by Maya Angelou
I excused myself from the table and went to stand on the deck. The small exclusive town of Tiburon glistened across the green-blue water and I thought about my personal history. Of Stamps, Arkansas, and its one paved street, of the segregated Negro school and the bitter poverty that causes children to become bald from malnutrition. Of the blind solitude of unwed motherhood and the humiliation of prostitution. Waves slapped at the brightly painted catamaran tied up below me and I pursued my past to a tardy marriage which was hastily broken. And the inviting doors to newer and richer worlds, where the sounds of happiness drifted through closed panels and the doorknobs came off in my hands.
Guests began to leave, waving at Yanko, who stood beside me at the rail: “À tout à l’heure,” “Adiós,” “Ciao,” “Adieu,” “Au revoir,” “Good-bye,” “Ta.” Yanko put his hand on my elbow and guided me back inside.
We had become a crowd of intimates around the table. Annette ladled the soup into large bowls and they all talked about sailing plans for next Sunday. If the weather was nice we would leave early so that we could have a full sail in before the Sunday crowd came for open house. Cyril wondered if I would like him and Annette to pick me up, since they also lived in San Francisco. Mitch said he wanted to talk to me about a short film he was going to do. Possibly I would like to narrate it. Victor said he and Henrietta were going to the Matador on Saturday for lunch and I should join them.
They did not question whether I wanted acceptance into their circle. I was chosen and my being a part of the group was a fact; the burden of choice was removed from me and I was relieved.
I told them I had a young son, and before I could ask, Yanko said, “Bring him. The sea is a female. And females desire young and masculine life. Bring him and we shall pacify the mother of us all. Bring him.”
One morning we sailed out on a smooth sea. Cyril was at the helm and Victor was regaling us with a gallant tale of medieval conquest. A young Scandinavian was on board, and when Victor was finished he, in turn, told a Viking story of heroic deeds and exploration.
Yanko slapped his forehead and said, “Ah, yes. Now I know what we must do. We must all plan to go abroad and civilize Europe. We must get a large ship and sail down the Thames and cultivate Britain first because they need it most. Then we cross the Channel and bring culture to France. Cyril, you shall be the first mate because you have by nature and training the mechanical mind. Mitch, you shall be the boatswain because of your ‘Samson strength’; Maya, you shall be the cantante, sitting in the prow singing us to victory. Victor, you shall be second mate because your talent is to organize. Annette, you shall be our figurehead, for your beauty will stun the commoners and enchant the aristocracy. I shall be captain and do absolutely nothing. Allons, enfants!”
Yanko allowed me to enter a world strange and fanciful. Although I had to cope daily with real and mundane matters, I found that some of the magic of his world stayed around my shoulders.
CHAPTER 14
If New Faces of 1953 excited the pulses of San Franciscans, Porgy and Bess set their hearts afire. Reviewers and columnists raved about Leontyne Price and William Warfield in the title roles and praised the entire company. The troupe had already successfully toured other parts of the United States, Europe and South America.
The Purple Onion contract bound me inextricably, but it also held the management to the letter of the law—I could not be fired except after having committed the most flagrant abuses.
On Porgy and Bess’s second night I called Barry and said, “I’m off tonight. You may say I’m ill.”
“Are you ill?”
“You may say so.” And hung up.
I had matured into using a ploy of not quite telling the truth but not quite telling a lie. I experienced no guilt at all and it was clear that the appearance of innocence lay mostly in a complexity of implication.
I went to the theater ready to be entertained, but not expecting a riot of emotion. Price and Warfield sang; they threaded their voices with music and spellbound the audience with their wizardry. Even the chorus performed with such verve that a viewer could easily believe each singer was competing for a leading part.
By intermission I had been totally consumed. I had laughed and cried, exulted and mourned, and expected the second act to produce no new emotions. I returned to my seat prepared for a repetition of great music.
