accusatory. He became a hatchet of a man. Chopping away at our geographic security. What were we doing in New York City, while black children were being set upon by dogs, black women were raped and black men maimed and killed? Did we think New York City could escape the righteous wrath of God? This was our chance to join the holy crusade, pick up the gauntlet flung down in hate, carry it through the bloody battleground to the region of
peace and justice and equality for all. The audience stood up and the Reverend Shuttles-worth sat down.

  Ralph Abernathy was introduced next. He moved slowly and quietly toward the podium. He stood a few seconds, looking down at his hands, which rested on top of the desk. His speaking voice was a surprise and his delivery a shock. He didn't have the fire of Walker or the anger of Shuttlesworth. His message was clear and quick, and in an unnerving way, the most powerful. The South was in a phase of change, and everyone must pay for change because everyone will benefit from change. As Christians, we all should be ready for change because if we think about it, Jesus was the greatest changer in history. He changed the idea of an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. He ran the moneylenders from the temple because they were cheating the people and taught forgiveness even of one's enemies. Rev. Abernathy reminded the audience that only with God could we develop the courage to change the unchangeable. When he moved, ponderously, slowly to his seat, there was a long moment when the audience sat still. Because his words had not been coated with passion or fashioned in eloquent prose, they took longer to swallow. The host minister rose again, and all rustling stopped. The room held its breath.