The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou

by Maya Angelou

  He gave me a calm look and said, “This is all for you.” There was only weariness in his tone.

  “Brothers and sisters.” Joe walked in the center of the floor. “You know why you are here.” I was handed a drink of Scotch. “Our sister from across the seas, and across the centuries, is planning to leave our brother from South Africa.”

  Damn. Vus knew it, I knew it, and I had told Banti a few hours earlier. I gazed at the African men and women, and found that the information was not news to them. No eyes widened, no jaws tightened at the announcement.

  “Our sister and her son have returned to Africa. We all know that she has worked very hard and that she feels herself an African.” A mumble of agreement followed his statement.

  “Our South African brother wages a fight for all of us. No day passes but that he is on the battlefield. No night comes without Vusumzi Make at the gun, threatening the fortress of white oppression.” Another rumble of accord lifted and floated in the room.

  “Now, I, the brother to all of you, have called for palaver. Neither of these young people have family in Egypt, outside this small community. So I have asked you so that we can examine the points and weigh the matter.” Panic was rising in my mind and paralyzing my legs.

  Joe said, “I will ask this side of the room to argue for our sister, Maya, and this side for our brother, Vus.”

  I shook myself away from the numbing shock and stood up.

  “Excuse me, Joe, but I’m not on trial. I’m going home.” Joe spoke to me over the undertone of disapproval.

  “Sister, you are going to stay in Africa. You have a son and a name. If you can sit through this palaver, the outcome will be news in Africa. You know, Maya, our people do not count on papers or magazines to tell us what we need to know. There are people here from Ghana, Mali, Guinea, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Liberia. Sister, try hard and sit down.”

  Years before I had understood that all I had to do, really had to do, was stay black and die. Nothing could be more interesting than the first, or more permanent than the latter. In truly critical moments I reminded myself of those discoveries. I walked back and sat down beside Vus, who had become a large, black stranger.

  Joe Williamson placed a dining-room chair in the middle of the half-circle, talking all the while.

  “The group from Maya, going right, will defend our brother. People left of Vus will support our sister. And please remember, folks, we are the only family they have in this strange land.”

  I looked to my right, and my heart raced. My friends, Banti, Kebi, Margaret Young, a Nigerian close friend, and Jarra would be arguing for Vus. I turned and looked across to the other side and saw three infamous lechers, a few old indifferent men and three women whom I didn’t know well. My team looked hopeless.

  Joe took his seat and spoke to me.

  “Sister, tell your complaint. Tell your side.”

  Black Americans had no custom of publicly baring the soul. In old-time churches, people used to rise and complain about the treatment they had received from fellow members, but those conferences had died out, leaving only the memory in ribald jokes.

  Mrs. Jackson stood up in church and reported, “Reverend, brothers and sisters. I accuse Miss Taylor of going ’round town saying my husband has a wart on his private part.” The congregation’s “uh huh huhs” sounded like drumrolls. Miss Taylor got up and said, “I have to speak to clarify what I said. Brothers and sisters, I did not say that Mr. Jackson had a wart on his private part. I never did. ’Cause I never saw it. What I said, and this is all I said, was it felt like it was a wart.”

  There was no precedent in my life for airing private affairs. I held myself still and erect.

  Joe repeated, “Sister, tell your part. Why do you find our brother impossible as a husband?”

  I looked at Joe, then at my dear friends, lined up in Vus’s defense. Banti, Kebi and Margaret know all my complaints, I had cried in their arms, and laid my head on their laps uncounted times. Now they sat with straight flat faces, as if we were strangers. I turned to look at the company gathered in my behalf. Their faces were also cold, unsupportive and strange. I was alone again, but then, since I was already black, all I had to do was die.

  I said, “The man stuffs his thing in any opening he finds. I am faithful, he is not.”

  A few coughs fell from the mouths of my squad, and Vus’s troop twitched and cleared their throats.

