by Maya Angelou
Momma and Uncle Willie hadn’t changed. She still spoke softly and her voice had a little song in it.
“Bless my soul, Sister, you come stepping up here looking like your daddy for the world.”
Christ and Church were still the pillars of her life.
“The Lord my God is a rock in a weary land. He is a great God. Brought you home, all in one piece. Praise His name.”
She was, as ever, the matriarch. “I never did want you children to go to California. Too fast that life up yonder. But then, you all’s their children, and I didn’t want nothing to happen to you, while you’re in my care. Jew was getting a little too big for his britches.”
Five years before, my brother had seen the body of a black man pulled from the river. The cause of death had not been broadcast, but Bailey (Jew was short for Junior) had seen that the man’s genitals had been cut away. The shock caused him to ask questions that were dangerous for a black boy in 1940 Arkansas. Momma decided we’d both be better off in California where lynchings were unheard of and a bright young Negro boy could go places. And even his sister might find a niche for herself.
Despite the sarcastic remarks of Northerners, who don’t know the region (read Easterners, Westerners, North Easterners, North Westerners, Midwesterners), the South of the United States can be so impellingly beautiful that sophisticated creature comforts diminish in importance.
For four days I waited on the curious in the Store, and let them look me over. I was that rarity, a Stamps girl who had gone to the fabled California and returned. I could be forgiven a few siditty airs. In fact, a pretension to worldliness was expected of me, and I was too happy to disappoint.
When Momma wasn’t around, I stood with one hand on my hip and my head cocked to one side and spoke of the wonders of the West and the joy of being free. Any listener could have asked me: if things were so grand in San Francisco, what had brought me back to a dusty mote of Arkansas? No one asked, because they all needed to believe that a land existed somewhere, even beyond the Northern Star, where Negroes were treated as people and whites were not the all-powerful ogres of their experience.
For the first time the farmers acknowledged my maturity. They didn’t order me back and forth along the shelves but found subtler ways to make their wants known.
“You all have any long-grain rice, Sister?”
The hundred-pound sack of rice sat squidged down in full view.
“Yes, ma’am, I believe we do.”
“Well then, I’ll thank you for two pounds.”
“Two pounds? Yes, ma’am.”
I had seen the formality of black adult equals all my youth but had never considered that a time would come when I, too, could participate. The customs are as formalized as an eighteenth-century minuet, and a child at the race’s knee learns the moves and twirls by osmosis and observation.
Values among Southern rural blacks are not quite the same as those existing elsewhere. Age has more worth than wealth, and religious piety more value than beauty.
There were no sly looks over my fatherless child. No cutting insinuations kept me shut away from the community. Knowing how closely my grandmother’s friends hewed to the Bible, I was surprised not to be asked to confess my evil ways and repent. Instead, I was seen in the sad light which had been shared and was to be shared by black girls in every state in the country. I was young, yes, unmarried, yes—but I was a mother, and that placed me nearer to the people.
I was flattered to receive such acceptance from my betters (seniors) and strove mightily to show myself worthy.
Momma and Uncle Willie noted my inclusion into the adult stratum, and on my fourth day they put up no resistance when I said I was going for a night on the town. Since they knew Stamps, they knew that any carousing I chose to do would be severely limited. There was only one “joint” and the owner was a friend of theirs.
Age and travel had certainly broadened me and obviously made me more attractive. A few girls and boys with whom I’d had only generalities in common, all my life, asked me along for an evening at Willie Williams’ café. The girls were going off soon to Arkansas Mechanical and Technical College to study Home Economics and the boys would be leaving for Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to learn how to farm. Although I had no education, my California past and having a baby made me equal to an evening with them.
When my escorts walked into the darkened Store, Momma came from the kitchen, still wearing her apron, and joined Uncle Willie behind the counter.
“Evening, Mrs. Henderson. Evening, Mr. Willie.”
“Good evening, children.” Momma gathered herself into immobility.
