.
The spotlight was working mostly just us. I caught glimpses of the four or five other couples, the
girls jungle-strong, animal-like, bucking and charging. But little Laura inspired me to drive to new
heights. Her hair was all over her face, it was running sweat, and I couldn't believe her strength.
The crowd was shouting and stomping. A new favorite was being discovered; there was a wall of
noise around us. I felt her weakening, she was lindying like a fighter out on her feet, and we
stumbled off to the sidelines. The band was still blasting. I had to half-carry her; she was gasping
for air. Some of the men in the band applauded.
And even Duke Ellington half raised up from his piano stool and bowed.
If a showtime crowd liked your performance, when you came off you were mobbed, mauled,
grasped, and pummeled like the team that's just taken theseries. One bunch of the crowd
swarmed Laura; they had her clear up off her feet. And I was being pounded on the back... when
I caught this fine blonde's eyes.... This one I'd never seen among the white girls who came to
the Roseland black dances. She was eyeing me levelly.
Now at that time, in Roxbury, in any black ghetto in America, to have a white woman who wasn't a
known, common whore was-for the average black man, at least-a status symbol of the first order.
And this one, standing there, eyeing me, was almost too fine to believe. Shoulder-length hair, well
built, and her clothes had cost somebody plenty.
It's shameful to admit, but I had just about forgotten Laura when she got loose from the mob and
rushed up, big-eyed-and stopped. I guess she saw what there was to see in that girl's face-and
mine-as we moved out to dance.
I'm going to call her Sophia.
She didn't dance well, at least not by Negro standards. But who cared? I could feel the staring
eyes of other couples around us. We talked. I told her she was a good dancer, and asked her
where she'd learned. I was trying to find out why she was there. Most white women came to the
black dances for reasons I knew, but you seldom saw her kind around there.
She had vague answers for everything. But in the space of that dance, we agreed that I would get
Laura home early and rush back in a taxicab. And then she asked if I'd like to go for a drive later. I
felt very lucky.
Laura was home and I was back at the Roseland in an hour flat. Sophia was waiting outside.
About five blocks down, she had a low convertible. She knew where she wasgoing. Beyond
Boston, she pulled off into a side road, and then off that into a deserted lane. And turned off
everything but the radio.
For the next several months, Sophia would pick me up downtown, and I'd take her to dances, and
to the bars around Roxbury. We drove all over. Sometimes it would be nearly daylight when she
let me out in front of Ella's.
I paraded her. The Negro men loved her. And she just seemed to love all Negroes. Two or three
nights a week, we would go out together. Sophia admitted that she also had dates with white
fellows, "just for the looks of things," she said. She swore that a white man couldn't interest her.
I wondered for a long time, but I never did find out why she approached me so boldly that very
first night. I always thought it was because of some earlier experience with another Negro, but I