The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou

by Maya Angelou

  “One Love. One Life.” My usually deep voice leaked out high-pitched and weak.

  A writer asked how many acts the play had. I answered again in the piping voice, “So far only one.”

  Everyone laughed; they thought I was making a joke.

  “If everyone is ready, we can begin.” John picked up his note pad. There was a loud rustling as the writers prepared to take notes.

  I read the character and set description despite the sudden perversity of my body. The blood pounded in my ears but not enough to drown the skinny sound of my voice. My hands shook so that I had to lay the pages in my lap, but that was not a good solution due to the tricks my knees were playing. They lifted voluntarily, pulling my heels off the floor and then trembled like disturbed Jello. Before I launched into the play’s action, I looked around at the writers expecting but hoping not to see their amusement at my predicament. Their faces were studiously blank. Within a year, I was to learn that each had a horror story about a first reading at the Harlem Writers Guild.

  Time wrapped itself around every word, slowing me. I couldn’t force myself to read faster. The pages seemed to be multiplying even as I was trying to reduce them. The play was dull, the characters, unreal, and the dialogue was taken entirely off the back of a Campbell’s soup can. I knew this was my first and last time at the Guild. Even if I hadn’t the grace to withdraw voluntarily, I was certain the members had a method of separating the wheat from the chaff.

  “The End.” At last.

  The members laid their notes down beside their chairs and a few got up to use the toilets. No one spoke. Even as I read I knew the drama was bad, but maybe someone would have lied a little.

  The room filled. Only the whispering of papers shifting told me that the jury was ready.

  John Henrik Clarke, a taut little man from the South, cleared his throat. If he was to be the first critic, I knew I would receive the worst sentence. John Clarke was famous in the group for his keen intelligence and bitter wit. He had supposedly once told the FBI that they were wrong to think that he would sell out his home state of Georgia; he added that he would give it away, and if he found no takers he would even pay someone to take it.

  “One Life. One Love?” His voice was a rasp of disbelief. “I found no life and very little love in the play from the opening of the act to its unfortunate end.”

  Using superhuman power, I kept my mouth closed and my eyes on my yellow pad.

  He continued, his voice lifting. “In 1879, on a March evening, Alexander Graham Bell successfully completed his attempts to send the human voice through a little wire. The following morning some frustrated playwright, unwilling to build the necessary construction plot, began his play with a phone call.”

  A general deprecating murmur floated in the air.

  “Aw, John” and “Don’t be so mean” and “Ooo Johnnn, you ought to be ashamed.” Their moans were facetious, mere accompaniment to their relish.

  Grace invited everyone to drinks, and the crowd rose and started milling around, while I stayed in my chair.

  Grace called to me. “Come on, Maya. Have a drink. You need it.” I grinned and knew movement was out of the question.

  Killens came over. “Good thing you stayed. You got some very important criticism.” He, too, could slide to hell straddling a knotted greasy rope. “Don’t just sit there. If they think you’re too sensitive, you won’t get such valuable criticism the next time you read.”

  The next time? He wasn’t as bright as he looked. I would never see those snooty bastards as long as I stayed black and their asses pointed toward the ground. I put a nasty-sweet smile on my face and nodded.

  “That’s right, Maya Angelou, show them you can take anything they can dish out. Let me tell you something.” He started to sit down beside me, but mercifully another writer called him away.

  I measured the steps from my chair to the door. I could make it in ten strides.

  “Maya, you’ve got a story to tell.”

  I looked up into John Clarke’s solemn face.

  “I think I can speak for the Harlem Writers Guild. We’re glad to have you. John Killens came back from California talking about your talent. Well, in this group we remind each other that talent is not enough. You’ve got to work. Write each sentence over and over again, until it seems you’ve used every combination possible, then write it again. Publishers don’t care much for white writers.” He coughed or laughed. “You can imagine what they think about black ones. Come on. Let’s get a drink.”

  I got up and followed him without a first thought.

