by Maya Angelou
“What questions?”
“What cereal does your family prefer? What soap powder do you use? What peanut butter do you buy? Like that.”
The salary was pitifully low, but the job was blissfully simple. I had started working on my stage play. Random Research would allow me time to develop my characters and plot. I would ask questions of the housewives, but between houses and women and questions and answers, I would let my characters play out plot possibilities. They would find their own voices and design their own personalities.
Watts was my assigned locale, and I was disappointed to find it had lost its air of studied grace. I had known the area when it had a kind of staid decorum, a sort of church-ladies-display-at-a-Sunday-afternoon-tea feeling. The houses were all of the proper size, none so large as to cause envy, none so small as to elicit pity.
Years earlier, the lawns were immaculate, grass was trimmed to an evenness and flowers were carefully placed and lovingly tended. There had not been many people on the street. A drive through residential Watts was like driving through a small town in a 1940s Hollywood movie. There were always the odd teenagers pumping themselves up on Schwinns, but they could have been extras in the film, save that these bikers were black, as were the women who called them home for supper: “Henry, Henry...”
The Watts I visited in 1965 was very different. The houses were still uniform and similarly painted, and the lawns still precise, but there were people everywhere.
On my visit to Watts to orient myself for the new job, I passed groups of men in T-shirts or undershirts, lounging on front porches and steps. Their talk was just a little louder than usual, and they didn’t stop their conversation or lower their voices when I came into view.
Although I was never pretty, my youth, a good figure and well-chosen clothes would usually earn a clearing of the throat, or at least a veiled sound of approval. But the men in this Watts didn’t respond to my presence.
“Good morning, I am working for a company that wants to improve the quality of the goods you buy. I’d like to ask you a few questions. Your answers will ensure that you will find better foods in your supermarket and probably at a reduced price.”
The person who wrote those lines, for interviewers to use with black women, knew nothing of black women. If I had dared utter such claptrap, at best I would have been laughed off the porch or at worst told to get the hell away from the woman’s door.
Black females, for the most part, know by the time they are ten years old that the world is not much concerned with the quality of their lives or even their lives at all. When politicians and salespeople start being kind to black women, seeking them out, offering them largesse, the women accept the soft voices, the simpering statements, the often idle promises, because those are likely to be the only flattering behavior directed to them that day. Behind the women’s eyes, however, there is a wisdom that does not pretend to be unaware; nor does it permit gullibility.
Martin Luther King, Jr., once related a story that demonstrated just how accurate the black woman was at assessing her location in the scheme of things and knowing how to handle herself wherever she was.
He told us about an older black woman who had worked for a white woman in Alabama, first as her laundress, then as her maid, then as her cook and finally as her housekeeper. After forty years, the black woman retired, but she would go to visit her former employer occasionally.
On one visit, her employer had friends over for lunch. When the employer was told that Lillian Taylor was in the kitchen, she sent for her. Lillian went into the living room and greeted all the women, some of whom she had known since their childhoods.
The white woman said, “Lillian, I know you’ve heard of the bus boycott.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’ve heard of it.”
“Well, I want to know, what do you think of it? Are you supporting it?”
“No, ma’am. Not one bit. Not one little iota. And I won’t let none of mine support it, either.”
“I knew you’d be sensible, Lillian, I just knew it in my bones.”
“Yes, ma’am, I won’t touch that bus boycott. You know my son took me to live with him and his family (he won’t let me even lift a finger), and he works for the power company way ’cross town from our house. I told him, ‘Charles, don’t you have anything to do with that bus boycott. You walk to work. Stay all the way out of that bus boycott.’ And my grandchildren, they go to school way over on the east side, I told them the same thing: ‘Don’t have anything to do with that boycott. You walk to school.’ And even today, when I wanted to come over and visit you, I got a lady from my church to bring me. I wasn’t going to touch that boycott. Sure wasn’t.”
The room had become quiet, and Lillian Taylor said, “I know you have plenty help now, but do you want me to bring you all more coffee?”
She went to the kitchen and was followed by the white woman’s daughter.
“Lillian, why do you treat my mother like that? Why not just come out and say you support the boycott?”
Lillian said, “Honey, when you have your head in a lion’s mouth, you don’t snatch it out. You reach up and tickle him behind his ears and you draw your head out gradually. Every black woman in this country has her head in a lion’s mouth.”
I knew that a straight back and straight talk would get the black woman’s attention every time.
“Good morning. I have a job asking questions.”
At first there would be wariness. “What questions? Why me?”
“There are some companies that want to know which products are popular in the black community and which are not.”
“Why do they care?”
“They care because if you don’t like what they are selling, you won’t buy, and they want to fix it so you will.”
“Yeah, that makes sense. Come on in.”
I was never turned away, although most times the women were abstracted. Few gave me their total attention. Some complained that their husbands were around all day.