  “I slave my ass off.” (African women hardly ever used profanity in mixed company, but I wasn’t strictly an African, and, after all, they had gathered to hear me speak and I was a black American. Mentioning slavery in present African company was a ploy. Their forefathers had been spared, or had negotiated for the sale of my ancestors. I knew it and they knew it. It gave me a little edge.)

  “I put money into the house. At ten o’clock I go alone to the Broadcast Building to narrate an essay, and I’m paid one pound. Vus spends money as if we are rich. He expects me to be faithful and steady and he comes home smelling of cheap perfume and a whore’s twat.” They may not have heard the word before but everyone knew what it meant.

  I reveled in the rustle of discomfort. They asked me and I told them.

  Joe Williamson clapped his hands. “All right, Sister Maya has spoken. I call upon Vus’s defense.” In a snap, queries were directed at me.

  “Have you kept yourself clean?”

  “Do you refuse your husband his marital rights?”

  “You are an American, after all; how well can you cook African food?”

  “Do you curse and act unbecoming?”

  “Do you try to dominate the man?”

  “Do you press him to have sex when he is tired?”

  “Do you obey him? listen to him carefully?”

  I answered every question with openness and sass. The sooner they rejected me, the sooner this odd ritual would be over. I would be free or get whatever was coming to me.

  When I finished responding, Joe turned to my squad. Their interrogation of Vus was weak and without heart.

  “Do you love her?”

  “Have you provided for her?”

  “Do you satisfy her?”

  “She had a child when she came to you. Have you tried to give her more children?”

  “Do you want her?”

  Vus answered honestly and quietly.

  There was a hiatus when he finished while Joe called for drinks for the crowd. We remained seated, holding fresh icy glasses.

  Joe began to prance in the clear plot of floor. Dainty, sure and masculine.

  “It seems to me, brothers and sisters, that Maya is in the right. Her objection is stronger than our brother’s reply. I suggest that in this palaver our brother is the loser.”

  He turned to Vus’s supporters.

  “Do you agree?” When the heads nodded, for the first time that night friendliness and smiles returned to the faces of my confidantes.

  Joe went to stand in front of Vus, an arm’s reach away.

  “Bro Vus, it is decided that you are in the wrong, and Sister Maya is in the right. Do you agree?”

  Vus lowered his large head in assent.

  Joe bowed, taking the agreement, and continued.

  “You must provide drink for everyone who has met here tonight. You must bring a lamb or goat for us all to chop.” A rampage of laughter followed the pronouncement but was quelled with Joe’s next words: “And our sister has the right to leave you.”

  Silence settled on the shoulders of the listeners. Falling from the air like particled smog.

  Joe faced me. “Sister, you have done well. You have sat through African palaver and you have won. Now you may leave.”

  I was wrung dry by the ritual and only a little pleased by Joe’s statement that now I had the right to leave. I never thought I needed anyone’s approval but my own.

  Joe stepped up to me, close enough for me to see clearly the whites of his eyes.

  “Now, sister, now that the triumph is in your hands, no
w that people from six countries agree that you can leave your husband, and no guilt will fall on your head. Now. Now in your position of strength, we throw ourselves on your mercy.” The group responded with jubilant laughter.

  “We ask you, from your righteous pinnacle, would you please give the man one more chance?”

  I looked at Banti, who instructed me with a nod. Kebi gave me a small smile. Margaret Young, my Nigerian friend, lifted her perfect eyebrows. I should say yes. I hadn’t decided where to go, I had no date to leave, and if Joe was right, which I suspected, if I acted graciously, my name in Africa would be golden.

  “Stay six months. Sister, give the man six months.”

  I looked at Vus. He was anxious. I knew immediately that his concern had less to do with me than it had to do with his repute. He had never knowingly or wittingly mistreated me. I could stay with him six months.

  I said, “I will stay.”

  Chairs scraped the floor. Vus took me in his arms, and whispered. “You are a generous woman. My wife.”

