The Purple Onion was a basement cabaret which Jorie called la Boîte (Don translated that into “the sardine can”). Its walls were painted a murky purple, and although it was supposed to accommodate two hundred people, well over that number crowded into the room the first night I went to catch the show, and the air was claustrophobically close. Jorie in a simply cut, expensive black dress leaned her back against the curve of the piano. She partly sang and partly talked a torch song, waving a cigarette holder in one hand and languorously moving a long chiffon scarf in the other. Her voice scratched lightly over the notes.
“He's just my Bill
An ordinary guy
you'd see him on the street
[pause]
And never notice him.”
She looked at the audience directly shrugging her thin shoulders. Her look said that Bill really was quite awful and she had little understanding of why she herself had noticed Bill. Before our eyes she changed from the worldly-wise woman, disillusioned by a burnt-out love affair, into a “regular” girl who was just one of the folks. The audience howled at the transformation, delighted by having been taken in.
I sat in the rear enthralled. It was hard to believe I was being asked to move into this brilliant woman's place, although my audition had gone well enough. The Rockwell family, led by the elder son, Keith, owned the club, and without much enthusiasm had signed a six-month contract with a three-month option for my services.
Jorie drooped over the piano dripping chiffon, and delivering accented witticisms. Or she would stand still, her shoulders down and her hands at ease and speak/sing a song that so moved her listeners that for a few seconds after she finished, people neither applauded nor looked at one another.
When I went to my first rehearsal, Jorie brought her drama coach to meet me. He was a tall, thin, black-haired man named Lloyd Clark, who spoke elegantly out of pursed lips and threw his fingers out as if he was constantly shooting his cuffs. He was accompanied by a handsome Dutch Amazon, whose blond hair was pulled back and hung in a two-foot ponytail. Her little girl's smile seemed incongruous on a face that could have modeled for a ship's prow.
And she spoke softly. “I'm Marguerite Clark. I'm his wife.” There was so much pride in her statement that I would not have been surprised had she hooked her fingers in her armpits and stalked around the room. Lloyd took her adoration as his due and asked me if I had ever worked with a drama coach. I told him that I had not, but that I had studied drama and that I was a dancer.
“Well, first, my dear, you must sing for me.” He held a cigarette between his third and fourth fingers, reminding me of a European movie actor. He puffed fastidiously. There was a neatness about the man which showed most prominently in his diction.
“I can't know if I can help you until I have”—each beloved word chosen carefully and handed out graciously, like choice pieces of fruit—“seen you perform.”
The piano player, who was white and experienced, intimidated me nearly as much as the drama coach. Earlier in the afternoon he had asked for my sheet music, and when I told him that the songs I intended to sing had hardly been published, he slammed the piano lid down and stood up.
“Do you mean I'm supposed to play without music? Just vamp till ready?”
I did not understand his indignation, nor the sarcasm in his last question. “I've signed a contract and I'm supposed to open in two weeks. What can I do?” I had found that direct questions brought direct answers if they brought answers at all.
“Have some lead sheets written for you,” he said indifferently.
“Can you do it? May I pay you to write the lead sheets? Whatever they are.”
He gave me a thin smile and, partially pacified, said, “If I can find the time.”
He sat again on the bench and opened the piano. “What do you sing?”
I said, “Calypso. ‘Stone Cold Dead in the Market’ ‘Run Joe,’ ‘Babalu.’ Things like that.”
He asked, “What key for ‘Stone Cold Dead’?” His fingers ran over the keyboard and I thought of my pervasive ignorance.
“I don't know.” The music stopped and the musician leaned his head on the piano. He was so dramatic I thought he should have been the star.
I said, “I'm sorry to be a bother.” Usually when one throws oneself at another's feet, one should be prepared to do a fast roll to avoid being stepped on. “But I'd appreciate your help—I'm new.”
The pianist rose to the occasion, which, given his sardonic expression earlier, might have come as a bigger surprise to him than to me.