Uncle Willie leaned against the wall. “Evening, Philomena, and Harriet and Johnny Boy and Louis. How you all this evening?”
Just by placing their big still bodies in the Store at that precise time, my grandmother and uncle were saying, “Be good. Be very very good. Somebody is watching you.”
We squirmed and grinned and understood.
The music reached out for us when we approached the halfway point. A dark throbbing bass line whonked on the air lanes, and our bodies moved to tempo. The steel guitar urged the singer to complain
“Well, I ain’t got no
special reason here.
No, I ain’t got no
special reason here.
I’m going leave
’cause I don’t feel welcome here …”
The Dew Drop In café was a dark square outline, and on its wooden exterior, tin posters of grinning white women divinely suggested Coca-Cola, R.C. Cola and Dr Pepper for complete happiness. Inside the one-room building, blue bulbs hung down precariously close to dancing couples, and the air moved heavily like stagnant water.
Our entrance was noted but no one came rushing over to welcome me or ask questions. That would come, I knew, but certain formalities had first to be observed. We all ordered Coca-Cola, and a pint bottle of sloe gin appeared by magic. The music entered my body and raced along my veins with the third syrupy drink. Hurray, I was having a good time. I had never had the chance to learn the delicate art of flirtation, so now I mimicked the other girls at the table. Fluttering one hand over my mouth, while laughing as hard as I could. The other hand waved somewhere up and to my left as if I and it had nothing to do with each other.
“Marguerite?”
I looked around the table and was surprised that everyone was gone. I had no idea how long I had sat there laughing and smirking behind my hand. I decided they had joined the dancing throng and looked up to search for my, by now, close but missing friends.
“Marguerite.” L. C. Smith’s face hung above me like the head of a bodyless brown ghost.
“L.C., how are you?” I hadn’t seen him since my return, and as I waited for his answer a wave of memory crashed in my brain. He was the boy who had lived on the hill behind the school who rode his own horse and at fifteen picked as much cotton as the grown men. Despite his good looks he was never popular. He didn’t talk unless forced. His mother had died when he was a baby, and his father drank moonshine even during the week. The girls said he was womanish, and the boys that he was funny that way.
I commenced to giggle and flutter and he took my hand.
“Come on. Let’s dance.”
I agreed and caught the edge of the table to stand. Half erect, I noticed that the building moved. It rippled and buckled as if a nest of snakes were mating beneath the floors. I was concerned, but the sloe gin had numbed my brain and I couldn’t panic. I held on to the table and L.C.’s hand, and tried to straighten myself up.
“Sit down. I’ll be right back.” He took his hand away and I plopped back into the chair. Sometime later he was back with a glass of water.
“Come on. Get up.” His voice was raspy like old corn shucks. I set my intention on getting up and pressed against the iron which had settled in my thighs.
“We’re going to dance?” My words were thick and cumbersome and didn’t want to leave my mouth.
&n
bsp; “Come on.” He gave me his hand and I stumbled up and against him and he guided me to the door.
Outside, the air was only a little darker and a little cooler, but it cleared one corner of my brain. We were walking in the moist dirt along the pond, and the café was again a distant outline. With soberness came a concern for my virtue. Maybe he wasn’t what they said.
“What are you going to do?” I stopped and faced him, readying myself for his appeal.
“It’s not me. It’s you. You’re going to throw up.” He spoke slowly. “You’re going to put your finger down your throat and tickle, then you can puke.”
With his intentions clear, I regained my poise.
“But I don’t want to throw up. I’m not in the least—”
He closed a hand on my shoulder and shook me a little. “I say, put your finger in your throat and get that mess out of your stomach.”
I became indignant. How could he, a peasant, a nobody, presume to lecture me? I snatched my shoulder away.
“Really, I’m fine. I think I’ll join my friends,” I said and turned toward the café.
“Marguerite.” It was no louder than his earlier tone but had more force than his hand.
