by Maya Angelou
I said, “I don’t have gold, but let me lend you some money.”
Weakness made her old, robust smile gentle, “Sistah, thank you, but my uncle is a goldsmith, and I have plenty of trinkets. What I want is to go and come. I want us to sit out in your compound on a Saturday. I want my strength back so that when I put my hands on your head you will know that Comfort has her hands on your head, and I want you to make me laugh. Oh Sistah, I cannot say how much I want to laugh.”
We embraced when she left and she promised to see me again in two months. Fine, fat and laughing.
Two weeks later a friend of Comfort’s came to my door.
“Sister Maya, I have come with very sad news. Our Sister, Comfort, died in Sierra Leone. She had not been there a week. Sorry to bring this news, but I knew you would want to know. She so loved to laugh with you.”
Malcolm was a prompt and exciting correspondent, using the mails to inform, instruct, and encourage us. His letters were weighty with news and rich in details of his daily life. The United States was on the brink of making great changes, and the time was ripe for the Organization of Afro-American Unity. His family was wonderful and it just might be increasing. Death threats were proliferating in his post box and he changed his telephone number frequently to protect his wife from vulgar and frightening callers.
Some of his letters were plain directives:
A young painter named Tom Feelings is coming to Ghana. Do everything you can for him. I am counting on you.
The U.S. State Department is sending James Farmer to Ghana. The Ambassador will pick out special people for him to see and special places he should go. I want you all to collect him and show him around. Treat him as you treated me. I am counting on you.
There were good people working for the OAAU, full of energy and enthusiasm, but none had the organizational skills to set up and run an efficient office. What they needed was an experienced coordinator.
He didn’t mention that I had worked as Northern Coordinator for Martin Luther King’s SCLC. By omitting the reminder, he forced me to speculate upon my possible value to the organization. I went to Julian for advice. He said, “I suspect we’ll all be home soon. Africa was here when we arrived and it’s not going anywhere. You can always come back.”
Alice’s letter from Ethiopia pushed me closer to my decision. She wrote that Malcolm came through Addis, looking good but harried and still traveling without a companion. “If he gets that OAAU in shape, he’d be sure to have people around him. Like you and Julian, I’m worried for his safety.”
My Ghanaian friends said they would be sorry to see me go, but they understood that my people’s struggle came first.
I thought long and carefully before I came to a final decision.
My son convinced me, and had nearly succeeded in convincing himself, that he was a grown man. He was either doing brilliant work at the university or, when he was distracted, none at all. He was a character, in a drama of his own composition, and was living the plot as it unfolded. Even if he forgot his lines, his mannishness wouldn’t allow him to accept prompting.
When I told him I was thinking of returning to the United States, he had smiled broadly.
“Yes, Mom. It is time for you to go back home.”
His only frown came when I said I would pay up his tuition and leave him a solid bank account.
“I’m really sorry I have to take your money, Mother, but someday … someday.” Visions of future affluence danced in his eyes. The little boy and even the rambunctious teenager had strutted upon the stage and exited. This new leading man did not need a mother as supporting actress in his scene. He welcomed having the stage to himself at last.
It seemed that I had gotten all Africa had to give me. I had met people and made friends. Efua, Kwesi Brew, T. D. Bafoo and Nana had woven themselves as important strands into the fabric of my life. I had gotten to know and love the children of Africa, from Baby Joe to the clever Kojo, the bouncing Abena, the grave Ralph and the ladylike Esi Rieter. They had given me their affection and instructed me on the positive power of literally knowing one’s place. Sheikhali had provided African romance, and Comfort’s life and her death had proved the reality of African illusion. Alice and Vicki and Julian and Ana Livia would return to the United States someday and we would stir up our cauldron of old love and old arguments, and not one whit of steam would have been lost during our separation. I had seen the African moon grow red as fire over the black hills at Aburi and listened to African priests implore God in rhythm and voices which carried me back to Calvary Baptist Church in San Francisco.
