by Maya Angelou
When John ran into friends and they fell into a sobbing embrace, I walked on alone.
There were noticeable differences between this current turmoil and the Watts uprising. In Los Angeles, rage had ruled. There, the people acted out of a pent-up anger over past slights and historic cruelties. On the evening of April 4, 1968, a lamentation would rise and hold tremulously in the air, then slowly fall out of hearing range just as another would ascend.
Strangers stopped in front of strangers and asked, “Why? Why?”
“You know? You know.”
Then strangers hugged strangers and cried.
A television in the window of an appliance store played tapes of Martin King speaking. No sound accompanied the pictures, but people stood silent, five deep in front of the shop window, as the uproar swirled unnoticed around them. I joined the watchers for a few moments and heard the moan behind me.
Rosa Guy emerged from the crowd. We stood looking at each other. We embraced and said nothing. When we released each other, we continued our separate ways.
A man, naked to the waist, walked out of a building with a conga drum strapped to his body. He waddled toward me, the head of the drum protruding from under his arm. He passed me shouting, not singing, unintelligible words.
I went into a lighted diner and sat at the far end of the counter. Only one other customer was in the place. He was leaning over so far his head was on the counter.
I waited for a few minutes for a waitress, and when none appeared, I called out, “Can I get some service?”
The man raised his head. “If all you want is coffee, you can get it yourself.”
I went behind the counter and lifted the coffeepot and looked at the man. “May I help you?”
“No, baby, nobody can help me. Nobody can help nobody. You know this is all about Malcolm.”
“What?”
I expected to hear the awful despair at Martin Luther King’s death. Malcolm’s name shocked me.
“Malcolm?”
“See, they killed him not far from here, and we didn’t do anything. Lot of people loved Malcolm, but we didn’t show it, and now even people who didn’t agree with Reverend King, they out here, just to show we do know how to care for somebody. Half of this is for Malcolm X, a half for Martin King and a half for a whole lot of others.”
I laid my own head on the counter weighted with new realization.
A man lived. A man loved.
A man tried, and a man died.
And that was not all there was to that. And it never was.
Thirty
Death of a beloved flattens and dulls everything. Mountains and skyscrapers and grand ideas are brought down to eye level or below. Great loves and large hates no longer cast such huge shadows or span so broad a distance. Connections do not adhere so closely, and important events lose some of their glow.
Everywhere I turned, life was repeating itself. The photograph of Coretta Scott King, veiled and standing with her children, reminded me of the picture of Jacqueline Kennedy with her children. Both women were under the probing, curious and often sympathetic eye of the world. Yet each stood as if she and her children and her memories lived together in an unknowable dimension.
On radio and in newspapers, Martin King’s name was linked again and again with the name Malcolm X. As if the life and death of one confirmed the life and death of the other.
Depression wound itself around me so securely I could barely walk, and didn’t want to talk.
I went to Dolly’s apartment. I didn’t want my absence to alarm her.
“I’m going to hibernate for a few weeks.”
She asked, “What do you mean?”
“I’m going to stay alone. I will not be seeing anyone. I just need to seek balance.”
Dolly said, “I understand. But listen, I’m going to bring you some food. And you’re going to have to talk to me once a day. I don’t care what you say, just don’t stop talking. Okay?”
Jerry Purcell sent an employee who knocked on my door loudly and repeatedly. When I opened it, he handed me a package wrapped in tinfoil.
“Jerry said that you would get a plate every other day. If you’re not here, I’ll leave it by the door.”
Jimmy Baldwin pried me loose from my despair. “You have to get out of here. Get dressed. I’m taking you somewhere.”
Exactly what Bailey had said and done when Malcolm was killed.
“Put on something that makes you feel pretty.” I remembered the old saying, which was a favorite of my Arkansas grandmother. “It’s hard to make the prettiest clothes fit a miserable man.”
Jimmy said, “Some friends have invited me to dinner, you will enjoy them. They are both funny, and you need to laugh.” We were in front of the building before Jimmy said, “This is Jules Feiffer’s apartment.”
Judy opened the door and welcomed us. Although I had not formed a picture of the Feiffers, I was unprepared for her beauty. She could have been a movie actress. Jules also surprised me. He looked more like a young, intense college professor than one of the nation’s funniest, most biting cartoonists.
They both hugged Jimmy, and the three of them laughed aloud as if they had heard a funny story when they last parted and had not had time to finish their laughter.
The Feiffers’ pretty ten-year-old daughter joined us in the living room. When Jimmy embraced her and asked after her school, she answered easily, showing the poise of a person twice her age.
We adults finished our drinks and moved into the dining room. We told and heard great stories over a delicious dinner. Jimmy talked about being a preacher in Harlem at fourteen years old. He may have lost some of his evangelical drama, but it returned that night in force. He preached a little and sang in a remarkably beautiful voice. His story was funny and touching. When we laughed, it was always with him and with the people he spoke of, never at them.