  Ten different conversations were being held in the kitchen.

  The writers were partying. Gone were the sober faces and serious eyes. As John Clarke and I entered, another writer spoke to me. “So, Maya, you lived through your baptism. Now you’re a member of the flock.” Sarah, a pretty little woman with fastidious manners, put her hand on my arm. “They were easy on you this evening, dear. Soft, you might say. Because it was your first reading. But you’ll see, next week you watch how they treat Sylvester.”

  Paule Marshall, whose book Brown Girl, Brown Stones was going to be made into a television movie, smiled conspiratorially. “See, I told you, it wasn’t too bad, was it?” They had stripped me, flayed me, utterly and completely undone me, and now they were as cheery as Christmas cards.

  I sipped the cool wine and thought about the evening’s instruction. Because I had a fairly large vocabulary and had been reading constantly since childhood, I had taken words and the art of arranging them too lightly. The writers assaulted my casual approach and made me confront my intention. If I wanted to write, I had to be willing to develop a kind of concentration found mostly in people awaiting execution. I had to learn technique and surrender my ignorance.

  John Killens interrupted my thoughts. “Maya, how long will it take you to rewrite that play?”

  I hadn’t decided on a rewrite, or even whether I would attend another Guild meeting.

  “I need to know so I can schedule your next reading.”

  “I’m not sure. Let me think about it.”

  “There are a lot of people ready to read. You’d better decide, otherwise you’ll have to get in line.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  John nodded and turned away. He lifted his voice. “O.K., everybody. What about Cuba? What about Castro? Are we going to sit back and watch the United States kick Castro’s ass, like its been kicking our ass, and say nothing?”

  In the second following John’s question, the air held quiet, free of chatter. Then voices rose.

  “All black people ought to support Castro.”

  “Cuba is all right. Castro is all right.”

  “Castro acts like he grew up in Harlem.”

  “He speaks Spanish, but it could be niggerese.”

  John waited until the voices fell.

  “There’s no time like right now. You know about the slave who decided to buy his freedom?” Small smiles began to grow on the black, brown and yellow faces. Grace chuckled and bit into her cigarette holder.

  “Well, this negero was a slave, but his owner allowed him to take jobs off the plantation at night, on weekends and holidays. He worked. Now, mind you, I mean, he would work on the plantation and then walk fifteen miles to town and work there, then walk back, get two hours’ sleep and get up at daybreak and work again. He saved every penny. Wouldn’t marry, wouldn’t even take advantage of the ladies around him. Afraid he’d have to spend some of his hard-earned money. Finally, he saved up a thousand dollars. Lot of money. He went to his master and asked how much he was worth. The white man asked why the question. The negero said he just wanted to know how much slaves cost. The white man said he usually paid eight hundred to twelve hundred dollars for a good slave, but in the case of Tom, because he was getting old and couldn’t father any children, if he wanted to buy himself, the master would let him go for six hundred dollars.

  “Tom thanked the slave owner and we
nt back to his cabin. He dug up his money and counted it. He fondled and caressed the coins and then put them back in their hiding place. He returned to the white man and said, ‘Boss, freedom is a little too high right now. I’m going to wait till the price come down.’ ”

  We all laughed, but the laughter was acrid with embarrassment. Most of us had been Toms at different times of our lives. There had been occasions when the price of freedom was more than I wanted to pay. Around the room faces showed others also were remembering.

  “There is a Fair Play for Cuba organization. An ad is going to be taken out in the daily newspapers. The ad will cost money. Anyone who wants to sign it can find the form in the living room. Put your name down and if you can afford to, leave some money in the bowl on the cocktail table.”

  A few people began to move hurriedly toward the front room, but John stopped them.

  “Just a minute. I just want to remind you all that if your name appears in the ad this afternoon, you can bet ten thousand dollars and a sucker that by nightfall it’ll be in the FBI files. You’ll be suspect. Just remember that.”