“Yes?” I had been stopped.
“They’re not your friends. They’re laughing at you.” He had misjudged. They couldn’t be laughing at me. Not with my sophistication and city ways.
“Are you crazy?” I sounded like a San Francisco-born debutante.
“No. You’re funny to them. You got away. And then you came back. What for? And with what to show for your travels?” His tone was as soft as the Southern night and the pond lapping. “You come back swaggering and bragging that you’ve just been to paradise and you’re wearing the very clothes everybody here wants to get rid of.”
I hadn’t stopped to think that while loud-flowered skirts and embroidered white blouses caused a few eyebrows to be raised in San Diego, in Stamps they formed the bulk of most girls’ wardrobes.
L.C. went on, “They’re saying you must be crazy. Even people in Texarkana dress better than you do. And you’ve been all the way to California. They want to see you show your butt outright. So they gave you extra drinks of sloe gin.”
He stopped for a second, then asked, “You don’t drink, do you?”
“No.” He had sobered me.
“Go on, throw up. I brought some water so you can rinse your mouth after.”
He stepped away as I began to gag. The bitter strong fluid gurgled out of my throat, burning my tongue. And the thought of nausea brought on new and stronger contractions.
After the cool water we walked back past the joint, and the music, still heavy, throbbed like gongs in my head. He left the glass by the porch and steered me in the direction of the Store.
His analysis had confused me and I couldn’t understand why I should be the scapegoat.
He said, “They want to be free, free from this town, and crackers, and farming, and yes-sirring and no-sirring. You never were very friendly, so if you hadn’t gone anywhere, they wouldn’t have liked you any more. I was born here, and will die here, and they’ve never liked me.” He was resigned and without obvious sorrow.
“But, L.C., why don’t you get away?”
“And what would my poppa do? I’m all he’s got.” He stopped me before I could answer, and went on, “Sometimes I bring home my salary and he drinks it up before I can buy food for the week. Your grandmother knows. She lets me have credit all the time.”
We were nearing the Store and he kept talking as if I weren’t there. I knew for sure that he was going to continue talking to himself after I was safely in my bed.
“I’ve thought about going to New Orleans or Dallas, but all I know is how to chop cotton, pick cotton and hoe potatoes. Even if I could save the money to take Poppa with me, where would I get work in the city? That’s what happened to him, you know? After my mother died he wanted to leave the house, but where could he go? Sometimes when he’s drunk two bottles of White Lightning, he talks to her. ‘Reenie, I can see you standing there. How come you didn’t take me with you, Reenie? I ain’t got no place to go, Reenie. I want to be with you, Reenie.’ And I act like I don’t even hear him.”
We had reached the back door of the Store. He held out his hand.
“Here, chew these Sen-sen. Sister Henderson ought not know you’ve been drinking. Good night, Marguerite. Take it easy.”
And he melted into the darker darkness. The following year I heard that he had blown his brains out with a shotgun on the day of his father’s funeral.
CHAPTER 17
The midmorning sun was deceitfully mild and the wind had no weight on my skin. Arkansas summer mornings have a feathering effect on stone reality.
After five days in the South my quick speech had begun to drag, and the clipped California diction (clipped in comparison) had started to slur. I had to brace myself properly to “go downtown.” In San Francisco, women dressed particularly to shop in the Geary and Market streets’ big-windowed stores. Short white gloves were as essential a part of the shopping attire as girdles, which denied cleaved buttocks, and deodorant, which permitted odorless walkings up and down the steep hills.
I dressed San Francisco style for the nearly three-mile walk and proceeded through the black part of town, past the Christian Methodist Episcopal and African Methodist Episcopal churches and the proud little houses that sat above their rose bushes in grassless front yards, on toward the pond and the railroad tracks which separated white town from black town. My postwar Vinylite high heels, which were see-through plastic, crunched two inches into the resisting gravel, and I tugged my gloves all the way up to my wrist. I had won over the near-tropical inertia, and the sprightly walk, made a bit jerky by the small grabbing stones, the neat attire and the high headed position, was bound to teach the black women watching behind lace curtains how they should approach a day’s downtown shopping. It would prove to the idle white women, once I reached their territory, that I knew how things should be done. And if I knew, well, didn’t that mean that there were legions of Black women in other parts of the world who knew also? Up went the Black Status.