“O.K.” He straightened away from the keyboard. “Try this.” He started to play and I recognized the tune.
“Yes, that's it.”
“I know that's it,” he said dryly. “Now how about singing so I can find your key.”
I listened carefully, squinting my eyes and tried to find where in all the notes he played I should insert my voice.
“Sing.” It was an order.
I started: “He's stone cold dead in de market.”
“No, that's wrong. Listen.” He played, I listened. I started to sing.
He said, “No, wrong again.”
Finally by chance I hit the right note. The pianist grudgingly nodded and I sang the song through.
He stood up and bounced a glance off me as he turned toward the bar. “You need music. You really need it.”
I watched him order and then gulp down a drink greedily.
And here was Lloyd Clark, tended by his adoring Brünnhilde, telling me to repeat the awkward performance.
Whenever I had danced non-angelically on the point of a pin, I always knew I might slip and break my neck. It could be fatal, but at least all anxiety would cease. Because of that, I often rushed toward holocausts with an abandon that caused observers to think of me as courageous. The truth was, I simply wanted an end to uncertainty.
The pianist responded to my nod and with visible resignation sat at the piano and began to play the song we had tried earlier.
I looked beyond my audience and decided to ignore the musician and his snide attitude. I fastened my mind on the plot. A poor West Indian woman had been threatened by her brutal husband (my mother's father was Trinidadian, and although he was kind he was very severe) and she struck back in self-defense. My sympathies rested with the mistreated woman. So I told the story from her point of view.
Don said, “Great, just great.”
Jorie asked Lloyd and the world at large, “Didn't I say she's marvy?”
Lloyd rose smiling, he came toward me offering his hands. “Fab, fab, darling, you're going to be fab. You're marvelously dramatic.” He turned to his wife, who was like a tall, white shadow following him. “Isn't she, Marg? Just fab?”
Marguerite gave him a loving smile. “Yes, Lloyd darling.” Then to me she said softly, “You're good. So very good. And after you work with Lloyd … Oh, I can hardly wait.” Her voice belied impatience.
“Now, dear, do sit down. Come, we must do some serious talking.” Lloyd took my hands. He leaned around me and said to the musician who was beelining for the bar, “Thank you, young man, thank you. And you did it without lead sheets. Brilliant!”
“Now, my dear, sit.” He pulled me along to Jorie's table. She patted my cheek and lowered one long-lashed eye slowly, meaning I was in, and hadn't she said so, and I had nothing to worry about and weren't we all so awfully smart. I winked back and grinned.
Marguerite sat so close to Lloyd she was nearly in his lap and Don made congratulatory little noises to me and to himself.
“First, dear, your name,” Lloyd said.
“Rita.”
“Is that your name? The name you were born with?” Disbelief was evident.
“No, my name is Marguerite.”
Marguerite Clark complimented us both. “Oh, isn't that nice?”
“It's all right for you, Marguerite, but it doesn't do anything for her.” I had been named for my maternal grandmother, who would not have taken
kindly to that statement.
“She needs something more exotic. More glamorous.” Lloyd turned to Jorie and Don. “Don't you agree?”
They did indeed.
“A really good name,” Don said, “is half the act.”
I thought about the popular entertainers who were mentioned in the newspapers weekly. I didn't know if their names were created for show business or if the entertainers had simply been lucky. I said nothing.
“Let's think. Think up some names.”
Don went to the bar and brought over a bottle of wine and some glasses.
Thaïs, Sappho, Nana, Lana, Bette, names of heroines from Greek history, world literature and Hollywood were bandied about, but none seemed to please my inventors.
I said, “My brother has always called me Maya. For ‘Marguerite.’ He used to call me ‘My sister,’ then he called me ‘My’ and finally, ‘Maya.’ Is that all right?”
Jorie said, “Di-vine. Di-vine, darling.”
Don was ecstatic. “It suits you, my dear, oh God, it suits you.”
