My Soul Looks Back

by Jessica B. Harris

  We cooked together again, and I had a flashback to the virtuosic dinner demonstration of more than forty years prior. Maya, although this time anchored by her breathing apparatus, was still in charge. She kept cooked chickens in the freezer where they could be thawed at will and then quickly stripped off the bone and transformed into chicken salad and other dishes that she enjoyed. That day, she felt like chicken salad. Small bowls appeared as the mise en place for the salad—chicken stripped from the carcass, minced celery, a bit of minced onion, mayonnaise, salt and pepper. She mixed, tested, and tasted, verifying flavor and consistency. It was missing something—mustard, she decided. Ordinary American ballpark mustard was produced, added, a final taste, and it was pronounced ready. It was perfection; we ate it for lunch.

  We both seemed to sense that this might be the last time we saw each other, that our time together was drawing to a close. And as I left, elated to have reconnected and wanting not to lose the fragile thread that we’d reknit from memories and food, I asked if I could come back the next day. “Of course,” she said graciously, and I made my arrangements with Mr. Stanback for transportation.

  For Black women, perhaps the most intimate test for friendship is letting another watch as you have your hair done. There’s an incremental intimacy that goes from watching you have your hair washed to sitting between a friend’s legs and having it braided. There is a special intimacy and a vulnerability that comes with watching someone having her hair straightened. For those of us of a certain age, it is a journey in five senses: the heat of the hot comb, the slight sizzle it makes on the hair oil as it “fries” the hair straight, the smell of heat and oil, the vulnerability that comes from having tender scalp near heated metal comb, and finally the understanding that this is a very personal moment, a glimpse into another level of reality. Finally, for many of us, it’s a time-traveling trip back to childhood, complete with its own vocabulary with words like tender headed and kitchen, and nappy and kinky.

  The last visit that I had with Maya was on that level of intimacy. Her hairdresser had come by to prepare her for an appearance that she was making via satellite television. She was too exhausted to make the appearance personally, and teams had been sent to set up cameras and lights so that she could speak from her home. She was having her hair done in preparation. Talking with her as the hairdresser tended to her duties, we took our friendship to a deeper level, and I could even imagine having a glimpse of the Maya she must have been as a child getting her hair done to appear in some church pageant in Stamps, Arkansas, like the one she detailed so vividly in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

  We shared another meal, this time a hot dog—one of the simple foods that she loved. The same care went into its preparation that had gone into making the chicken salad a day earlier. Condiments called for and assembled, bun toasted, and dog cooked just so. She ate with diminished appetite and only wanted half, but the small amount that she consumed, she ate with gusto. It would be our last meal together. After the years of takeout orders from El Faro, lavish suppers cooked by Sam, Paparazzi pasta dinners, and the meals she’d cooked, including the astonishing one in Sonoma more than forty years prior, it’s ironic indeed that our last meal together would be a simple hot dog lunch eaten off a kitchen table crowded with the detritus of everyday living.

  A close friend dropped by after the hairdresser left, and scotch was called for. Our time for intimate conversation had passed with too much left unsaid. With the friend’s arrival, the conversation changed slightly. We talked about parents (he’d recently lost his mother) and legacy and life and its twisting turns. Another libation was called for, and the friend and I were sent off to get liquor from the shed that served as a depot. We went off chatting companionably (perhaps a bit too much so). When we returned, I could tell that things had changed, and it was time for me to go. When I suggested it might be time for me to leave, it was confirmed with a “Yes, it’s time for you to go.” I left with Mr. Stanback and headed back to my hotel; that was the last time I saw Maya.

