Chapter 9
I nch by taunting inch, Dalia lifted the skirt of her long, slinky, red dress until she held it above her bare knees, which she bent and swayed back and forth. The gang of half-wits ogling her went wild, cheering, clapping, and whistling.
Good god almighty, she thought. They’re just knees. Everybody has them. But if these animals wanted to go apeshit crazy and pay for the privilege of seeing her extraordinarily ordinary knees , so be it. Ten- and twenty-dollar bills rained down on the front of the stage.
Even though the other dancers came out half naked and stripped to their skin, Dalia’s routine to the classic song The Stripper drove men wild. It was old-fashioned burlesque, naughty but never nasty as her striptease mentor had always said.
Of course, her mentor had no idea she’d been a mentor and would be very unhappy at realizing she’d convinced her young family member to do this.
Mama’s cousin, stage name Dolly O’Dare, had been an internationally famous burly-q girl back in the days of swoony jazz, cigarette-smoke-filled rooms, and classy acts.
Dalia had heard Dolly opine about the decline of the art of striptease often enough to know better than to let Dolly, the “exotic dancer,” know what she was up to at a gentlemen’s club.
“Gentlemen” my eye, Dalia had thought after her first night on stage. Nary a gentleman had deigned to walk through the door.
Thus, she knew her mom’s cousin would disapprove of her dancing and particularly the joint she danced in.
Dolly lived in Detroit, but Dalia wasn’t worried about running into her here.
The former burlesque performer wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like this.
But if she did get wind of Dalia’s dalliance, she’d no doubt report to Mama Mamie, which Dalia dare not let happen.
She’d let her mama believe the “big, fancy restaurant” lie ’til the end of time.
Mama would never know what she’d done to make enough money to grant the one dream Mamie Blackburn had always cherished.
With the way Mamie had always put everyone else before herself, now that she was a twenty-two-year-old grown woman Dalia had found the means to put her mama first. After all, at age fifty-five Mamie Blackburn didn’t have fifty more years to work this out.
No, Dalia wanted it to happen that very fall, a couple of months away.
The president of the Farmdale Bank, who was also mayor, was holding store space for her, property he owned right in the historic part of downtown. Once Dalia had enough for a deposit, the first month’s rent, and retrofitting, Mama Mamie’s Bakery would come to life.
It’d been listening to Mama’s cousin Dolly talk about how she’d danced, classy not brassy and fun rather than frantic, that planted the idea of dancing into Dalia’s head.
As she performed to The Stripper , she let her mind wander back to that morning six months earlier at the kitchen table.
Mama had made a sumptuous coffeecake, which the cousins appropriately enjoyed with their coffee as they chatted away like morning birds.
Mama had been born and raised in Farmdale and Dolly an hour away in Detroit, but they’d seen each often as kids, their mothers being sisters and visiting each other almost every weekend.
Then Mamie had stayed with them in Detroit to finish high school there because there hadn’t been a high school for black students in her small hometown.
Being near the same age, the two girls had grown up more like sisters than cousins.
At Mamie’s kitchen table, they’d exemplified the meaning of the phrase “coffee klatch,” chatting freely while Rose, who was too young for such a conversation, played outside with Rover.
“I never approved of Dolly’s choice of career,” Mamie explained to Dalia, who felt a bit like a third wheel sitting with these two as they reminisced about things that had happened before her time.
Mamie took a bite of her coffeecake before explaining.
“Not until Butch and I visited you …” she looked at Dolly “… that one time in Harbor Springs at that nightclub. My, I must admit, that was fun!”
“I knew you’d like it. You and Butch were such good dancers. And that band was fabulous. You two cut a rug on that dance floor.”
Mamie chuckled. “I loved being in his arms and moving to music. We used to turn on the radio and dance around the house all the time.”
“Now that,” Dalia interjected, “I remember. You were like teenagers in love.”
Mamie smiled. “Because in our hearts, that’s what we were. I know we seemed like a couple of old fuddy-duddy farmers, but we did love to have fun. And Dolly, we did have a great time at that club. And your performance wasn’t nearly as salacious as I’d feared.”
“I tried to tell you. Burlesque back in the day was like vaudeville with singers, comedians, and acrobats, but with the addition of a stripper. That was where I came in.” Dolly winked at Dalia.
