Caryl Phillips - Dancing In The Dark

He tells her that after Cripple Creek he and George decided to head east. He tells her this as part of his wooing narrative and she listens to her tall, handsome young man who always remembers to bring her flowers. Sitting together on one of the two benches in their modest city park, he admits that by the time the pair of them reached Detroit they both realized that they would have to try something new. He pauses and coughs, and then he looks all about them. They like to sit together and feel New York City licking past on either side, marooned in this small quadrant of concrete with the tattoo of horse’s hooves filling the silences in their sputtering conversation. He now looks her full in the face as a distant church bell strikes the hour and signals the onset of dusk. In Detroit we made the decision, at Moore’s Wonderland Theatre. Again he pauses, but he is careful to make sure that the smile never leaves his lips. He is tense and eager that none should overhear, but there is nobody else in the park. She does not understand. You see, he continues, it made more sense to both George and myself that we exchange roles, so I became the clown and he became the straight man, and right away the laughs came more easily. She watches as he throws back his head and laughs out loud. Walker and Williams became Williams and Walker. You’d never believe it was George, stepping and prancing and throwing everybody those uppity looks, and our immediate success made us wonder why we had never thought of it before. It also made things a little easier between the two of us, although there had never been any real problems, just a little tension from the way things were working out, but it was not anybody’s fault, and neither one of us was blaming the other one. He pauses as though he has suddenly revealed too much, and she looks at him but says nothing. His mind is still full and he has not finished. They both know that there is something else. And so, having paused for as long as he dare, he continues. And the makeup. George was not happy but I tried the makeup and became somebody else. She watches his face struggle to hold the smile. The makeup. She places her hand on his arm and squeezes slightly. She understands that he is asking to be forgiven, but he is not an uncouth Ethiopian delineator, nor is he a shouting coon. He is no Ernest Hogan or Bob Cole in crude blackface. She understands that her suitor is a man who is playing a part. He is playing a shuffling, dull-witted, clumsy, watermelon-eating Negro of questionable intelligence. He is playing a character. He is a performer who applies makeup in order to play a part. Sitting in the small concrete park, his large hand now resting lightly on her left knee, she smiles and then decides that the less they talk about Detroit the better it will be for both of them. She takes her small hand from his arm and places it on top of his hand. And then, he says, his hypnotic voice as insistent as waves breaking against the shore, we made our way to New York City and became the Two Real Coons and entered vaudeville, which meant no more medicine shows, no more Barbary Coast or Cripple Creek, we were in New York City doing vaudeville with George’s new dandified character and my own impersonation of a Negro. I was now the lazy, slow-footed half of the team, and I had adopted cork. She looks at the beautiful white roses in her lap. He always chooses the finest blossoms and these days her room is forever high with the aroma of freshly cut stems. Although she has said nothing to anybody beyond Ada, everybody knows that a gentleman caller is pursuing the recently widowed Mrs. Thompson, for the scent of flowers permeates the musty air of the otherwise dull boardinghouse. Again, he looks across at her. The light is beginning to fade now, but she can see that he is watching her closely as she reaches with her free hand and pulls the shawl closer to her shoulders. A casually draped arm would be acceptable, but she understands that he is not this type of a man. Up above, the wind begins to comb through the solitary tree, and she spies a slither of moon in the darkening sky. I have not talked about the cakewalk, he says. It was George’s idea to add the cakewalk to the act for he thought that it would make everything a little more tasteful. He opens up his smile now, and she smiles along with him. She knows all about the cakewalk, for these days everybody does the cakewalk in their act, but only Williams and Walker have the nerve to call themselves the world champions of this elegantly strutting dance and to challenge all comers. Only Williams and Walker possess such a high sense of themselves, but after all, this is why she is sitting right here with Mr. Williams. She admires his spirit, and she is at peace with everything that he has told her. As they fall again into one of their familiar silences, she feels happy that he has shared with her at least one small part of the story of his passage to New York, but already she understands that this man’s heart is likely to remain a deep ocean of jeweled secrets, some of which, with time, he may well bestow upon her. As the tree finally fades to black and the streetlights are illuminated, this thought comforts her. But her suitor does not appear ready to leave just yet. He seems to be lost in his own thoughts, and she is reluctant to say anything that might disturb his reverie, and so, despite the cold that is piercing her shawl and tormenting her thin body, and the wind that is threatening to dislodge her small hat, Lottie sits in the gloomy park and says nothing.

“Lottie child, you really want to marry a colored performer? Girl, you scarcely know the man.” Ada tightens the straps on her shoes. “Your husband’s barely cold, but at least Sam was a businessman. This white man’s fool acts like he’s better than us, but you and me both know that he ain’t no better than any of us, even if people do know how to call out his name.”

Lottie looks herself up and down in the dressing room mirror, and then she picks up the powder brush. These days she finds it necessary to apply extra makeup, which both depresses and alarms her. She knows that at her age she ought to be thinking of taking up something other than hoofing and clowning, and her late husband always said as much. But what? She pivots and faces Ada, whose exasperated expression makes it plain that there is little point in Lottie saying anything further. Clearly, Ada understands that Lottie’s sail is already hoisted, and that she is moving inexorably in the direction of her young man, and this being the case Lottie decides to say nothing and simply finish applying her makeup. Perhaps, Ada should mind her business. Young Mr. Williams never said that he was better than anybody else, but she won’t bother to remind Ada of this fact. All young Mr. Williams does is act as though he is better than other folks, and this is good enough for her. This has made all the difference.

…

On the day of the wedding Lottie opens her door and discovers Ada standing before her with one hand planted firmly on her hip.

“Good morning, Ada.”

Lottie steps to one side to let her friend pass by. As she does so she smells the perfume and the lavender water that Ada loves to sprinkle about her neck and wrists in a poor attempt to mask the stench of the hair products that Mrs. McDonald from Jamaica sells Ada by the bucketful, foul-smelling creams and ointments that promote the so-called new colored beauty.

“You’re not planning on taking a seat?”

Ada sits with a theatrical heaviness that suggests unease. Lottie stares at her friend and then decides that whatever is on her mind, Ada must take responsibility for sharing it. She looks beyond Ada and out through the undraped window at the beautiful fall morning in New York City. This should be a day of joy, but Lottie is being forced to endure the irksome presence of her friend, who now slumps.