Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas

by Maya Angelou

  I clung to Tosh, surrendering more of my territory, my independence. I would ignore the straightness of his hair which worried my fingers. I would be an obedient dutiful wife, restricting our arguments to semantic differences, never contradicting the substance of his views.

  Clyde stood flinching as I combed his thick snarled hair. His face was screwed into a frown.

  “Mom—ouch—when am I going to grow up—ouch— and have good hair like Dad's?”

  The mixed marriage bludgeoned home. My son thought that the whites' straight hair was better than his natural abundant curls.

  “You are going to have hair like mine. Isn't that good?” I counted on his love to keep him loyal.

  “It's good for you, but mine hurts. I don't like hurting hair.”

  I promised to have the barber give him a close cut on our next visit and told him how beautiful and rich he looked with his own hair. He looked at me, half disbelieving so I told him about a little African prince named Hannibal who had hair just like his. I felt a dislike for Tosh's hair because of my son's envy.

  I began scheming. There was only one way I could keep my marriage balanced and make my son have a healthy respect for his own looks and race: I had to devote all my time and intelligence to my family. I needed to become a historian, sociologist and anthropologist. I would begin a self-improvement course at the main library. Just one last church visit, then I would totally dedicate myself to Tosh and Clyde and we would all be happy.

  • • •

  The Evening Star Baptist Church was crowded when I arrived and the service had begun. The members were rousing a song, urging the music to soar beyond all physical boundaries.

  “I want to be ready

  I want to be ready

  I want to be ready

  To walk in Jerusalem, just like John.”

  Over and over again the melodies lifted, pushed up by the clapping hands, kept aloft by the shaking shoulders. Then the minister stepped out away from the altar to stand at the lip of the dais. He was tall and ponderous as befitted a person heavy with the word of God.

  “The bones were dry.” The simple statement sped through my mind. “Dry Bones in the Valley” was my favorite sermon. The song that whites had come to use in mimicry of the Negro accent, “Dem Bones” was inspired by that particular portion of the Old Testament. Their ridicule—“De toe bone connected to de foot bone, foot bone connected to de ankle bone, ankle bone connected to de …”—in no way diminished my reverence for the sermon. I knew of no teaching more positive than the legend which said that will and faith caused a dismembered skeleton, dry on the desert floor, to knit back together and walk. I also knew that that sermon properly preached, could turn me into a shouting, spinning dervish. I tried for the first few minutes to rise and leave the church, but the preacher swung his head to look at me each time I poised myself to leave. I sat again. He told the story simply at first, weaving a quiet web around us all, binding us into the wonder of faith and the power of God. His rhythm accelerated and his volume increased slowly, so slowly he caught me off guard. I had sat safe in my own authority in so many churches and waited cautiously for the point in the service when the ignition would be sparked, when “the saints” would be fired with the spirit and jump in the aisles, dancing and shaking and shouting their salvation. I had always resisted becoming a part of that enchanted band.

  The minister's voice boomed, “These bones shall walk. I say these bones shall walk again.”

  I found myself in the aisle and my feet were going crazy under me—slithering and snapping like two turtles shot with electricity. The choir was singing “You brought my feet out the mire and clay and you saved my soul one day.” I loved that song and the preacher's voice over it measured my steps. There was no turning back. I gave myself to the spirit and danced my way to the pulpit. Two ushers held me in gloved hands as the sermon fell in volume and intensity around the room.

  “I am opening the doors of the Church. Let him come who will be saved.” He paused as I trembled before him.

  “Jesus is waiting.” He looked at me. “Won't somebody come?”

  I was within arm's reach. I nodded. He left the altar and took my hand.

  “Child, what church were you formerly affiliated with?” His voice was clear over the quiet background music. I couldn't tell him I had joined the Rock of Ages Methodist Church the month before and the Lily of the Valley Baptist the month before that.

  I said, “None.”

  He dropped my hand, turned to the congregation and said, “Brothers and sisters, the Lord has been merciful unto us today. Here is a child that has never known the Lord. A young woman trying to make her way out here in this cruel world without the help of the ever-loving Jesus.” He turned to four old ladies who sat on the front row. “Mothers of the Church, won't you come? Won't you pray with her?”

  The old women rose painfully, the lace handkerchiefs pinned in their hair shook. I felt very much in need of their prayers, because I was a sinner, a liar and a hedonist, using the sacred altar to indulge my sensuality. They hobbled to me and one in a scratchy voice said, “Kneel, child.”

  Four right hands overlapped on my head as the old women began to pray. “Lord, we come before you today, asking for a special mercy for this child.”

  “Amens,” and “Yes, Lords” sprang around the room like bouncing balls in a cartoon sing-along.

  “Out. Devil,” one old lady ordered.

  “She has come to you with an open heart, asking you for your special mercy.”

  “Out of this baby, Devil.”

  I thought about my white atheist husband and my son, who was following in his nonbelieving footsteps, and how I had lied even in church. I added, “Out, Devil.”