  John Clarke coughed his laugh again. “Hell, if you’re born black in the United States, you’re suspect of being everything, except white, of course.” We laughed, relieved at the truth told in our own bitter wit. I thought of lines in Sterling Brown’s poem “Strong Men”:

  We followed away, and laughed as usual.

  They heard the laugh and wondered.

  Just before I left the house, I signed the already-filled application form.

  Paule Marshall stopped me at the door. “I really want to hear your rewrite. You know, lots of people have more talent than you or I. Hard work makes the difference. Hard, hard unrelenting work.”

  The meeting was over. Members were embraced, kissed lips or cheeks and patted each other. John Killens offered to drive me home.

  Grace hugged me and whispered. “Ya did good, kid, and I know you were scared witless.”

  When John parked in front of my house, I gathered my papers and asked, “What’s the hardest literary form, John?”

  “Each one is the hardest. Fiction is impossible. Ask me. Poetry is impossible. Ask Langston or Countee. Baldwin will say essays are impossible. But everyone agrees, short stories are so impossible, they almost can’t be written at all.”

  I opened the car door, “John, put me down for a reading in two months. I’ll be reading a new short story. Good night.”

  I thought about my statement as I walked up the stairs. I had gathered from the evening’s meeting that making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake. I knew I was going in, so I decided I might as well try what John Killens suggested as the deepest end: the short story. If I survived at all, it would be a triumph. If I swam, it would be a miracle. As I unlocked my door, I thought of my mother putting her age back fifteen years and going into the merchant marines. I had to try. If I ended in defeat, at least I would be trying. Trying to overcome was black people’s honorable tradition.

  CHAPTER 3

  There is an awesome reality to Rent Day. It comes trumpeting, forcing the days before it into a wild scramble. My rent day seemed to come due every other day, and Guy always needed just one more pair of jeans. The clothes I had to have were eternally in the cleaners, and staples disappeared from my kitchen with an alarming regularity.

  I could get a job singing, but I didn’t have an agent. Harlem theatrical representatives sought light-skinned Cotton Club-type beauties for their traveling revues. Midtown white agents would only book unknown black entertainers for out-of-town or night gigs, stag parties or smokers. I knew one white New York club owner who had been a loyal friend to me, but with my recently acquired new level of black dignity I refused to go pleading to him for work.

  I found a job on my own. The little club on the Lower East Side was a joint where people came when they didn’t have any other place to go. There was a long bar, diluted drinks, dinner-plate-sized tables and no dressing rooms (I changed in the women’s toilet) and the work itself embarrassed me.

  I sang in the club for two miserable months. People I admired were doing important things. Abbey and Max Roach were performing jazz concerts on liberation themes. Lorraine Hansberry had a play on Broadway which told some old truths about the black American Negro family to a new white audience. James Baldwin had the country in his balled fist with The Fire Next Time. Killens’ And Then We Heard the Thunder told the uncomfortable facts about black soldiers in a white army. Belafonte included the South African singer Miriam Makeba in his concerts, enlarging his art and increasing his protest against racial abuse. And I was still singing clever little songs only moderately well. I made the decision to quit show business. Give up the skintight dresses and manicured smiles. The false concern over sentimental lyrics. I would never again work to make people smile inanely and would take on the responsibility of making them think. Now was the time to demonstrate my own seriousness.

  Two weeks after my firm decision, I received an offer to appear at the Apollo Theater, and the idea of rejecting the invitation never occurred to me. The Apollo, in Harlem, was to black entertainers the Met, La Scala and a Royal Command Performance combined. Pearl Bailey, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Duke Ellington had played on that stage.

  Frank Schiffman, the manager, sat in the darkened theater listening to rehearsal. Tito Puente’s big band with Willie Bobo and Mongo Santamaria dropped dancing notes in the air like dust particles in a windstorm.

  Schiffman sat rigid in the first row. I rehearsed my songs with the band, spurred on by the timbales of Willie Bobo and Mongo Santamaria’s conga. I enlarged on my initial interpretation of the music, singing better than I was usually capable of. Schiffman didn’t move or speak until I started to rehearse “Uhuru,” an audience-participation song which I used as an encore.

