by Maya Angelou
The gynecologist’s table was my Armageddon. There on the cold table, gray steel instruments would probe between my legs and into the unknown territory where my deepest guilts had lodged. I had no more idea of the construction of a woman’s regenerative organs than I had of the structure of the moon. Surely, I thought, there would be some scars visible from my son’s birth. Some leftover tube hanging down which would signal to the knowledgeable that I was a mother and therefore unfit to serve my country (which by this time I had come to love with a maudlin sentimentality).
“We’ll take a few slides.” The nurse’s face was stony, and the doctor ignored my face, acting as if I was nothing but a thin chest, flat belly and long black legs.
I asked why.
“These are venereal-disease tests.” She spoke as if she were weather-watching. I’d gladly have settled for syphilis and gonorrhea. If the Army could take care of my teeth, a couple of injections would cure the diseases.
“The tests will be back in a few days.”
I tried to scrape from their faces any information they had gathered. But those faces were trained in suppression. I wanted to shout at their closed ears, “I’ll wait. I’ll sit in the outer office and wait for the results.” But I too had some training—that is, “Never let white folks know what you really think. If you’re sad, laugh. If you’re bleeding inside, dance.”
“I’ll be away for a few days,” I lied, “but I’ll phone as soon as I return.” I tried to make it sound as if I would be doing them a favor.
Three or four days jittered by with no pretense at flowing, and then the phone call came.
“Miss Johnson?” I recognized the voice with echoes of starched uniforms and drill squadrons.
“Yes, I’m Miss Johnson.” I tried to put “I’m Miss Johnson, so what?” into my own response and failed.
“Sergeant Matthews at the Induction Center.”
I know. I know. Go on, dammit.
“I’m calling to tell you you’ve passed all your tests and have been included in the March-April quota of personnel to enter Officer Candidate School. Is that all right with you?”
I suddenly had dirigible-sized air pockets in my cheeks which prevented me from making any sound except a loud explosion. I nodded into the telephone.
“Will you be prepared to leave the San Francisco area at the beginning of May for Fort Lee, Virginia?”
The air plopped out of my mouth and I jerked the phone away. God knows I didn’t want to frighten the sergeant and give her a reason to re-examine my dossier of lies. I turned the sound into a fake cough and brought the mouthpiece back.
“Excuse me. A little spring cough. Oh yes, I can certainly be ready for May first.” I was in a little more control, so I added, “I’m most happy to have this opportunity to serve my country and I shall—”
She interrupted, “Yes, well, come down in the next few days and sign the loyalty oath. Good-bye.” And hung up.
Now I was ready. Things had arranged themselves in my favor at last. For the next two years I would have the security of purpose and the dignity of being a soldier in good standing in the Army of the United States of America.
Natural restraint and the conceit of sophistication kept me from rushing down immediately to sign the loyalty oath. I was able to keep myself away for two days before I surrendered.
I stood in front of the flag, one hand on the Bible, the other clasped to my breast, and swore I would defend this land from her enemies, etc., etc. The deep motives, the noble intent so moved me that with the least encouragement I would have dissolved in a flood of patriotic tears.
Mother was happy but not surprised at my success story. When I told Bailey that I would soon be going into the Army, he turned a cold stare on me and asked without relishing curiosity, “What the shit for? Men are trying like hell to get out and my sister is dying to get in. You dumb bunny.” The air between Bailey and me had coarsened with our growing up and thickened with his cynicism. He could no longer see me clearly and I could not distinguish his black male disappointment in life.
It could not be said that Bailey was living at home, but more accurately that he was based there. He worked as a waiter on the Southern Pacific trains running from San Francisco to Chicago or Los Angeles or Houston.
Few black families are without ties to the U.S. railroads. The early-twentieth-century Negro aristocrats were the families of ministers, morticians, teachers and railroad men. Passes to ride the trains were traded in Southern black areas as easily as legitimate money. And many poor black families ate their beans and greens from good china and used heavy silver from the Union Pacific, Southern Pacific and New York Central.
