Free Negroland: A Memoir by Margo Jefferson

around her neck. She looks down, as if she’s misbehaved, then lifts her head and smiles.
    “Blow out the candle,” she sings pertly,
Blow out the candle,
Blow out the candle so the neighbors won’t see!
    She cups her hands at her waist, clasps them at her throat—opera singers always do this on TV—throws her head back just a bit, and smiles again. She extends an arm, then flings it up and flicks her wrist. It’s almost Spanish! Her shoulders move slightly, no more than a few measures, and off the beat. Then she sways her hips, pretending not to notice that they’re swaying. (“Just enough,” says my mother.) She mimes snuffing out a candle like French maids do in operas.
Won’t you blow out the candle,
So there will be no scandal?
And no one will know
You’ve been ki-i-i-ssing me!
    “Why couldn’t they give her a real song? Ellington or a show tune,” my father wants to know. He doesn’t want to know; he knows, and we know too. “She did the best she could do with that ditty.”
    But Lena Horne has made her way into the show-tune penthouse. Lena Horne sings Cole Porter. She’s wearing a black sheath with full-length, see-through sleeves. The white curtains behind her curl and drape.
    “While tearing off a game of golf…” Hah!
    My father doesn’t care about golf, but plenty of his friends do.
    The collar of her sheath is made of tulle netting, and it matches the cuffs. Tulle ruffles cuff her wrists. Lena Horne doesn’t move her body at all. She stands in profile the whole time. Her behind is perfectly round, not big. One arm is poised at her waist. The other moves stealthily toward the fancy chair that goes with a vanity dresser that isn’t on the set.
    She places her wrist on the chair back with extreme care. (“Hauteur” is my mother’s word.) She has ballet hands, but they’re a little pointed. They’re show business ballet hands. She lets two fingers touch the curve of the chair and move back and forth.
    “Ah just adore his asking for more…” This time the “I” is “Ah,” while “adore” comes out “adoharr” and “more” (her eyes widen and stare out on “more”) rolls itself into “mohrr.”
    The syllables stay crisp, though. They’re not guttural. They’re a design carved onto the surface of each word. She stretches her mouth open, widens it and shows her teeth. Even and gleaming in perfect formation. She smiles but curls her lips as she sings “But my heart belongs to Daddy.” She turns her face away and lifts her chin. For the last line—“ ’cause my daddy, he treats it so well”—we see only her profile.
    My parents talk about what she does with her face. Lena mugs, they agree, but she can get away with it. She’s a beauty.
    And she used to be bland. Then she married Lennie Hayton. He was a bandleader and arranger, a big wheel at MGM. He gave her sophisticated arrangements and taught her how to put a song over with personality, with pizzazz. To rule it, not defer to it.
    Lennie Hayton is white, but when you see pictures of them in Ebony , he’s the one who looks grateful. He’s always smiling. He’s standing behind her most of the time, with his white hair and little beard. Lena knew what she was doing.
    She never has the lapses in taste Dorothy Dandridge has. One Sunday night on Ed Sullivan the curtains part to show Dorothy in a strapless gown that pushes her breasts up and toward each other and out toward the waiting audience. In a whispery voice, sometimes closing her eyes and sliding her head back toward undulating shoulders, she chants, “He’s a smooth operator, a cool sweet potato and a gone alligator.”
I’m here to tell you
One natural fact
( CHA cha cha CHA CHA CHA CHA !)
I like it like that!
You drive me wild
You make me shout
Have mercy Mister Percy
Now cut that out!
    “Mercy Mister Percy?” my mother repeats when Ed Sullivan has extended his arm, thanked Miss Dandridge, and gone to a commercial break. “Why doesn’t she just say