Blues for an Alabama Sky

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. 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. 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.

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. 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.