  • • •

  Thomas Stearns Eliot lied. April is not the cruelest month. It’s May. The not-so-merry month of May. May marks the month in which both of my parents died fifteen years and thirteen days apart and it’s also the month in which Maya died fourteen years after my mother. Ironically, I was in New Orleans when I received word of Maya’s death. An early-rising friend of mine, not knowing that I was in another time zone, awakened me at 5:00 a.m. with the sad news. Then there was no more sleep, only memories flowing in an endless loop: Sam and Jimmy and Horatio Street, and Dolly and Rosa and Paule and Louise, and bourbon and ginger ale and takeout from El Faro, and dancing to Stevie Wonder in platform shoes, and my own parents, and my youth, and the journey shared and the friendships savored and the better part of my life lived and past.

  When death passes, arrangements have to be initiated and calls were made to Winston-Salem to determine what would happen. They’d not yet been made and were in the hands of Maya’s immediate and extended family. I said a quiet, personal good-bye to my longtime friend in my sun-dappled garden and awaited the news. When the announcements came, I was appalled to note that I had an inviolable commitment on June 4, the day of the Winston-Salem memorial: I would be keynoting a conference on food that I’d organized in New Orleans. It was impossible to get out of that. When I called and attempted to explain my predicament, knowing full well just how tangential to everything I would be, I was told that there would be several memorials: one in San Francisco for the West Coast people and one in New York City at some unknown date later in the year. I began the New Orleans conference with a moment of silence in her memory and waited for the New York memorial.

  The notice came during the summer that it would be held in the fall at Riverside Church in Manhattan. The invitation arrived, and I mused on the irony of a funeral invitation with an RSVP attached, but I did respond and requested not only my seat but my offered plus-one seat for a young protégée whom I’d asked to attend with me, knowing that she would be a way to connect future generations to that circle of friends. I duly received two tickets, which I put away, noting that the tag on the end said “silver,” but thinking no more of it. I was surprised several weeks later to receive an email telling me that there had been a change in the seating arrangements and that I would receive a different ticket. Several weeks later I did, this one sporting a side tag that read “platinum.” I’d been upgraded by someone. Again as she had at her own round table, Maya had reached out and moved me up, insisting that I own up to being a part of that circle of friends.

  Riverside Church is New York’s Notre Dame and Westminster Abbey all rolled up into one. While St. John the Divine may lay claim to being the city’s handmade gothic masterpiece and St. Patrick’s is where the pomp-and-circumstance funerals of Roman Catholic notables take place, Riverside Church is the people’s church. It reflects the diversity of its neighborhood in every service and ceremony—a place imbued with the gravitas of organized religion. I’d been there a few times with a friend for services and savored the pluralistic service and the unique mix of smells and bells and happy/clappy rejoicing that could exist only in that New York City neighborhood. It was only fitting that it should be at Riverside Church that New York bid farewell to the woman who exemplified the spirit of a generation.

  It was very much a celebrity memorial. There is no need to describe the service. In this era of oversharing, it was live-streamed, archived, and lives online where all can watch in their pajamas from home. Being there was another matter, another way of understanding and saying farewell. Folks were meeting and greeting, gossiping, looking for friends, and generally acting as though they were at a cocktail party and not a memorial. The to-ing and fro-ing and pew-hopping conversations before the ceremony began rivaled any at the latest nightclub, but the grief was real, as was the knowledge that we were all there bearing witness to the end of something powerful. My newly arranged platinum ticket placed me in the front pews with
, surprisingly, friends and acquaintances I hadn’t seen in decades. It was like being back at the New Year’s party, only this time the gathering was a mix of the joy at reconnection muted by the somber solemnity of the occasion. Almost four months had passed since Maya’s passing, so we’d all gotten over the shock, and watching the crowd at the pre-ceremony was enlightening. It was like watching a parade of my past life: Marcia Gillespie and Susan Taylor represented the Essence magazine years; Georges Faison, accompanied by his partner, T, was a nod to my theater-reviewing time; Helen Brodie Baldwin and Louise Meriwether took me back to my days with the circle of friends; and Toni Fay reminded me of my West Village days. There were others as well: some known, others familiar faces that had passed in corridors. The sanctuary was full; it was a standing-room-only crowd. The numbers of the stalwart, though, were diminishing: Rosa was gone; Joan Sandler, who could not make it, was represented by her daughter; I didn’t see Paule. Luminaries, the kind who would appear in boldface in the Post, dotted the attendees. Space was being held in the front pews for Hillary Clinton and Valerie Simpson, and space had been left for the wheelchairs of Toni Morrison and Maya’s son, Guy, all of whom would have a part in the services.