Bailey was still the plum pretty black color and his teeth shone white like promises. His hair was glossy and his small hands delicate and graceful. But all the gentle reminders of his love for me through our childhood stopped at his eyes. It seemed some confrontation, which he had kept secret, dulled their shine and left them flat and unseeing.
His fast speech, which used to stumble into a stutter with excitement, had slowed, and a songless monotone rasped out his meanings. When he was home from a trip, he never sat around with Mother and me, playing pinochle or coon can, as we used to do, but hurriedly put down his gear and left the house for some mysterious destination. He successfully blocked my prying by saying, “Take care of yourself and your baby and your own business and that’ll take all your time.”
When I tried to involve Mother in discussion of his whereabouts and how abouts, she said nearly the same thing but generally added, “He’s a man. He’s got a job and his health and strength. Some people have to make it through life with less.” And that was that.
Papa Ford, who had been brought to the new house, sat bowed over his coffee in the warm kitchen.
I asked him, “Papa, what’s Bailey doing? Why is he changing so?”
He lifted his head and relished a toothless mouth. Smack. Smack.
“Uh. Uh, girl. Uh, uh.” He lowered his head, loving the doom he hinted.
“Papa, what does that mean? Say something.”
The passage of years had ground away his emotional-transition apparatus. He would often shift in a moment from a dozing indifference to a fighting fury. He did so then.
“Don’t ask so many goddam questions. Keep your goddam big eyes open. You’re no shitty-ass baby.” A slurp from his mug and he was nearly asleep again.
CHAPTER 20
I had to make arrangements for my personal belongings. I told Mother that when I got out of the Army I would dress in suits, and my cashmere-sweater sets would match kick-pleated Scotch-plaid skirts. I wouldn’t be needing the old clothes. Mother had decided they were good enough to be given to charity. I remembered the large St. Vincent de Paul’s trucks, backing down our driveway once a year during my teens, collecting Mother’s unwanted items. After a brief but pointed sermon when Mother spoke of “those less fortunate than you,” I chose the Salvation Army as my beneficiary. Those fresh clean faces in their absurd regalia playing their uninspired music, unheeded, had always depressed me. They had to be the most deserving.
The records would stay in the house. Mother enjoyed Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Louis Jordan, Buddy Johnson and Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup as much as I. She’d play them at her parties and think of me.
I found it hard to think of leaving my books. They had been my elevators out of the midden, and to whom could I entrust such close friends?
The benevolent act of giving away my clothes, however, spilled over into that decision making. Hospitals were the answer. I was certain that lean and lonely tubercular patients would have their spirits lifted reading the Topper stories of Thorne Smith, and I had proved it possible to read Robert Benchley’s essays and short stories over a hundred times and still laugh. Ann Petry’s The Street, all Thomas Wolfe, Richard Wright and Hemingway would be given to an old-folks home. But the Russian writers would be packed away in mothballs and stored in our basement. I would savor th
e idea of Dostoevsky’s, Tolstoy’s and Gorki’s volumes molding in the dank cellar, wisps of camphor and odors of wet earth floating above them.
I quit my job to spend more time with Guy, to record his cherubic smile and be amazed at the beauty of his coordination. He seldom cried and seemed a budding introvert, for although he never thrust himself from company, he appeared to be equally amused alone. A baby’s love for his mother is probably the sweetest emotion we can savor. When my son heard my voice at the downstairs door he’d begin to sing, and when I arrived in his view he’d fall back on his fat legs, his behind would thud to the floor and he’d laugh, his big head rocking up and down.
I knew it would be hard to leave him. Hard on me, but harder on him, for he had no way of understanding that I was gone to prepare a place for us. I hugged his sweetness to me and squeezed my love into his pores. If we were to have a decent life, a small but neat house, good neighborhood and schools, bulky knit sweaters and the expensive tennis shoes I saw large boys wearing, I’d have to get some kind of training and I needed help. Uncle Sam was going to be more a friend to me than any of my bad blood uncles.