The curtain rose on a picnic in progress. The revelers were church members led by a pious old woman who forbade dancing, drinking and even laughing. Cab Calloway as Sportin’ Life pranced out in a cream-colored suit and tried to paganize the Christians.
He sang “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” strutting as if he was speaking ex cathedra.
The audience applauded loudly, interrupting the stage action. Then a young woman broke away from a group of singers near the wings. She raced to the center of the stage and began to dance.
The sopranos sang a contrapuntal high-toned encouragement and the baritones urged the young woman on. The old lady tried to catch her, to stop the idolatrous dance, but the dancer moved out of her reach, flinging her legs high, carrying the music in her body as if it were a private thing, given into her care and protection. I nearly screamed with delight and envy. I wanted to be with her on the stage letting the music fly through my body. Her torso seemed to lose solidity and float, defying gravity. I wanted to be with her. No, I wanted to be her.
In the second act, Warfield, as the crippled Porgy, dragged the audience into his despair. Even kneeling, he was a large man, broad and thick-chested. His physical size made his affliction and his loss of Bess even sadder. The resonant voice straddled the music and rode it, controlling it.
I remained in my seat after the curtain fell and allowed people to climb over my knees to reach the aisle. I was stunned. Porgy and Bess had shown me the greatest array of Negro talent I had ever seen.
I took Clyde to the first matinée and he liked the dancing and “the little goat that pulled Porgy off the stage” at the end of the opera.
The Purple Onion had picked up my three-month option and I decided to develop my own material. I began making up music for poems I had written years before and writing new songs that fit the calypso form.
One night the club was filled and more people were waiting outside for the room to clear. I lifted my head from a bow and standing before me was a beautiful Black woman holding a long-stemmed rose. I bowed to her and she returned the bow, continuing to bend until she laid the flower at my feet. She blew a kiss and walked down the aisle to her table. Her friends began applauding again. I was not sure whether it was for me or for her, so I nodded to the musicians and started another encore. Halfway through I recognized the woman. She was the soprano who sang the “Strawberry Song” in Porgy and Bess. I almost bit my song in two; all the people at that table were probably from Porgy and Bess.
I went directly from the stage to the table and took the rose along.
The group stood and applauded again. I laid the flower on the table and applauded them. The audience, infected, began to applaud us.
“These are the great singers from Porgy and Bess,” I shouted over the noise. People stood up to look, and soon the whole audience was standing and we were applauding ourselves for our good taste to be alive and in the right place at the right time.
We went to Pete’s Pool Room, a large rambling restaurant on Broadway where the beats and artists and big-eyed tourists and burlesque queens went for a breakfast of hard rolls and maybe a game of pool. I wanted to call the whole room to order and present to them the singers from Porgy and Bess. We found seats and I heard the names again.
Ned Wright, a tall muscular man of about thirty, said I was excellent and “Don’t run yourself down, darling, there are plenty of people in the world who will do that for you.”
Lillian Hayman, the dramatic soprano, who was as plump as a pillow and biscuit-brown, laughed often, trilling like a bird and showing perfect white teeth. Chief Bey, the drummer, mumbled in a deep voi
ce that seemed to shake his wiry black frame. Joseph Attles, a tenor, was at forty the oldest of the group. He was tall and very delicately made. A lemon-yellow man, he was understudy for Cab Calloway, who was Sportin’ Life, and Joseph James, who sang the role of Jake.
And, of course, Martha Flowers, a great soprano and at that time a Bess understudy. Martha said, “My dear, you stand like an African queen holding off a horde of marauders. All alone.” She was short, but as she talked and gestured, body erect, she grew tall before my eyes. I told them how their singing had affected me, and when the opportunity arose, I asked about the dancer.
Martha said, “Leesa Foster, Elizabeth Foster. She is also a soprano and I hear she is going to be one of our Besses.” They promised to bring her to the club the next evening.