  I was fascinated to see Toni. I’d seen little of her after the St. Paul sojourn, an occasional sighting as she ascended into the literary firmament that she now inhabits. I was pained to see that she arrived in a wheelchair, but the verve and the passion with which she spoke about her friend indicated that none of the fire had gone out.

  The service was majestic, a fitting memorial for one who had become a cherished elder to the country and indeed the world. Hillary Clinton spoke. Songs were sung and chanted, and drums were beaten. Valerie Simpson performed a particularly moving mix of “I’m Every Woman” that included Maya’s own voice and a coda sung to Morrison. I was astonished at the memorial to hear Guy say that he’d been terrified of her intensity most of his life, because I suspect I had been as well, as I had often been of Sam. They indeed were two of a kind. Their hair-trigger volatility made it hard for me to figure them out and harder to see that in deed and in fact, they both truly loved me as much and as best as they knew how.

  The repast that followed for the immediate family and friends was held at the Sugar Bar, the West Side venue owned by prime members of Maya’s extended family: Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson. Ashford himself had died three years prior, and a very visibly grieving and moved Simpson had not only sung at the service but, following that emotionally exhausting performance, she’d hosted the repast.

  Not invited, still tangential to the group, I’d piggybacked attendance, relying on the company of Helen Brodie Baldwin, Jimmy’s sister-in-law, and Louise Meriwether. With them, I edged into the table of elders who had known Maya for decades. There was Toni. Her aura of wisdom was palpable, and her face was familiar from so many book jackets and lecture posters, but it was undeniable that decades had passed and we had all grown older. Morrison, who had been in a wheelchair during the service, had difficulty walking, and her progress through the narrow restaurant was halting and painful. Helen was her usual voluble self, and she and Meriwether engaged in a friendly contest to snag the waiter to get some of the food that was clearly inadequate to serve the masses who’d shown up (including the uninvited like me). Word spreads rapidly about events like this, and without a doorman or a bouncer, they are easily overrun. Who would think there would be need for a gatekeeper at a repast following a memorial? Maya’s certainly did.

  Channeling my mother, I made myself known to Toni, who had no recollection of me. It was neither the time nor the place to struggle for markers that would have made me known. She was gracious and slightly apologetic at not remembering me, and asked one question: “Was I kind?” There were no words with which to describe just how kind she’d been. And how much the brief time that I did spend with her had meant and how it had formed me. The fact that that was her one question contains in itself a universe of information about the time and place that had been. Clearly I’d been a minute footnote in her very busy life, a tiny point that would take more digging than needed to be done, but the recognition of the possibility and the desire to have done no harm were telling of the kindnesses that she had indeed evidenced. For me, in the midst of the crowd, it was truly a time for reflecting about the past and about all that had been and those things left unsaid and so much that couldn’t be said.

  • • •

  Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived. So I was taught to remember the fate of the wives of Henry the Eighth. The fates have been only marginally kinder to the members of the group:

  Richard Long, he of magisterial wisdom and astonishing linguistic abilities, died in 2013.

  I have no idea what happened to Bernard Hassell, who danced at the Folies Bergère and guarded Jimmy’s gates in St. Paul-de-Vence.

  Benny Luke, who strutted his stuff in La Cage aux Folles, remained in Paris as a pillar of the African American community there. He died in 2013.

  Georges Garin died in 1979 and was celebrated as a chef who pioneered nouvelle cuisine.

  Mary Painter remained in the South of France, where she died in 1991.