Jules talked about school and his college mates. His tale was told with wit so dry that when we laughed, we thought we breathed in dust.
Judy kept the glasses filled and added the appropriate response whenever it was needed. She said, “Nothing funny ever happened to me until I met Jules.”
When my time came, I thought of the saying “You have to fight for the right to play it good.” I described Stamps, Arkansas. Although there is nothing amusing about racial discrimination, the oppressed find funny things to say about it.
“The white folks are so prejudiced in my town, a colored person is not allowed to eat vanilla ice cream.
“And when a white man heard a black man singing ‘My Blue Heaven,’ he called the KKK. They visited the offender and told him that the Molly in the lyric was a white woman, and they wanted to hear how he would sing the song now that he had new information.”
I sang what the black man supposedly sang:
“Miss Molly and y’all
I ain’t in that stuff at all
Y’alls happy in y’alls
Blue heaven.”
There was very little serious conversation. The times were so solemn and the daily news so somber that we snatched mirth from unlikely places and gave servings of it to one another with both hands.
The evening was full. I was on the street before I realized how much I had relaxed in the Feiffers’ home. I told Jimmy I was so glad to laugh.
Jimmy said, “We survived slavery. Think about that. Not because we were strong. The American Indians were strong, and they were on their own land. But they have not survived genocide. You know how we survived?”
I said nothing.
“We put surviving into our poems and into our songs. We put it into our folk tales. We danced surviving in Congo Square in New Orleans and put it in our pots when we cooked pinto beans. We wore surviving on our backs when we clothed ourselves in the colors of the rainbow. We were pulled down so low we could hardly lift our eyes, so we knew, if we wanted to survive, we had better lift our own spirits. So we laughed whenever we got the chance.
“Now,
how does your spirit feel?”
I said, “Just fine, thank you.”
Thirty-one
They were from Northern California and looked the part. Jon wore a loose-knit tan sweater with leather elbow patches and tan pants. Verna, a small, neatly made woman, sat comfortably in a light-colored Chanel suit, and Steve wore black slacks and a black V-neck sweater over a white turtleneck shirt that filled in the V.
They had gotten my address from Enrico Banducci, who owned the Hungry I in San Francisco. Enrico and I liked each other, so we had kept in touch over oceans and continents.
“Ms. Angelou, we know you are a writer and, we are told, a very good one.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have anything published?”
I didn’t think it wise to say I had a short story published in Revolución, Cuba’s premier magazine.
I said, “Ah.” Then I added, “I have written some short essays that Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis read on a national radio station.”
“We’d be glad to see them.”
“Yes, they could tell us a lot about your style.”
“When I heard you were looking for a writer, I put a few in my attaché case.” I had borrowed the attaché case from Sam Floyd. “Please tell me what kind of writer are you looking for.”
Jon leaned back and said, “We think it’s past time for our station to do some programs on African-American culture and history. We were told that you have lived in Africa, and you might be the very person to bring it together for us.”
Steve said, “We need an insider’s view.” Well, I certainly was inside.
“I am writing a play now, but I do have some ideas for a documentary.”
“Would the subject of African-American culture be of interest to you?” Steve asked.
“Of course!”
Steve flinched. I did not intend to speak so abruptly, but the question was so inane it caught me off guard.
“Of course,” I said more softly. “In fact, in Ghana I was struck by how much of what I thought was Afro-American culture really had its origin in Africa. Now I know I should have anticipated that, but I did not.”
Jon asked, “Do you think you have enough material?”
“How long do you want the program?”
“No, no,” Verna said, “not a program, we want a series. Ten one-hour programs. Can you do that?”
“Certainly. Surely. I just misunderstood. Ten one-hour programs?” I wondered if there was that much material in the whole world. “Yes. I can do that.”
“We will be seeing other writers, but who is your agent?”
Would they even consider me if I admitted I had no agent?
“I have a manager. He acts as my agent.” Having a manager might make me seem an important writer. “I’ll give you his address and telephone number.”
I wrote down Jerry Purcell’s phone number. “He’s away today, but I’m sure you can reach him tomorrow at this number.”
I needed the day to find Jerry before they talked to him. I had to tell him that he was my manager.
For over an hour we talked about San Francisco and the state of the Broadway stage and PBS in general and their station KQED in particular and the United States and Africa. That was the kind of conversation I liked to have, rambling, tumbling, wandering off from one subject onto another.
Their humor pleased me. I forgot where I was and why I was there. When they stood, I remembered and immediately wondered if I had talked too much and overstayed my welcome. We shook hands all around, and Jon said, “We will speak to your manager, and you will hear from us before the week is out.”
Yes, I did like them, and I hoped they liked me.
Three days later Jerry telephoned. “I got good money for you, so you’ll be going out to San Francisco.”
I whooped all the way to the library.
