Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (55 page)

He took me from room to room. “Sammy, c’mon and say hello to our cook. It’ll be the biggest kick in the world for her.” He brought me into the kitchen. “Sarah, I guess you know who this is, don’t you.” He stood back beaming at us.

She smiled and wiped her hand on a towel. “I’m glad to meet you, Sammy,” and shook hands. Harry Host put his arm around her, elaborately. “Sarah’s a member of the family, aren’t you, Sarah?”

She nodded and smiled. “Yes, sir.”

As we left the kitchen he said, “Great woman.”

His wife joined us and we went upstairs. I said, “This is a fantastic setup. I wish I had something like it myself.”

The wife said, “Uh, well—uh, maybe there’s something available in the building—we can check if you’re interested …” She was rushing on, trying to convince me she hadn’t noticed I’m colored. Her husband said, “Of course vacancies are pretty rare….”

“Look, I was only talking. I’ve got a home on the coast that I haven’t spent a full week in, and I’m usually not in New York enough to make it worth while.”

She leaped for the out. “Believe me, you’re just as well off. The city’s ruined …” Oh, God, she’d done it again. She tried frantically to recover. “It’s those damned
spicks
. Every since
they
started coming over here …”

The car doors slammed shut, first one then the other, sealing us off safely from the rest of the city. I rested giddily against the soft
leather seat. “George if you ever wondered how come colored people’s hair is kinky—it’s from going to parties like that one.”

“Did something happen I don’t know about?”

“Nothing special.” I turned the key and started the engine. “But before I accept another of those invitations it’s a definite half-gainer into the river.”

I sat behind my bar grinning at George as if somebody were rubbing my back. “Baby, your star is home from the wars and he ain’t about to leave this room unless someone yells fire.”

“Have you forgotten that Jane and Burt and Michael and Chita are going to be meeting us at Danny’s in an hour?”

“A great star never forgets.” I called Danny. “This is your old buddy Sammy Davis, Jr., known to his close friends as just plain Mr. Wonderful…. No baby, I’m dead on my feet, but the buddies’ll be looking for me in about an hour. Will you tell them there’s been a change in plan and there’ll be a Carey car for them and to just get in it and come over to the Gorham? And Danny, give them a couple of jugs of spaghetti and some of that veal-pajamas and maybe a little shrimp marinara …”

George was puzzled. “I still don’t understand what happened. I admit the people were a little square …”

“Hey. Hold it. You know I’ve never put anyone down ‘cause they’re square.” He was waiting. I sat back against the curve of the bar, lit a cigarette, blew the smoke out and looked up. “George, did you happen to notice the platter of fried chicken?”

“Well, yes …”

“Do you think they serve that at all their parties? With the caviar?”

“Well …” He took a slug of his scotch. “They were trying to be nice.”

“Baby, I’m not saying they weren’t trying. And I love fried chicken, I could eat it all night. But I also eat other food—like anybody else? It’s not like they invited a rabbit so they had to have a head of lettuce on the table for him. Let me put it this way: how would you like to be the only Jewish cat invited to a party and you look at the food and it’s lovely and then over in a corner of the table you see they’ve got a little side order of gefilte fish for you?”

“Well, now that you mention it”—he couldn’t resist smiling—”I did wonder when they were going to start your crap game.”

“You see? You did catch it.”

“Well …”

I leaned across the bar. “Listen, y’know the old cliché ‘Some of my best friends are colored’? It’s been up-dated. Now it’s ‘My kid goes to school with Ralph Bunche’s son.’ ”

He smiled slightly, holding back, knowing that his complete reaction would only steam me. He shrugged, trying to minimize it. “Well, I don’t want to do a cliché, too, but you’ve got to remember that to most people,” he made a face, “particularly that crowd today, you’re the first Negro they ever met socially and they just don’t know how to handle it.”

“Baby, if that’s the case, and it probably is, then they’ll have to get somebody else to practice on. Let them go out and hire some colored kid who needs the dough. Let them sit down and talk to
him
‘cause I’ve had it with running classes for learners.”

“Well, I can understand that it’s not exactly kicks, but at least you know their intentions are good. You know how they feel about you. They certainly wouldn’t be throwing parties in your honor if they were prejudiced or anything.”

