Ten Cents a Dance Read online

  "I know someplace," I said.

  "You?" Peggy laughed. "Since when?" But I was already digging through my coat pocket. Where was that flyer Ozzie had given me? Had I thrown it out? I'd meant to . . . a folded bit of paper tumbled past my fingertips. I grabbed it, flattened it open on my knee. Manny took it from me and tilted it toward the window, trying to catch the light of streetlamps as we cruised down Western Avenue. "Lily's," he read. "Jump and jive . . ."

  Alonso glanced across me at Manny. I felt Manny shrug. He peered at the flyer and read the address to the cabbie, who snorted and changed direction.

  "You know that's in Bronzeville," Peggy whispered to me. I didn't answer. Bronzeville was the Negro neighborhood, east of the Yards, between us and Lake Michigan. I'd never been there. Ma once said she'd skin us alive if she found us within a mile of it.

  I didn't glimpse much of it that night. Outside, it was black as the inside of a coal bin, sleeting and howling with wind, that's all I saw, and you can bet we didn't stand around gawking. Me and Peggy jumped out of the cab and ran down the outside stairs to the basement entry, snatching at the iron rail to keep from slipping, our pocketbooks held over our heads. We found ourselves in a tiny front room with unpainted wood walls and a gray-haired Negro man sitting on a stool behind a cash register. To our right was an even tinier checkroom; to our left, a heavy velvet curtain. From behind the curtain came the stomp of drums, a hail of beats too fast to sort out, and over them, the scream and soar of a trumpet. Kicking my heart into high gear, thrumming down to my feet. I forgot the ache.

  "Swell joint, kid." Peggy shook the sleet off her pocketbook. Glanced around at the bare walls. "Good thing I've had my tetanus shot."

  I was already shimmying out of my coat and hat and handing them to the hatcheck girl. Alonso paid our admission, and then, Manny behind me, I stepped through the curtain into a blast of trombone. The entire club was maybe half the size of the Starlight's dance floor. Dimmer, and warm, stale with cigarettes, perfume, beer. A dozen or so little square tables, about half of them full. Mostly Negroes, a few whites, their foreheads and cheeks shining in the light of tiny yellow-shaded lamps, shining coffee-and-milk, shining pink, shining mahogany-wood brown.

  Of course, I saw Negroes all the time, on the streetcar and the el, and when I was at the packinghouse I'd even worked with one, Evelyn, who cleaned the floors. But I'd never been in a place that was mostly Negro. I'd certainly never seen Negro and white sitting together. Dancing together. Holding hands. I stood frozen, unsure what to do.

  Someone touched my elbow. I jumped, and looked up to see Manny grinning. He nodded at the band, crammed on a platform barely raised above the floor, at the tables, at the three couples dancing.

  "Great!" he shouted over the music. "This is great!"

  I grabbed Peggy's arm and put my mouth up to her ear. "What kind of place is this?"

  "You're the one who brought us here, don't you know? This is a black and tan. You think a regular joint would let us in, with them?" She tipped her head toward the men. Alonso caught her eye, and she smiled at him. "Let go of my dress," she said to me. "You're wrinkling it."

  A woman slipped past a knot of people toward us. "Welcome to Lily's," she said. She was tiny, and Ozzie was tall, but I could see the resemblance: wide-apart eyes, curved cheeks. Hers rounder than his but ending in the same strong chin. She was shorter than me but bigger hipped, her black hair rolled into an elegant updo.

  "We're from the Starlight Dance Academy," I said. I had to raise my voice over the music. "Ozzie told us about this place!"

  She nodded and waved us to follow her. She slipped between tables and I had to scoot to keep up, sure I was going to trip over someone's foot or my own. She put us at a table off to the side, just a few feet from the band and the couples jitterbugging on a bare patch of floor.

  I felt like I had eyes all over my skin, taking in everything. The blue tablecloths and battered tin ashtrays. The rippling waves of the men's hair, combed straight back and gleaming. The men in zoot suits—I didn't know the name for them, I asked Manny, later—sharkskin gray, kelly green, royal blue, each with broad shoulders and nipped-in waists, coats and silver watch chains hanging almost to their baggy knees.