With time and a kindly librarian, any unskilled person can learn how to build a replica of the Taj Mahal. I pored over books about television documentaries. I read instructions on how to write television plays and accounts of producing and directing television.
I studied hard and memorized phrases and words I had never used. Boom and speed and camera angle, tripod and seconds and reverses. After a week I had an enlarged vocabulary. When I wasn’t reading about television, I was writing for television.
I thought that I would learn on the job, but I would learn quicker and more easily if I had some of the language.
I designed a series called Blacks. Blues. Black. We were blacks in Africa before we were brought to America as slaves, where we created the blues, and now we were painfully and proudly returning to being upstanding free blacks again.
The program would show African culture’s impact on the West. As host, I would introduce the lyricism of poetry and the imagery of prose. In one program I would have B. B. King playing blues and church choirs singing spirituals and gospel songs. There would be African, African-American and modern ballet dance, and I would point out their similarities. The art of African sculpture would be shown as the source and resource of many Western artists’ creativity. I would place Fan, Ashanti and Dogon masks alongside the works of Picasso, Klee, Modigliani and Rouault.
It was thrilling to think of returning to San Francisco, with something to do and the faith that I would do a good job.
Thirty-two
I was so excited that the telephone call hardly penetrated.
“My name is Robert Loomis, and I am an editor at Random House. Judy Feiffer spoke of you. She said you told wonderful stories.”
“How nice of her. James Baldwin and her husband told the best.”
“I am calling to ask if you’d like to write an autobiography.”
I said, “No, thank you. I am a poet and playwright.”
He asked, “Are you sure?”
“Yes, quite. In fact, I’m leaving in a few days to write and host a television series for PBS in San Francisco. I’ll be there for a month or more.”
“May I have a California number for you?”
I gave him Aunt Lottie’s San Francisco telephone number and my mother’s number in Stockton, California, where she had moved.
“I’m pretty certain that I will not write an autobiography. I didn’t celebrate it, but I have only had my fortieth birthday this year. Maybe in ten or twenty years.” We both laughed and said good-bye.
In San Francisco I collected dancers and singers and musicians and comedians. I went to churches and synagogues and community centers. On the day of the first shoot, Bob Loomis telephoned again.
“Miss Angelou, I’m calling to see if you’ve had a change of mind, if you are certain that you don’t want to write an autobiography for Random House.”
I said, “Mr. Loomis, I am sure that I cannot write an autobiography. I am up to my lower jaw in this television series. When I come back to New York, I’d like to talk to you about a book of poetry.”
He said, “Fine,” but there was no eagerness in his voice. “Good luck to you.”
In San Francisco I was pleased that all the pieces were falling into their proper places. The ministers I approached were agreeable, the choir conductors were talented and willing. I borrowed an entire collection of Makonde sculpture from Bishop Trevor Hoy at the Pacific School of Religion and church officials allowed me to film their services. I took television crews into elementary schools and people’s private homes.
Blacks. Blues. Black was well received. The Sun Times, the local black newspaper, gave it a rousing review. Rosa Guy and Dolly came out for the premiere.
People who had looked askance when I began the series were now standing in line to participate. Schools had adopted the programs, and I was told that some preachers were using my subjects as topics for their sermons in San Francisco.
On my last day, Robert Loomis called again. I have always been sure that he spoke to James Baldwin. He said, “Miss Angelou, Robert Loomis. I won’t bother you again. And I must say, you may be right not to attempt an au
tobiography, because it is nearly impossible to write autobiography as literature. Almost impossible.”
I didn’t think. I didn’t have to. I said, “Well, maybe I will try it. I don’t know how it will turn out, but I can try.”
Grandmother Henderson’s voice was in my ear: “Nothing beats a trial but a failure.”
“Well, if you’d like to write forty or fifty pages and send them to me, we can see if I can get a contract for you. When do you think you can start?”
I said, “I’ll start tomorrow.”
Thirty-three
Rosa and Dolly and I traveled to Stockton to spend a last weekend with my mother before returning to New York.
She cooked and laughed and drank and told stories and generally pranced around her pretty house, proud of me, proud of herself, proud of Dolly and Rosa.
She said black women are so special. Few men of any color and even fewer white women can deal with how fabulous we are.
“Girls, I’m proud of you.”
In the early morning, I took my yellow pad and ballpoint pen and sat down at my mother’s kitchen table.
I thought about black women and wondered how we got to be the way we were. In our country, white men were always in superior positions; after them came white women, then black men, then black women, who were historically on the bottom stratum.
How did it happen that we could nurse a nation of strangers, be maids to multitudes of people who scorned us, and still walk with some majesty and stand with a degree of pride?
I thought of human beings, as far back as I had read, of our deeds and didoes. According to some scientists, we were born to forever crawl in swamps, but for some not yet explained reason, we decided to stand erect and, despite gravity’s pull and push, to remain standing. We, carnivorous beings, decided not to eat our brothers and sisters but to try to respect them. And further, to try to love them.