Page 64 of Mazywood

“Freed slaves,” he corrected her. Otis’s lips fought his smile as he gazed across the massive set, basking in his good luck.

But Mazelle had lost her mood for smiling.

Gram had been born a slave in Georgia, and when Mazelle was six, she had asked her what it was like to be enslaved as a little girl. Mazelle hadn’t known much about slavery beyond the power of the word to make grown-ups frown, and she had a vague idea it might mean you had to do a lot of chores because her sisters complained that their parents “worked them like slaves.”

Gram had patted Mazelle’s head with teary eyes, as if the question itself had cast her back to her childhood. They sold my mama away. Pulled me out of her arms. It still hurts, was all Gram had said. Mazelle didn’t remember much she and Gram talked about before she died, but she remembered that. What would Gram think if she could see her now?

Mazelle’s eyes clouded with tears borrowed from Gram. Warm moisture washed the dust on her cheek. But Otis was too excited to notice, daydreaming about his future in Hollywood.

“Say,” Otis said. “You wanna meet Hattie McDaniel?”

Hattie McDaniel was a long way from Central Avenue.

The fragrant gardenia bushes along the path made Mazelle wish she’d chosen a flower with a more pleasing scent, not just colors. Her pulse was quick in her palm clutching the bouquet as she approached the whitewashed door. Otis was boarding with Hattie McDaniel because she knew his parents, but she hoped Otis hadn’t overstepped his role to invite her to dinner. She smelled what she thought might be stewing chicken. Her stomach growled.

Before Mazelle could knock, the door flung open—and Hattie McDaniel stood there wearing a silk robe with a fur collar that hung loosely across her large frame. Her bright red lipstick was the only visible makeup, but the splash of color made her round face glow with a natural beauty and joy the cameras did not capture.

“Look at you—all grown up!” Hattie McDaniel squealed. She gave Mazelle a hug against her soft, fleshy bosom. Mazelle was surprised at how close she came to crying. Mother might have come too, except she’d been having a coughing spell. Mazelle hated to admit how many of her experiences didn’t feel quite real without Mother and Daddy at her side.

Otis appeared behind Hattie McDaniel, his arms folded. He was even more handsome in his contemporary clothing: high black slacks and a plaid slipover sports shirt. “Thought you didn’t know her,” Otis said to Mazelle over his hostess’s shoulder. Was that a spark of envy?

“You don’t know Little Mazy?” Hattie McDaniel said. “This child ran that whole show. It sure is good to meet you, Mazelle Washington. I was thrilled when Otis said you got hired.” Mazelle noted that, like her, Hattie McDaniel’s natural voice was very different from her roles.

Mazelle’s face flashed hot. “Well… we’re just extras…”

“God put you there for a reason,” she said. “Maybe one of those reasons was me.”

Mazelle stole glances around the living room, trying not to be obvious as she gawked. The rose-colored sofa and matching chairs all looked new. She glimpsed a copy of a poetry book Mother also owned on a reading table: Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Lyrics of Lowly Life. But although it wasn’t ostentatious, there was nothing “lowly” about this house.

Hattie McDaniel retrieved a letter from a rolltop desk and slipped a business card into Mazelle’s hand. DARK DREAM PICTURES, it read. MASON JACKSON—PRESIDENT. “I heard just yesterday from an old friend in Chicago who said he’s making race pictures now, and he has a script he wrote for me about a schoolteacher who gets in all kinds of funny jams. I’m so tied up with contracts, these scripts always pass me by, much as I wish I could. My agent won’t show me scripts if they’re not from a studio. But, girl, I think you’d be perfect for it! You’re young, but I don’t know any actresses with a name who can deliver the comedy like he wants to.” She lowered her voice as if her friend might overhear her across the miles. “Especially who’d be willing to work for what he can pay.”

Mazelle had felt her feet lifting from the floor as she looked at the business card, but the buoyant feeling vanished when she heard Mother’s voice in her head. “Will I make at least five dollars a day?” Mazelle heard herself blurt out.

Hattie McDaniel raised her eyebrows at her boldness. “To be the star? Sure, you might get a hundred dollars for the whole picture.” It sounded like a small fortune now, but Mazelle had been making twice that per week working for Mr. Lorenzo. “But, child, nobody does race pictures for the money. None of them have much money to speak of—not even Oscar Micheaux. I hear he won’t spend more now than he did when he first started before you were born. But you can be the star, not just a face in the background.”

“If you get paid,” Otis muttered. “Miss Hattie, can I tell her?”

Miss Hattie turned to look at him with a swatting motion. “Child, hush. I never should have told you anyhow.”

“Come on, Miss Hattie—let her dream about what she can do.”

“I’m gonna go check on my chicken,” Miss Hattie said, making her way toward the kitchen. Her house’s layout was eerily similar to Mazelle’s, the kitchen at the far rear of the house. “And I’ll bring you some sweet tea, Mazelle. Nobody knows how to brew tea in L.A.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Otis whispered to Mazelle, “She’s making four hundred and fifty dollars a week on Gone with the Wind.”

A week! Mazelle gaped. Mazelle didn’t know Negro actors were ever paid that much.

“Close your mouth back up, or she’ll know I told you.”

Mazelle would enjoy many dinner parties with Hattie McDaniel in the years to come—several at her Jefferson Park house, and later at her more lavish Sugar Hill home that she would be forced to go to court to defend her right to occupy—but that first frank conversation was the most memorable because Mazelle didn’t know she would ever see her again, so she asked every question she could think of. Her parents had insisted that she finish her high school education—but Miss Hattie felt like her first true teacher. The only teacher she’d ever needed. Mazelle almost forgot to eat while she savored Miss Hattie’s advice. Although her dining room and every table setting were well appointed and stylish, the house around Mazelle vanished as Miss Hattie spoke to her as if she were in the spotlight on a stage.

“I spent years writing letters to get my papa his war benefits,” Miss Hattie said. “He fought for the Union in the Civil War, you know. Year after year, they said no because he was born a slave, so he didn’t have no birth certificate. See how it’s rigged against us? Hollywood too. Hollywood is hard for anybody, but it’s ten times worse for Negroes. So when I see stories in the press asking, ‘Why does Hattie McDaniel want to play maids?’ or ‘How come Hattie McDaniel is playing Mammy?’ I get real hot until I remind myself they don’t know how far I’ve come. They don’t know how many times I heard ‘No’ and kept on singing and acting to keep from cleaning bathrooms. And they sure don’t know how much I wish I didn’t have to play a maid… But if I stopped making pictures, I might have to go back to being a maid. When you’ve missed some meals, you know more hungry days might be waiting just around the corner.”

Mazelle nodded. She knew too well. As educated as Mother was, the only steady work she’d found in Los Angeles so far was cooking. She was planning fancier parties now and supervised other cooks, but she was still working for a white family.

Miss Hattie went on: “Miss Butterfly, she’s been on Broadway and whatnot, and I’ve told her she needs to pick her battles. You may be ready to quit over this or that—but don’t be surprised if your phone stops ringing. White folks never did like an ‘uppity’ Negro, which to them is any Negro that stands up for themselves. And you’re skinny as a pin and cute as you can be, so I’m just gonna tell you straight: These studios will say you should gain weight. Big as I am, those producers wish I was bigger. Best I figure, they don’t want you to think you’re in competition with those white starlets. A big Negro woman won’t intimidate them the same way.