Two very pale girls wore bathing suits. The brunette wore a modest, almost dowdy suit. It wasn’t a color photo: the blond girl’s hair looked white in its pageboy style. The halter of her suit’s bosom was shirred, and the bottom exposed lots of thigh.
“Mother complained so much about that suit, but I told her, ‘It’s the new style, and I’m going to live until I get married. Really live!’ I’m glad I did. The war cut into our fun, and I went gray so early, right after Lawrence was born. You can’t wear gray hair past your chin. It looks unkempt. Don’t you think so?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Ailey, how many times have I told you that ‘ma’am’ is servant talk and we are not servants? At least we are not on my side of the family.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I wish your mother wouldn’t take you down to that backwoods metropolis every summer. It’s ruining you. Here’s the cottage on Oak Bluffs. It’s getting difficult to travel now, but do you know why I still go, Ailey?
“No, ma—no, Nana.”
“I go because there are Negroes like me there, people with whom I feel comfortable. We are accomplished, we are quiet, and we never make trouble. If you adhere to those rules, you will have peace with others.”
Then, Miss Delores would knock and bring in a tray, balanced on her right arm. This was the woman my mother forbade me ever to call a “maid.” I wasn’t allowed to address her by her first name without a handle attached. It didn’t matter that she cleaned Nana’s kitchen and bathrooms. That she cooked the roasted chicken that she then cooled and placed on the tray, alongside water crackers, crudités, and thinly sliced cheeses, and walked the tray up the stairs to serve my grandmother and me. Miss Delores had babysat me as a toddler, my mother told me. I needed to give her some respect.
When Nana and I finished eating, I wouldn’t press the servants’ button that had been installed in the corner of the anteroom long before I was born. I’d take the tray down while Nana changed into her silk pajamas. When I returned, she would turn on the television and smoke a cigarette fitted into a jade holder. I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone she smoked, especially my parents. I would sit on the love seat at the foot of her bed, but it was hard to concentrate on the movie. When my grandmother talked, she expected me to turn and look at her.
On the television screen, Stormy Weather. Lena Horne sang next to a greasy-headed man playing the piano, an outrageous, feathered cap on her head. Now there was dancing, and Miss Horne shimmied in the middle of adoring men. Her voice was mediocre, but her presence carried the scene.
“Isn’t Lena Horne beautiful? There was a girl I went to school with who was even prettier than that. But it wasn’t Toomer when I went. It was the City Preparatory School for Negroes. Goodness, I can’t even remember that girl’s name. What was her name?” My grandmother took a puff of her cigarette and blew it out. “But I remember her face like it was yesterday. I was so jealous of that girl.”
“You, Nana?”
“Every woman has her insecurities, Ailey, especially if she doesn’t know a man’s heart.” She pulled on her cigarette. “God, I despise Bill Robinson! For the life of me, I don’t know why they cast him in this movie! He looks like an ugly monkey.” Puff. Puff. “Ailey, do you want to hear a secret?”
“Sure, Nana.”
“I first saw Stormy Weather over at the theater on Sixth Street, but I didn’t sit in the balcony. What do you think about that?”
“Um . . . okay.”
“Ailey, it was against the law back then. The theater on Twenty-First Street was for Negroes, so we could sit wherever we wanted. But the one on Sixth Street was segregated. Only whites could sit on the first level. If you were Negro, you had to sit up in the balcony. I could have been arrested.”
“Weren’t you scared, Nana?”
“Of what? Nobody knew. I’d leave your father at home with the housekeeper and pass for white all the time. I had plenty fun in those days, and your grandfather never knew a thing about it.” She winked. “Oh, here’s the best part! Watch.”
On TV, Lena performed her legendary song, and my grandmother sang along.
*
To me, Cecily Rester was as beautiful as Lena Horne, and when she began to pay me attention at school, I knew this was my chance. Not only for non-kin female companionship, but to be popular. I felt the euphoria of power, but also fear. In just a few weeks I’d seen Cecily turn ugly on one of the lunchtime crew. I didn’t want to be the flower withering beneath her gorgeous sun.