“No, baby, you sure don’t,” Ida said, “not unless you’re really willing to ask yourself how you’d have made it, if they’d dumped on you what they dumped on Rufus. And you can’t ask yourself that question because there’s no way in the world for you to know what Rufus went through, not in this world, not as long as you’re white.” She smiled. It was the saddest smile Cass had ever seen. “That’s right, baby. That’s where it’s at.”
The cab stopped in front of Small’s.
“Here we go,” said Ida, jauntily, seeming, in an instant, to drag all of herself up from the depths, as though she were about to walk that mile from the wings to the stage. She glanced quickly at the meter, then opened her handbag.
“Let me,” said Cass. “It’s just about the only thing that a poor white woman can still do.”
Ida looked at her, and smiled. “Now, don’t you be like that,” she said, “because you can suffer, and you’ve got some suffering to do, believe me.” Cass handed the driver a bill. “You stand to lose everything — your home, your husband, even your children.”
Cass sat very still, waiting for her change. She looked like a defiant little girl.
“I’ll never give up my children,” she said.
“They could be taken from you.”
“Yes. It could happen. But it won’t.”
She tipped the driver, and they got out of the cab.
“It happened,” said Ida, mildly, “to my ancestors every day.”
“Maybe,” said Cass, with a sudden flash of anger, and very close to tears, “it happened to all of us! Why was my husband ashamed to speak Polish all the years that he was growing up? — and look at him now, he doesn’t know who he is. Maybe we’re worse off than you.”
“Oh,” said Ida, “you are. There’s no maybe about that.”
“Then have a little mercy.”
“You’re asking a lot.”
The men on the sidewalk looked at them with a kind of merciless calculation, deciding that they were certainly unattainable, that their studs or their johns were waiting inside; and, anyway, three white policemen, walking abreast, came up the Avenue. Cass felt, suddenly, exposed, and in danger, and wished she had not come. She thought of herself, later, alone, looking for a taxi; but she did not dare say anything to Ida. Ida opened the doors, and they walked in.
“We’re really not dressed for this place,” Cass whispered.
“It doesn’t matter,” Ida said. She stared imperiously over the heads of the people at the bar, into the farther room, where the bandstand seemed to be, and the raised dance floor. And her arrogance produced, out of the smoke and confusion, a heavy, dark man who approached them with raised eyebrows.
“We’re with Mr. Ellis’s party,” said Ida. “Will you lead us to him, please?”
He seemed checked; seemed, indeed almost to bow. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Please follow me.” Ida moved back slightly, to allow Cass to go before her, giving her the briefest of winks as she did so. Cass felt overcome with admiration and with rage, and at the same time she wanted to laugh. They walked, or, rather, marched through the bar, two lone and superbly improbable women, whose respectability had been, if not precisely defined, placed beyond the gates of common speculation. The place was crowded, but at a large table which gave the impression, somehow, of taking up more than its share of space, sat Steve Ellis, with two couples, one black and one white.
He rose, and the waiter vanished.
“I’m delighted to see you again, Mrs. Silenski,” he said, smiling, holding out that regal hand. “Each time I see Richard, I beg to be remembered to you — but has he ever given you any of my messages? Of course not.”
“Of course not,” Cass said, laughing. She felt, suddenly, unaccountably, extremely lighthearted. “Richard simply has no memory at all. But I kept imagining that you would come back to see us, and you never have.”
“Oh, but I will. You’ll be seeing much more of me, dear lady, than you have the courage to imagine.” He turned to the table. “Let me introduce you all.” He gestured toward the dark couple. “Here are Mr. and Mrs. Barry — Mrs. Silenski.” He bowed ironically in Ida’s direction. “Miss Scott.” Ida responded to this bow with an ironical half-curtsey.
Mr. Barry rose and shook their hands. He wore a small mustache over narrow lips; and he smiled a tentative smile which did not quite mask his patient wonder as to who they were. His wife looked like a retired showgirl. She glittered and gleamed, and she was one of those women who always seem to be dying to get home and take off their cruel and intricate and invisible lacings. Her red lower lip swooped or buckled down over her chin when she smiled, which was always. The other couple were named Nash. The male was red-faced, gray-haired, heavy, with a large cigar and a self-satisfied laugh; he was much older than his wife, who was pale, blonde and thin, and wore bangs. Ida and Cass were distributed around the table, Ida next to Ellis, Cass next to Mrs. Barry. They ordered drinks.
“Miss Scott,” said Ellis, “spends a vast amount of her time pretending to be a waitress. Don’t ever go anywhere near the joint she works in — I won’t even tell you where it is — she’s the worst. As a waitress. But she’s a great singer. You’re going to be hearing a lot from Miss Ida Scott.” And he grabbed her hand and patted it hard for a moment, held it for a moment. “We might be able to persuade those boys on the stand to let her sing a couple of numbers for us.”
“Oh, please. I didn’t come dressed for anything. Cass picked me up at work, and we just came on as we were.”
Ellis looked around the table. “Does anyone object to the way Miss Scott is dressed?”
“My God, no,” said Mrs. Barry, swooping and buckling and perspiring and breathing hard, “she’s perfectly charming.”
“If a man’s word means anything,” said Mr. Nash, “I couldn’t care less what Miss Scott took it into her beautiful head to wear. There are women who look well in — well, I guess I better not say that in front of my wife,” and his heavy, merry laugh rang out, almost drowning the music for a few seconds.
His wife did not, however, seem to be easily amused.
“Anyway,” said Ida, “they’ve got a vocalist, and she won’t like it. If I was the vocalist, I wouldn’t like it.”
“Well. We’ll see.” And he took her hand again.
“I’d much rather not.”
“We’ll see. Okay?”
“All right,” said Ida, and took her hand away, “we’ll see.”
The waiter came and set their drinks before them. Cass looked about her. The band was out, the stage was empty; but on the dance floor a few couples were dancing to the juke box. She watched one large, ginger-colored boy dancing with a tall, much darker girl. They danced with a concentration at once effortless and tremendous, sometimes very close to one another, sometimes swinging far apart, but always joined, each body making way for, responding to, and commenting on the other. Their faces were impassive. Only the eyes, from time to time, flashed a signal or acknowledged an unexpected nuance. It all seemed so effortless, so simple; they followed the music, which also seemed to follow them; and yet Cass knew that she would never be able to dance that way; never. Never? She watched the girl; then she watched the boy. Part of their ease came from the fact that it was the boy who led indisputably — and the girl who followed; but it also came, more profoundly, from the fact that the girl was, in no sense, appalled by the boy and did not for an instant hesitate to answer his rudest erotic quiver with her own. It all seemed so effortless, so simple, and yet, when one considered whence it came, it began to be clear that it was not at all simple: on the contrary, it was difficult and delicate, dangerous and deep. And she, Cass, who watched them with such envy (for first she watched the girl, then she watched the boy) began to feel uneasy; but they, oddly, on the gleaming floor, under the light, were at ease. In what sense, and for what reason, and why would it be forever impossible for her to dance as they did?