But Laura really liked school. She said she wanted to go on to college. She was keen for algebra, and she planned to major in science. Laura never would have dreamed that she was a year older than I was. I gauged that indirectly. She looked up to me as though she felt I had a world of experience more than she did—which really was the truth. But sometimes, when she had gone, I felt let down, thinking how I had turned away from the books I used to like when I was back in Michigan.
I got to the point where I looked forward to her coming in every day after school. I stopped letting her pay, and gave her extra ice cream. And she wasn’t hiding the fact that she liked me.
It wasn’t long before she had stopped reading her books when she came in, and would just sit and eat and talk with me. And soon she began trying to get me to talk about myself. I was immediately sorry when I dropped that I had once thought about becoming a lawyer. She didn’t want to let me rest about that. “Malcolm, there’s no reason you can’t pick up right where you are and become a lawyer.” She had the idea that my sister Ella would help me as much as she could. And if Ella had ever thought that she could help any member of the Little family put up any kind of professional shingle—as a teacher, a foot-doctor, anything—why, you would have had to tie her down to keep her from taking in washing.
I never mentioned Laura to Shorty. I just knew she never would have understood him, or that crowd. And they wouldn’t have understood her. She had never been touched, I’m certain she hadn’t, or even had a drink, and she wouldn’t even have known what a reefer was.
It was a great surprise to me when one afternoon Laura happened to let drop that she “just loved” lindy-hopping. I asked her how had she been able to go out dancing. She said she’d been introduced to lindy-hopping at a party given by the parents of some Negro friend just accepted by Harvard.
It was just about time to start closing down the soda fountain, and I said that Count Basie was playing the Roseland that weekend, and would she like to go?
Laura’s eyes got wide. I thought I’d have to catch her, she was so excited. She said she’d never been there, she’d heard so much about it, she’d imagined what it was like, she’d just give anything—but her grandma would have a fit.
So I said maybe some other time.
But the afternoon before the dance, Laura came in full of excitement. She whispered that she’d never lied to her grandma before, but she had told her she had to attend some school function that evening. If I’d get her home early, she’d meet me—if I’d still take her.
I told her we’d have to go by for me to change clothes at the house. She hesitated, but said okay. Before we left, I telephoned Ella to say I’d be bringing a girl by on the way to the dance. Though I’d never before done anything like it, Ella covered up her surprise.
I laughed to myself a long time afterward about how Ella’s mouth flew open when we showed up at the front door—me and a well-bred Hill girl. Laura, when I introduced her, was warm and sincere. And Ella, you would have thought she was closing in on her third husband.
While they sat and talked downstairs, I dressed upstairs in my room. I remember changing my mind about the wild sharkskin gray zoot I had planned to wear, and deciding instead to put on the first one I’d gotten, the blue zoot. I knew I should wear the most conservative thing I had.
They were like old friends when I came back down. Ella had even made tea. Ella’s hawk-eye just about raked my zoot right off my back. But I’m sure she was grateful that I’d at least put on the blue one. Knowing Ella, I knew that she had already extracted Laura’s entire life story—and all but had the wedding bells around my neck. I grinned all the way to the Roseland in the taxi, because I had showed Ella I could hang out with Hill girls if I wanted to.
Laura’s eyes were so big. She said almost none of her acquaintances knew her grandmother, who never went anywhere but to church, so there wasn’t much danger of it getting back to her. The only person she had told was her girl friend, who had shared her excitement.
Then, suddenly, we were in the Roseland’s jostling lobby. And I was getting waves and smiles and greetings. They shouted “My man!” and “Hey, Red!” and I answered “Daddy-o.”
She and I never before had danced together, but that certainly was no problem. Any two people who can lindy at all can lindy together. We just started out there on the floor among a lot of other couples.
It was maybe halfway in the number before I became aware of how she danced.
If you’ve ever lindy-hopped, you’ll know what I’m talking about. With most girls, you kind of work opposite them, circling, side-stepping, leading. Whichever arm you lead with is half-bent out there, your hands are giving that little pull, that little push, touching her waist, her shoulders, her arms. She’s in, out, turning, whirling, wherever you guide her. With poor partners, you feel their weight. They’re slow and heavy. But with really good partners, all you need is just the push-pull suggestion. They guide nearly effortlessly, even off the floor and into the air, and your little solo maneuver is done on the floor before they land, when they join you, whirling, right in step.
I’d danced with plenty of good partners. But what I became suddenly aware of with Laura was that I’d never before felt so little weight! I’d nearly just think a maneuver, and she’d respond.
Anyway, as she danced up, down, under my arm, flinging out, while I felt her out and examined her style, I glimpsed her footwork. I can close my eyes right now and see it, like some blurring ballet—beautiful! And her lightness, like a shadow! My perfect partner, if somebody had asked me, would have been one who handled as lightly as Laura and who would have had the strength to last through a long, tough showtime. But I knew that Laura wouldn’t begin to be that strong.