Marguerite waited for Lloyd. He thought, looking at me pointedly, trying to find the name in my face. After a minute, he said, “Yes, you're Maya,” as if he was christening me.
Marguerite said, “Lloyd, you're right, darling. She is Maya.”
Don passed the wine around.
“Maya what?” Jorie looked at Lloyd. “Do deliver us from performers with one name. Hildegarde, Liberace. No, she must have at least two names.”
I said, “My married name is Angelos.”
Don chewed the words around, tasting them.
“Maya Angelos.” Jorie took the name over, weighing it on her tongue. “That's not bad.”
Lloyd said, “It sounds too Spanish. Or Italian. No, it won't do.” An idea broke his face wide open. “I've got it. Drop the s and add a u. Maya Angelou.” He pronounced it Angeloo. “Of course! That's it!”
Jorie said it was too divine. Don said it was perfection. Marguerite beamed her approval of Lloyd and then of the name.
We all drank wine to toast our success. I had a job, a drama coach, a pianist who was going to provide me with lead sheets, and I had a new name (I wondered if I'd ever feel it described the me myself of me).
We begin to prepare for my debut. For three hours each day Lloyd coached me. His instructions included how to stand, how to walk, how to turn and offer my best profile to an audience. He worked over my act as busily as a couturier creating a wedding gown for royalty.
“My dear, but you must stand still. Glide out onstage like the Queen Mary slipping out of her berth, reach the piano and then stand absolutely, but absolutely, still. After a few seconds look around at your audience and then, only then, at your pianist. Nod your head to him and then you will begin your music. When he finishes his intro, then you will begin to sing.”
I found standing still the most difficult of all his instructions. During rehearsal when I was introduced my nerves shivered and the swallows in my stomach did nose dives. I would hear “… and now Miss Maya Angelou,” and I would race from the dressing room, down the narrow aisle to the stage and, immediately, without waiting for the music, begin: “Moe and Joe ran a candy store.”
“No, my dear. Still. Be totally still. Think of a deep pool.”
Again and again I tried until I was able to walk on stage, and, thinking of nothing at all—neither deep pools nor sailing ships—stand absolutely still.
Lloyd said I had to learn at least twelve songs before opening night. I plundered the memories of every acquaintance. Mornings found me in the sheet music shops and record stores, ferreting for material. By midday, I hurried to the pianist's apartment, where we practiced songs over and over until they began to have less meaning than words in a children's game. Afternoons I worked with Lloyd in my house. When he left, I selected some songs to practice in front of Clyde. Although I sang the cute, the humorous songs for his enjoyment and would prance around this way and that, he always watched me with a seriousness that would have impressed a judge. When I finished he would remove his horn-rimmed glasses and look at me speculatively and ask, “Gee, Mom, how can you remember all those words?”
Clyde had become a talker. He talked to me, to the family, to strangers and had long, involved conversations with himself. His discourses ranged over the subjects of his life. He had become a voracious reader, consuming books whole at nearly one sitting, then reliving the plot in his conversations. He read science fiction (he loved Ray Bradbury) and western pulp, his Sunday School lessons, Paul Laurence Dunbar's poems and animal stories and explained to all who would listen that he, Red Ryder and Fluke were going to ride their horses to the moon and talk to God, who was an old Black man who played the guitar. Red Ryder was a Western character from books and Fluke was Clyde's invisible miscreant friend. Fluke made him laugh aloud with his mischievousness. He was able to do things Clyde could not do, and Fluke did them with impunity. If a lamp was overturned and broken, it was because Fluke was walking around on the lampshade. When the bathtub ran over and turned the tiled floor into a shallow pool, Fluke had gone to the bathroom after Clyde left and turned the spigot on.
Vainly I tried to explain the difference between lying and making up a story, but decided it was more important that Clyde keep his nonexistent buddy to lessen the loneliness of an only child. I liked to listen from the kitchen when he told Fluke good-night stories and when, in his morning bath, he laughed outright as he warned his friend against indulging in some troublemaking antic.