  A trumpet blare caught my ear, a ratta-tat-tat solo so catchy my feet started jitterbugging under the table. It was Ozzie, all right, only an Ozzie so different from the trumpeter at the dance hall I hardly recognized him. Instead of a tuxedo, he wore a checked cotton shirt and a regular tie, and his jacket was unbuttoned. He wasn't bored now. He leaned back like a tree in a gale, his trumpet aimed someplace far gone from here, his cheeks puffed out and eyes squeezed shut and the sweat pouring down. Did he do this every night—play six hours at the Starlight, then come straight here?

  Ozzie poured on the gas and so did the dancers. I thought I knew how to Lindy Hop—but I didn't, not like this. One girl threw her arm high in the air, her other hand gripping the man's hard, and they twisted low to the floor, knees wide, her body one long curve from fingers to hips, both of them light and lively on the balls of their feet. Kicking out to the side, the girl's Cuban heel flashing an inch from our table. Peggy jerked backward.

  Ozzie lowered his trumpet, his solo done. People clapped and shouted. Alonso whistled.

  "Dance?" Manny shouted in my ear. I grabbed his hand and leaped to my feet. I didn't care if he was Filipino or Chinese or Negro or Polish. I didn't care that I didn't know how to dance like this. I could hoof it well enough, the beat was fast and wild and I couldn't stay sitting.

  Manny danced a hundred times better than Stan Dudek, a thousand times better than Art. He twirled and finger-popped, and we twisted and swung, my skirt flaring wide. After a while we staggered back to the table, and I found a drink at my seat. Coca-Cola and some kind of liquor, harsh under the sweetness. I didn't care; I was thirsty. I drank it down and we headed out to the floor again. A tall, thin Negro girl had stepped up onstage. She wore a pretty red dress that showed a scatter of freckles, big as raindrops, across her chest. She didn't look any older than Ozzie, no older than me. She carried herself like she wasn't sure where to put her hands or what to do with her shoulders, and for a second I thought she'd wandered up there by mistake. But the people at the tables whistled and called Sing it, Ophelia, and she did. There was no microphone, but she had the pipes to carry the whole room, a throaty scat and wail and, I tell you, my feet flew and Manny was right there, jump and turn and swing, his hand tight on mine. I glanced up at the bandstand and saw Ozzie watching her. He'd been so wrapped up in the music all night, I didn't think he'd noticed anything past the end of his trumpet. He sure hadn't noticed me. But he saw Ophelia, all right, the look on his face like the music itself had put on a dress and come up to him and said hello. But she didn't toss so much as a glance his way.

  After a while, Ophelia took a break. Manny and Alonso lit up cigarettes at the table. I followed Peggy to the ladies' room. My legs shook, my dress stuck to my back, my hair felt five feet wide and a yard high. I didn't care. My feet hurt, but I didn't care about that, either. Let them be sore tomorrow, just please, keep them hopping tonight.

  The ladies' room had only one stall and one mirror, although the mirror was a good size and had Hollywood lights over it. That'd be Lily's touch. A man wouldn't know about girls trying to fix their faces in shadows. Not that those lights did me any good. I tapped shoulders and said, "Excuse me," and these Negro girls said, "Yes, ma'am, hang on just a sec," and went right on dabbing their faces. Except that they were colored, it was just like the Starlight during a break: too many girls and not enough mirror, and every girl out for herself.

  Peggy stood by the wall, holding her compact high, to catch the light. I did the same.

  "I have to hand it to you," Peggy said. "Alonso said this is just what the doctor ordered. No big fancy floor show, just a band that can really cook."

  I imagined coming here with Paulie. Imagined him saying, What great music, what a great place. You're so
mething else, Ruby. I wondered if I'd ever have the chance.

  We stayed over an hour. By the time we left, the weather had let up, a little. Alonso and Manny went out first to get a cab. When Peggy and I followed, a white girl was standing next to them, talking. She was blond—a dye job, even under the streetlamp you could tell, it was too all-over yellow—and so much rouge her face looked like a painted doll's. I didn't remember seeing her in the club. Manny looked embarrassed. Alonso turned his back to her.

  Peggy bumped me hard with her shoulder. "For Pete's sake, Ruby, it's freezing" I ducked past the woman into the cab. Through the window, I glimpsed her turn on her heel and stride away. Then Manny slid onto the seat next to me, and we were moving. "Who was that?" I asked. Nobody answered. Alonso told the cabbie to drop them off at their flat, then take us home.

  "What gentlemen," Peggy said as we waved to the boys through the cab window, after letting them off. "But then, Pinoys always are. Do you want the cab to drop you first, or me?"

