Chapter Twenty-Four #3
“Thank you, Jerry,” she said. “I mean it this time. You were right about this shindig.”
Lorenzo grinned, giddy. He snatched another drink from a tray and downed it like a shot. “And the night’s just getting started.”
“You’d really let me out of my contract?”
He coughed in surprise, mid-swig. He didn’t answer. She’d known he wouldn’t.
“If I do a screen test, they might want to sign me to a contract too,” she said.
“It’s called a loan. MGM loaned Clark to Selznick to do Gone with the Wind.”
Mazelle was the one who’d argued to him that she could be loaned out if she won a part in Cabin in the Sky, so she didn’t need an explanation.
MGM must have gotten a slice of the profits.
And she was just a nobody, but if she convinced enough studios to give her a screen test, Lorenzo might get a lucky payday. No wonder he was so giddy.
“What’s in it for you?” Mazelle asked.
Lorenzo’s eyes turned flinty. “Let me and your agent think about business, Mazelle. Do you know how ecstatic he’s gonna be when I tell him about tonight? All you need to do is smile and charm their pants off exactly like you’ve been doing.”
“That I can do,” Mazelle said. If a new studio bought out her contract, she could get away from Lorenzo and stop moving backward. She couldn’t mistake Lorenzo’s horse-trading for true affection, or a courageous racial stand. She was just property to him.
But that was all right, as long as she didn’t fool herself about who he was. She was here.
The faces and conversations blurred as Mazelle smiled her way through the room.
“Who’s your little brown princess, Jerry?”
“I thought they didn’t allow Negroes in here…”
“Good for you, Jerry! I tell you, this country’s treatment of Negroes is shameful. How can we fight for freedom overseas when our Negro citizens don’t have full freedom at home?”
“You’re the same one from Lorenzo’s pictures? You’re too classy for this mope, baby.”
“You’re the most gorgeous woman in this room—it’s such a shame.”
This last man had a languid French accent that drew her ear.
Lorenzo was busy chasing the closest drink tray, so the man must not have power.
The handsome young man in tweed might be an actor, but she didn’t recognize him.
He addressed her in a bland, familiar way, as if they were continuing a previous conversation.
But his blue eyes were cool and detached.
“What’s the shame?” she asked.
He gestured around the room with his cigarette.
“Because they don’t see you. Their world is too small.
They have a kind of… what is the word? Myopia?
They are thinking, ‘Ah, she is so pretty for a colored girl.’ You should come to Europe instead, once the war is over.
With these people, you don’t have a chance in hell to be a star.
” His eyes were dispassionate as he gave her a polite smile and turned away, absorbing himself in a group of giggling socialites.
Mazelle’s face sagged beneath the weight of her smile.
She felt as if the stranger had slapped her.
He had made no effort to be kind or cruel, he just enjoyed the sound of his own speculations.
And his prophecy sounded so real that it was as if the French stranger had broken her spell and Cinderella had been revealed as a scullery maid despite her exquisite gown.
The crowd was swelling, making it harder to glide through. Fewer people noticed Mazelle as the arrivals of philanthropists and artists floated in, with a few familiar faces joining the crowded suite. She thought she saw Bette Davis in the throng, or a woman who could be her twin.
“Mazelle Washington!” Lorenzo was saying loudly, already sounding drunk. “Look at her right over there. Look at that face. That figure.” His voice was grating. Was this an auction?
The party was too loud: every word, laugh, and cough.
Mazelle’s smile was a bigger burden, fraying when she forgot to tend to it.
She couldn’t keep ignoring her bloated bladder.
The hotel’s public restrooms were officially segregated, so she made her way through the crowd to find the suite’s private bathrooms.
Her step hitched when she saw hastily fastened handwritten signs askew on the doors, but the signs only read GENTS and DAMES, not WHITE ONLY. Both bathrooms were already in use, the doors closed.
Away from the crowd, the air felt cooler and Mazelle noticed how tightly her muscles were wound across her back from anxiousness, flirting with pain.
Her cheeks hurt from smiling. The DAMES door flew open, and a blue-haired older woman in a mink wrap jumped with fright when she saw Mazelle waiting near the door.
“What in the world—” the woman said, her smoke-thickened voice so loud that a few nearby heads turned.
