Sing for Me Read online

  I shake my head hard. “I’m not doing any such thing.”

  Rob levels a look at me. “You are doing such a thing. Or I’m telling about those songs. Your singing.”

  My so-called singing. It’s what I do when I’m alone, or I think I’m alone, only to discover Rob sitting outside my window on the fire escape, listening, his eyes wide with astonishment and delight.

  I slam my fists against my thighs. Rob catches hold of my hands and stops me from doing it a second time.

  “Listen, Rose. Listen to me now. I’m on your side. You know that. Tonight is only for your own good.”

  “You wouldn’t tell. You promised.” My voice cracks and falters. “But promises, promises. That’s you all over, right?”

  “Come out with me and have a good time.” Rob tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear. “It’s just music, Laerke, music that’s made for you. A little good music never hurt anybody. And you know, if you’d just let ’er rip and sing what you really want to sing, your voice could . . . well, who knows what might happen! You’ve just got to believe, Laerke. You’ve just got to get past the past, your fears, your family.”

  “I Got Rhythm,” “Pennies from Heaven,” “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” Songs of the world, not of the church. Songs that are wrong. These are the songs I love, in a different way than I love “Amazing Grace” and “At the Cross,” but deeply, so deeply, as deeply as Mahalia Jackson must love singing gospel. These are the worldly songs I sing that I shouldn’t, leaving Rob wide-eyed with astonishment and delight.

  I want Rob to keep my secret. I want to hear some music. Most important (at least, this is what I tell myself), I don’t have another way home.

  I climb into the backseat and begin to change.

  TWO

  Minutes later, I’m a different girl. A girl Dad would call a tramp. A girl I’d avoid if I saw her on the street. Too pretty, I’d think. Too racy. Too rich. Too much like someone I guiltily wish I were, lying in bed in the dark with Sophy asleep beside me. And now in the dark, here I am. Here she is. That very girl in a dress that surpasses my dreams. I created her by match light. I saw her in the rearview mirror. Brown eyes accentuated by black pencil at eyebrows and lids. Cheeks rouged to shimmering pink and powdered with Snowfire. Lips lacquered until they’re be-still-my-beating-heart red. Wavy, shoulder-length hair swept up into a simple twist and secured, except for a few tendrils, with mother-of-pearl barrettes.

  I’m jittery with amazement and guilt. Putting on “face paint”—that’s what Mother calls it. It came so easily to me. I must be looking at too many magazines when I should be getting what Mother needs for Sophy at the pharmacy. God forgive me.

  “Minxy!” Rob says, God forgive him. “Course I always knew you had a special allure, Rose. Now, come on, let’s go.” He blows out the match. When I reach for my coat, he says, “Leave it.”

  Is pretty always this cold? That’s what I wonder as I emerge from the DeSoto into the wintry night air. The rough wind bites my bare throat. It flutters the butterfly sleeves, exposing my arms, and wildly whips the dress’s hem until it’s a blue froth at my bare ankles. (Rob made me take off my old stockings; he almost made me go barefoot, rather than let me wear my scuffed Mary Janes, but I put my foot down there, so to speak.) I’m shivering uncontrollably now. The wind nearly blows me back into the car.

  But Rob slips off his suit jacket and throws it over my shoulders, then grabs my hand and drags me from beneath the El tracks, across the vacant lot, down the wooden sidewalk, and round the corner to where East Thirty-Fifth Street hums with lights, traffic, and people—black people, mostly—all of them wearing coats, many of them wearing fur coats, laughing and talking as they hurry past.

  Back to the question I asked when Rob took his little detour under the El tracks. “Where are we, exactly?”

  Rob licks his lips and smiles like he’s tasted something sweet on the bitter air. “Bronzeville.”

  Well, that explains it. Bronzeville is the heart of Chicago’s black community, home to the very rich and the very poor, and to many in the middle. I’ve heard Dad speak with grudging envy of this neighborhood’s thriving businesses—the banks and beauty colleges, the department stores and movie theaters, the hospitals, and the offices of the nation’s most influential weekly newspaper, written for those who inhabit this community and others like it, the Chicago Defender, which speaks not of “colored” or “black” people but of “the Race.” At least that’s what Dad says, his voice heavy with judgment and foreboding.