  "You're closer," I said. It didn't matter where we were; I always said Peggy was closer. I didn't want her to know I was from the Back of the Yards. I didn't want her to smell the packinghouses and the stockyards, that stench of carcass and manure and smoke. The smell of work, the Yards called it. I was used to it, but I'd ridden the streetcar with plenty of people who weren't. I didn't care to see their reaction on Peggy's face.

  "I've never had so much fun in my life," I said. "Wasn't the music amazing?"

  Peggy stretched, then collapsed into the corner of the seat. "We hear nothing but jazz all night, every night," she said, yawning. "What's amazing about more of it?"

  "But this, it was . . . " Different, I was going to say. Exciting. They hadn't just played popular stuff from the radio; half the songs I'd never heard before. I tried to explain, but Peggy didn't care. I took off a shoe and pressed my fingertips deep along my instep, massaging the ache. How could anyone hear those glorious horns, the belting voice of the tall, freckled singer, and not tell the difference between that and the stuff they dished up at the Starlight?

  Ozzie sure knew the difference. Somebody who could play like that, I wondered why he bothered with the Starlight at all.

  "Are all the black and tans like Lily's?" I said.

  I meant the music, but Peggy said, "No, thank God. The ones I've been to are all fancier than that dump. The Hoot Owl, for instance. You'll go there, if you keep going out with Pinoys. They won't let them in the regular clubs, you know, so you don't have much choice." She yawned again. "I think you've got yourself another fish, with that Manny. He likes you."

  "Where do Filipinos come from?" I said sleepily. "I never thought to wonder before."

  The cab pulled up in front of Peggy's hotel. She wrapped her hand around the door handle. Then she ducked her head down, close to her shoulder, as if she were talking to the floor.

  "They're called the Philippine Islands," she said. "Tiny. Compared to here." Her eyes met mine then; they had an odd look, almost as if she was angry, but her voice was as light and casual as ever. She yanked open the cab door. "You remember those taxi dancers Nora talked about, who married flips?"

  My very first night at the Starlight. "Yeah, I remember."

  Peggy stepped out of the cab. "I'm one of them," she said, and slammed the door shut behind her.

  NINE

  I didn't even wait for Peggy to get her coat off, the next night at the Starlight. "You're married?" I said.

  "Hush!" Peggy said. She glanced around at the hubbub in the Ladies', then jerked open her locker. "I knew I should've kept my big mouth shut. Just do me a favor and keep it quiet, all right?"

  "But who is he? When did—"

  Peggy leaned down and clapped a cool hand over my mouth. Her skin smelled faintly of lemon. "Look, I was feeling nostalgic and I let it slip. Okay? Blame the rum and Cokes. That part of my life is over and done with, and it's a brand stinking new day. But if these witches find out, I'll never hear the end of it, and you know that's a fact." I nodded. She took her hand away.

  It was a Sunday night. Slow, only half the usual number of customers. I couldn't help but watch Peggy. She was only a few years older than me—not that that mattered, plenty of girls got hitched by eighteen. Ma had been only sixteen when she got married. But to a Filipino! How did that happen? And what on earth did over and done with mean? That her husband had died? That they'd gotten divorced? Surely not—nobody but movie actresses ever got divorced. No, she must be a widow. Maybe that was why she didn't want anybody to know; she didn't want to be reminded of her grief. I watched her dance past with a skinny fellow whose ears stuck out like flags, telling him a joke, laughing so hard she could barely talk. That's what the customers liked about Peggy, how peppy and upbeat she was.

  Not like any widow I'd ever met.

  By closing, at two o'clock, neither of us had snagged a fish. I finished scrubbing my face at the sink—when I didn't have an after-hours date, I liked the warm water at the Starlight a lot better than the freezing tap at home—and padded in my stocking feet back to the lockers.

  "Want to split a cab?" Peggy asked.

  "Sure," I said.

  As soon as we got in the cab, I scootched around to face her. She groaned and laid her head in her hand. "You're not going to leave it alone, are you?" she said.

  "I didn't say a word all night. Not one syllable."

  "I don't suppose you can keep it that way."

  I leaned toward her, my chin cupped in my hands.

  She sighed. Glanced up at the ceiling of the cab, as if it might have an escape hatch. Then she said to the cabbie, "We've changed our minds. Drop us at Bennie's on Jackson."