If the heart of Africa still remained allusive, my search for it had brought me closer to understanding myself and other human beings. The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned. It impels mighty ambitions and dangerous capers. We amass great fortunes at the cost of our souls, or risk our lives in drug dens from London’s Soho, to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury. We shout in Baptist churches, wear yarmulkes and wigs and argue even the tiniest points in the Torah, or worship the sun and refuse to kill cows for the starving. Hoping that by doing these things, home will find us acceptable or failing that, that we will forget our awful yearning for it.
My mind was made up. I would go back to the United States as soon as possible.
Nana Nketsia was traveling to Lagos by car and when he invited me and his two oldest daughters to accompany him as far as the Togo border, I accepted gratefully. Now that I had decided to leave Africa, I realized I had not seen Eastern Ghana.
Araba rode with me and Adae got into her father’s car. Three hours after we left Accra we arrived at the small but busy town of Aflao. Nana beckoned me to follow and led me to a large two-story stone house at the end of a quiet lane.
“We will stay here for the night, and at dawn my driver and I will continue to Lagos. Come inside, I want you to meet our host, the customs officer.” A servant responded to Nana’s knock and his daughters, Nana and I were shown into a daintily furnished sitting room. Before we could choose seats a young girl around Araba’s age entered through a side door. She smiled and extended her hands and made a little curtsy to Nana.
“Nana, welcome. I am Freida, Adadevo’s daughter. He is still at the office. I will make you comfortable.”
Nana introduced Araba, Adae and me, and Freida bobbed prettily, accepting the introduction. She supposed we would be weary after such a long journey and offered to show us to our rooms. Nana was put on the ground floor, and I was given a second floor guest room. Araba and Adae were to share a room near Freida.
Although I was used to the dignity of African girls, I was taken aback by Freida’s grown-up composure at sixteen. She was a practiced hostess. I surmised that she was an only child of a single parent and circumstances had forced her to grow up quickly and very well. Nana carried his shortwave radio to his quarters and I retired to my room.
For the next hours as the girls giggled down the hall, I thought of my impending departure and the Organization of Afro American Unity. There had been no mention of salary or responsibilities. I knew that I would be paid the minimal wage and would be asked to raise money, organize files, recruit members, stuff envelopes, draft news releases, type, file and answer the telephone. Those were the usual chores that go begging in understaffed and underfinanced civil rights organizations.
It would be good to see my family and old friends. Suddenly I was excited at the prospect of being back in New York City, and back in the fray.
Araba broke into my thoughts. “Auntie Maya, Mr. Adadevo is here, and dinner is served.” I prepared myself and joined the group in the dining room.
Mr. Adadevo was a tall, dark brown man of pleasing appearance, and when he spoke his voice sang with the melodic Ewe accent. The girls sat together at dinner, using English to talk across their language barrier while Nana and Mr. Adadevo spoke of portentous matters of State. The hours of assessment in the guest room had drained my energy, and
I was glad there was no general conversation which could command my participation.
At an early hour, I asked to be excused, honestly claiming exhaustion.
The bed, sleep and I met together and I rose at dawn to go downstairs and bid Nana a safe journey. He promised that he would return to Ghana before my departure.
When Mr. Adadevo entered the kitchen the day was bright and I was having yet another cup of instant coffee. He ate quartered oranges and asked me why I was only then visiting his area. I made a courteous reply, then he asked if I would like to see the nearby town of Keta only thirty miles away. Without any real interest I again answered courteously.
“That would be nice. We should start back to Accra by early afternoon.” He assured me that we would have plenty of time and left to rouse the still sleeping girls.
It was decided that we would take his large car. Araba, Adae and Freida sat in the back, and Mr. Adadevo, his driver and I occupied the front seat.
The countryside was beautiful, but not unusually so. My eyes had become accustomed to coconut trees and palms, and bougainvillaea growing freely on country roads and city streets. A quiet murmur reached me from the back seat and since neither Mr. Adadevo nor his driver spoke, I was lulled by the car motor and the moist warm air into a near torpor.
