Blues for an Alabama Sky

GUY. There are still plenty of clubs in Harlem looking for a fine woman who can sing.

ANGEL. I can’t sing anymore. My heart is broken.

GUY. You can sing the blues.

ANGEL. Everybody in Harlem is singing the blues.

GUY. Paris has never seen costumes like the ones I’m designing for La Bakaire!

DELIA. Do you ever think you won’t go?

GUY. I’m going. Besides I have no choice. The matter is now officially out of my hands. Angel wasn’t the only one who got fired last evening. […] Well, I couldn’t hardly stand by and let Bobby toss her bodily out on the street, could I?

DELIA. What are you going to do?

GUY. I’m going to drive Josephine crazy until she sends for me. […]

DELIA. I’ve got a little money saved if you need anything.

GUY. Aren’t you sweet?

He kisses her.

I’m fine for now. […] Do me a favor?

DELIA. Sure.

GUY. Don’t tell Angel. I don’t want her to panic. I can take care of both of us if I have to. I won’t be the first time.

GUY. Look, even in your current sorry state, you’re better off than most of the Negroes in Harlem. You’ve got a place to stay and I’m not gonna let you starve to death. We’ll figure it out.

ANGEL. I should be figuring things out for myself.

GUY. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. […] Have I ever let you down?

ANGEL. You know you haven’t.

GUY. I know I haven’t, but I’m asking you.

A beat. He waits.

ANGEL. No, you have never let me down.

DELIA. He was wonderful! He got so worked up at the end of his sermon, he came out of the pulpit, walked straight down the middle aisle and right up Seventh Avenue. His robe was billowing out around him like wings…

GUY. That Negro ought to quit preaching and go on into full-time show business.

[…]

DELIA. I talked to him about the clinic.

GUY. You did?

DELIA: And I wasn’t even nervous. I was in line to shake his hand after service and he said he was happy to see I had decided to make Abyssinian my church home. And I said I was proud to be a part of a church that had a sense of responsibility to the masses. […] He knew what I meant! The people of Harlem.

ANGEL sings her way over to DELIA and begins dancing with her as she sings. DELIA is shy, but delighted. SAM watches them affectionately.

SAM. I didn’t realize your revolution left a space for dancing.

ANGEL (still dancing). All revolutions leave a space for dancing. They just like to pretend they don’t.

DELIA stops dancing.

DELIA (defensive). I’m not trying to make a revolution. I’m just trying to give women in Harlem the chance to plan their families.

GUY. You can’t make it real just because you want it to be.

ANGEL. Are you really going to Paris?

GUY. It’s not the same thing.

ANGEL. Why isn’t it? Because you’re some kind of genius with a dream and I’m just a colored woman out of a job?

GUY. Is that your dream? Singing for gangsters? And then what?

ANGEL. Then I’ll have to figure out something else. Isn’t that what you always tell me? ‘One step at a time.’

GUY. Okay. One step at a time. Audition. Sing your heart out and if he acts a fool, me and Sam will cut his heart out for him.

GUY. For prospects, you gotta look past 125th Street. No law says we gotta live and die in Harlem, USA, just ‘cause we happened to wind up here when we finally blew out of Savannah. […] I can look out of this very window and see us walking arm in arm down the Champs Elysées.

ANGEL. Remember how you used to take those old broke-up binoculars whenever we’d go to the beach at home? The only Negro in the world ever tried to see Paris from the coast of Georgia.

GUY. I am not! Langston said he used to… I almost forgot! He’s back! […] [T]he group is gathering at his place later for a welcome home. […] Want to go preen?

ANGEL. Can I wear your tux?

GUY. I’m wearing my tux! Why don’t you go very femme? You’ll probably be the only lady at this affair.

ANGEL. The myth of the magical Josephine. She practically lives with us but so far I haven’t seen her share of the rent money!

DELIA. Guy says he expects to hear from her by the end of the month.

ANGEL. Guy says, Guy says! He’s been sending her sketches for a year but have you seen a return cable? A letter? A postcard of the Eiffel Tower? Nothing! Nothing but that damn picture hanging up there grinning at me all day and all night! (A beat.) Guy’s a dreamer. He always was and he always will be, but I'm gonna hitch my star to somebody a little closer to home.

ANGEL. Look at you, Deal. You got bags under your eyes like an old woman. All tired and frowned up. […] Sit down here for a minute. Can I take your hair aloose?

DELIA. Angel...

ANGEL. This will only take a minute, I promise.

DELIA sits, and ANGEL begins to massage her head expertly. As ANGEL talks, we see DELIA’s body relax.

A New Orleans Voodoo woman showed me how to do this when I was a little girl back in Savannah.

DELIA. What was she doing in Savannah?

ANGEL. The Voodoo woman? What does anybody do anywhere? How does that feel?

DELIA. Wonderful.

DELIA. Maybe you should cut back on your nightlife.

SAM. That’s the one thing I should not do.

DELIA. And why is that?

SAM. Because it helps me remember that we’re not just a bunch of premature labors and gunshot wounds. In a choice between a couple of hours’ sleep and a couple of hours of Fats Waller, I’d have to let the good times roll!

DELIA: Don’t you ever stop teasing?

SAM. I don’t want to work so hard on the body I forget about the soul.

SAM (gently). I deliver babies every day to exhausted women and stone-broke men, but they never ask me about birth control. They ask me about jobs.

DELIA. What does that mean?

SAM. It means we still see our best hope in the faces of our children and it’s going to take more than some rich white women playing missionary in Harlem to convince these Negroes otherwise.

DELIA (angrily). Why can’t we take help wherever we can find it?