Francis, the dressmaker, took Gerry's (with a G) ideas and fashioned long, snug dresses out of bolts of raw silk and white corduroy. The gowns were slit on both sides from floor to hip, and underneath I wore one-legged pants of gay batik. When I stood still, the dress material fell gracefully giving an impression of sober elegance, but when I moved the panels would fly up and it seemed as if one leg was bare and the other tattooed. I wore no shoes. The total effect was more sensational than attractive, but having no illusions about my ability to sing, I reasoned that if I could startle the audience with my costumes and my personality, they might be so diverted that they wouldn't notice.
Opening night, I longed for one of two things. To be dead—dead and forgotten—or to have my brother beside me. Life had made some strenuous demands on me, and although I had never ruled out suicide, no experience so far had shattered me enough to make me consider it seriously. And my brother, Bailey, who could make me laugh at terror or allow me the freedom to cry over sentimental things, was in New York State, grappling with his own bitter reality. So, despite my wishes, I was alive and I was alone.
I watched through a peephole as Barry Drew walked to the stage. He claimed that he was descended from two great theatrical families and had to live up to his heritage.
“And now, ladies and gentleman”—he rubbed his hands together—“this evening, making her debut at the Purple Onion”—he turned his best side to the light and opened his arms for the world—“Miss Maya Angelou!”
There was some applause, not enough to hearten but not so little I could deny that people were waiting for me.
I counted three and walked slowly down the aisle and onto the stage. I stood still as I had at rehearsal, and a dead calm surrounded me. One second later fear plummeted to my stomach and made my knees weak. I realized that I could not see the people. No one had warned me that a combination of spotlights and nerves would cause blindness. The aisle down which I had walked still lay open and unobstructed. I looked at it once, longingly, then turned to the pianist and nodded. And although I did not know it, another career for me had begun.
Popularity was an intoxicant and I swayed drunkenly for months. Newspaper reporters began to ask for interviews and I gave them in an ersatz accent, which was a mélange of the speech of Ricardo Montalban, Jorie Remus and Akim Tamiroff. I was invited to talk on radio and sing on television. Fans began to recognize me in the street and one well-to-do woman organized a ten-member Maya Angelou fan club.
/> Later I met people who said, “I saw you dance at the Purple Onion.” I graciously withheld the information that in fact I was hired at the club as a singer, but the songs had many refrains and such complex rhythms that often I got lost in the plot and forgot the lyrics. So, when the words eluded me, I would admit my poor memory and add that if the audience would bear with me I would dance. The first few times I owned up to a weak memory, Lloyd Clark and Barry Drew frowned disapprovingly, but after the audiences applauded loudly Barry accepted it and Lloyd said, “Wonderful, dear, wonderful. Keep it in. In fact, you should dance more.”
I shared the bill with a strange and talented couple. Jane Connell sang scatterbrained ditties, while her sober-side husband Gordon dryly played piano. Their patter was sharp and displayed their Berkeley university background. When they left to join Jorie in New York's Blue Angel, a frowzy blond housewife from Alameda auditioned and was accepted at the club. She brought a wardrobe of silly flowered hats and moth-eaten boas which she flung around her thin neck. Her laugh, which she shared often, was a cross between a donkey's braying and a foghorn. She said she would not change her name because when she became successful she wanted everyone to know it was, indeed, her herself. The name was painted in large white letters outside the club: Phyllis Diller.
CHAPTER 11
Without a father in the house and no other male authority figure in his world, Clyde fell under the spell of uniforms. He began to adore policemen and daydream about becoming a bomber pilot.
“I'll zoom down like this, Mom, brrr and blow their heads off. Boom, boom, boom.” He marched and clumped around the house in a poor parody of Gestapo goose-stepping He saluted walls and chairs and ordered doors to be “at rest, Sergeant Door.” He had become enamored of the Air Force and every evening at bedtime he waited in his room for me to hear his prayers and then to sing (he would join in):