Suddenly, I jerked alert and looked ahead. We were approaching a sturdy and graceful bridge. My heart began to race and I was struggling for breath. I gasped, “Stop, stop the car. Stop the car.” The driver consented. I was sitting next to the window, so I opened the door and quickly stepped to the ground. I spoke through the back window.
“Get out, girls. Come. You, too, Freida. We are going to walk across this bridge.” Although they were stunned by my behavior, they obeyed, and I said to the startled Adadevo, “We will join the car on the other side.” I walked briskly apart from my charges who were unsettled by my actions and tittering nervously. My pretended concern over the waterscape and the overgrown river banks caused me to turn my head often, as if looking for a particular object or view. In fact, I was more jittery than the teenagers. I could not explain my behavior. I only knew that the possibility of riding across that bridge so terrified me that had the driver refused to stop, I would have jumped from the still moving car.
Mr. Adadevo was standing at the end of the bridge, and after he saw the passengers safely in the back seat, he took my arm and drew me aside.
“Why were you afraid? I have rarely seen such terror. Do you know anything about this bridge?” I shook my head.
“Have you ever heard of the Keta bridge?” I shook my head again. I had never heard the area mentioned. “The old bridge, I should say bridges,” his face was solemn, “were infamous for being so poorly constructed that in any flood they would crumble and wash away. People in conveyances of any kind lost their lives, so a century ago passengers in palanquins used to stop and get down in order to walk across. In a crisis, only people on foot could hope to reach the other side.” I felt a quick chill. He asked, “Are you sure someone didn’t tell you that story?” I said, “I must have read it somewhere.” I apologized for startling him and knew without question that I had no inkling of the bridge’s history.
After my inexplicable outburst, there was a new tension in the car. No sounds came from the back seat, but Mr. Adadevo began speaking immediately after the bridge episode and didn’t stop until we reached Keta.
He talked about Accra, of Ghana’s growth, of the wisdom of Kwame Nkrumah. He said he admired the American Negro athletes and Dr. Martin Luther King. He spoke of his region, describing it in detail, its fishing and copra industries, its markets and major towns, and its religion.
I half heard his crooned chant as I was more engrossed in examining my actions at the bridge.
“There is a lagoon behind Keta and of course the ocean before it, and that has caused the people of the town a great problem. For after the work of enlarging the ports of Tema and Sekondi-Takowadi, the ocean has reacted by backing up onto Keta. They have already lost over two miles of the town. The people are being squeezed by two forces of water. The town will disappear in time and the people have nowhere to go.”
When I heard the dire story, I again surprised myself. I felt as if I had just been told a beloved relative was dying. Tears came to my eyes and threatened to run down my face. I dreaded the possibility of crying before strangers, but even more awful was the prospect of allowing Nana’s daughters to see me out of control. The motto of their family was “royalty does not weep in the street,” and I had spent a great effort showing them that although I was born from slaves, I was descended from kings.
I took a handkerchief and faked a cough.
Araba leaned foward, “Auntie, are you all right?”
I told her I thought I was reacting to the dust, and she was satisfied.
Adae, asserting her intelligence and explaining me to her new friend, said “Auntie is very sensitive. She has allergies.” I was grateful for their presence, for without them I might have bent over my lap and let the emotion of loss drain out of me in rivers of tears. I swallowed the knots in my throat over and over and wondered if I was losing my mind. What did that bridge and the sea’s encroachment on Keta have to do with me?
Adadevo was still talking as the car turned through the narrow streets of the old town. Although we could not see the ocean, suddenly I knew or felt that the next turn would give us a panoramic view of the surf. I held onto myself and hoped that the presentiment would prove false.
Mr. Adadevo said, “Now here is the sea. You call it the Atlantic Ocean. We have another name for it in Ewe.”