“I work nights, and usually I come home and sleep a few hours, then get up and have time to fix up my house. But with him not working, he’s home all day, bringing his friends in and all that.”
Or they complained that the men weren’t around.
“I don’t know where he’s spending his time. He’s not working, he’s not at the job and he’s not at home...makes me a little suspicious.”
Listening to the women brought me more squarely back to the U.S.A. The lilt of the language was so beautiful, and I was heartened that being away from the melody for a few years had not made one note foreign to me.
The women ranged from college graduates to those who would find it challenging to read the daily newspaper, yet the burdens of their conversations were the same.
Those who worked or needed medical attention or collected supplemental food stamps were dependent on private cars. Public transportation was so poor that if a woman had to use it in order to be at work by eight-thirty A.M., she would have to leave home at five A.M.
Those who worked as housekeepers, maids and cooks shopped on their way home from their jobs in the stores used by their employers. The goods were fresher, of better quality and remarkably cheaper.
I had gone to Watts to fulfill the demands of my job and had gotten so much more. The women opened their doors and minds to me. Even as I asked about dishwashing Dove and Bold and Crisco and Morton salt, I found hardworking women and hard-thinking women. Indirectly, I met their men, whose jobs had disappeared and who found they were unable to be breadwinners in their own homes.
Some men, embarrassed at their powerlessness, became belligerent, and their wives’ bodies showed the extent of their anger. Some, feeling futile, useless, left home, left the places where they read disappointment in every face and heard shame in every voice. Some drank alcohol until they reached the stage of stupor where they could not see or hear and certainly not think.
On the surface, Watts still appeared a pretty American dream,
wide thoroughfares, neat lawns, nice bungalows. Those factors were facts, but there is always a truth deeper than what is visible.
Without work and steady salaries, the people could not envision tomorrows. Women and men, furious with themselves and each other, began to abandon the children. They didn’t leave them in baskets on doorsteps, they abandoned them in the home. Dinners together became fewer because the father was seldom there and the mother was busy reviewing where she went wrong, or prettying up to set out her lures again.
The bootless children, with discipline removed, without the steadying hand of a present parent who cared, began to run like young tigers in the streets. First their need drove them to others like themselves, with whom they could make a family. Then their rage made the newly formed families dangerous. Gangs of abandoned children bullied their way up and down the sidewalks of Watts, growing bolder and angrier every day.
They left the schools in record numbers. What could school offer them that could be of use? Education, so they could get jobs? But their parents had had jobs that were taken away. Their parents had believed in the system, and see them now? Empty uncaring husks of the people they once were. No. School promised nothing, nothing save a chance to lose the families they had just made and needed so desperately.
Nine
The uproar in Watts taught me something I had not known. Odor travels faster and farther than sound. We smelled the conflagration before we heard it, or even heard about it. The odor that drifted like a shadow over my neighborhood was complex because it was layered. Burning wood was the first odor that reached my nose, but it was soon followed by the smell of scorched food, then the stench of smoldering rubber. We had one hour of wondering what was burning before the television news reporters arrived breathlessly.
There had been no cameras to catch the ignition of the fire. A number of buildings were burning wildly before anyone could film them. Newscasters began to relay the pictures and sounds of the tumult.
“There is full-blown riot in Watts. Watts is an area in southeast Los Angeles. Its residents are predominately Negroes.” Pictures were interspersed with the gasps of the newscasters.
That description was for the millions of whites who lived in Los Angeles but who had no idea that Watts existed and certainly no awareness that it was a parcel of the city and only a short ride from their own communities.
Policemen and politicians, all white, came on the television screens to calm down the citizenry in the unscathed regions.
“You have nothing to fear. The police have been deployed to Watts, and in a few hours we will have everything under control.”
Those of us who watched the action live on television over the next few days knew that the officials were talking out of their hats.
The rioters had abandoned all concern for themselves, for their safety and freedom. Some threw rocks, stones, cans of beer and soda at police in cars and police on foot. Heavily burdened people staggered out the doors of supermarkets, followed by billows of smoke. Men and women carried electrical appliances in their arms, and some pushed washers and dryers down the middle of the street.
However, nothing—not the voices trained to relay excitement nor the images of unidentifiable looters entering and leaving unlighted shops—could capture the terrifying threat of a riot like the stench of scorched wood and burning rubber.
Radios blared, “Watts is on fire.” Television cameras filmed a group of men turning over a car and a young woman throwing a bottle at a superstore window. The glass seemed to break in slow motion. In fact, throughout the duration of the explosion, every incident shown on television seemed acted out at a pace slower than real time.
Sirens screamed through the night, and television screens showed gangs of young men refusing to allow fire trucks a chance to put out fires.
“Burn, baby, burn.” The instruction came clear over the radios: “Burn, baby, burn.” Certain political analysts observed that the people were burning their own neighborhood. Though few houses were set afire, the rioters considered the stores, including supermarkets, property of the colonialists who had come into the neighborhood to exploit them and take their hard-earned money.
