Free The Legs Are the Last to Go by Diahann Carroll Page A

job at Macy’s.
    The audition was nerve-racking, as freckle-faced Elissa banged her heart out on a grand piano on an overlit stage. I forgot about the serious-looking people scrutinizing us, plunged into my song, “Tenderly,” and gave it all I had. Afterward, we waited in the lobby for a verdict. A producer came out to tell us the singer was wanted, but not the pianist.
    I told Elissa that I didn’t want to do it without her. She told me I had to.
    I won first prize on the television show, and went in to see Mr. Godfrey to discuss appearing on his daily radio show. This time, it was with my mother. She was looking unusually beautiful that day, in a formfitting suit and high heels that made her voluptuous body all the more seductive, and Mr. Godfrey, a man fully in touch with his power over us, flirted with her right under my eyes. Then he told us a racist joke about a slave who fell off a wagon or some silly thing. And Mom laughed. What was going on here? I felt my palms go sweaty with discomfort. How dare this man insult my mother? How dare he insult me like that? It was very confusing to see this woman, my mother, who had such a keenly developed sense of propriety, allow herself to be so complicit with such vulgarity. The sense of correctness (ingrained in me since I was a toddler) went into high alert, and suddenly the power this bullying celebrity had to change my life didn’t mean anything to me. I told him, “I don’t think my mother appreciatesjokes like that.” He fell silent and got a look of consternation on his otherwise pleasant bland face that I’ll never forget. And my mother? She looked absolutely shocked at my response. All her life, both she and my father, dignified and upright as they were, had had to stoop and bow their heads when faced with racism. They didn’t want to make any waves. They wanted to move up in the world, and getting upset about how hateful racism could be was never their approach. After a moment, Mr. Godfrey leaned in to his buzzer and told his secretary, “Miss Smarty Pants here is going to be on our radio show next week.” By holding my own, I had prevailed. I wish I could have impressed that point on my mother. But when it came time to appear on my first radio broadcast, he continued flirting with her and she allowed it, even as she became more and more embarrassed. Her discomfort could not stop Arthur Godfrey, a driven entertainer. And you know what? It didn’t stop me, either. I returned to the show to sing for the next three weeks, an unqualified success.
    Of course my mother found this as exciting as I did. I was, after all, her child, and it was terribly validating for her to see me prevail at such an early age. She’d get up at the crack of dawn with me, dress herself carefully, weigh in on my outfit, then drive me to the studio, where I had to put on my own makeup to perform in front of a live radio audience. It was so exciting to be waiting in the dressing room with well-known singers, such as the McGuire Sisters. And the acclaim we’d get all week from neighbors who heard me on the radio pleased her, of course, but it was the backstage glamour, the entry into an exclusive world my mother had never imagined within herreach, that made her happiest. And she developed a taste for it right away; this intoxicating inside world of show business got into her blood early on. Well, why not? She lacked what it took to crack the code of black society in our community. But suddenly she was on the inside of an even more impressive world. Those early days of accompanying me were our happiest times, as triumphant as they were nerve-racking, really. I was still so young that I needed her to be there with me, and we both knew it. My father did, too. Yes, there was a toddler in the house, but my mother always made sure someone else could look after her.
    Sometimes she’d see a handsome man on our rounds. Proper as she could appear to