The driver parked at the side of Keta’s market and Mr. Adadevo asked me to come and meet his sister, who had a stall on the market’s periphery. We walked in file with Freida and the driver carrying large empty straw baskets.
Mr. Adadevo’s sister was tall and thin and resembled Efua. When we were introduced, I found that she spoke very scanty English and I expected that she would speak French.
The Ewe tribe which occupied Togo and the eastern area of Ghana had been a German colony in the nineteenth century, but after Germany’s loss of World War I, the allied victors took away Germany’s mandate and gave the area to France. French became the province’s official language in 1920, so I offered to speak French with my host’s sister, but her French was only a little better than her English. We smiled at each other and shook our heads in exasperation. She spoke rapid Ewe with her brother and niece, while Araba and Adae looked on.
I waved good-bye, anxious to climb into the raised market which was issuing sounds of trade and merriment.
The narrow stairs were bounded by wooden walls, making the entrance dim. I was looking down, making certain of my footfall, when a voice above me drew my attention. I looked up to see an older woman, unusually tall, blotting out the light behind her. She spoke again and in a voice somewhat similar to my own, but I was unable to understand her.
I smiled and, using Fanti, said regretfully, “I am sorry, Auntie, but I don’t speak Ewe.” She put her hands on her wide hips, reared back and let loose into the dim close air around us a tirade of angry words. When she stopped, I offered, in French and in a self-deprecating tone, “I am sorry, Auntie, but I don’t speak Ewe.”
She clapped her hands close enough to my face for me to feel the rush of air, then she raised her voice. My ignorance of the meaning of her words did not prevent me from knowing that I was being denounced in the strongest possible language.
When I could wedge myself into her explosion, I spoke in English nearly whining, “Auntie, I am sorry, but I do not speak Ewe.”
It seemed the walls would collapse. The big woman took a step down to me, and I backed down two steps. There was no room on the stairs for me to pass her, and I wouldn’t have had the nerve to try to force my way beyond that now enraged giant frame. Her invective was coming faster and louder. I knew that my luck had to have totally deserted me to allow me to meet a mad woman on darkened stairs wh
o I could neither placate nor threaten.
Mr. Adadevo spoke behind me, and I turned only slightly, afraid to leave my back unprotected.
“Mr. Adadevo, would you please talk to this Auntie. I can’t make her understand.”
The woman fired another salvo, and Mr. Adadevo stepped up and placed himself between me and my assailant. He spoke softly in Ewe. I heard the word “American” while I was watching the woman’s face. She shook her head in denial. My protector spoke again, still softly. I heard “American Negro.” Still the woman’s face showed disbelief.
Mr. Adadevo looked at me and said, “Sister, she thinks you are someone else. Do you have your American passport with you?”
I hadn’t seen my passport in two years, but I remembered having an old California driver’s license, which had its identifying photograph. I took the wrinkled, but still slick paper from my wallet and gave it to Mr. Adadevo. He handed the document to the woman who strained to see in the darkness. She turned and walked up the stairs into the light. Mr. Adadevo followed and I followed him.
There, the woman, who was over six feet tall, stood peering at the flimsy piece of paper in her dark hand. When she raised her head, I nearly fell back down the steps: she had the wide face and slanted eyes of my grandmother. Her lips were large and beautifully shaped like my grandmother’s, and her cheek bones were high like those of my grandmother. The woman solemnly returned the license to Mr. Adadevo who gave it back to me, then the woman reached out and touched my shoulder hesitantly. She softly patted my cheek a few times. Her face had changed. Outrage had given way to melancholia. After a few seconds of studying me, the woman lifted both arms and lacing her fingers together clasped her hands and put them on the top of her head. She rocked a little from side to side and issued a pitiful little moan.
In Arkansas, when I was a child, if my brother or I put our hands on our heads as the woman before me was doing, my grandmother would stop in her work and come to remove our hands and warn us that the gesture brought bad luck.