SAM. Because it’s more complicated than that. The Garveyites are already charging genocide and the clinic isn’t even open. […] And they’re not the only ones who feel that way. What does family planning mean to the average colored man? White women teaching colored women how to stop having children.

DELIA. A woman shouldn’t have to make a baby every time she makes love!

[LELAND] hands her the cable.

ANGEL. From Josephine?

She grabs it and reads quickly. When she is finished, she speaks sarcastically.

She says she just loves everything, of course. She can’t really commit to a job or anything, of course, but if he can just send three or four finished pieces, she’s almost certain they might be able to at least think about giving him a try.

She crumples the cable and tosses it down.

LELAND. He said it was a dream come true...

ANGEL. I’m tired of Negro dreams. All they ever do is break your heart.

ANGEL. I wish you’d be more careful.

GUY. Walking up to the corner in broad daylight?

ANGEL. Leland knows some of these guys and he said...

GUY. What guys?

ANGEL. Like the ones who...stopped you at the store.

GUY. They didn’t stop me. They offered to kick my ass.

ANGEL. You know they’ll spot you dressed like that!

GUY. Spot me? I’m not hiding! Look, I’m leaving this place as fast as I can, but until I do? I plan to walk where I please, wearing what I please, whenever I please.

GUY. I’m sewing for whatever clubs are left in Harlem and I got two weddings coming up if all else fails. We’ll make it, Angel. I promise.

ANGEL. You’re a hell of a provider, Big Daddy.

GUY. You wouldn’t dismiss it all so fast if I was a straight man offering to take you to Paris.

ANGEL. But you’re not that, are you?

SAM and Delia arrive.

[…]

GUY. Angel and I have been fighting about my effectiveness as a provider.

SAM. A provider of what?

ANGEL. Let’s talk about something else.

DELIA. Is Leland coming?

ANGEL. Any minute now.

SAM. Should I be asking about this Negro’s intentions?

GUY. Maybe you should ask him if he’s a good provider.

SAM. He seems to be an honest, hard-working man. You can’t hardly ask for more than that, can you?

LELAND. Men flirting with men?

GUY. They were homosexuals, for God’s sake. What’s wrong with you?

LELAND. Don’t put God’s name in the stuff you’re talking about! I don’t know how sophisticated New York people feel about it, but in Alabama, there’s still such a thing as abomination!

GUY (standing). Get out.

ANGEL. Guy! Don’t!

GUY. Then I think you better.

ANGEL (looking at LELAND helplessly). Will you wait for me downstairs for just a minute, honey?

LELAND. The night I found you, I went to bed early, like I always do, but I couldn’t sleep. I was just laying there, wide awake. So I got up and went out for a walk. I was missing that Alabama sky where the stars are so thick it’s bright as day. So, I looked up between the buildings and I thought I was dreaming. Didn’t even look like Harlem. Stars everywhere, twinkling at me like a promise. And then I saw you. And that was all I saw. Just you. (A beat.) Marry me, Angel. I’ll never leave you again.

ANGEL. Swear it.

LELAND. I swear it.

ANGEL. I was hoping you would come.

LELAND. You were?

ANGEL. Yes. I want your son to grow up with his father.

ANGEL. I don't want to have this baby, Sam.

A beat.

SAM. What about Leland?

ANGEL. What about him? (A beat.) I don’t know. I just know I’m going to Paris. Guy booked passage for me and we sail next Friday.

SAM. Did you tell him about the baby?

ANGEL. Of course I told him. He was surprised at first, maybe a little mad at me. He sounded like you. ‘What about Leland? What about Leland?’ What about me?

SAM. This will kill him, Angel.

ANGEL. No, it won’t! He’ll live through it just fine. And so will I. (A beat.) This is my chance to live free, Doc, and I’m taking it.

ANGEL. Listen to me, Alabama. This isn’t about you and it isn’t about all the dead mamas and all the dead babies and all the things that are supposed to move me. I’m not that kind of colored woman! I just don’t want to think about all that anymore. I’m tired of it! I’m going away. From you. From Harlem. From all those crying colored ghosts who won’t shut up and let me live my life!

LELAND. Don’t talk like that, Angel! We’ll have lots of beautiful babies. I promise.

ANGEL. I don’t want any babies. Not yours or anybody’s.

A beat.

LELAND. What do you mean?

[…]

ANGEL. Nothing.

LELAND. You’re lying.

ANGEL. You want me to lie! That’s all you ever wanted. Pretend I’m Anna. Pretend I love you. I’m through with it!

LELAND grabs her arms and turns her toward him roughly.

GUY. Harlem was supposed to be a place where Negroes could come together and really walk about, and for a red-hot minute, we did. But this isn’t the end of the world, you know. It’s just New York City.

[…]

When I first met Angel at Miss Lillie’s, she was already saving her getaway money. […] She was headed up to Harlem as fast as she could get there and she believed it so hard, I believed it, too. […] And I’d be lying there with my eyes closed, letting those old men touch me wherever they felt like it, but it didn’t matter, because in my mind, I was stomping at the Savoy! […] [W]hen she was ready to make a move, I’d be ready too. […] I met her at the train station. She was happy to see me, but she sure would have left without me.

ANGEL […] picks up the fan, walks to the open window and sits down, looking out calmly in a moment that is clearly reminiscent of the afternoon she first encountered Leland walking by her window. She has been faced with these same difficult decisions about how she will live many times and although she would have avoided this moment if she could have figured out how, she is not in a state of panic or confusion or even remorse. She is thinking, figuring out what is, and what is next. A respectable-looking MAN in a nice suit enters, walking with a sense of purpose until he sees ANGEL sitting in the window at the same moment she sees him. He keeps walking, but then slows, stops and turns back to her. She smiles, fanning herself slowly.

ANGEL. Hot enough for you?