Her eyes stabbed at Mazelle. She stood planted in front of the bathroom as if to block her entrance.
“Good evening, ma’am,” Mazelle said with relentless charm, though her eyes stabbed right back. “If you’ll move aside… I won’t make a mess on this nice carpet.”
The woman gave a start, lips parted. She’d probably never been spoken to so frankly by a Negro. Mazelle breezed past the woman after she stepped aside, ignoring her indignation.
Once she closed the bathroom door, Mazelle’s mouth fell open with a silent cry of frustration.
The nerve of that woman to think she could block her from the bathroom.
Every human being on earth needed to piss, so why appoint herself the bathroom police?
And Lorenzo should have been with her to clear the way instead of drinking himself to oblivion.
But at least the bathroom was lovely, all marble and shine.
Enough towels for an army. A claw-foot bathtub she wished she had time to soak in.
Mazelle carefully lifted her dress, trying not to crease or soil it, and sat on the toilet to release a long, steady stream.
The seat was still warm from the woman who’d left, and distaste mingled with Mazelle’s annoyance.
She didn’t want to share body heat with that woman any more than she’d wanted to share it with Lorenzo.
After she flushed, Mazelle went to the sink and reached for the faucet—but stopped when she saw her gloved arms. Instead, she gazed at her reflection, and the last of her irritation melted away.
She patted a few stray hairs back in place alongside her ears, but the bright lighting made her dress and skin glow even more.
If she was going to be a true movie star, she couldn’t let herself get upset by the behavior of one ignorant person.
Hell, if she had held on to every slight and grievance, she would have killed someone by now.
The bathroom door inched open. “Hello?” a woman called. “Are you decent?”
“Yes, but I’m not finished—” Mazelle began, but a glimpse of the woman’s cheek in the mirror showed light brown skin: She was a Negro. “Oh! Did somebody smuggle you in too? Better come in before they call the police.”
“Isn’t it the most ridiculous thing?” the woman said, letting herself inside. She turned to lock the door behind her, which Mazelle had not remembered to do. “Sneaking us in here like we’re going behind enemy lines. It’s humiliating. But anything for the war effort, I guess.”
It wasn’t until the woman took her place at the sink beside Mazelle to powder her face that Mazelle saw who she was: Lena Horne.
The stunning Georgia Brown from Cabin in the Sky, and the female lead of Stormy Weather—the most famous Negro actress in the world—stood next to her!
Horne was the only Negro starlet with a seven-year contract at MGM like the white stars after the NAACP designated her the Negro Face of the Future.
Most Negro actors Mazelle knew had never met Lena Horne, but already couldn’t stand her.
But Hattie was forever saying it wasn’t Lena’s fault that the NAACP’s Walter White looked down his nose at the Negro actors already working in Hollywood, not bothering to consult with them before he anointed Lena as their successor when he met with studio heads.
Negroes could be just as color-struck as white folks.
Before Lorenzo called, Mazelle had been turned down for leads in race films by Negro directors because of her dark skin too.
Lena was wearing a white lace dress with spaghetti straps that clung to her birdlike figure.
Did she weigh more than a hundred and twenty pounds?
And she smelled like a spring flower garden.
No one will notice you now, a voice whispered to Mazelle.
Dread cinched her stomach after her initial joy at seeing this beautiful woman.
More than anyone she knew of, Lena Horne was living the life Mazelle craved, almost a twin sister.
Except that Lena’s skin was so pale, lighter than her mother’s.
Mazelle looked away when she realized she was staring.
“Do you see lipstick on my teeth?” Lena asked. She posed her teeth for Mazelle.
Damn if they weren’t the most perfect white teeth too. How could teeth look like pearls? Mazelle looked for flaws, found none, and was irritated with herself for looking.
“Nope,” Mazelle said. “Everything’s perfect.”
Lena cocked her head for a more serious study of Mazelle.
“I’m so jealous of that gown,” she said.
“Those gloves too! My trunk got left behind in New York, so I had to find this in a hurry.” She gestured at her formfitting lace dress as if it were rags.
“Anyway, I’m relieved to see you here. It feels so good not to be alone for a change. But, honey, you know that already.”