  I blink into the wind. It must be close to eleven now. Once a month, Mahalia Jackson and her gospel choir do a special Saturday program that lasts late into the night, sometimes into the wee hours of the morning. I could be hearing that good gospel music right now, but instead I’m standing here. Here! Yet I’ve never been more awake in my life. Or felt more alive.

  A car passes by, and from the half-open passenger’s side window comes a sharp whistle.

  “That was directed at you, my dear,” Rob says. “Some University of Chicago snobs out slumming, I’d venture to say. At least they know a pretty girl when they see one.”

  Dad would be horrified if he knew I was being perused in such a manner. Mother, too. And Pastor Hoirus and the entire congregation of the Danish Baptist Church. And me. I pull Rob’s jacket closer around my throat, tighter across my chest, covering the far-too-low-cut neckline of this astonishing dress. I want off this street. I want inside just about anywhere. Teeth chattering, I manage to ask, “Where now?”

  Rob smiles slyly. “Guess.”

  I look around. Where could all these people be hurrying to? A picture show is letting out of the Grand Theater across the street, but the box office windows are curtained, so it’s closed now. At the end of the block, bums huddle around the warmth of a smoldering ash can. My throat tightens at the sight; just last week, Dad said we weren’t so far from that kind of life. He was in one of his moods, but I can’t shake his words from my memory. Some of the men are in tatters, but others are more nattily dressed. It’s a slippery, swift slope to poverty, so the saying goes, and as my dress and Rob’s suit prove. One swarthy white man wearing a red-and-black plaid hunting jacket and matching cap wields drumsticks. He’s rapping a beat against the side of the ash can. He’s got rhythm, that’s for sure. Another, more ragged man, a black man with thinning gray hair, is playing the harmonica. I can’t make out the melody, but something sure is setting the men’s feet tapping, keeping their blood flowing in the cold.

  I nod in their direction. “If that’s the big musical attraction, I’d say we’re a little overdressed.”

  “Not quite.” Rob takes my elbow and turns me toward a metal door. A delivery entrance—that’s what it looks like. Then I see the wooden sign across the top, the words painted there in red block letters: CALLIOPE’S.

  Rob draws me toward the door. “This is the place, right up there with the best clubs in town. The Sunset Café, the Royal Gardens, the Apex Club, and Calliope’s—people come from all over to hear music at places like this. Last time I was here, I met a man from France. Another time, a woman from Cuba. And then there was this fellow from India. You should have seen the cut of his jacket—the strangest little collar, but swellegant, I gotta say.” Rob’s voice rises with excitement. “Oh, Laerke, you’ll love it here. The musicians may not be Mahalia Jackson, but they’re their own kind of heaven-sent.”

  With that, he opens the door and pulls me inside.

  Here’s what I know about bars, clubs, dens of iniquity: nothing.

  Well, I do know this. I know that up until just four years ago, in 1933, a place like Calliope’s wouldn’t have existed. Not out in the open, anyway. Prohibition would have pushed it underground. A place like this would have only been found behind a locked door guarded by thugs with guns. Rob and I would have needed a password to get inside. We would have needed to know someone, the wrong kind of someone. We would have put our lives on the line—or, at the very least, our clean po
lice records.

  Prohibition never should have ended, that’s what Mother and Pastor Hoirus say. Teetotaling temperance. That’s what’s best for everyone. Dad remains quiet when this subject comes up, but then, Mother’s the Baptist. Dad just drops us off at the church entrance and picks us up when the service is over. And he frequently smells like he’s had a little nip of something Mother would like to prohibit in between.

  Regardless of Mother’s and Pastor’s wishes, temperance is clearly a thing of the past. That’s the first thing I realize, taking in this place. The smell! No, Dad carries the smell of liquor; this place reeks. It reeks of all that’s spilled and sticky beneath my Mary Janes. Stale beer, musky whiskey, fruity wine. And all these cigarettes, wafting around my head, and something even more foul that’s wafting . . . cigars! Stinking, hazy wreaths of smoke fill the air.

  Rob has brought me to a crowded, noisy, boozy club, and people that aren’t him are pressing up against me, pushing me this way and that, nearly knocking me off my feet. I’m stumbling now, snagging the beaten-down heels of my shoes on the hem of my beautiful dress. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe! In front of me, a woman throws back her head, laughing, and a heavily scented lock of her fiery orange hair—lilies? gardenias?—catches in my mouth. I drop my silver satin clutch. The lights spread and smear like melting butter. The woman’s hair slips from my mouth as my legs buckle. I’m going down.

