Free Dancing in the Dark by Caryl Phillips

his infantile reactions? Who was this fellow? Sambo? Coon? Nigger? However, the audience never failed to recognize this creature. That’s him! That’s the nigger! He lookslike that. And that’s just how he talks. And he walks just like that. I know him! I know him! But this was not Egbert Austin Williams. This was not George Walker. This was not William E. B. DuBois. This was not Booker T. Washington. This was not any Negro known to any man. This was not a Negro. And the first time he looked in the mirror his heart sank like a stone for he knew that this was not a man that he recognized. This was somebody else’s fantasy, and unless he could make this nobody into somebody, then he knew that eventually his eardrums would burst with the pain of the audience’s laughter. The first time he looked at himself in the mirror his heart sank. In Detroit in 1896.
    It was in Detroit that he first persuaded a disapproving George that this might be a good idea. It was in Detroit that he first betrayed his father. It was in Detroit that he first pushed his hands into the pot and worked the oily substance onto his fingertips. There was a moment’s hesitation as he felt the cork slither between his delicate, oversized fingers, and then he began to smear his warm face with the cold potion. Only when he was sure that it was spread evenly across his face did he dare look up and stare into the mirror. He needed to make sure that the edges of the makeup met his hairline. He needed to give himself a consistent tone of blackness, and then he drew on his lips so that they grew beyond his own, swimming out toward his cheeks and down his chin. His lips were the final touch. He erased himself. Wiped himself clean off the face of the earth so that he found himself staring back at a stranger.
    The irate woman bursts into his dressing room without knocking and she noisily demands her money. A surprised George looks up at her.
    “You finished already?”
    The woman holds out a purple-gloved hand and snorts. “Finished what, child? You better talk with that man.”
    George pulls a thick roll of bills from the back pocket of his street pants.
    “Five dollars is what we agreed on, right?”
    She takes the money and tucks it into her notebook, all the while pursing her lips in disgust.
    “You said you wanted me to do something special for him seeing as he’s acting all lonesome and everything, but you better let that boy know that we Detroit girls don’t appreciate you out-of-town boys acting in this fashion toward us. He don’t want something this fine, then his ignorant ass only needs to say so. No need for the man to be running off his mouth in my face like I ain’t nobody. I deserve some mannerly treatment, don’t you think?”
    George looks the tan girl up and down and slowly a smile breaks out on her face.
    “Sugar, I like how you is looking at me. Give me two dollars more and you can taste what your partner didn’t want.” George laughs and turns from her. “You know,” she begins, her voice now shrill with anger, “the two of you all deserve each other. Coming into my town like you all is big and mighty but you ain’t nothing but a pair of broke-down little boys masquerading as men.”
    She slams the door as she leaves, and a resigned George shakes his head. He knows that his partner will be sitting by himself in his dressing room, furious with George for having arranged for a girl to visit with him. But the truth is he couldn’t think of anything else that he might offer Bert to help him out of his depression. For the past week, since he began to use the cork and play the simpleton to George’s straight man, his mood has clouded over, which makes no sense for despite George’s unhappiness with Bert making a blackfaced coon of himself he has toadmit that they are now making more coin than they ever did. But Bert is struggling with what he calls his “new character,” and George had hoped that a girl might help. She was a gift,