Martha bettered her promise by bringing not only Leesa Foster but even more people the next night. The voice teacher, Frederick Wilkerson, and two or three other cast members sat with the original group at two tables pushed together. Again they all said they enjoyed my singing, again I demurred, saying that I was really a dancer. Leesa was instantly interested and we spoke of dance schools, teachers and styles. Again we went to Pete’s for breakfast. Wilkie, as the voice teacher was called, leaned forward and boomed, “You are singing totally wrong. Totally wrong. If you keep it up you’ll lose your voice in five years.” He leaned back in his chair and added, “Maybe three years, yes, yes. Maybe three.”
His pronouncement pinched my budding confidence. I looked around the table, but no one seemed perturbed by his warning. I asked him what I could do to prevent disaster. He nodded and said in sonorous tones, “You are intelligent, yes I see that. You are intelligent. Get to a voice teacher, a good voice teacher. And study very hard. Apply yourself. That’s all.” He smacked his lips as if he had just tasted a favorite sweet.
“How can I find a good teacher?”
The singers were as curious about his answer as I. They looked at him.
“Now that’s another intelligent question,” his voice boomed. “As a matter of fact, I plan to leave Porgy and Bess and relocate myself in San Francisco. I am willing to take you as a student if, and only if, you work hard and listen to me. I don’t have time for any more students; however, I want to help you. If you don’t get help, you not only won’t be able to sing, you’ll hardly be able to talk.”
Robert Breen, Porgy and Bess’s good-looking and balding producer, came to the Purple Onion the next evening accompanied by his wife, Wilva, a pleasant little blond woman; the business manager, Robert Dustin; and an attractive, well-built woman who was introduced to me as Ella Gerber, company drama coach. When we shook hands, her dark-lashed eyes studied me.
Breen said he had heard I was a professional dancer. I admitted that.
“We may have an opening soon for a dancer who sings. Would you come to the theater and audition for us?”
I thought about my contract. I would not be free to take the job for nearly three months. Should I tell them? It would be honest and fair to leave the job open for another dancer. I told myself that I loved honesty and openness, not so much for its own sake but for its simplicity—I would be free from apologies, recriminations and accusations. Then I thought of Leesa Foster dancing to the sound of great voices, tossing herself into music and movement as if within that marriage lay all human bliss.
“Would I have to audition to a record or could I work with the company?”
Breen turned his pink, baby-skinned face to Dustin.
“We have a full rehearsal scheduled,” Dustin said, “and if you want Maya to try out, that could be arranged.”
They looked at me, Ella Gerber’s eyes computing the length of my legs, the size of my brain and the amount of my talent.
Breen suggested a date and I agreed. We drank a cold white wine to the audition and they left.
I went to the bar and told Ned about the conversation I had had with Breen. “Dance, darling.” He raised his hands to eye level and snapped his fingers. “Dance until they see Nijinsky in a duet with Katherine Dunham.” Snap!
—
All the singers were in street clothes, as if they had stopped by the theater en route for something more important. Some stood on the empty stage, others stood in the wings or lounged in the front row of the theater.
Billy Johnson, assistant conductor, waited while the musicians warmed up and tuned their instruments in the orchestra pit. Trills and arpeggios of voices came from backstage.
The stage manager, Walter Riemer, had a flashy smile and was as elegant as John Gielgud, whom he resembled. He took a position just off the stage. “Watch me, dear, when I do this”—he waved his hand like a flag in a high wind—“that’s your cue.” And he left me.
I sneaked around the curtain and watched as Billy lifted his arms as if he was trying to pull the orchestra out of the pit by invisible strings. The music began to swell, the singers poised.
At a casual indication from Johnson’s right hand the voices exploded, ripping shreds in the air.
When Riemer’s hand floated my cue, I was laughing and crying at the wonder of it all. I ran on stage, stepping lightly between the singers’ notes. If I was supposed to portray a woman carried away by music, blinded and benumbed by her surroundings, enchanted so by the rhythm and melody that she fancied herself a large, gloriously colored bird free to fly rainbows and light up the winds, then I was she.
Three days later, Bob Dustin offered me the job.