  Dolly McPherson was one of the few who could argue with Maya and reconnected me to the circle of friends. She remained Maya’s sister/friend until forgetfulness slipped into the penumbra of Alzheimer’s. She died in 2011.

  Rosa Guy, Trinidadian author who transformed the world of young-adult literature with her frank presentations of the real-life issues that confront teenagers today, died in 2012.

  Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor died in 2016, as I was finishing this book.

  I have lost touch with Lowell Todd and do not know if he’s still with us. He has moved from his Horatio Street apartment.

  I have lost touch with Paule Marshall, but she lives and works in Virginia.

  Corrine Jennings is the founding director and moving force behind Kenkeleba House, an art gallery on the Lower East Side. She has all of Sam’s papers and books that we packed up over thirty years ago and hopes to one day use them as the foundation for an archive.

  Louise Meriwether, who came to the parties with her mother and who was a pillar in the circle, is still very much alive and still very much writing.

  Helen Brodie Baldwin, Lover’s widow, lives in New York City and attends all ceremonies honoring her late brother-in-law. She’s writing her own story of life with the Baldwin family. We have meals together periodically.

  Martina Arroyo no longer sings, but nurtures new talent through her Martina Arroyo Foundation. We are in touch after a many-year hiatus.

  As I was beginning to research this book, I typed in a random collection of words—James Baldwin/Sam Floyd/France—and was astonished to find a posting about Baldwin from a man who stated that he knew Jimmy because he’d had a seventeen-year relationship with Professor Sam Floyd. Clearly that time overlapped with my Sam Floyd years in some way. I’ve tried to relocate the reference, but no matter what I type in, nothing comes up. The Internet gods have spoken, and I feel no need to open Pandora’s box or pick at a healed-over wound. I’ve questioned those who knew, and whether from forgetfulness that comes with time or out of kindness for my youthful naiveté, they can recall no one else with Sam at my time. Whoever he is, I know he must have his own stories to tell, some of which no doubt parallel my own. Perhaps we’ll meet; I suspect not. I loved Sam with all of the passion my twenty-year-old self could muster. Mercurial, majestic, maddening, and an eternal conundrum, Samuel Clemens Floyd III and the world to which he introduced me and the long-lasting friendships that I made because of him are a part of my DNA and I am me because of it.

  As for Maya, a year or so after her passing, I attended a nonrelated event where I was surprised by Oprah’s chef, Art Smith, when he looked up at me and said out of the blue, “Maya truly loved you, you know.” Me? Really? No, I didn’t know. The same scenario was repeated only last year by someone from Oprah’s Sirius radio staff. With t
he hindsight that comes from close examination and with the wisdom (or at least experience) that comes with age, I can see that, yes, she did. We had a more-than-forty-year relationship that went from wariness to acceptance to affection and understanding. When I wrote High on the Hog in 2011, she, without question or quibble, wrote the Foreword, in which she extols my writing skills and presages this book by saying:

  If Harris decides that she is more of a prose writer than a recipe writer, the world of cookbook users and readers will be poorer for it. However, because she writes so well, all readers will be well serviced.

  I will be among that group.

  I’m not sure how she would have felt about this effort. After all, no one more than she knew what it was to love Sam Floyd, to be a part of that circle of friends, to have lived those times, and to have been a part of New York City at that very special moment in time. I like to think that, as with all of my other endeavors, she would have supported me as my soul looks back.

  * * *

  * * *

  Leg of Lamb with Spicy Mint Sauce

  I do much of my entertaining these days in the house that my parents bought more than fifty years ago on Martha’s Vineyard. Both the island and I have changed a great deal in those years, but the gingerbread cottage overlooking the tennis courts will always be family home to me: a place that houses memories of people loved, friends made, and great meals shared. Many of the friends still summer on the Vineyard, and I celebrate the beginning of each new holiday with a shared Bastille Day meal that has leg of lamb as its centerpiece. It’s my salute to memories of the past and friends of the present, and I try each year to include someone new as a look toward the future.