The Future of Another Timeline

^NINE TESS

Chicago, Illinois (1893 C.E.)

The morning after I came out to Aseel and Soph as a traveler, I navigated between a headache, yet another carriage full of ostriches, and monumental chunks of Ferris wheel to reach the Algerian Theater. Sol was addressing the whole troupe when I arrived, while Aseel translated into Arabic. With opening day right around the corner, he’d arranged for a special preview show at the local press club for that afternoon. Several of the dancers would perform, with Aseel’s Lady Asenath routine as the main attraction.

“What? This afternoon?” Aseel whirled on Sol, glowering. A few of the dancers cracked smiles. They were always amused when Aseel fought with Sol.

To his credit, he looked sheepish. “That’s the only time they would give us. But a lot of press are coming! We should get lots of notices.”

There was nothing to be done but to make the best of it. Aseel swung into action. “Salina, Amina, and Bertha, come with me. We’ll figure out something. And you too, Tess. We need our costumes to look perfect.”

I followed them to the dressing room. As I sewed furiously, Aseel went over their set. Each dancer would do her number while the others watched, and of course Lady Asenath would be the climactic act. She also dispensed some advice. “Remember to bring a veil to rip off your face at some point. Those white gentlemen love it.”

Salina looked dubious. “A veil? How does that fit into my dance?”

“I trust you can make it work.”

Salina shrugged and looked at me. “You got a veil?”

“I can make one for you right now.” I looked over at Aseel. “You want something to cover her nose and mouth? Or her whole head?”

“Nose and mouth is fine.”

“Nothing on my head with it? Who wears a veil over her nose and mouth without a head covering?” Salina threw up her arms.

Aseel rolled her eyes. “Look, I know. But trust me. They will eat it up.”

Sol brought us in a carriage to the press club, where we found Soph pacing back and forth outside. She was fuming. “They won’t let me in, despite my press credentials!”

“Come with us, and I’ll get you in.” Aseel crooked her finger for Soph to follow.

When we reached the entrance, the doorman scowled. “This is a men’s club. She can’t come in.”

“I’m press, sir! It is a press club.” Soph’s pale cheeks had gone red and her hair was coming undone.

Aseel stepped forward. “She’s with us. We’re the reason why everyone is here.” And with that, she swung the dark wool coat off her shoulders to reveal her danse du ventre costume, with its nearly transparent chemise and ropes of beads shimmering over the generous curve of her belly.

“What… what… are you… Lady Asenath?”

“I am. And we’re going inside for our press conference.”

The man gaped.

I wondered what made him gaze at her like that. She was beautiful, but not in this era’s conventional sense—she fit no Gilded Age ideal with her brown skin and thick waist. Was he rocked by moral indignation? Titillated by the idea of a live-action French postcard? Whatever it was, she forced him to look beyond the phantasm his desire conjured. She radiated authority. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Aseel took it for granted that men would do what she said. And it worked. In the face of her supreme certainty, the doorman stood aside.

“Why, thank you, sir.” Aseel gave a curtsy that made her look even more regal. “I do hope you’ll come visit us on the Midway.”

Soph sailed in after us, the row over her credentials completely forgotten.

The setup was not ideal. Some of the younger press men had cleared a space along one wall of the smoky room, arranging overstuffed chairs and heavy tables in a haphazard imitation of cabaret seating. We had no dressing room, so the dancers retreated to a sofa in the corner to shed their coats and fix their veils in place. All of them wore beaded belts and tassels over the puff of their long skirts, cinched beneath the swell of their stomach muscles. Their little vests were basically push-up bras adorned with all the gold thread and coins I could muster. Though the effect was diminished somewhat by their modesty camisoles, which covered them from neck to elbows, we all knew it was racy enough to inspire headlines. That’s why we were here.

Sol gave a brief preamble, explaining to the assembled men that in his humble opinion, as director of the Midway, the dancers of the Algerian Theater were going to be the most impressive and astonishing attraction anyone had ever seen. He talked about how these dances originated with the Berbers of the Maghreb, and would educate Americans about the enchantments of other cultures. As he spoke, I could see Soph writing swiftly in shorthand, nodding as Sol thanked each of the dancers by name. She’d found a seat next to an elderly man with hamster-sized muttonchops, who kept glancing at her as if she were a radish come inexplicably and irritatingly to life. I did some final adjustments on Amina’s skirts and then withdrew further into the corner, where I could watch everyone’s reactions to the show.

Bertha went first, walking daintily to the center of the room, practically tiptoeing in her incongruous, Western-style slippers. She flitted through a pantomime routine, waving handkerchiefs as she pretended to be a lady fretting over her toilette. Then came Amina and Salina, who did a short version of the danse du ventre, then tore their veils off with comical enthusiasm. It wasn’t part of the traditional dance at all, but Aseel was right. When the women’s round cheeks and rouged lips were revealed, some of the men gasped audibly and there was a general shuffling of notepads. Meanwhile, Aseel was whispering furiously to Sol, pointing at a dusty pianoforte in the corner. I knew immediately what she was getting at. They needed music. Desperately.