  Someone grabs my arm. Rob hoists me up with one hand; with the other, he waggles my purse before my eyes.

  “Music swept you off your feet, huh?”

  “Music?” I gasp for air, sounding dull and dim-witted. I take the purse from Rob. The silver satin still looks clean. There’s that.

  “Listen, Rose!”

  All I can hear is the sound of me catching my breath. And now laughter, shouting, clinking glasses and bottles . . . I hear all this, too.

  Rob peers at me. “You look pale, even under all that makeup. Don’t worry, though. You still look pretty.”

  “I’m not worried.” This comes out faintly because it’s a lie. I try to conjure the sound of Mother’s voice: All will be well. God is with us. Instead I hear something else—a reedy piping from somewhere across the crowded room. Lilting notes, a hint of melancholy weaving sinuously through the chaos. It’s a clarinet—an instrument I’ve heard a lot on the radio at the Jewish deli where I get the dark rye bread that Dad likes best. The clarinet’s music makes me think of a wizened man, making his spry way through a difficult world, sometimes stumbling just to get a laugh—or maybe it’s the deli’s owner I’m thinking of, because Mr. Kalman is a lot like that, making his way from day to day. Mr. Kalman sometimes sways to the sound of the clarinet coming from his radio. He moves like a cobra, hypnotized by a snake charmer’s flute, swaying like I’m swaying now.

  “You hear it, don’t you?” In his excitement, Rob gives me a little shake. “I told you this music is out of this world. And the band’s not even warmed up yet. Heck, they’re not even all onstage.”

  Rob takes his jacket from my shoulders and puts it on. Runs his hands quickly through his hair, taming his curls. Settles the jacket more securely into place to cover his potbelly. Smiles his charming, impish smile, and, smoothing my butterfly sleeves into place, says, “There, now. Perfect. Listen, wait right here, okay? There’s someone I have to find. You’ll be amazed who else is here, Rose.”

  I blink. Someone I know? Someone who knows me? I reach for Rob’s sleeve, trying to hold him back. “Don’t go!”

  But he’s gone.

  Alone in the crowd, I sway with the push and pull—not so much cobra now as flotsam or jetsam. I look for the stage, but all I can see are the backs of people’s heads. But I can hear. Oh, I can hear the clarinet lilting up and down a scale. And there’s a low thrum—a bass fiddle being plucked. Two musicians, warming up. Will anyone else join them?

  “Excuse me, please.” The man’s voice is low and husky. Even Mother would have to call his tone gentlemanly, never mind that the words were spoken in a bar.

  I turn to make way for the man with nice manners, who is right here, standing so close because he has no other choice in this crowd. I meet his eyes, black and almond-shaped with long, thick lashes. I take in his tawny skin, his carefully groomed and glistening black hair.

  A black man is standing in front of me, so close I feel warmth emanating from him. His scent is warm, too. It’s a light, bright scent—from cologne, maybe, or fine French soap—that reminds me of nothing so much as sun-warmed lemons. The man must have been trying to get past me to somewhere else, but now he stands very still. As close as can be, he stands, looking into my eyes. And never mind what’s right and wrong, assumed or forbidden, he doesn’t seem the least bit concerned about the fact that I’m a white woman and he’s a black man. A handsome man. A very handsome man who also happens to be black. As close to me as can be.

  My skin prickles with some emotion I can’t put a name to. Fear. I try that on for size, but it doesn’t fit. Embarrassment. Nor that. Recognition is the word that comes to mind, though that’s not a feeling, is it? It’s an experience. I’m having an experience of recognition, standing face-to-face with this man. An experience that makes sneaking out of the apartment and setting foot in this club seem like minor experiences by comparison.