  “No audience participation in the Apollo.” His voice was as rusty as an old iron bar.

  “I beg your pardon?” Always get siditty when you’re scared, was my policy. “Were you speaking to me?”

  “Yeah, no audience participation in the Apollo.”

  “But that’s my act. I always use ‘Uhuru’ as an encore. The word means freedom in Swahili. Babatunda Olatunje, the great Nigerian drummer, taught it to me—”

  “No audience participation—.”

  “Is that your policy, Mr. Schiffman? If so …”

  A few musicians rustled sheet music; others talked in Spanish.

  “It’s not a policy. The only policy in the Apollo is ‘Be Good.’ I’m telling you no audience participation because Apollo audiences won’t go along with it. You’ll die. Die on the stage if you try to get this audience to sing with you.” He gave a little laugh and continued, “Most of them can sing better than you anyway.”

  A few musicians who understood English laughed. Many people could sing better than I, so Schiffman had told me nothing I didn’t already know.

  “Thanks for your advice. I’m going to sing it anyway.”

  “It’ll be a miracle if they don’t laugh you off the stage.” He laughed again.

  “Thank you.” I turned back to the orchestra. “I don’t have sheet music, but the song goes like this …”

  I didn’t expect Schiffman to know that my life, like the lives of other black Americans, could be credited to miraculous experiences. But there was one other thing I was sure he didn’t know. Black people in Harlem were changing, and the Apollo audience was black. The echo of African drums was less distant in 1959 than it had been for over a century.

  One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street was to Harlem what the Mississippi was to the South, a long traveling river always going somewhere, carrying something. A furniture store offering gaudy sofas and fake leopard-skin chairs shouldered Mr. Micheaux’s book shop, which prided itself on having or being able to get a copy of any book written by a black person since 1900. It was true that sportily dressed fops stood on 125th and Seventh Avenue saying, “Got horse for th
e course and coke for your hope,” but across the street, conservatively dressed men told concerned crowds of the satanic nature of whites and the divinity of Elijah Muhammad. Black women and men had begun to wear multicolored African prints. They moved through the Harlem streets like bright sails on a dark sea.

  I also knew that fewer people giggled or poked the sides of their neighbors when they noticed my natural hair style.

  Clever appliance-store owners left their TV sets on the channels broadcasting U.N. affairs. I had seen black people standing in front of the stores watching the faces of international diplomats. Although no sound escaped into the streets, the attentive crowds appeared. I had waited with a group of strangers one night near St. Nicholas Avenue. The mood was hopeful, as if a promise was soon to be kept. The crowd tightened, pulled itself closer together and toward the window, as a small dark figure appeared on all the screens at once. The figure was that of an African wearing a patterned toga, striding with theatrical dignity toward the camera. The sidewalk audience was quiet but tense. When the man’s face was discernible and the part in his hair distinct, the crowd began to talk.

  “Hey, Alex. Hey, brother.”

  “He’s a good-looking thing.”

  “That African walk like God himself.”

  “Humph. Ain’t that something.”

  The man’s mouth moved and the crowd quieted, as if lip reading. Although it was impossible to understand his message, his air of disdain was not lost on the viewers.

  One fat woman grinned and giggled, “I sure wish I knew what that pretty nigger was saying.”

  A man near the back of the crowd grunted. “Hell. He’s just telling all the crackers in the world to kiss his black ass.”

  Laughter burst loudly in the street. Laughter immediate and self-congratulatory.

  Schiffman had been in Harlem since the beginning of the Apollo. He had given first contracts to a number of black performers who went on to become internationally famous. Some people in the area said he was all right, and he had black friends. He understood who was running numbers, who was running games and who was square and respectable. But he wasn’t black. And he was too mired in the Harlem he had helped to fashion to believe that the area was moving out of his control and even beyond his understanding.