Two days passed and I could wait no longer. I drove to Watts and parked as near the center of the uprising as possible, then I walked. The smell had turned putrid as plastic furniture and supermarket meat departments smoldered. When I reached a main street, I stopped and watched as people pushed piled-high store carts out of burning buildings. Police seemed to be everywhere and nowhere, watching from inside their cars.
A young boy, his arms laden, his face knotted in concentration, suddenly saw me.
“You want a radio?”
I was amazed that there was no guilt in his voice. I said, “No, not yet. Thanks anyway.”
Ordinarily I would have read in the boy’s face, or felt, an “Uh-huh, this woman knows I’ve been stealing.” There would have been at least an ounce of shame. But his approach had been conspiratorial, as if to say, “We’re in this together. I know you not only know what I am doing, you approve of it and would do it yourself if you could.”
Smoke and screams carried in the air. Someone behind me was cursing long, keen streaks of profanity. It became hard to discern if the figures brushing past me were male or female, young or old.
The farther I walked, the more difficult it was to breathe. I had turned and started back to my car when a sound cut the air. The loud whine of police sirens was so close it stabbed into my ears. Policemen in gas masks emerged out of the smoke, figures from a nightmare. Alarm flooded me, and in a second I was dislocated. It seemed that the sirens were in my nose, and smoke packed my ears like cotton. Two policemen grabbed a person in front of me. They dragged the man away as he screamed, “Take your hands off me, you bastards! Let me go!”
I ran, but I couldn’t see the pavement, so it was nearly impossible to keep my footing. I ran anyway. Someone grabbed for me, but I shrugged off the hand and continued running. My lungs were going to burst, and my calves were cramping. I pushed myself along. I was still running when I realized I was breathing clean air. I read the street signs and saw that I was almost a mile away from my car, but at least I wasn’t in jail. Because I had run in the opposite direction from where I had parked, I would have to circle Watts to find my car, but at least I wasn’t in Watts.
When I returned home, the television coverage was mesmerizing. The National Guard was shown arriving in Watts. They were young men who showed daring on their faces but fear in their hearts. They were uncomfortable with new, heavy responsibilities and new, heavy guns.
After three days the jails began to fill. The media covered hundreds of looters being arrested. Frances Williams said that the rumor in the neighborhood beauty salons and barbershops was that the police were arresting anyone black and those suspected of being black.
Watts was all anyone could think of. The fact of it, the explosion of anger, surprised and befuddled some: “I’ve driven through Watts many times. It’s very nice.” Some people were furious: “The police should have the right to shoot at will. If a few of those looters were shot, the rest would get the message soon enough.” Watts went on burning. It had not had enough, and I hadn’t had enough.
Curiosity had often lured me to the edge of ruin. For years, I had known that there is nothing idle about curiosity, despite the fact that the two words are often used in tandem. Curiosity fidgets, is hard to satisfy, looks for answers even before forming questions. Curiosity wants to behold, to comprehend, maybe even to become.
Two days after my tentative foray into the war zone, I had to go again, but this time I wouldn’t allow fear any control over me. This time I would not run.
The combustion had spread, so my previous parking space was now only a block from the riot. I parked there anyway and walked directly into the din.
Burglar alarms continued to ring in the stores that had no front doors or windows. Armed civilians stood in front of ravaged businesses, guarding a
gainst further looting. They were heckled.
“Hey brother, you guarding Charlie’s thing. You must be a fool.”
“I sure wouldn’t risk my life for somebody else’s stuff. If they care that much for it, they ought to come down here and look after it themselves.”
“Ain’t that much money in the world make me lose my life...”
The National Guard was heckled, too, but not as pointedly.
“Hey, man, you drew some lame duty.”
“Don’t you feel like a fool standing in front of a supermarket?”
I heard this in front of a pawnshop: “Hey, man, don’t you feel stupid keeping people from stealing something that was already stole in the first place?”
The soldiers worked at keeping straight faces.
The devastation was so much broader. On the second day of the riot, and my first day visiting Watts, there was a corridor of burned-out buildings and cars, but on the fourth day, the corridor had widened substantially.
That night I sat down at my kitchen table and wrote on a yellow pad my description of the events I had seen in Watts and the uprising as it was reported on television.
Our
YOUR FRIEND CHARLIE pawnshop
was a glorious blaze
I heard the flames lick
then eat the trays
of zircons
mounted in red-gold alloys
Easter clothes and stolen furs
burned in the attic
radios and TVs
crackled with static
plugged in
only to a racial outlet
Hospitality, southern-style
cornpone grits and you-all smile
whole blocks novae
brand-new stars
policemen caught in their
brand-new cars
Chugga chugga chigga
git me one nigga
lootin’ n burnin’
he won’t git far