“When I played supper clubs like the one in Harbor Springs there was a band and a dance floor for customer dancing and then my act. The audience was filled with couples, not dirty old men.”
“Yes, yes, yes. I’d been mistaken,” Mamie admitted. “The music was phenomenal, and your act was truly lovely.”
“You see,” Dolly said, turning to Dalia, “back then a dancer’s attitude was ‘look at what I’ve got that you can’t have’ instead of today’s dancers who give it all away.
In my era, ‘stripping’ meant peeling down to a pair of bikini bottoms and pasties, very demure by today’s standards.
And sometimes I only let down a shoulder strap and didn’t strip at all.
That drove them wild.” She’d pointed at Dalia with her fork and chuckled. “I made a lot of money that way.”
At the time, Dalia worked at the grocery store in Farmdale. Realizing it would take ten years for her to save enough money for her mom’s bakery, and that would only be if she continued to live rent-free on the farm, Dolly’s story impressed her.
Dolly had made a lot of money in her day so Dalia figured there would still be money to be had. As she secretly plotted a stint as a dancer, she knew she’d have to do it like Dolly had done it. Present standards wouldn’t work for her.
She’d had quite a time selling her idea to the owner of the club but from night one she’d been a success.
There was enough bare skin and frenetic music up there on stage.
Her act offered something different – a look at what real striptease had once been.
When one of her songs came on, the room tended to calm down with revelers being intrigued by the change of pace.
Heads turned, mouths shut, and eyes riveted to her.
Scarlett Blaze, her cheesy stage name, did not fail to deliver.
She’d honed five acts she rotated throughout the night.
The Stripper was her favorite because, like Dolly, she only went so far as to let one of her gown’s thin straps fall off her shoulder.
The others were performed to jazz songs from the ’40s and ’50s, Dolly’s heydays.
The furthest she ever stripped got her down to a bikini-type outfit.
She’d clandestinely made her own costumes in the back of the barn, hand-sewing every inch because she didn’t want to take a chance on being caught in the sewing room in the house.
The song neared its end. Reluctantly, she prodded her mind to come back to the room to give it all she had. More money flowed including some fifties. It would be a good night.
As was customary, one of the bouncers reached onto the stage, scooped up the cash, and met her at the back of the stage to hand over her tips. That Brody McIntyre wasn’t there, apparently having the night off from his part-time gig.
Most importantly, she needed to get ahold of that deputy to beg him not to blow her cover.
If folks in Farmdale knew how she made the money for her mama’s bakery, they might never set foot in the establishment, no matter how much they loved Mamie Blackburn and her yummy creations. It was a chance Dalia couldn’t take.
She’d hoped to talk to Brody that night and had been disturbed upon realizing he wasn’t there. Now she’d have to go looking for him.
“Damn,” she snarled at herself as she got in her truck at the end of her shift. “I have to talk to him!” She smacked the steering wheel, afraid her whole undercover operation would soon blow up in her face.
Like always, she stopped at a Shell gas station, the same one she always stopped at.
She went inside to get the outside ladies’ room key from the Middle Eastern woman who worked the night shift all by herself, which always worried Dalia as they were in the middle of the seedy part of Detroit.
The quiet but friendly woman always handed Dalia the key and never asked questions when the stripper in the bright red wig, stiletto heels, and sparkly makeup who’d taken the key returned it as a plain Jane in jeans and a tee shirt.
The two women from different cultures and different lives had an unspoken understanding that bonded them together.
Both were doing the best they could to make it in this world.
Dalia always put a ten-dollar bill on the counter, smiled at her nameless friend, and left, glad to be on her way home.
At least she got to go home to a lovely, peaceful farm.
There was no telling what her gas station friend went home to.
Sometimes Dalia had an urge to ask if she wanted to come visit the farm for a good Mamie meal.
But that would break her secret wide open. Living a double life truly was getting to her. She had no idea how Mata Hari, the exotic dancer, courtesan, and supposed double agent during World War I, had done it. She herself would make a horrible spy.
Of course, however, Mata Hari had been exposed and executed.
It hadn’t worked out so well for that gal.
Dalia’s exposure might not lead to such grim consequences, but it would destroy everything she’d work for so hard.
She’d maneuvered her life into a tangled mess and had to figure out how to untangle it.
She refused to let her mama’s and her daughter’s lives be affected negatively by what she’d chosen to do. They deserved better than that.