My Soul Looks Back

by Jessica B. Harris

  The only memorial Sam had was a quiet one at Queens College in a small room in the Student Union. It was attended by a handful of colleagues, and it was the best that could be given by those who were mourning the loss of a colleague. A few words were read. Claiming the relationship that many at the school did not even know existed, I publicly read Maya’s poem “To a Man”

  My man is

  Black Golden Amber

  In the poem, Maya had revealed her deep love for Sam: his love of good brandy, his enveloping scent of Gitanes and Chanel Pour Homme, his southern manners, and his teasing, huggable plumpness. She had presented the man I had known, been intimate with, and loved with all of the passion that a twenty-something could muster. She’d also nailed him as ever changing. Indeed, he was like water: elusive, impossible to hold, and never to be contained. I now knew that.

  Our Queens College colleague Corrine, who had been instrumental in organizing the memorial, spoke eloquently from her own grief about a man she had always loved but who could or would not reciprocate, and a small chamber music group of students and faculty played “Amazing Grace.” It was sad not just because of the bereavement, the few attendees, and the program, but because it was an inappropriate finale for someone who had walked with the icons of music, literature, and the arts of the second half of the twentieth century and indeed been their equal. The informality, lack of style, and drab, unremarkable surroundings were totally inappropriate to Sam’s life as he lived it.

  From the circle of friends, there was nothing. There was a telephone call from Maya checking on the whereabouts of Sam’s ashes and quietly asking if I was all right, but other than that nothing, only shock and astonishment that Sam was gone from a plague that had blindsided them all. At some point, Jimmy returned to town, and I saw him once, but a year and a half later, in December 1987, he, too, would be gone, memorialized in a service at St. John the Divine that contained all of the pomp and majesty that he deserved: African drumming and all of the pageantry of New York’s nonsectarian gothic cathedral underpinned by his mother’s mourning moans. I didn’t know; I didn’t go. Darrell died earlier in 1987, and death had been too much with me. I couldn’t handle another memorial. I’d also disappeared from the group. The fragile, tenuous bonds that I’d had with them had dissolved at Sam’s death, or so I thought.

  • • •

  Weeks after Sam’s death, Corrine and Ruth, colleagues from Queens College, obtained keys to Sam’s apartment from Lowell Todd with the hope of going by to begin to clear it out. I was called to join them and did. The sorry task was arduous. Sam, like me, was not a minimalist. It had been years since I’d visited 81 Horatio Street, although I still lived only a few blocks over, and the years had not been kind. Blues, the cat, had preceded Sam in death by several months, and left to his own devices with an illness that was ravaging him, there had been no housekeeping. What had been professorial disarray had turned into a cluttered pit of stuff without the central illuminating soul that was Sam. Books tumbled off shelves in the entrance, the bedroom, and the living room. The ladder-back, cane-bottomed chair still sat at the window, no longer a vantage point from which to view the world but, rather, a lonely memorial to what had been. In the kitchen, never pristine at the best of times, pots stood unwashed in the sink, coffee mugs awaited a good scrub, and the roaches were having their way. In the living room, the fireplace ashes were unhauled and papers overflowed from the coffee table from which Sam used to ceremoniously extract his latest pieces of writing. We read a few; this time, though, there were no compositions or snippets of character portraits or observations about life. They were revealing, painfully so, as though reading the diary of a long-time friend or parent in which deep secrets are told. There were instead letters to God and to an older church “sister” recalled from his youth, beseeching them to save him from whatever demons he felt were pursuing him and begging for relief. There were Fingerhut catalogues with strange, small items circled, nonessential trivial items of the sort he would have once derided as useless trash. The house had become a house of pain, isolation, and increasing dementia.

  While we were doing this, Sam’s sister Bernice called, cursing the colleagues out and telling them to leave everything and get out of her brother’s apartment. I’d met Bernice and gone to visit her in her apartment in the Bronx a few times with Sam. He’d delighted in regaling folks with tales of his two sisters, who were his protectors and who were, in his telling of it, serious-drinking women who knew how to take care of themselves in the world—pistol-packing mamas for the twentieth century. Volatility clearly ran in the family, and Bernice also had the family hair-trigger temper. When they told her I was there with them, she was somewhat mollified, a testimonial to our kinder relationship and to her perceptions of my relationship with Sam. Nonetheless, we packed up what we were doing and left.

  I had shared a good part of my youth with Sam and we’d lived in dual-apartment symbiosis with items shared back and forth between our conjoined households. I looked for none of the things that I had loaned him: the signed books, first editions, and galleys from my book-reviewing days were crated up and eventually went to Corrine. The cooking utensils that journeyed from one apartment to the other for dinner parties and suppers remained in the cabinets and on the shelves. I left the apartment with a few items, the scant detritus of a formative time that would never be repeated: a silver stuffing spoon, a carving knife, a Blue Willow turkey platter, two service plates (one from Chez Garin and the other from Le Lingousto), an unopened bottle of Chanel Pour Homme (the fragrance that I will forever connect with Sam), and one large black-and-white photograph of Sam with an unknown man standing by a motorcycle. I did not know the man, nor did Corrine or Ruth; he looked a bit like a blond biker type. Sam is smiling and looks sublimely happy and connected to him. I did not know the man, but I did know the shirt that Sam was wearing: one of the batik ones that he had gotten from his Barbadian friend, Stella St. John. I kept the photo to remind me that things are not always as they seem and that face value may not always be all that there is. My Sam Floyd period had ended with revelations and confusion. The final coda, though, would not come until more than fourteen years later.