  The raspy voice said, “Stretch out, child, and let the Devil go. Make room for the Lord.”

  I lay flat on the floor as the congregation prayed for my sins. The four women commenced a crippled march around my body.

  They sang,

  “Soon one morning when death comes walking in my room,

  Soon one morning when death comes walking in my room,

  Oh, my Lord,

  Oh, my Lord,

  What shall I do?”

  They were singing of their own dread, of the promise of death whose cool hand was even then resting on their frail shoulders. I began to cry. I wept for their age and their pain. I cried for my people, who found sweet release from anguish and isolation for only a few hours on Sunday. For my fatherless son, who was growing up with a man who would never, could never, understand his need for manhood; for my mother, whom I admired but didn't understand; for my brother, whose disappointment with life was drawing him relentlessly into the clutches of death; and, finally, I cried for myself, long and loudly.

  When the prayer was finished I stood up, and was enrolled into the church roster. I was so purified I forgot my cunning. I wrote down my real name, address and telephone number, shook hands with members, who welcomed me into their midst and left the church.

  Midweek, Tosh stood before me, voice hard and face stony.

  “Who the hell is Mother Bishop?”

  I said I didn't know.

  “And where the hell is the Evening Star Baptist Church?”

  I didn't answer.

  “A Mother Bishop called here from the Evening Star Baptist Church. She said Mrs. Angelos had joined their church last Sunday. She now must pay twelve dollars for her robe, since she will be baptized in the Crystal Pool plunge next Sunday.”

  I said nothing.

  “I told her no one who lived here was going to be baptized. Anywhere. At any time.”

  I made no protest, gave no confession—just stood silent. And allowed a little more of my territory to be taken away.

  CHAPTER 5

  The articles in the women's magazines did nothing to help explain the deterioration of my marriage. We had no infidelity; my husband was a good provider and I was a good cook. He encouraged me to resume my dance classes
and I listened to him practice the saxophone without interruption. He came directly home from work each afternoon and in the evening after my son was asleep I found as much enjoyment in our marital bed as he.

  The form was there, but the spirit had disappeared.

  A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning's greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications.

  “How are you?” Does he/she really care?

  “Fine.” I'm not really. I'm miserable, but I'll never tell you.

  Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.

  Bacon and coffee odors mingled with the aseptic aroma of Lifebuoy soap. Wisps of escaping gas, which were as real a part of a fifty-year-old San Francisco house as the fourteen-foot-high ceilings and the cantankerous plumbing, solidified my reality. Those were natural morning mists. The sense that order was departing my life was refuted by the daily routine. My family would awaken. I would shower and head for the kitchen to begin making breakfast. Clyde would then take over the shower as Tosh read the newspaper. Tosh would shower while Clyde dressed, collected his crayons and lunch pail for school. We could all sit at breakfast together. I would force unwanted pleasantries into my face. (My mother had taught me: “If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning ‘Good morning’ at total strangers.”)

  Tosh was usually quiet and amiable. Clyde gabbled about his dreams, which had to do with Roy Rogers as Jesus and Br'er Rabbit as God. We would finish breakfast in a glow of family life and they would both leave me with kisses off to their separate excitements.

  One new morning Tosh screamed from the bathroom, “Where in the hell are the goddamn dry towels?” The outburst caught me as unexpectedly as an upper cut. He knew that I kept the linen closet filled with towels folded as I had seen them photographed in the Ladies Home Journal. More shocking than his forgetfulness, however, was his shouting. Anger generally rendered my husband morose and silent as a stone.

  I went to the bathroom and handed him the thickest towel we owned.

  “What's wrong, Tosh?”

  “All the towels in here are wet. You know I hate fucking wet towels.”

  I didn't know because he had never told me. I went back to the kitchen, not really knowing him, either.

  At breakfast, Clyde began a recounting of Roy Rogers on his horse and Red Ryder, riding on clouds up to talk to God about some rustlers in the lower forty.

  Tosh turned, looking directly at him, and said, “Shut up, will you. I'd like a little fucking peace and quiet while I eat.”

  The statement slapped Clyde quiet; he had never been spoken to with such cold anger.

  Tosh looked at me. “The eggs are like rocks. Can't you fry a decent goddamn egg? If not, I'll show you.”

  I was too confounded to speak. I sat, not understanding the contempt. Clyde asked to be excused from the table. I excused him and followed him to the door.

  He whispered, “Is Dad mad at me?”

  I picked up his belongings, saw him jacketed and told him, “No, not at you. You know grownups have a lot on their minds. Sometimes they're so busy thinking they forget their manners. It's not nice, but it happens.”

  He said, “I'll go back and tell him 'bye.”

  “No, I think you should just go on to school. He'll be in a better mood this evening.”

  I held the front door open.

  He shouted, “ 'Bye, Dad.”