With my clothes gone to the Salvation Army and my books packed in wooden boxes downstairs, I spent my remaining time gazing at the training manual and familiarizing myself with creases and salutes and drill formations, how a bunk should be made and how officers were to be addressed.
A week before I was to be inducted, a military voice over the telephone ordered me down to the Recruitment Center.
“I can come this morning or this afternoon.”
“This morning! And that’s an order, soldier.”
“It sounds urgent.” Maybe our departure date had been moved up.
“It’s more urgent than that. It’s about some discrepancy on your documents. We’ll see you this morning.” Click.
Dammit, dammit and double damn. Probably some ruthless, relentless doctor had re-examined my charts and found that I’d had a baby. And I had sworn that everything I had written was God’s own truth. There were laws to punish criminals who lied (“perjury” it was called) on oath. And it must have been worse to lie on oath and the flag.
Mother had taken Guy out for the morning, to leave me alone with my army books. I had no one to accompany me. I dressed as I wondered. I shook as I planned. It was pretty certain I wasn’t going into the Army, but I might go to jail if the Army wanted to press charges. I should have known better than to lie to the government. People always said Uncle Sam would spend a thousand dollars to get you if you stole a three-cent stamp from him. He was more revengeful than God.
I couldn’t run, I couldn’t hide. I went to the government building.
On the bus I soft-conned myself. I had done so well on the examinations that if I came clean and explained that I had made solid arrangements for my son’s care for two years, they might make an exception. It could be simple, if only I got a kind interviewer and could stop shaking.
“Marguerite Johnson?”
The woman’s long thin neck rose out of wide sloping shoulders and her voice skidded like a fire alarm. I would have liked her face softer.
“Yes.” Er … “Yes, ma’am.” She was an officer. Oh hell, I mean … “Yes, sir.”
“Did you or did you not sign the loyalty oath?”
“I did.” Did I? I had gone down a few weeks before and sworn to uphold the flag, defend the country and protect my fellow Americans with my life, if need be. I had been so moved by my sincerity that I added to myself, “My country may she always be right but right or wrong, my country.” Off we go into the wild blue yonder and the caissons go rolling along.
“Were you or were you not asked if you had ever been a member of the Communist party?”
“I was asked, and I said no.” Well, if that was all it was! I felt the blood pushing to open up its old passages and start to flow again.
“You lied, Johnson.” The voice sirened up to a screech.
“Lied, sir? No, sir. I’ve never—”
“This is your signature, Johnson?” She produced the loyalty oath by slight of hand. I didn’t need to peer to see the large curving Marguerite Johnson.
“Yes, sir. That is my signature.”
She flipped the paper over and grinned her pleasure. “The California Labor School is on the House Un-American Activities list, Johnson. Do you know why?”
“No, sir. I only studied dance and drama there.”
“Oh, come now. Don’t be stupid. It’s a Communist organization and you know it.”
“Maybe so, but I have never been a member.”
“You went to the school for two years.” She had regained her composure, her stiffness.
“But that was when I was fourteen and fifteen. I had just come from the South, and a playground teacher got me a scholarship. It was because I had trouble talking—”
“Communists are ungodly, Johnson. And this man’s army fights under God.”
I felt as if I were drowning in straw. The light was still visible but no amount of struggling brought me nearer to it.
“Because you were young and, I hope, you’re still innocent, the Army is not going to bring charges of falsification against you. But we definitely cannot risk you as a soldier in our army, Johnson. Dismissed.”
I was suspended, physically and mentally, for a second.
“Dismissed.”
I know I’d have made a good soldier because without the benefit of habit or training, my body turned sharply and walked out into the sunshine.
