Josephine Baker (89 page)

Since I started this book, the children and I have become closer, and I have been urging them to write their own stories. People are curious, they ask me, “What ever happened to all those children?” I just say, “We're all alive, and no one is in jail.”

In 1991, eleven of my brothers and sisters were reunited—for the first time since Josephine's death—on a French TV show. Noël, hospitalized for schizophrenia, was not there, but for him you are still “the lady with a lot of heart who thought about children.”

Jari helps me in the restaurant, and recently, Koffi and his wife Diane came from Buenos Aires to visit. We went to Harlem to gape at William Spiller's house, and the building where Mama Dinks lived. We also had a reunion at Chez Josephine with your nephew Artie, who laughed when he met Koffi. “The last time I saw you,” Artie said, “was when Josephine brought you to Les Milandes in that shoe box.”

For Koffi, you were a kind of Joan of Arc. “She fought for her ideas,
even sometimes against herself. She was very ambivalent. ‘I think white, but I'm black.' In her head, it was a difficult conjunction of ideas.

“She was very demanding of me because I was the darkest of the children. ‘You are black, you have to be well dressed.' She wanted me to be proud of myself and fear no one. I like the color of my skin. It would be too sad, too monotonous to have only one color. The sky is blue, the sea green, the human race is the human race, not the white race or the black race.

“If Mother was still with us, she would be fighting against AIDS. I don't have her fame or strength, but in my own way, I can do a little to better the world, we all can.”

Clearly, you did some things right, Mother. But you did some things wrong, too. You broke my heart. “Mother dropped you for Jean-Claude Brialy,” Marianne told me, “because in France, you had no name, while Brialy was a star, he could help her.”

It doesn't matter anymore. All your life, you were a hustler, and I'm a hustler too; secretly, I used to admire the way you delivered the blows; half the time your victims didn't know they were wounded until they saw the blood.

Following Balanchine's advice, I kept searching for you, and found behind your seven veils more than I've chosen to tell. As your friend Donald Wyatt says, “Even a legend deserves some privacy.”

But some of the rumors about your adventures are too fascinating to ignore. Is it true that Charles de Gaulle, hero of the Resistance and legendary president of the French Republic, succumbed to your charms? Did you sleep with him? Marcel Sauvage told me he knew it for a fact.

I wouldn't bet against it. I don't forget that once you were a Goddess of the Macumba, and that you never liked to sleep alone. Even in death.

The baby of Luis and his wife Michele is buried with you. She was born after you died, and lived only a short time. “My mother had just left us,” Luis says, “and it was like she was punishing us twice. I had the impression that she was stealing my child; she was alone in her grave, and she took her granddaughter so she would have company in eternity.”

Seven years later, in 1982, when Richard was so ill he could no longer come to the telephone, I called Margaret. “You and he share Carrie's blood, I think you should make peace with your brother.”

By the time I arrived in the town of Baillargues where Richard lived with his family in a kind of housing project, Margaret was already there. Richard was weak, he had not been out of bed for a long time, but he
asked Margaret to shave him. I finished off the job with a touch of my electric razor, and a splash of my Vetiver cologne.

Then we went in to dinner. Margaret had prepared a feast like in the old days on Bernard Street, fried chicken, potato salad, ribs, lemon pie. I sat at the head of the table, and at the other end, in a high chair, was your eighteen-month-old great-niece (and my godchild), Nais. She was Richard's first French grandchild.

Richard was weak, but happy, and after the meal, he asked me and his son Alain to help him outside. Margaret said no. “You can't go out, it's going to kill you.”

We went anyway.

When the neighbors saw him coming through the door, they surrounded him, kissing him, telling him how wonderful he looked. He led me to the front of the building and there, parked near the sidewalk, was an old gray Ford.

“Tumpy bought me that car, Jean-Claude,” he said. “I have no money for insurance or repairs, but I keep it to remind me she could be generous. I know she hurt you, too, but you have to forgive her. The people that were good to her, she kicked them in the ass, and the ones that were bad to her, she fed them. That was Josephine.”

That was Josephine. I must have heard it a thousand times from a thousand people. You were what you were, and Richard was right. I must forgive you for the bad times, say thanks for the good times, and move on. But you know what? I still miss you.

Richard and I bent over the rusty Ford, putting our hands on it, tears rolling down our cheeks. Back in the apartment again, I helped put Richard to bed, and then Margaret asked to be left alone with him. She was holding her Bible. You know your sister, Mother, she wanted Brothercat to be ready for the big trip.

I wandered into the living room. It was the end of the day. Nais was tired, but when Guylaine tried to take her to bed, she screamed. It was funny to see how this baby, who looked just like you, struggled. Pushing away her mother's hands, clenching her small fists, she pounded on the floor, banging her head, rage, will, life-force—whatever it was—giving her the strength to go on with the show long after her eyes drooped with sleep.

Then and there I knew Carrie was right.

Tumpy ain't dead.

A
KIO
, single, works in a bank in Paris.

