Megan Bergman: Almost Famous Women: Stories

“Someone’s got to stay here and clean up,” Rae Lee says.

“Ruby has it under control,” Tiny says.

And so, as the girls follow the man in the nice suit with all the instruments they can carry, Ruby does as she always does. She takes down the drum kit, wipes it clean, loads it into the bus. She folds the stands and files away the music. One last night on the road, she thinks, and then a motel. Finally, a motel.

She isn’t old, but her bones ache and her head hurts, mostly from sleep deprivation. As she moves from the bus to the bandstand, she catches sight of a man in her peripheral vision, a man in a not-so-nice suit and a brown cap. He comes closer, and closer, until finally she wipes her hands on her pants and asks him, “Can I do something for you?”

“There’s a white girl in that band,” he says. “Ain’t there.”

Ruby shrugs. “Who knows?” she says, moving back toward the bandstand. But he grabs her arm. “ You know,” he says.

Ruby pulls away, but she doesn’t dare speak. Speaking is inviting trouble. They stand there like that at an impasse, the festival quieting down behind them, bales of tobacco being packed away, the pungent golden scent still lingering in the air.

“I don’t know where you’re from,” he says. “But we do things differently down here. We don’t mix. It ain’t allowed.”

“I understand,” Ruby says, backing away.

“We’ll make you understand,” he says. Ruby waits for more, but there isn’t any more, not tonight. She drives the bus back to the armory, folds her arms across her chest, and waits for sleep that doesn’t come.

She’s driving again, back on 95, almost always 95. Nodding off, jolting upright, pinching her face, biting her fingers to stay awake. Just another half hour and she can park in Rocky Mount. Just another half hour and she can stop having a conversation with herself.

What am I good for? she wonders.

A lot of things. I can play music by ear. But you can’t read it.

I can learn it quickly. But you can’t perfect it. If you could, you’d be on that stage, not driving this bus.

Who cares about me? Tiny does, sometimes.

Rae Lee settles into the seat behind her, yawning. “Too much champagne,” she says, touching her temples.

Ruby grits her teeth.

“Any trouble?” Rae Lee asks.

“A little,” Ruby says.

“Not the law?”

“Just another man upset that we’ve got white girls onstage. Upset about mixing.”

Rae Lee nods. “We’ll get through tonight, rest, and then next month we’ll be back at the clubs. It’s safer at the clubs. They don’t mind so much.”

“The good ones don’t,” Ruby says. She opens and closes her jaw, trying to wake up. Sweat drips down her back. She presses on.

The band is due onstage at the Cotton Ball in one hour, and Roz, the Jewish girl from up north, is a mess. She’s looking at herself in the bathroom mirror, frowning, lip quivering.

“Here,” she says, handing Tiny a compact with dark foundation in it. “I want you to put this on my face.”

“Not me,” Tiny says, walking away, holding up a hand. “I don’t want nothing to do with that business.”

“Someone,” Roz says, tears in her eyes. “Help.”

Pauline steps up and wipes a sponge through the dark makeup. “Here you go,” she says. “Just don’t get worked up now and smudge things.”

Tiny comes closer to have a look. “I know you mean well,” she says. “But you’re awfully hard to look at.”

“All the better,” Roz says, sniffling. “I don’t want anyone to notice me. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. Not tonight.”

Rae Lee, for once, doesn’t have anything to say. She watches the girls over her cat-eye glasses from the corner of the dressing room, then looks back down at the set list on the clipboard.

“You and me next year,” Tiny whispers to Ruby. “Bad as we are, on the road, no crying.”

Ruby nods her head, rocking a little on her stool as she laughs. She likes her laugh, low and throaty. It’s a jazz singer’s laugh, even if she’s not much of a singer.

“Could you put some tea on?” Rae Lee asks Ruby. “Girls, have a little tea before the set. We want to do our best, see if we can get this gig next year. It’s worth two nights at the club, if you know what I mean.”

After preparing tea, Ruby heads out in front of the band to lay down the sheet music. The ballroom is beautiful. There are white flower arrangements everywhere, white lights, white linens, white tufts of cotton, white marble. White, white, and more white.

Moments later the girls file onstage as a short man in a crisp suit hollers, “The best of the Big Band era! Right here in Rocky Mount! On your feet for the International Sweethearts of Rhythm!”

Ruby watches the girls flesh out the bandstand in their white suits, waving politely in their nicest costumes, the ones they save for the best-paying gigs. There’s thunderous applause, a sea of white faces in front of them, men with freshly combed hair, women in high heels and pearls. Mink stoles in summer. Ruby wants to be onstage and feels a part of herself go with the band. She imagines the ivory keys beneath her fingers.

Anna Mae, Hepburn-thin and elegant as ever, nods her head to the audience. She has a lush black feather in her hair, a white dress that wraps around her neck, and a brooch on her collar. “I have a question for you,” she says into the microphone. “Do you want to jump tonight?”

The audience claps their hands. Someone whistles.

“I said do you want to jump, children?”

The audience roars and the trumpets kick into gear, the drums, the bass. The sax players turn their bodies in synced-up rhythm. The horns are loud and clear. God, it’s a sort of high when they nail a song, Ruby thinks, really nail it. If only I could be part of that flow, part of that sound.

The night starts well, high energy like the best of them, but the crowd is full of hecklers, men yelling things like “Hey, sweetheart, up there on the drums,” and “brown sugar.”

Ruby feels unsettled. She can see everything registering in Tiny’s eyes. Just get through it, she thinks. Just get through it and onto the bus and everything will be fine, just fine.

“When I think of something southern…,” Tiny begins.

Ruby starts to get nervous. Has Tiny been drinking? Maybe she’s just tired. She gets tired sometimes.

“I think of corn bread, chittlins…”

Tiny isn’t the kind of person who needs to drink. Or is she?

“Hey there, black girl!” a man in a blue suit shouts, huge smile on his face. He holds his drink up to toast Tiny, sloshing small, clear drops of gin onto the floor.

“Hey, fella,” Tiny shouts, looking down and gesturing with her trumpet. “It’s not about being black. It’s not about being a girl, though I like girls. It’s about playing your goddamn music. Blowing your goddamn horn.”

“I don’t mean no harm,” he says, his face twisted into what Ruby thinks is false contrition. He ain’t sorry, she thinks.

Anna Mae is moving for the microphone, but Tiny grips it. “Sure you don’t,” she says. “Just like your brothers Klu…”

Rae Lee heads for the stage, Ruby not far behind her. Vi rises from behind the bandstand. But the man gets to Tiny first. He leaps onto the stage and goes for her, pulling her off the side of the stage, his arms underneath hers, and suddenly he is dragging her large body. Tiny’s heels make a terrible sound going across the dance floor. She’s still clutching her trumpet.