In Harlem, years later, a friend of mine called “Sammy The Pimp” taught me something I wish I had known then to look for in Laura’s face. It was what Sammy declared was his infallible clue for determining the “unconscious, true personality” of women. Considering all the women he had picked out of crowds and turned into prostitutes, Sammy qualified as an expert. Anyway, he swore that if a woman, any woman, gets really carried away while dancing, what she truly is—at least potentially—will surface and show on her face.
I’m not suggesting that a lady-of-easy-virtue look danced to the surface in Laura—although life did deal her cruel blows, starting with her meeting me. All I am saying is that it may be that if I had been equipped with Sammy’s ability, I might have spotted in Laura then some of the subsurface potential, destined to become real, that would have shocked her grandma.
A third of the way or so through the evening the main vocalizing and instrumental stylings would come—and then showtime, when only the greatest lindy-hoppers would stay on the floor, to try and eliminate each other. All the other dancers would form a big “U” with the band at the open end.
The girls who intended to compete would slip over to the sidelines and change from high heels into low white sneakers. In competition, they never could survive in heels. And always among them were four or five unattached girls who would run around trying to hook up with some guy they knew could really lindy.
Now Count Basie turned on the showtime blast, and the other dancers moved off the floor, shifting for good watching positions, and began their hollering for their favorites. “All right now, Red!” they shouted to me, “Go get ’em, Red.” And then a free-lancing lindy-girl I’d danced with before, Mamie Bevels, a waitress and a wild dancer ran up to me, with Laura standing right there. I wasn’t sure what to do. But Laura started backing away toward the crowd, still looking at me.
The Count’s band was wailing. I grabbed Mamie and we started to work. She was a big, rough, strong gal, and she lindied like a bucking horse. I remember the very night that she became known as one of the showtime favorites there at the Roseland. A band was screaming when she kicked off her shoes and got barefooted, and shouted, and shook herself as if she were in some African jungle frenzy, and then she
let loose with some dancing, shouting with every step, until the guy that was out there with her nearly had to fight to control her. The crowd loved any way-out lindying style that made a colorful show like that. It was how Mamie had become known.
Anyway, I started driving her like a horse, the way she liked. When we came off the floor after the first number, we both were wringing wet with sweat, and people were shouting and pounding our backs.
I remember leaving early with Laura, to get her home in time. She was very quiet. And she didn’t have much to say for the next week or so when she came into the drugstore. Even then, I had learned enough about women to know not to pressure them when they’re thinking something out; they’ll tell you when they’re ready.
Every time I saw Ella, even brushing my teeth in the morning, she turned on the third degree. When was I seeing Laura again? Was I going to bring her by again? “What a nice girl she is!” Ella had picked her out for me.
But in that kind of way, I thought hardly anything about the girl. When it came to personal matters, my mind was strictly on getting “sharp” in my zoot as soon as I left work, and racing downtown to hang out with Shorty and the other guys—and with the girls they knew—a million miles away from the stuck-up Hill.
I wasn’t even thinking about Laura when she came up to me in the drugstore and asked me to take her to the next Negro dance at the Roseland. Duke Ellington was going to play, and she was beside herself with excitement. I had no way to know what was going to happen.
She asked me to pick her up at her house this time. I didn’t want any contact with the old grandma she had described, but I went. Grandma answered the door—an old-fashioned, wrinkled, black woman, with fuzzy gray hair. She just opened the door enough for me to get in, not even saying as much as “Come in, dog.” I’ve faced armed detectives and gangsters less hostile than she was.
I remember the musty living room, full of those old Christ pictures, prayers woven into tapestries, statuettes of the crucifixion, other religious objects on the mantel, shelves, table tops, walls, everywhere.
Since the old lady wasn’t speaking to me, I didn’t speak to her, either. I completely sympathize with her now, of course. What could she have thought of me in my zoot and conk and orange shoes? She’d have done us all a favor if she had run screaming for the police. If something looking as I did then ever came knocking at my door today, asking to see one of my four daughters, I know I would explode.
When Laura rushed into the room, jerking on her coat, I could see that she was upset and angry and embarrassed. And in the taxi, she started crying. She had hated herself for lying before; she had decided to tell the truth about where she was going, and there had been a screaming battle with grandma. Laura had told the old lady that she was going to start going out when and where she wanted to, or she would quit school and get a job and move out on her own—and her grandma had pitched a fit. Laura just walked out.
When we got to the Roseland, we danced the early part of the evening with each other and with different partners. And finally the Duke kicked off showtime.
I knew, and Laura knew, that she couldn’t match the veteran showtime girls, but she told me that she wanted to compete. And the next thing I knew, she was among those girls over on the sidelines changing into sneakers. I shook my head when a couple of the free-lancing girls ran up to me.
As always, the crowd clapped and shouted in time with the blasting band. “Go, Red, go!” Partly it was my reputation, and partly Laura’s ballet style of dancing that helped to turn the spotlight—and the crowd’s attention—to us. They never had seen the feather-lightness that she gave to lindying, a completely fresh style—and they were connoisseurs of styles. I turned up the steam, Laura’s feet were flying; I had her in the air, down, sideways, around; backwards, up again, down, whirling….