J
ANOT
, single, works as a gardener for the Societé des Bains de Mer in Monte Carlo.

L
UIS
, married, two children, works for an insurance company in Monte Carlo and lives in Menton, France.

J
ARI
, married, no children, helps me run Chez Josephine, my restaurant in New York City. He has changed the spelling of his name to Jarry.

J
EAN-CLAUDE
, no. 1, married with one daughter, lives in Paris.

M
OÏSE
(Moses), divorced, no children, died of cancer in 1999 in Bordeaux, France.

B
RAHIM
, single, an actor and novelist, lives in Paris. He has changed his name to Brian.

M
ARIANNE
, married, two children, lives in Paris.

K
OFFI
, married, two children, is a chef de cuisine. He lives in Buenos Aires with his family.

M
ARA
, married, two children, works in a government tax office in Benson, France.

N
OËL
, single, lives in Paris.

S
TELLINA
, married, one daughter, lives in Venice, Italy.

M
ARIE-JOSEPH
, widowed, one daughter, is an advertising executive in Dijon, France.

M
ARIE-ANNICK
, divorced, two children, is a professor of French and English in Sens, France.

M
ARTINE
, married, two children, lives in Istres, France.

In the years between 1926 and 1975, Josephine recorded over 230 songs, singing in French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, starting in September of 1926 for Odeon with a session that included “Dinah,” “I Want to Yodel,” and “I Wonder Where My Baby Is Tonight.” My favorite, from
Princesse Tam-Tam
, is ‘Le Chemin du Bonheur.” Her last album,
Josephine Baker at Bobino
, had Pierre Spiers conducting the orchestra. His son Gerard, who was playing drums with them, recalls that since Josephine first recorded “J'ai Deux Amours” in 1930, in C major, her voice had come down a full fifth, which is most unusual.

Telegram Josephine sent to German chancellor Willy Brandt from my home in Berlin on November 19, 1972,
prior
to her knowledge of the election results.

Der Abend

African American

The Afro-American

Amsterdam News

L'Art Vivant

Beaux-Arts

Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Chicago Daily News

Chicago Defender

Chicago Star

Chronique du Pingouin

Constanze

Le Crapouillot

Daily Mail

Défense de la France

Esquire

Le Figaro

France-Dimanche

France-Soir

Gazetter and Guide

Herald Examiner
(Chicago)

Hollywood Reporter

The Indianapolis Recorder

Journal du Jura

Le Merle Rose

Minute

The Nation

The National Observer

New Orleans Item

New York
Daily News

New York Post

The New York Times

The New Yorker

Nippon Times

Paris Match

Paris-Soir

Paris-Magazine

Le Petit Journal

Philadelphia Independent

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Philadelphia Tribune

Pittsburgh Courier

Plaisirs

Philadelphia Afro-American

The St. Louis Argus

Le Soir

Sun Chronicle

Time

Tageblatt

Vanity Fair

Variety

Die Welt

Women's Wear Daily

Abatino, Pepito.
Josephine Baker Vue par la Presse Française
. Paris: Les Editions Isis, 1931.

Abtey, Jacques.
La Guerre Secrète de Josephine Baker
. Paris and Havana: Editions Siboney, 1948. Also unpublished notes and original manuscript generously supplied by Commandant Abtey.

Baker, Josephine, and Jo Bouillon.
Josephine
. Paris: Laffont, 1976.

Baker, Josephine, and Jo Bouillon.
Josephine
, Trans. by Mariana Fitzpatrick. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.

Bonnal, Jean-Claude.
Josephine Baker et le Village des Enfants du Monde en Perigord
. Le Bugue: PL Editeur, 1992.

Delteil, Caroline Dudley (Reagan).
La Revue Nègre
. Unpublished manuscript used with permission from Sophie Reagan Herr.

Guild, Leo.
Josephine Baker
. Los Angeles: Holloway House, 1976.

Hammond, Bryan, compiler.
Josephine Baker
. London: Jonathan Cape, 1988.

Haney, Lynn.
Naked at the Feast: A Biography of Josephine Baker
. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1981.

Hultin, Randi.
Jazzens Tegn
. Oslo: H. Aschehoug & Co., 1991.

Kuhn, Dieter.
Josephine
. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1976.

La Camara and Pepito Abatino.
Mon Sang Dans tes Veines: Roman d'après une Idée de Josephine Baker
. Paris: Les Editions Isis, 1931.

Papich, Stephen.
Remembering Josephine: A Biography of Josephine Baker
. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976.

Rivollet, André.
Les Fausses Canailles
. Unpublished manuscript used with permission of Rivollet estate, executor Bernard Houdeline.

Rivollet, André.
Une Vie de Toutes les Couleurs
. Grenoble: B. Arthaud Éditeur, 1935.

Rose, Phyllis.
Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Times
. New York: Doubleday, 1989.

Sauvage, Marcel.
Les Mémoires de Josephine Baker
. Paris: Editions KRA, 1927. Illustrated with 30 drawings by Paul Colin.