When I glided and pulled into White Town, there was a vacuum. The air had died and fallen down heavily. I looked at the white windows expecting to see curtains lose strained positions and resume their natural places. But the curtains on both sides of the street remained fixed. Then I realized that the white women were missing my halting but definitely elegant advance on their town. I then admitted my weariness, but urged my head higher and my shoulders squarer than before.
What Stamps’ General Merchandise Store missed in class it made up in variety. Cheap grades of thread and chicken feed, farming implements and hair ribbons, fertilizer, shampoo, women’s underwear, and B.V.D.s. Socks, face powder, school supplies and belly-wrenching laxatives were shoved on and under the shelves.
I pitied the poor storekeeper and the shop attendants. When I thought of the wide aisles of San Francisco’s Emporium and the nearly heard, quiet conversations in the expensive City of Paris, I gave the store a patronizing smile.
A young, very blond woman’s mournful countenance met me in the middle of a crowded aisle. I gave her, “Good morning,” and let a benign smile lift the corners of my lips.
“What can I do for you?” The thin face nodded at me like a sharp ax descending slowly. I thought, “The poor shabby dear.” She didn’t even form her words. Her question floated out like a hillbilly song, “Whakin I dew fer yew?”
“I’d like a Simplicity pattern, please.” I could afford to be courteous. I was the sophisticate. When I gave her the pattern number out of my head and saw her start at my Western accent, regained for the moment, I felt a rush of kindness for the sorrowful cracker girl. I added, “If you please.”
She walked behind a counter and riffled through a few aging sewing patterns, her shoulders rounding over the drawer as if its contents were in danger. Although she was twenty, or more l
ikely eighteen, her stance and face spoke of an early surrender to the poverty of poor-white Southern life. There was no promise of sex in her hip span, nor flight in her thin short fingers.
“We ain’t got it here. But I can put in a order to Texarkana for it for you.”
She never looked up and spoke of the meager town twenty-five miles away as if she meant Istanbul.
“I would so much appreciate that.” I did feel grateful and even more magnanimous.
“It’ll be back in three days. You come in on Friday.”
I wrote my name, Marguerite A. Johnson, without flourishes on the small pad she handed me, smiled encouragement to her and walked back into the now-serious noon sunshine. The heat had rendered the roads empty of pedestrians, and it assaulted my shoulders and the top of my head as if it had been lying in wait for me.
The memory of the insensate clerk prodded me into exaggerated awareness and dignity. I had to walk home at the same sprightly clip, my arms were obliged to swing in their same rhythm, and I would not under any circumstances favor the shade trees which lined the road. My head blurred with deep pains, and the rocky path swam around me, but I kept my mind keen on the propriety of my position and finally gained the Store.
Momma asked from the cool, dark kitchen, “What’d you buy, Sister?”
I swallowed the heat-induced nausea and answered, “Nothing, Momma.”
—
The days eased themselves around our lives like visitors in a sickroom. I hardly noticed their coming and going. Momma was as engrossed as she’d allow herself in the wonder of my son. Patting, stroking, she talked to him and never introduced in her deep voice the false humor adults tend to offer babies. He, in turn, surrendered to her. Following her from kitchen to porch to store to the backyard.
Their togetherness came to be expected. The tall and large dark-brown woman (whose movement never seemed to start or stop) was trailed one step by the pudgy little butter-yellow baby lurching, falling, now getting himself up, at moments rocking on bowed legs, then off again in the wave of Momma. I never saw her turn or stop to right him, but she would slow her march and resume when he was steady again.