“For the act you’ve been waiting for… Lady Asenath… I’ll be providing some music.” Sol sounded uncertain, but the press men moved chairs out of his way so he could sit at the instrument. Aseel made a “go go” gesture with her hands and Sol looked pensive for a moment, then began to pluck out a simple tune.

Was I going crazy, or was he playing a Ke$ha song? I bobbed my head and tried to recall the lyrics to “Take It Off,” until they blurred in my mind with the lyrics to a song we sang as children: “There’s a place in France where the women wear no pants…” I couldn’t believe it. Had Sol Bloom invented a tune that would last for generations, and become synonymous with both strippers and shitty Orientalist tropes? I pondered. More likely, he was playing a variation on a tune that some anonymous keyboard-tickler had written. Still, he was transplanting it into a new context. I was actually here for the origin of a meme. This was the kind of thing that got you published in Nature.

But as soon as Aseel stepped into the middle of the room, my thoughts of academic fame evaporated. She stood completely still, head down, slowly lifting her arms to wield the clashing finger cymbals on her hands. As she raised her bare face—no veils for Lady Asenath—her shoulders started to move with the music. She shivered and stopped, shivered and stopped, her tassels flashing in and out of her skirts like fish in sunlit water. Soph stopped writing and watched in open admiration, her lips parted. Many of the men wore the same expression.

When Aseel began to undulate, her necklaces ringing, she made the room hers. Her body pulsed like an artery. She barely moved her feet, and yet she embodied a motion more fluid and frenetic than anything a ballerina could evoke with whirls and kicks. As the music reached a crescendo, so too did the rolling waves of her muscles, rippling down her midriff into the trembling layers of her skirts. There was something sexual about it, but not in the kittenish, saucy-ironic style these men had seen in burlesque shows. This was a body that would resist them if they dared to approach it. She swayed and flexed and showed her strength.

From the back of the room there was a loud bang and the sound of a scuffle. Three men were overturning chairs, while others were trying to restrain them. As Aseel delivered a final clash of her cymbals, one of the agitated men stood up on a table and began to yell.

“This is evil, Satanic filth! These foul sluts are nothing more than savage beasts! Send them back to the dark country that spawned them!”

Then his buddy jumped up next to him, and my heart almost exploded. It was the shitbag from the Grape Ape concert—the Comstocker, older now, his face partly obscured by a beard shot with gray. “You are upstanding men! Do you want this vile obscenity to sicken the minds and bodies of every innocent who visits the Midway?”

There were shouts as the press men scrambled to pull the Comstockers off their perch. But they wouldn’t shut up. “We will put a stop to this! Mark my words!”

The third man, young with slicked-back hair, waved a rope that he’d coiled into a noose. “Will you let a Jew and his black bitches lead you to hell?” Then he ran at Salina, dumping a can of machine oil over her head before we could stop him. She screamed as the reeking black fluid ran down her face and stained her chemise. Sol raced to drape her in his jacket and I grabbed some spare fabric to clean her up.

The room degenerated into chaos, and cries of “Stand down, man!” mingled with further ranting from the Comstockers, as they were dragged to the door. As I helped Salina into another chemise in the corner, I heard Soph’s unmistakable soprano above the baritone din. “The Devil take you!” she screamed. “There is no goodness left in your putrid souls!”

A group of press men shoved the Comstockers into the street and Aseel appeared at my side. She was utterly calm, and said something quietly to Salina that made the weeping woman break into a shaky smile. Then Aseel turned to me, her lips thinned with rage. With a fierce yank on my shoulder, she pulled me close enough to hear her jagged whisper. “What you talked about last night? I’m in. We are going to bring those men low.”

Before I could reply, Sol took to the center of the room and waved his hands to quiet everyone down. “Chicago is a great city! A city of progress and industry! We don’t need yesterday’s moralists to tell us what’s right and wrong. We can see for ourselves, and judge for ourselves. I hope you gentlemen learned something from the show.” Then he winked. “And maybe you had a little fun too, before that ruckus. Remember, the Algerian Theater is right next to Cairo Street, below the great Ferris wheel! You can see more of this beautiful, secret tradition for only two bits! Show opens on May first!”

And with that, he hustled us back to the carriage waiting outside. I had never seen Sol upset before, so I couldn’t be certain that’s what I was witnessing now. He kept up the jolly patter as we rode back to the Midway, complimenting the women on their performances, and giving each of us an extra dollar for our trouble. Still, I thought I saw him wince a few times. When we got out of the carriage, he told the driver to take him straight to his favorite club for a drink.

Aseel looked thoughtful as he drove away. “You know he makes the same salary as the president? But they still call him ‘Jew’ instead of Sol Bloom. Kind of makes me feel bad for him.”

“Yeah.”

I thought of my father reading the Haggadah at Passover, letting me ask the Four Questions for the first time. I stumbled over the unfamiliar word “reclining,” and my grandfather gently corrected me. As a kid in the liberal 1970s, I had no way to understand how much anti-Semitic shit they’d eaten in their lives. Of course, there were things about me that they would never understand either.