  Bennie's was an all-night diner. I ordered a hot dog and a cola, Peggy a piece of apple pie and a coffee. "One bun pup, one Eve with a lid on!" the waitress bawled to the cook.

  Peggy had met her husband a year ago, at another taxi-dance hall near the Loop. They'd dated for six weeks, then got married.

  "Talk about head over heels," she said. "From the first time I saw him, I was a goner. He could've asked me to live in sin in an igloo in Alaska, and I'd have done it."

  Her husband, Vidal, had come to America for college. "That's why most of them are here," she said. "But then the law changed, so if they leave the States, they can't get back in. The problem is, there's no Filipinas here to marry. So a lot of them marry American girls, instead."

  Four months after their wedding, Vidal found out his mother was dying. She wanted him to come home, and he went. End of story, Peggy said. She sliced the edge of her fork through her apple pie.

  "But you . . . how come you didn't go with him?" I asked. "If a man I loved . . . I mean, it wouldn't matter where he went, so long as we could be together!"

  Peggy took a sip of coffee, wiped her mouth. "He never told his family about me." Her voice light and dry, as if she were talking about a pair of shoes. "His mother warned him, see. About us American girls." She arched her fingers like claws, bared her crooked tooth in a Dracula grimace. Then shrugged and picked up her fork.

  "But he can come back now, can't he? I mean, he's married to you; they can't keep him out, can they? Or, or you can go there. Now that his mother's . . ."

  "He won't come back," Peggy said. "He got married. Again. To a nice Filipina girl his mother approved of. For all I know, Vidal Jr. might be on the way right now." She folded her napkin and tossed it down by her empty plate. "Like I said. End of story. So what's yours?"

  "My what?"

  "Your story. Every taxi dancer has a story. I spilled mine, now it's your turn."

  My hot dog was cold in my hands. I put it down. "Are you still in love with him?"

  "Does it matter? Look, if he'd stayed, I'd have divorced him. He wanted me to become a Catholic and he wouldn't pick up his socks."

  How could she sit there and talk like it was nothing more than a story in one of Angie's magazines? At least those had happy endings. I tore off a piece of bun, rolled it between my fingers.
"What about your family?" I asked. "What did your mother say when she found out?"

  She sat back in her chair, her coffee cup in both hands. Looked at the blackness of the window. Outside, or at her reflection, I couldn't tell.

  "The last thing my mother said to me was, 'Don't come home. It'll kill your father.' " Peggy glanced at me. Shrugged again, a quick lift of one shoulder. "I told you," she said. "Every taxi dancer has a story."

  . . .

  Manny became one of my fish. So did Tom. Between them, and a few others here and there, I started picking up three, sometimes four dates a week. Pretty soon, I got to know every chop suey joint and after-hours club for ten blocks around the Starlight, and most of the black and tans, too. Maybe Peggy thought I didn't fool Del, claiming to be eighteen, but I fooled every nightclub I ever walked into. Or maybe they didn't care. After my first week at the clubs, I never thought about it.

  If my date was a white fellow looking for a little adventure, then I'd steer him to Lily's. White fellows always seemed to think the black and tans were dangerous, and they especially liked Lily's because it was so cramped, the bandstand practically on top of the customers. Authentic, they said, whatever that meant. I just liked it because nobody played fast, hot, finger-popping-foot-stomping swing the way Ozzie and the band did.

  Lucky for me, Manny was as wild for Lily's as I was. I liked Manny. He was fun, and he could tear up a dance floor like nobody's business. Plus, he was the only college boy I'd ever met. Had his degree, too. But nobody would hire a Pinoy architect, he told me, so he'd gone to work for Pullman as a railroad porter. Dressed up in a white jacket, showing passengers their compartments, fetching toothbrushes. He liked me because I laughed at his jokes and, in the cab on the way home, I didn't mind a kiss or two. The first time he kissed me, I was shocked. Not by how strange it was, but how ordinary. It got so where, except for the fact that we couldn't go to the regular clubs, I almost forgot he was a Pinoy.

  Was that how it'd been for Peggy? If, once you got to know a fellow, you didn't think of him as foreign anymore? He was just Vidal, who left his socks on the floor. Head over heels for him, she'd said. Sometimes I wondered if Alonso reminded her of him. They seemed to be getting awfully close, and I'd noticed her studying him, almost, with an odd look on her face, like she was trying to remember something she was afraid of forgetting.