“I know exactly how they feel about me. The trouble is
they
don’t know how they feel about me. Let’s not celebrate National Brotherhood Week just because a woman throws a party for me instead of keeping me out of school. They wanted to show off to their friends that they know Sammy Davis, Jr. Fine. I’m only flattered. But let’s carry it a little further: here’s a woman who adores herself for being a liberal and having ‘a colored man’ to her apartment, right? But do you want to do about ten minutes on what a shake-up it would have been if instead of you I’d brought Charley Head with me? Or any colored guy who dresses well, who makes a lot of dough and has been around—but isn’t famous. I’d have set back her personal integration movement by fifty years. There’d be lorgnettes dropping all over the place, with mumbling, ‘Well, we like
him
but did he have to bring his friends?’ ”

“I don’t know why I’m defending her, but as long as I’m involved, how can you be so sure she’d react like that? Okay, they tried to do something they weren’t experienced at and they blew it, but that doesn’t mean …”

I came out from behind the bar. “Look, you’re talking to Charley Optimist. I don’t just casually jump to the conclusion that people are prejudiced. I’m hoping and praying I won’t see it. Further, if I expect people to give me the benefit of the doubt then obviously I’ve got to give
them
the benefit of the doubt. But when a woman says to
me, ‘I like the colored people. It’s the spicks I hate,’
this
is a prejudiced woman. Here’s an educated, presumably intelligent person lumping a whole group of people together—millions of them in one swoop—and judging them. It doesn’t occur to her that if her Negro maid didn’t come in one day you don’t go around saying Ralph Bunche, Sidney Poitier, and Thurgood Marshall are unreliable. By the same token there is nobody justified in hating all the Puerto Ricans ‘cause nobody has
met
all the Puerto Ricans. But this woman wants me to believe that she prejudges one group without prejudging another. Impossible. Either you see people as
individuals
or you don’t. My God, you can’t even say, ‘All of last year’s string beans were lousy’ so how can you do it with
people?

“Then another cat tells me, ‘I’ve got ten Negroes and six white men working for me.’ Here’s a man who’s counting people by color, but he makes a trip across the room to brag to me that he’s a liberal. Do you realize that the only cliché I escaped is: ‘Oh? I didn’t even notice you were colored.’ ”

“Small world. Somebody said that to
me”

“George, you’re rotten to the core.”

He frowned, pleased. “I know.”

“Now, Act Two: I’m reaching for an hors d’oeuvre and a man smiles broadly at me: ‘I want to shake your hand. You’re a credit to your people.’ Here this phony all-too-liberal is telling me colored people are rotten but
I’m
okay and he’s waiting for me to say thank you.

“How do you fight someone like this? The worst thing in the world is when you’re up against people
who don’t know they’re prejudiced
.

“They bring me to their homes, put their arms around my shoulder and walk around the room insulting me, patronizing me, hurting me just as much as a hater would, maybe even more, but
they
expect me to say ‘Thank you.’ They go to bed puffed up with the satisfaction of being humanitarians, patting themselves on the back: ‘I’m not prejudiced, I even had one to my home,’ and they fall asleep counting colored people coming to their parties.”

I stood up and gave a bar stool a little spin with one finger and watched it wobble slightly as it turned. “I’d be the last person in the world to say that anybody
must
be anything but what he wants to be. And even if he decides he wants to wear the badge of liberal I’m
not asking him to turn over his income to the NAACP, or to go ride Freedom Buses—but he’s got to know there’s more to it than not throwing rocks.”

George was looking into his glass, turning it slowly, troubled, seeing something he’d seen around him all his life but which had to look different from the inside.

The doorbell rang. He looked up, and as surely as if he were putting on a different coat I could see him getting ready to hide again behind the facade of sophistication. He grinned. “Your fried chicken is here.”

When I noticed the Paramount clock showing 4:30 I closed the blinds so the kids wouldn’t notice it beginning to get light outside. I put the tape recorder on the bar. “Okay. Chita will be Leticia Vanderveer, Washington hostess whose salon is, in reality …”

“Lamont Cranston.”

I gave George a look. “Whose salon is, in reality, a hotbed of undercover agents …”

“Hot bed? Hot bed? What do you mean by
that
?”

An hour later the tape ran out, the loose end ticking each turn around the spindle. I jumped up to change it.