I said, as if newly indignant, that the Purple Onion would not let me out of my contract. Dustin commiserated with me and added, “We’ll be auditioning people for the next two months. We have to have a lead dancer before we go back to Europe.”
Even my imagination had never dared to include me in Europe. Whenever I envisioned foreign countries, I saw them through other people’s words or other people’s pictures. London to me was as Dickens saw it, a folk song in a cockney accent, Churchill V-ing his fingers, saying, “We shall fight on the beaches,” and so forth. Paris, in my mind, rang with the hoofbeats of horse-drawn carriages from the age of Guy de Maupassant. Germany was Hitler and concentration-camp horror or beery burghers in stiff white shirts sitting on benches photographed by Cartier-Bresson. Italy was the hungry streets of Open City or curly-haired people singing and eating pasta.
The images had been provided by movies, books and Pathé News, and none included a six-foot-tall Black woman hovering either in the back or in the foreground.
CHAPTER 15
When Porgy and Bess left San Francisco I resigned myself to the nightclub routine, and the burden of life was lightened only by twice-weekly sessions with Wilkie and Lloyd and the romping growth of Clyde.
Three days before my contract ran out I received a telephone call from Saint Subber, the Broadway producer, inviting me to come to New York City to try out for a new show called House of Flowers. He said Pearl Bailey would be starring and he had heard I was a great deal like her. If I satisfied him and got the role he had in mind, I would play opposite Miss Bailey.
New Yorkers may love their hometown loyally, but San Franciscans believe that when good angels die they stay in northern California and hover over the Golden Gate Bridge. I appreciated the chance to try out for a Broadway show, but the invitation did not make me ecstatic. It meant leaving San Francisco, without the prospect of Europe with Porgy and Bess.
Mom and Lottie and Wilkie encouraged me to go. The voice teacher and my mother had found that they had much in common and Mother invited him to move into our house. He came bringing his piano, students, huge rumbling voice and his religious positivism. He could cook nearly as well as the two women and the kitchen rang and reeked with the attempts of three chefs to outtalk and outcook one another.
They would take care of Clyde until I found an apartment and then he could fly to me. Of course I was going to get the part. There was no question of that.
I arrived in New York and went to a midtown hotel which Willkie had suggested. The congeste
d traffic and raucous voices, the milling crowds and towering buildings, made me think of my tiny fourth-floor room at the end of a dark corridor a sanctuary.
I telephoned Saint Subber, who said I must come to his apartment. I wriggled around his invitation, not wishing to face the street again so soon and hesitant about going to a strange man’s apartment—especially a New York producer’s apartment. Hollywood films had taught me that breed was dangerous: each one was fat, smoked large smelly cigars and all said, “All right, girlie, ya got talent, now lemme see ya legs.”
“Mr. Saint Subber”—or was one supposed to call him Mr. Subber?—“I need to have my hair done. May I see you tomorrow?”
He blasted my excuse. “No, no matter, I won’t be looking at your hair.”
See, my legs. Just as I thought.
“I want to see what you look like.” He gave me his address and hung up.
I had come three thousand miles, so surely I had the courage to go a few more blocks.
A uniformed doorman in front of a neat East Side apartment house raised his brows when I told him my destination, but he walked me into the lobby and reluctantly handed me over to a uniformed elevator operator. The operator pulled his face down as if to say “So, hot stuff, huh?” but he said “Penthouse,” and we began our smooth ascent. When we stopped he rang a bell and the door opened.
A beautiful blond young man offered me his hand. “Miss Angelou?” He did not look as if my legs would interest him.
“Yes. Mr. Subber?”
The elevator door closed and we were in a beautifully furnished living room.
“No, I’m not Saint. My name is Tom. I’m helping on the production. Please have a seat.” He led me to a sofa. “Saint will be with you in a few minutes. What can I get you to drink?”
While he was away I looked at the room and wondered about the tenant. Paintings adorned the walls and flowers were fresh and gay on little tables. A man’s voice in argument came through a louvered door.