  There was no answer as I kissed him and closed the door. Fury quickened my footsteps. How could he scream at my son like that? Who the hell was he? A white-sheeted Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan? I wouldn't have a white man talk to me in that tone of voice and I'd slap him with a coffee pot before he could yell at my child again. The midnight murmuring of soft words was forgotten. His gentle hands and familiar body had become in those seconds the shelter of an enemy.

  He was still sitting over coffee, brooding. I went directly to the table.

  “What do you mean, screaming at us that way?”

  He said nothing.

  “You started, first with the towels, then it was Clyde's dream. Then my cooking. Are you going crazy?”

  He said, “I don't want to talk about it,” still looking down into a half-filled cup of near-cold coffee.

  “You sure as hell will talk about it. What have I done to you? What's the matter with you?”

  He left the table and headed for the door without looking at me. I followed raising my protest, hoping to puncture his cloak of withdrawal.

  “I deserve and demand an explanation.”

  He held the door open and turned at last to face me. His voice was soft again and tender. “I think I'm just tired of being married.” He pulled the door closed.

  There is a shock that comes so quickly and strikes so deep that the blow is internalized even before the skin feels it. The strike must first reach bone marrow, then ascend slowly to the brain where the slowpoke intellect records the deed.

  I went about cleaning my kitchen. Wash the dishes, sweep the floor, swipe the sputtered grease from the stove, make fresh coffee, put a fresh starched cloth on the table. Then I sat down. A sense of loss suffused me until I was suffocating within the vapors.

  What had I done? I had placed my life within the confines of my marriage. I was everything the magazines said a wife should be. Constant, faithful and clean. I was economical. I was compliant never offering headaches as excuses for not sharing the marital bed.

  I had generously allowed Tosh to share my son, encouraging Clyde to think of him as a permanent life fixture. And now Tosh was “tired of being married.”

  Experience had made me accustomed to make quick analyses and quick if often bad decisions. So I expected Tosh, having come to the conclusion that marriage was exhausting, to ask me for a divorce when he returned from work. My tears were for myself and my son. We would be thrown again into a maelstrom of rootlessness. I wept for our loss of security and railed at the brutality of fate. Forgotten were my own complaints of the marriage. Unadmitted was the sense of strangulation I had begun to feel, or the insidious quality of guilt for having a white husband, which surrounded me like an evil aura when we were in public.

  At my table, immersed in self-pity, I saw my now dying marriage as a union made in heaven, officiated over by St. Peter and sanctioned by God. It wasn't just that my husband was leaving me, I was losing a state of perfection, of grace.

  My people would nod knowingly. Again a white man had taken a Black woman's body and left her hopeless, helpless and alone. But I couldn't expect their sympathy. I hadn't been ambushed on a dark country lane or raped by a group of randy white toughs. I had sworn to obey the man and had accepted his name. Anger, first at injustice, then at Tosh, stopped my tears. The same words I had used to voice my anguish I now used to fan the fires of rage. I had been a good wife, kind and compliant. And that wasn't enough for him? It was better than he deserved. More than he could reasonably have expected had he married within his own race. Anyway, had he planned to leave me from the first? Had he intended in the beginning to lure me into trust, then break up our marriage and break my heart? Maybe he was a sadist, scheming to inflict pain on poor, unsuspecting me. Well, he didn't know me. I would show him. I was no helpless biddy to be beckoned, then belittled. He was tired of marriage; all right, then I would leave him.

  I got up from the table and cooked dinner, placed the food in the refrigerator and dressed in my best clothes. I left the dinner pots dirty and my bed unmade and hit the streets.

  The noontime bar in the popular hotel on Eddy Street was filled with just-awakened petty gamblers and drowsy whores. Pimps not yet clad in their evening air of exquisite brutality spent the whores' earnings on their fellow parasites. I was recognized by a few drinkers, because I was Clydell and Vivian's daughter, because I had worked at the popular record shop or because I was that girl who
had married the white man. I knew nothing about strong liquor except the names of some cocktails. I sat down and ordered a Zombie.

  I clung to the long, cold drink and examined my predicament. My marriage was over, since I believed the legal bonds were only as good as the emotional desire to make them good. If a person didn't want you, he didn't want you. I could have thrown myself and my son on Tosh's mercy; he was a kind man, and he might have tolerated us in his home and on the edges of his life. But begging had always stuck, resisting, in my throat. I thought women who accepted their husbands' inattention and sacrificed all their sovereignty for a humiliating marriage more unsavory than the prostitutes who were drinking themselves awake in the noisy bar.

  A short, thickset man sat down beside me and asked if he could pay for my second Zombie. He was old enough to be my father and reminded me of a kindly old country doctor from sepia-colored B movies. He asked my name and where I lived. I told his soft, near-feminine face that my name was Clara. When I said “No, I'm not married,” he grinned and said, “I don't know what these young men are waiting for. If I was a few years younger, I'd give them a run for they money. Yes siree bob.” He made me feel comfortable. His Southern accent was as familiar to me as the smell of baking cornbread and the taste of wild persimmons. He asked if I was “a, uh, a ah a fancy lady?”