Chapters (31)
- Cover
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Room in the Dark I
- Fawns of the Diaspora Court Liliane in Paris, While Tabou Combo Whispers “Coq Qualité” in Her Ears
- Room in the Dark II
- “I Usedta Drink, Smoke and Do the Hoochie-Koo,” or What’s a Girl to Do When Her Mother Looks Like Ruth Brown
- Room in the Dark III
- “El Bochinche” es que only Fe Cortijo Knows or All the LeBron Brothers Know If Victor-Jésus María Sang Lili to Her Freedom
- Room in the Dark IV
- And Where Is Garnett Mimms?
- Room in the Dark V
- I Know Where Kansas City Is, But Did Wilbert Harrison Ever Get There?
- Room in the Dark VI
- Zoom Went the Strings of Liliane’s Heart, But Arsenio Rodriguez Could Have Told Her the Music Sounds Just as Sweet When We’re Blind and Still We See
- Room in the Dark VII
- I Know Where the E Train Stops But I’m “Sendin’ Out an S.O.S.” and I’m Not Edwin Starr Either
- Room in the Dark VIII
- “Happy, Happy Birthday, Baby” or Wouldn’t It Be Great If the Lead Singer of The Crests Wasn’t a White Boy and I Could Be My Mother?
- Room in the Dark IX
- Every Time My Lil World Seems Blue, I Just Haveta Look at You and Learn Eye-Hand Coordination
- Room in the Dark X
- “That’s Why I Love Her So and Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, I Want to Know” or Why Jackie Wilson Died in Silence
- Room in the Dark XI
- There’s No Use Cryin’ “Forever” or Hyacinthe Returns from a Very Blue Holiday for Real B(l)ack at Ya
- Room in the Dark XII
- Lollie Struts Her Stuff Thru “The Sea of Love” or the Brides of Frankenstein Catch the Bouquet
- By Ntozake Shange
- Acknowledgments
- Copyright
Liliane, S. Bliss, Mama, and I were a-twitter. It was like they were girls again too. Then I heard Liliane’s father, Parnell, shout up for S. Bliss. She excused herself. That’s when I realized she could get nervous. She rushed so, leaving, that her dress got caught on the knob of my door. Then, instead of working the cloth off, she just ripped it. Ripped that gorgeous peach organza. I saw Liliane blush and start to brush her hair again. S. Bliss blushed and ran on down the stairs toward Mr. Lincoln’s voice. I’d never seen a mother and a daughter blush, simultaneously, before. When I looked to my mama, she lowered her eyes. I wasn’t about to lower my eyes, but I did keep my mouth shut.
By the time night fell, the cicadas were singing, the music was just blaring, and Liliane and I had ventured to the back of the yard with some African students from Tougaloo, Granville Simeons from Nassau, and a punch Mama had had made up for us. “No Jack Daniel’s for your fast little behinds,” she’d chuckled. We were trying to learn the high-life from Abe-Odun, but the grown-ups kept switchin’ the records. Liliane pulled me aside, whispering that she knew what was up.
“I bet our mamas are looking for that Ruth Brown record. My father thinks it’s so lowdown. He doesn’t like to hear it, but he sure ’nough doesn’t mind looking at Ruth Brown.” We picked through the bushes to get a look. There was R.C. and S. Bliss by the record player, all hands and 33 LPs. All of a sudden there she was, in all her honky-tonk glory:
“I usedta drink, I usedta smoke, I usedta do the hoochie-coochie
I usedta drink, I usedta smoke, I usedta do the hoochie-coochie
And now I’m saved, I say I’m saved. Oh, I’m saved.”
S. Bliss was in a writhing flirt. R. C. a twirl in my father’s arms. Even the white men, all two of them, were patting their feet to that big drum beat: boom, boom, boom. Abe-Odun, the Simeons, and Liliane and I were mastering the high-life neath the Spanish moss, when there was a boom bigger than the drum.
“Get down. Get down,” I shouted. I knew, in spite of the sound of Ruth Brown’s voice brazen in the air, I knew these boom sounds weren’t to keep us dancing the high-life or the mess-around. This was the boom and crash and shriek of night-riders, of Ku Kluxers, of our tormentors.
“Get down, you fools, get down. Don’t you see, it’s the Klan.”