The spotlight was working mostly just us. I caught glimpses of the four or five other couples, the girls jungle-strong, animal-like, bucking and charging. But little Laura inspired me to drive to new heights. Her hair was all over her face, it was running sweat, and I couldn’t believe her strength. The crowd was shouting and stomping. A new favorite was being discovered; there was a wall of noise around us. I felt her weakening, she was lindying like a fighter out on her feet, and we stumbled off to the sidelines. The band was still blasting. I had to half-carry her; she was gasping for air. Some of the men in the band applauded. And even Duke Ellington half raised up from his piano stool and bowed.
If a showtime crowd liked your performance, when you came off you were mobbed, mauled, grasped, and pummeled like the team that’s just taken the series. One bunch of the crowd swarmed Laura; they had her clear up off her feet. And I was being pounded on the back…when I caught this fine blonde’s eyes….This one I’d never seen among the white girls who came to the Roseland black dances. She was eyeing me levelly.
Now at that time, in Roxbury, in any black ghetto in America, to have a white woman who wasn’t a known, common whore was—for the average black man, at least—a status symbol of the first order. And this one, standing there, eyeing me, was almost too fine to believe. Shoulder-length hair, well built, and her clothes had cost somebody plenty.
It’s shameful to admit, but I had just about forgotten Laura when she got loose from the mob and rushed up, big-eyed—and stopped. I guess she saw what there was to see in that girl’s face—and mine—as we moved out to dance.
I’m going to call her Sophia.
She didn’t dance well, at least not by Negro standards. But who cared? I could feel the staring eyes of other couples around us. We talked. I told her she was a good dancer, and asked her where she’d learned. I was trying to find out why she was there. Most white women came to the black dances for reasons I knew, but you seldom saw her kind around there.
She had vague answers for everything. But in the space of that dance, we agreed that I would get Laura home early and rush back in a taxicab. And then she asked if I’d like to go for a drive later. I felt very lucky.
Laura was home and I was back at the Roseland in an hour flat. Sophia was waiting outside.
About five blocks down, she had a low convertible. She knew where she was going. Beyond Boston, she pulled off into a side road, and then off that into a deserted lane. And turned off everything but the radio.
—
For the next several months, Sophia would pick me up downtown, and I’d take her to dances, and to the bars around Roxbury. We drove all over. Sometimes it would be nearly daylight when she let me out in front of Ella’s.
I paraded her. The Negro men loved her. And she just seemed to love all Negroes. Two or three nights a week, we would go out together. Sophia admitted that she also had dates with white fellows, “just for the looks of things,” she said. She swore that a white man couldn’t interest her.
I wondered for a long time, but I never did find out why she approached me so boldly that very first night. I always thought it was because of some earlier experience with another Negro, but I never asked, and she never said. Never ask a woman about other men. Either she’ll tell you a lie, and you still won’t know, or if she tells you the truth, you might not have wanted to hear it in the first place.
Anyway, she seemed entranced with me. I began to see less of Shorty. When I did see him and the gang, he would gibe, “Man, I had to comb the burrs out of my homeboy’s head, and now he’s got a Beacon Hill chick.” But truly, because it was known that Shorty had “schooled” me, my having Sophia gave Shorty status. When I introduced her to him, she hugged him like a sister, and it just about finished Shorty off. His best had been white prostitutes and a few of those poor specimens that worked around in the mills and had “discovered” Negroes.
It was when I began to be seen around town with Sophia that I really began to mature into some real status in black downtown Roxbury. Up to then I had been just another among all of the conked and zooted youngsters. But now, with the best-looking white woman who ever walked in those bars and
clubs, and with her giving me the money I spent, too, even the big, important black hustlers and “smart boys”—the club managers, name gamblers, numbers bankers, and others—were clapping me on the back, setting us up to drinks at special tables, and calling me “Red.” Of course I knew their reason like I knew my own name: they wanted to steal my fine white woman away from me.
In the ghetto, as in suburbia, it’s the same status struggle to stand out in some envied way from the rest. At sixteen, I didn’t have the money to buy a Cadillac, but she had her own fine “rubber,” as we called a car in those days. And I had her, which was even better.
—
Laura never again came to the drugstore as long as I continued to work there. The next time I saw her, she was a wreck of a woman, notorious around black Roxbury, in and out of jail. She had finished high school, but by then she was already going the wrong way. Defying her grandmother, she had started going out late and drinking liquor. This led to dope, and that to selling herself to men. Learning to hate the men who bought her, she also became a Lesbian. One of the shames I have carried for years is that I blame myself for all of this. To have treated her as I did for a white woman made the blow doubly heavy. The only excuse I can offer is that like so many of my black brothers today, I was just deaf, dumb, and blind.
In any case, it wasn’t long after I met Sophia that Ella found out about it, and watching from the windows one early morning, saw me getting out of Sophia’s car. Not surprisingly, Ella began treating me like a viper.
About then, Shorty’s cousin finally moved in with the woman he was so crazy about, and Sophia financed me to take over half of the apartment with Shorty—and I quit the drugstore and soon found a new job.
I became a busboy at the Parker House in Boston. I wore a starched white jacket out in the dining room, where the waiters would put the customers’ dirty plates and silver on big aluminum trays which I would take back to the kitchen’s dishwashers.