  Joe Williamson shouted, “This time, we party. We wait for the fatted calf, but now we drink and celebrate the reunion of our brother and sister. We toast Mother Africa, who needs all her children.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Guy graduated from high school and then took a knapsack and joined Egyptian friends for a trek in the Sahara. My friendship with Kebi and Banti became stronger. More women were hired in my office and some found my presence incongruous and unacceptable. I spoke halting Arabic, smoked cigarettes openly, was not a Muslim, and was an American on top of that. On the day when President Kennedy and Khrushchev had their confrontation over the independence of Cuba, in the hours when the next world war hung like an unpaid debt over our heads, no one spoke to me. The male employees ignored me; as if by a time warp we were all returned to my first day at the Arab Observer. The women were openly hostile. Papers which they needed to bring to my desk were handed over by the coffee server or the copy boy. Actions by people thousands of miles away, men who didn’t know I was alive and whose sympathy I would never expect, influenced my peace, and rendered me odious. Kennedy was an American, and so was I. I didn’t have the language to explain that being a black American was qualitatively different from being An American. I worried like everyone else, but made myself scarce in the office.

  Vus was trying and so was I, but neither of us was able to infuse vitality into our wilting marriage. He steadily gained weight as I became thinner. Indifference became the mattress we lay on, so our sexual sharings disintegrated into unsatisfying periods of hasty and uncomfortable rubbings.

  I had promised to stay for six months and we both felt the time was dragging.

  Banti and Kebi found excuses to send their drivers to my house bearing food and crates of liquor. Accompanying notes stated that they had overordered or simply had no more storage room.

  I became more dependent on our friendship. I spent nearly every evening in the company of one or the other or both of the sisterly women. When we talked, they told amusing tales of home, of their families, of the husbands they loved, of the children, of a merciful God and sometimes of their private fantasies. Vus was never mentioned.

  After five months I began to think about my future and Guy’s placement in an African school. Ghana’s university was known to be the best institution of higher learning on the continent. I thought I’d be very lucky to enroll him there. I had no contacts in Ghana, but I did have Joe Williamson as a brother. I went to him.

  “Joe, I’m leaving.”

  He showed no surprise.

  “I want to go to West Africa. I want to place Guy in the University of Ghana and I need a job.”

  He nodded.

  “And I need your help.”

  He nodded again and said he had been expecting my decision and had prepared for it. There was an offer of a job from the Liberian Department of Information, based on a white paper on Liberia which I had written for the United Arab Republic. He got up from his desk and hugged me.

  “Sister, you will be an asset to Liberia.”

  Vus accepted my departure with undisguised relief. We had worn our marriage threadbare, and it was time to discard it. He would get tickets on United Arab Airlines. He had friends in Ghana we could stay with for a few days. If I got into trouble I could always count on him. I could have any of the furniture, which was now paid for, sent on to Liberia.

  I thanked him for the plane arrangements and refused the furniture. I knew that other women would be in the house before the sheets lost my body’s heat. He grinned and hugged me.

  I had taken Guy into my confidence as far as was possible with a proud, distant seventeen-year-old boy. He knew that for the past year I had been unhappy. After the palaver, I had told him we would remain in Cairo for at least six more months, and he would have time to finish school.

  He wanted to have a party. All his friends would come. Would Vus and I leave him the house for a few hours? Would Omanadia cook chicken and lamb and rice her special way? Maybe he could borrow records from the Williamsons and wouldn’t it be all right if he served a little beer? His sudden jollity made me perceive how much he had been affected by our pleasureless home. I realized that it had been a long time since I had seen that wide innocent smile, or his fine dark eyes shine.

  Banti and Joe gave us a farewell party. Kebi and Jarra prepared an authentic Ethiopian dinner for a merry crowd. David DuBois took us all out to an opulent restaurant near the pyramids. I had a goodbye lunch with Hanifa Fathy and her friends, and the day finally arrived to leave Cairo.

  —

  Guy held my hand on the plane. He leaned near and whispered, “It’ll be O.K., Mom. Don’t cry. I love you, Mom. Lots of people love you.”

