Megan Bergman: Almost Famous Women: Stories

“I’m giving them all of me. Take it or leave it, baby.”

No one was going to leave it and Tiny knew as much, Ruby thinks. Sure the band is hot right now, but it’s Tiny that gets the people on their feet. When Anna Mae’s pretty ballads are done and Tiny gets up there all fat and loud with her horn, people go crazy.

Ruby hears footsteps behind her. Finally , she thinks, smiling as she catches Tiny’s eyes in the rearview mirror. This is the high point of every long night. Tiny in her cheetah-print silk pajamas and wrapped hair wandering to the front of the bus, two hundred and thirty pounds but quiet as a panther when she wants to be.

Tiny crouches over her shoulder and whispers in her ear. “You and me, baby. We’re going to break off from these uptight girls and do our own thing. Vegas for a while. The seediest clubs in Brooklyn. Just bide our time and then we’ll jump.”

“Yeah,” Ruby says, heart beating fast. “I’d like that.” Ruby knows Tiny is all talk, all hustle, keeping her options open, but God, it feels good to think about having her to herself, living a little lighter, a little faster. Managing themselves, their time, their songs.

Tiny squeezes Ruby’s shoulder. The tips of her fingers rest on Ruby’s skin, but only for a few seconds; she’s gone again. Rae Lee and the girls know about Tiny and Ruby, but they don’t want to see it. They know but they don’t know .

It was no small thing, driving that bus. It was hard on her nerves. Even tonight, even when the bus can’t exceed the speed limit, Ruby waits for the blue lights in the window. Maybe someone will wake up soon and keep her company. Or maybe there will be more hours like this, alone, her hands on the wheel.

Ruby pulls the bus into a quiet-looking Gulf station around six in the morning in a little town called Dunn. The station is small but rambling, as if it used to be a house and has been added on to and forgotten throughout the years. The windows are dirty and there are signs for dry goods, notions, and oil changes. A few crows caw from the red tin roof, and cicadas are going in the dense brush surrounding the place.

“Dunn ain’t nothing but sticks and dip,” Tiny mutters, surveying the scene as she exits the bus onto the gravel lot. “Guess y’all gon’ have to buy my sandwiches.”

Ruby always stops places where you can’t buy much, because it’s better for Tiny’s business. Tiny doesn’t have to ask.

Sixteen girls plus Rae Lee and Ruby file out of the bus, most of them in sleeveless cotton shifts, hopelessly wrinkled until they find a place to iron. While the girls brush their teeth in the woods and stretch their legs, Ruby sets out seventeen folding chairs, then a card table with bread, jam, and instant coffee. She works fast, swigging black coffee between tasks.

“Get your damn shoes on,” Rae Lee tells Johnnie, the pianist. She’s last to get off the bus, and her eyes are sleepier than usual. She coughs into her hand. Johnnie, like half of the girls, comes from the Piney Woods School, a place for colored orphans. Right off the Mississippi farm, they’d all learned to play on banged-up instruments. Some of them had been on the road since they were sixteen. They didn’t know any different, only that life on the bus was better than what they’d been trained for, which was pretty much cleaning house and sewing.

“Nobody’s watching,” Tiny says, the only one brave enough to talk back to Rae Lee. “There’s no audience here.” But Johnnie has already run back onto the bus for her shoes and reemerges, still bleary-eyed. Ruby hands her coffee in a Styrofoam cup, and Johnnie takes a sip, wincing.

She looks sick, Ruby thinks. Please be sick. God forgive me for these thoughts, but I want to get up on that stage and play.

Johnnie sneezes and wipes her nose on her elbow.

“Johnnie Mae, are you able to play tonight?” Rae Lee asks. “Ruby can stand in.”

“Johnnie’s fine,” Tiny snaps. “Let her be.”

Ruby turns away, then boards the bus. She stands next to the driver’s seat, one hand on the pockmarked leather, heart pounding. Why did Tiny’s words feel like a betrayal? She’s just standing up for Johnnie, Ruby thinks, opening her eyes wide then blinking to rid them of the tears threatening to fall.

You’re not a crying woman, she tells herself, just as her own mother used to. You’re a patient woman. Hardworking. So get out there and work.

That afternoon they arrive in Kinston, Ruby steering the bus to a spot behind the armory. The girls are already in their dresses and jackets, hair curled, their faces made up for the Tobacco Festival. The brass instruments are shined and the sheet music is organized. Anna Mae sits away from the fray in her white column gown, trying to stay clean. Her eyes are closed, but Ruby can see her lips moving, practicing her set. Further back Tiny is running through finger exercises, her trumpet silent, her fingers arched and limber.

“We’re going to start with ‘Jump Children,’ ” Rae Lee is saying at the front of the bus, clipboard in hand. “And if anyone gets to asking you about what race you are, you just smile and pretend you can’t hear a word, understand?”

As the girls file out of the bus, Ruby bringing up the rear, she can smell barbecue, hear the twangy vocals coming from the festival’s center stage. A line of food carts and tobacco vendors flanks the railroad tracks. Men in coveralls stand over amber-colored bales of tobacco, auctioneers fast-talking their way into sales.

God, I’m tired, she thinks. Just a two-hour nap and another long night ahead.

A crowd is gathering on Main Street for the parade, bunched in front of the old Paramount Theater, children on shoulders. A blue balloon goes free from a child’s loose fingers, lifting up and further up still, into the warm air.

There’s a bandstand waiting for the Sweethearts, a series of white music stands and boxes, and they know how to make it work; they can make anything work. They file in and tune up. To Ruby this is a painful wheeze of a sound, a breathing in before you can breathe out. The cymbals shake. Vi and Roz run the scales on the sax. Anna Mae gives the cue and turns to the crowd with her soprano:

When you’re feelin’ low and you don’t know what to do…

Soon a truck creeps slowly toward the stage with a white float hitched to the back. Ruby cranes her neck to see a young white girl in a sparkling white bathing suit. She has a crown on her head, long brown hair cascading down her shoulders, and she’s waving, one arm around a large white plastic deer. The ribbon around her neck reads: “Miss Tobacco Queen, 1944.” She’s surrounded by girls in high heels perched on top of tobacco bales, waving brown, crinkled leaves like handkerchiefs.

We’re too good for this, Ruby thinks. Too good.

“Little white girl with a plastic deer,” Tiny says, leaning into the mic after the song is finished. “How about that. A round of applause for that pretty girl and her deer.”

Ruby takes a sharp breath. Did anyone notice Tiny’s disdain?

“Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man.” “Sweet Georgia Brown.” “Lady Be Good.” Soon the set is finished, the sun has faded, and the girls are whisked away for drinks at a fancy house down the road. There’s a white man in a nice suit talking to Rae Lee. “Bring your instruments!” he says, grinning.

“Can’t just visit,” Tiny mutters. “Gotta work for you, huh?”

Ruby looks at Johnnie’s face, then Pauline’s. The girls are tired, but Rae Lee’s answer is always the same. Yes.