  * * *

  * * *

  I can’t cook now. I’ll just drink.

  While the crowd may have done their mourning with Johnnie (Walker), Jack (Daniel’s), and Jim (Beam), I sustained myself with red wine and lots of it. I’d moved from the jug wines and reduced-for-sale-bin bottles into my Merlot moment and was developing a palate. Now I’ve gone beyond that into the occasional very good Burgundy and American Pinot Noir. So crack open the piggy bank and pour a Baccarat goblet full of Gevrey-Chambertin, Romanée-Conti, or some ruby velvet liquid from Willamette Valley to celebrate the full life that was Sam’s.

  * * *

  * * *

  Chapter Nine

  * * *

  * * *

  AFTERMATH

  After Sam’s death, I’d dropped out, but the circle of friends and friendships continued. Feeling like a sexual pariah through no fault of my own, I remained firmly on the edge, leaving it all behind. Two years later, I bought a house in Brooklyn, left the West Village, and embarked on another part of my own life. It was over, or so I thought. It now seems logical that Dolly McPherson would have been the glue that held it all together for me.

  A native of New Orleans, McPherson had, like Sam and the members of the group who erred on the academic side of the equation, grown up in the old-school world of HBCUs. When I met her, she was teaching at Hunter College. Not only was Dolly Maya’s litmus test at Wake Forest, she would later become her Boswell as well, writing an analysis of her growing autobiographical oeuvre. Dolly was a true southern belle, always gracious and a bit formal, but she also had a wicked sense of humor and could hold her own with any of the crowd. Dolly also had a kindness and an openness with me that may have stemmed from the fact that Sam was a friend and not a former lover, and we became fast, if irregular, frie
nds. I suspect, as she had with students over the years, Dolly was quietly mentoring me.

  Like Sam, and indeed like me, Dolly was a spendthrift, and the joke ran that she would take the subway to Sam’s apartment to borrow some money and then return home in a taxi once the transaction was completed. McPherson’s apartment was appropriately professorial, filled with the bulging bookshelves that seemed to be a prerequisite for entrance into the group of friends.

  Dolly was Maya’s conscience in many ways: her kinder and gentler side. Dolly was one of the few people who could and would disagree with Maya and hold her own. It was a valuable role as Maya’s fame increased and fewer and fewer people would disagree with her.

  Dolly kept up with folks and knit her friendships closely; Dolly kept in touch. After Sam’s death, Dolly stayed in touch with me and with my mother, gently supporting endeavors, savoring triumphs, marking book publications, and generally keeping up with news. It was logical, then, that she was the one I turned to when my mother died in 2000. It happened so suddenly that I found myself at sea. Although eighty-seven years old, my mother had been resistant to any thoughts of death, and so when she died, there were no plans for anything, only a very full house that we’d lived in for almost fifty years and a lifetime of happy memories. When my father had died fifteen years earlier, Mom and I had each other, but this time I was truly alone, and I had no idea where to turn. As I had no significantly older female relatives, I could only look to those elders whom I’d known with Sam. Dolly, who had been a friend to my mother and me, was one of my first calls.

  Somehow I knew that Dolly’s positive voice and elder sister wisdom was what I needed, so I called her, finding her number in one of my mother’s telephone books. She answered and was the calm, nurturing soul that I needed. She suggested that I might want Maya to speak at Mom’s memorial. I’d never considered that she might and certainly had not dared to think of asking for such a favor, but Dolly felt that she would and was more than willing to make the call. Shortly after, I heard the familiar voice on the phone comforting me and saying that she would come to New York to speak. I was floored but grateful and went about making the other plans and organizing a memorial. (We don’t do funerals in my immediate family.)

  As is often the case with bereavements, there were and still are holes in my memory about those days, and my scattershot organizing of things meant that there were also many changes of plan. As an only child, this one was completely on me, and I had no idea where to begin. I can only claim that I was guided from beyond, because a voice reminded me of my mother’s family’s undertaker, who agreed to take on all of the arrangements for cremation and the sad tasks of getting the death certificate and other requisites. My parents had been charter members of the church I grew up in, and I’d in fact been the first baby christened in the congregation, so the venue was taken care of. Slowly, it all came together. Friends flocked from around the world, and somehow arrangements for the memorial service, a repast, and all of the other things from program printing to lodgings for out-of-town guests were taken care of. I still don’t know how, but will always be grateful to all of my friends who surrounded me then. It all went off without a hitch, until in the middle of the repast following the memorial that had to change the original date because the church had a prior commitment, the phone rang and someone said, “Jessica, it’s for you; it’s someone who says she’s Maya Angelou.” I’d completely forgotten my request and had never felt that she would have made such a trek from North Carolina for me. Mortified, I went to the phone, my embarrassment trumping my grief, and explained my horror at my mistake and my not informing her of the date change. There was quiet; then that calm and soothing voice said, “I understand.” In truth, a part of me hadn’t believed that she would travel to New York for me! For me!

