Cypress had discovered Harlem after-hours night life, and was becoming a regular at gambling spots and underworld taverns. Her refusal to speak and that smile drew “Outlaw Willie” and “Rolls-Royce Lou” to buy her drinks or some blow as a token for her madness. She didn’t pick up anybody or make friends, she was just a regular. At an almost bar, two basements down, four bodyguards and five iron doors under an uptown tenement, another ex-dancer, Lily, did all of Cypress’ talking for her. “She would like a Courvoisier, double.” Nothing else was happening.

Before the Golden Onk opened up, Cypress made it to the downtown bars and pubs. Here, people she knew watched her uneasily, rarely spoke, but always noticed what she was drinking and that smile. She was in an old Irish tavern being taken over by Puerto Ricans and black artists on the Lower East Side, when she abruptly stopped making concentric circles in the sawdust under her feet, to listen. Cypress rushed toward the sound—music from home. She stood anxiously looking over shoulders in the back room, trying to see and share. Who was making this glory? Who was letting her speak? Cypress smiled and burst with “Yes. Yes. Yes.” And before she remembered she didn’t dance any more, she had leaped to the front of the musicians and was speaking of beauty and love in her body. Cypress danced her ass off, improvising and involving the audience in her joy. She whipped a shawl out of one woman’s hand and a cigar out of an old fellow’s mouth. With the lit end of the cigar in her mouth, the shawl over her head, Cypress moved as Yanvallou. Curved and low to the ground, her back undulated like Damballah’s child must. The smoke eased from her mouth like holy vapor, pure and strong. The air was clean, the music rich. Cypress was dancing an old dance, a saxophone whispering hope all around her, love refusing to sit still. Cypress was a dance of a new thing, her own spirit loose, fecund, and deep.

As Leroy McCullough slipped the alto from his mouth, Cypress grabbed him and squeezed, and felt home again. Such a way to run into an old friend, while she was trying to be dead and silent. Leroy didn’t know what was going on. Cypress wouldn’t answer any of his questions about Sassafrass, or where she was living; she just got another drink and kept holding his hand, smiling and crying at the same time. When she blacked out in his arms, Leroy set her down in a back booth, went on with the next set, and carried her to his place. Cypress was smiling in her sleep.