Mother and the baby were still out when I returned to the big house. Papa Ford was away on his noonday constitutional. The rooms were all dark and cool. I sat at the ornate dining-room table and tried to sort things out.
My clothes were gone, I had no job and I had been rejected by the Army. That damn institution, which accepts everybody (to tell from its soldiers), had turned me down. My life had no center, no purpose. I had to admit, though, that I had lied. Not on the issue they charged against me (hell, I wouldn’t have recognized Stalin if he’d been in my class when I was fourteen. Literally, all white folks still looked alike to me: pale and similar), but I had lied about Guy’s birth. I wondered if justice was served. If maybe I should just shut up and take my punishment. I needed Bailey. I longed for the old days when I could speak to him and work out my problems.
I got up from the table and opened the door to his room. It had a strange emptiness. Not as if the occupant had just stepped out and was expected back, but as if it had never been occupied and expected nothing. There was a deadness in the air. I turned on the overhead light, went to the windows and pulled up the shades. The gray spring light dared only to enter a yard or so. I decided to change his linen, clean up and put fresh flowers in his room. Meanwhile I would think over my problem.
I stripped the blankets and folded them, then I tugged at the linen. For a moment I was so amazed I forgot my whereabouts. This couldn’t be Bailey’s bed. He was the model of cleanliness, neatness, decorum. Every member of my family had said at one time or other, “Maya should have been a boy and Bailey a girl. She’s so sloppy and he’s so neat”—and more to that effect.
The sheets were gray and black with dirt. An odor of perfumed hair oil and must lifted heavily. I tugged at the edges and let the sheets slide to the floor. The pillows rode along on the end of the sheet. As they tumbled, a small round bundle wrapped in brown paper bounced down at my feet.
I opened it without needing to. Thin brown cigarettes were held together with three rubber bands.
Even in his absence, Bailey had helped me. I lighted one of the cigarettes and in minutes was snickering over the stupidity of the Establishment. The U.S. Army with its corps of spies had been fooled by a half-educated black girl. I sat down on Bailey’s bed and laughed until I had to fight for my breath.
CHAPTER 21
I took a job as swing-shift waitress in a day-and-night restaurant called the Chicken Shack. The record player blared the latest hits incessantly
and the late-night clientele spent their overflow energy loudly in the brightly lighted booths.
Smoking grass eased the strain for me. I made a connection at a restaurant nearby. People called it Mary Jane, hash, grass, gauge, weed, pot, and I had absolutely no fear of using it. In the black ghetto of the forties, marijuana, cocaine, hop (opium) and heroin were only a little harder to obtain than rationed whiskey. Although my mother didn’t use anything but Scotch (Black & White), she often sang a song popular in the thirties that at its worst didn’t condemn grass, and at its best extolled its virtues.
Dream about a reefer five foot long
Vitamin but not too strong
You’ll be high but not for long
If you’re a viper.
I’m the queen of everything
I got to get high before I can swing
Light some tea and let it be
If you’re a viper.
Now when your throat gets dry
you know you’re high
Everything is dandy
You truck on down to the candy store
And bust your conk on peppermint candy
Then you know your brown body scent
You don’t give a damn if you don’t pay your rent
Light some tea and let it be
If you’re a viper.
I learned new postures and developed new dreams. From a natural stiffness I melted into a grinning tolerance. Walking on the streets became high adventure, eating my mother’s huge dinners an opulent entertainment, and playing with my son was side-cracking hilarity. For the first time, life amused me.
Positive dreaming was introduced on long, slow drags of the narcotic. I was going to do all right in the world, going to have it made—and no doubt through the good offices of a handsome man who would love me to distraction.
My charming prince was going to appear out of the blue and offer me a cornucopia of goodies. I would only have to smile to have them brought to my feet.
R. L. Poole was to prove my dreams at least partially prophetic. When I opened the door to his ring and informed him that I was Rita Johnson, his already long face depressed another inch.