  The next day, I journeyed to where she was staying in Manhattan to beg pardon and take the licks that I certainly deserved. There were none. I don’t remember where we met; I do remember overflowing bookcases and comfortable chairs and sitting at Maya’s feet and giving her the unfinished caged bird cloisonné pendant that my mother had begun for Dolly but had not been able to finish. I remember little else from that meeting but the caring familial warmth with which I was enveloped.

  It was the beginning of a new chapter between Maya and me, one where Sam remained the unmentioned glue that united us, but where we met as, if not equals (I was still very much the younger sister), then adults: adults who had weathered some storms together and shared memories of a past that few others knew.

  I gradually came back into the now-expanded fold. Jimmy was no longer the sun at the center of this circle of friends; rather, Maya had become the reigning monarch. She had bought a Harlem brownstone that soon became the hub of her New York universe. Gloriously renovated, as can happen when funds are seemingly endless, it was designed for entertaining, with bold colors and comfortable seating. One could enter either from the basement kitchen level or climb the brownstone’s steps and be received more formally at the front door. It was clearly divided into public spaces and private ones, and there was little crossing of them. An elevator had been installed so that Maya could slip in and out of the room without climbing the steps, which had become increasingly difficult for her to navigate with age.

  The public spaces consisted of the living room, where Maya is reputed to have asked the decorator to give her a fruit bowl. The strawberry, watermelon, and banana colors were vivid and welcoming and very much like falling into a vibrant fruit bowl. This was a public room—one for grand pronouncements and posed photographs, for holiday festivities and bold-faced moments.

  The dining area was a bit more sober. Decorative painting of a cloud-filled brilliant-blue sky made the ceiling a cry thrown up to heaven. Crimson chairs surrounded a circular dining table at which all were on equal footing, as though we were in King Arthur’s court at the Round Table. At her festivities, the elders from the circle that I had known convened when they were in attendance. Rosa, who was beginning to show signs of the Alzheimer’s that would eventually afflict her, Louise Meriwether, and Joan Sandler camped out in the cushy chairs surrounding the dining room. It was here that Maya often sat, and here that she said grace before we ate, beginning with her usual invocation, “Mother, Father, God . . .” One New Year’s Day, the conversation and the energy around that table were so vital and vibrant that the glass that topped the table cracked right down the middle. All stopped for a minute. Then the ancestors were saluted and acknowledged and everything went on as before, making allowances, of course, for the glass with a big crack down the middle.

  The basement kitchen/sitting room was a more intimate space where the plush cushions were dented with butt prints from intimate conversations, and there was a cozy comfort that signaled home and hearth, not house beautiful. It was a sort of neutral ground between the public space of the upstairs reception rooms and the very private bedroom spaces above where few others than family ventured. The kitchen was designed with an island that could serve as a buffet serving space for large gatherings. It did double duty as delineator of space when Maya cooked, and looking at it the first time, I vividly recalled the culinary performance so many years before in Sonoma. Now, though, when I was in the kitchen, I was no longer simply a spectator; we’d cook together, bonding for real this time over our shared passion for food and our common love for entertaining. Maya loved people, reveled in good company, and adored entertaining. She gave parties: small dinners and lavish y’all-come gatherings to which all of her known world was invited. These parties had gone on all along in other venues and at other times, but after my return to the group, I became aware of them through Maya’s New Year’s Day party.

  The party was a New York humdinger of a gathering. I began attending it annually, returning from New Orleans, where I’d begun to spend the Christmas holidays and the end-of-the-year festivities. All ages mixed and mingled at the New Year’s Day gatherings: family, friends old and new, business associates, and ac
quaintances who seemed to be interesting. Ironically, I too had thrown New Year’s Day parties and had hosted as many as sixty people in my home in Brooklyn; they were similar in many other ways as well, reminding me just how I’d been formed by that circle of friends more than thirty years earlier. Mine, though, were small things compared to Maya’s, which were huge, splendid, and helmed by her more-than-able personal assistant, Lydia Stuckey, to whom I took an immediate liking. Maya did all of the cooking for the New Year’s Day parties, reveling in the chance to show off her culinary skills and delighting in creating a lavish spread of all of the traditional foods that make up New Year’s Day in an African American household. There were black-eyed peas and rice (served separately, not together) and made with and without pork, greens, potato salad, macaroni and cheese, sweet potatoes, and several types of turkey, along with roast ham—all prepared in what a West African girlfriend of mine would have called “industrial quantities.” This lavish spread was accompanied by rivers of red wine and scotch and a bounty of desserts. After dinner, there was often caroling with professional voices singing traditional songs while Valerie Simpson accompanied folks on the piano. Presents were exchanged with intimates, and I knew that Maya and I had passed another milestone on the friendship trail when one year she made sure that I received a small something, a token of our enduring connection. I treasure my Indian pillboxes.