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
There was something heretical about what was happening. Liliane, blushing and blurting, “What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?” while five young men, all of whom had been her suitors, tried to preen and puff what was mussed, while the one cousin she was actually seeing kept kissing her. Later in life, Liliane would learn that that many young men who knew each other and you were probably a football team or a frat rush line engaged in a collegiate frivolity known as gang banging, then a misunderstanding, then she wanted it and finally date rape or wilding. If it took only one man to undo your dress and vertebral attachments during “rough sex” (a.k.a. rape), your hymen, labia, and vulva were considered more pristine and vulnerable than if you unfortunately had spent the night with some varsity team or other. Liliane wondered if the boys boasting about all the letters on their sweaters and pre-punk motorcycle jackets had ever thought of poor Hester Prynne. She had a letter too. A big red one. Probably sinny and silky, and did the cricket team have a yen for a girl with a scarlet A. Straight As, as well as attentive, approachable, anxious to be somebody. Now that’s an odd idea.
Anyway, this is not at all what was happening to Liliane the night her father arrived on Spring Street in Trenton to take her back to Bellmawr. Even then, everyone didn’t go to the Bluffs or Bimini. Yes, Liliane’s daddy poked the Mack truck of an El Dorado past the dignified row houses with porches and tended plants, past the women high in the last blush of their forties headin’ for Klotz’s, The Tuxedo Club. Some would even venture to The Candlelight or that one cross the wooden bridge over by Seward Street was just “the Bucket of Blood”—not a Bucket of Blood, but “the” Bucket. So here comes Liliane’s daddy waving to everyone who might possibly see him on a stank dark Friday night looking like he was or hadta be the town’s colored undertaker, colored tavern owner, colored dentist, colored lawyer, or colored doctor. Yeah, when Garnett Mimms was on every colored girl’s mind and jolting every colored boy’s body, the Negro’s options were fairly limited. Liliane’s options at that moment were particularly limited.
Liliane was a virgin. Liliane in a classical Catholic sense “belonged to no man” and was, therefore, bereft of sin. Liliane was a Daddy’s girl.