Michael yawned. “It’s just as well. I’m so tired I can’t see.”

Chita was putting on her coat. “I’m crazy. I’ve got a class tomorrow at eleven. How can I possibly dance with no sleep?”

I shrugged. “I know someone who’s the star of a Broadway musical who manages to do it and people don’t exactly hiss and boo me.”

Burt said, “We’ve got to get home and do the column.” “And why are you pulling up your tie, George? You’re only going downstairs.”

He pulled it open. “That’ll show you how tired I am.”

I turned off the tape recorder. “Then that’s it, folks, right? It’s a definite run-out-on-old-Sam.”

Michael asked, “Have you ever tried sleeping?”

“Okay. Don’t let me keep you. All of you do what you feel you should. I’ll just stay here alone—with all my friends.”

George said. “Now really, it
is
five o’clock.”

“No need to apologize. Get your sleep.” I handed out a set of Shakespeare books. “Tomorrow night we’ll have Hamlet readings. I’ve got a benefit so we won’t meet here until one. You’ve all got
until then to learn your parts. You don’t have to know them by heart but it’ll be much more fun if you’re familiar with your lines.”

I snapped my book closed and rolled on the floor hysterically. “That’s it, folks. That’s
it
. Michael—I’m sorry, baby, but we’re all family here so I can say it—Polonius you ain’t!”

Chita yawned. I glared at her. “It’s only three o’clock, Chita. If you start in with that dance class jazz again …”

“But I
do
have a lesson and I was rotten today.”

I stood up. “Never let it be said that I hampered anybody’s career. It’s too bad though, that I went to the trouble to think up things that might be amusing for the few people I care about …” They were watching me curiously, defensively, as I unwrapped a Monopoly set.

Chita picked up the racing car, then she inspected the other tokens. “Are these real gold?”

“Quite.” I smiled bitterly, disappointedly. “I thought it would be a pleasant change for my friends to play Monopoly with solid gold instead of little pieces of tin.”

At around six-thirty George stood up. “Why am I still playing? I hate this game.”

Chita looked at me beseechingly. “I’ve really
got
to go.”

I lifted the board carefully and placed it on the bar. “Okay, we’ll finish tomorrow night. Everybody remember what they are.”

I stood at the door while they waited for the elevator. “So, the buddies are running out on me again, eh? A man has to write a column—maybe that I can understand, he’s got a deadline. Although I don’t see why you can’t bring your typewriter over here. But you, George, and Michael, and you Chita,” I gave them the tragic look, “I suppose it never occurred to you to skip your class just once and help bring joy to a poor soul who, this evening alone, has entertained thousands, a man who’s brought happiness to total strangers and asks nothing for himself but to be surrounded by his few close friends.” As she stepped into the elevator I called out, “I hope you get great big muscles in your legs!”

I watched the door slide closed and went back into the apartment. It was getting light outside. I washed my face, purposely using warm water so I wouldn’t wake myself up. The lid of my bad eye was hanging one-third closed, the sure sign I was tired. I opened my bed, but I had no desire to get into it. I sat at the bar and looked at the
Monopoly set, embarrassed by it and by the Shakespeare books—the traps I’d used to keep friends with me until I’d turned them into prisoners. I stuffed the money, the deeds, and the gold tokens into the box, gathered up the books and put them in the closet.

As my head touched the pillow it was as though I’d hit the lock on a giant Jack-in-the-Box which sprang open and out flew the clown, jeering, sneering, shattering the quiet of the room, razzing me with words and images that belonged in the past, but that I could only keep locked away through the warmth of an audience or the security of friends. My pillow was hot and I turned it. I tried to ignore the sounds, to concentrate on the good things: the audiences, the people at benefits looking at me with approval, as though color didn’t matter, as though they didn’t know there were such things as scandal magazines and gossip columns. I strained to remember, to nourish myself on their affection—but by memory, the hatred and anger was stronger, louder.

Eventually the first rays of the morning sun were streaming through the Venetian blinds, casting shadows, like prison bars, on the walls of my room.

I sat behind my bar looking through the mail, autographing pictures, occasionally glancing up to see how George, Chita, and Michael were doing. The bell rang and Michael opened the door for Jane and Burt. I waved. “So the wandering journalists have returned home after another glittering night of gathering tomorrow’s news today, eh?”