  I made no attempt to explain that I was not crying because of a lack of love, or certainly not the loss of Vus’s affection. I was mourning all my ancestors. I had never felt that Egypt was really Africa, but now that our route had taken us across the Sahara, I could look down from my window seat and see trees, and bushes, rivers and dense forest. It all began here. The jumble of poverty-stricken children sleeping in rat-infested tenements or abandoned cars. The terrifying moan of my grandmother, “Bread of Heaven, Bread of Heaven, feed me till I want no more.” The drugged days and alcoholic nights of men for whom hope had not been born. The loneliness of women who would never know appreciation or a mite’s share of honor. Here, there, along the banks of that river, someone was taken, tied with ropes, shackled with chains, forced to march for weeks carrying the double burden of neck irons and abysmal fear. In that large clump of trees, looking like wood moss from the plane’s great height, boys and girls had been hunted like beasts, caught and tethered together. Sacrificial lambs on the altar of greed. America’s period of orgiastic lynchings had begun on yonder broad savannah.

  Every ill I knew at home, each hateful look on a white face, each odious rejection based on skin color, the mockery, the disenfranchisement, the lamentations and loud wailing for a lost world, irreclaimable security, all that long-onerous journey to misery, which had not ended yet, had begun just below our plane. I wept. Guy rose from time to time to bring fresh Kleenex, and I didn’t dare speak to him of my thoughts. I would not make a sound. If I opened my mouth, I might not be able to close it again. Screams would pierce the air and I would race the aisles like a mad thing.

  I cramped my lips together until the seam between them meshed, and allowed, as my only expression, the warm tears gliding like honey down my face.

  —

  The airport at Accra sounded like an adult playground and looked like a festival. Single travelers, wearing Western suits or dresses which would be deemed fashionable in New York, were surrounded by hordes of well-wishers, swathed in floral prints or the rich plaid silk of Kente cloth. Languages turned the air into clouds of lusty sound. The sight of so many black people stirred my deepest emotions. I had been away from the colors too long. Guy and I grinned at each other and turned to see a sight which wip
ed our faces clean. Three black men walked past us wearing airline uniforms, visored caps, white pants and jackets whose shoulders bristled with epaulettes. Black pilots? Black captains? It was 1962. In our country, the cradle of democracy, whose anthem boasted “the land of the free, the home of the brave,” the only black men in our airports fueled planes, cleaned cabins, loaded food or were skycaps, racing the pavement for tips. Guy nudged me and I turned to see another group of African officers walking unconcerned toward the gate which opened out on the tarmac.

  Ghana was the place for my son to go to college. My toby (the Southern black word for a lucky talisman), had “hunched me right.” Guy would be able to weigh his intelligence and test his skills without being influenced by racial discrimination.

  We passed through customs, delighted to have our bags examined by black people. Our taxi driver was black. The dark night seemed friendly to me, and when the cab’s lights illuminated a pedestrian, I saw a black face. By the time we reached the address Vus had given me, a knot in my stomach, which had bunched all my remembered life, had unfurled. I realized I hadn’t seen a white face for over an hour. The feeling was light and extremely strange.

  We stopped in front of a rambling white bungalow, which looked eerily fluorescent in the black night. A short reserved man answered Guy’s knock. He welcomed us in and told us that he was Walter Nthia, and after embracing us both, showed us to rooms in the rear of the house. I joined him quickly in the living room to assure him that we didn’t plan to stay long. I needed no more than a week to get my son’s schooling arranged and get him a place to stay on campus, and I had to hurry on to Liberia, where I had a job waiting in the Department of Information.

  Walter said Bro Vus was the pride of the PAC, and that my reputation had preceded me. We could stay as long as necessary. He was an economist, working for the Ghanaian government, was divorced and lived alone. He didn’t entertain much, but he had asked a few South Africans and black Americans resident in Ghana to come that evening to greet us.