  The man looks swiftly away from me, then back again. Surprise—no, astonishment flashes across his face. Yes, it’s her. She’s still here. He recognizes me, too. He bows slightly. Hello again, he might as well be saying. He’s wearing a tuxedo, I realize, as he runs a long, dark finger under his crisp white collar. He swallows. The muscles of his throat, his Adam’s apple, rise and fall beneath his skin. Beautiful. My mouth has gone dry, my face hot. “Oh,” I say for no reason I can think of, no reason at all. Pink must be flooding my warm face. Or maybe my face is the same color red as my be-still-my-beating heart lips, as my heart, for that matter, which is thudding so hard now in my chest it’s all I can do to keep from looking down to see if this far-too-low-cut neckline is rising and falling with each beat. But his gaze holds mine. I don’t look anywhere but into his eyes.

  “My,” I say, which seems to mean nothing and everything at the same time.

  He nods, agreeing. “Yes,” he says, confirming once and for all. He leans closer yet, so that his lemon-scented warmth becomes summer’s heat. “Miss . . .?”

  How can he be so brave, so bold, so foolish, so familiar? How can I be so glad that he is all these things, and surely more?

  “Sorensen,” I say.

  “Miss Sorensen.” He nods again, his thanks this time, and his nose nearly bumps against mine. Then—impossible though it seems in this crowd—he slips easily past me. As he does, his elegant fingers graze my left wrist. Summer’s heat. His touch burns even after he disappears into the crowd. I stare after him, though there’s nothing to see but other people.

  And this is when the mixed-up nature of this place finally reveals itself to me, and I suddenly understand the how of him. There are as many black folks as white folks in this club. Some of them are sharing tables. One couple—a white man and a black woman—are sharing a drink. The man holds the thin green straw as the woman leans close to sip from it. Another couple, a black man and a white woman, test out dance steps together.

  I taste waxy lipstick, then the iron tang of blood. I’m biting my lip, and far too hard. I clench my hands instead.

  My parents have always made sure that we stayed out of colored neighborhoods. We’ll take the long way if we have to, to pass such places and their people by. On the rare occasions when Mother sees a black man approaching, she makes me cross over to the other side of the street. If Dad sees such a person, he’s likely to do the same, and then make an ugly joke at the person’s expense.

  I duck my head so swiftly that the mother-of-pearl barrettes loosen in my hair. I can set them back into place, but I can’t shake off this sudden sense of shame.

  Someone bumps into me with a grunt. Another pai
r of hands gives me a solid shove, and a man growls, “Move it or lose it, twit.” So much for good manners. So much for waiting for my cousin. So much for being inhibited by so many things, but especially, in this moment, by my shame. It’s time to get out of the heavy traffic.

  Using my silver satin purse as a small shield, I push and shove my way to a row of tall stools flanking a wall. Miraculously, a stool is empty. I carefully smooth out the back of my dress and perch on the cushioned seat. I can see the stage from here. There are the musicians, gathering beneath the spotlights, and among them—well, there he is. I’d recognize him anywhere. The man who knows my name though I don’t know his. The man whose brief touch still lingers, hot on my wrist.

  He’s a musician.

  He’s testing out the keys on an upright piano. His fingers fly up the octaves, the notes flaring like the flames on Rob’s matches. Now his fingers descend, the notes cascading like drops of water. The man’s younger than the other band members, not much older than me, probably. But he’s playing like a seasoned professional.

  There are four men total in the band. Two of them black, two of them white. That must explain the band’s name, the Chess Men, stenciled in black letters across the white face of the bass drum. A portly white bassist twirls his fiddle in a neat circle, then dips it low as he might a female dance partner, teasing laughter from the audience members flanking the stage. And the ash can drummer, the swarthy fellow in the red-and-black checkered hunting jacket (swapped now for a black tuxedo, though he still wears the red-and-black checkered cap on his head), he’s up there, too, hunkered down behind his drum kit. He flings off his cap now, and his bald head shines pinkly in the spotlights as he whisks a brush across a snare. And there’s the licorice-whip-thin clarinetist, with salt-and-pepper gray hair and skin nearly the ebony color of the instrument he’s playing.

  And there’s the man I’d recognize anywhere.

  “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”—that’s the song he’s playing. One by one, the drummer, the bassist, and the clarinetist join in. The song’s a hit this winter. I hear it all the time, wafting through other people’s open windows, and up and down store aisles. Though a cigarette will never touch my lips, still I sing this smoky song when I’m alone, or I think I’m alone, only to find Rob listening at the window. I close my eyes now, and I hear the forbidden melody clear as can be in spite of the noise all around: