by Maya Angelou
I arrived at the residency. Bahnti Williamson was waiting. “Ooh, Auntie Maya, welcome home.”
She smiled, showed a pretty set of small, white teeth, and stretched her arms to me. “Ooh, Auntie Maya, how we have been anxious to see you. Ooh, Auntie.” She turned her baby-filled belly to the side so that we could embrace, and I felt at home.
During the nearly two years when I had lived in Cairo with a teenage son I scarcely understood, and a husband I understood too well, Bahnti and her husband Joe, Jarra and Kebidetch Mesfin, an Ethiopian couple, and David Du Bois, had given me their laughter, love, company and very little advice.
Bahnti and I entered the residency, which had the air of a Liberian village during feast day. Henry, the Williamsons’ oldest son, Bahnti’s younger sister, cousins, Liberian visitors and wives of African diplomats stationed in Cairo crowded around embracing me and shaking my hand. After we sat together eating “country chop” (a spicy African stew) and toasted my arrival, Bahnti took me to a guest room where she explained that Joe was almost too busy to come home.
The president had brought a large retinue of cabinet members to attend the conference of nonaligned countries, and Joe, as Liberian Ambassador, had to be available to the delegation every minute. She said that she had hardly been able to await my arrival. There was no one to help in the preparations for the president’s visit to the residency, which would take place in two days. I allowed myself to forget the twenty or more relatives, friends and servants who hovered over her like drone bees around the queen, preening her and making her comfortable.
“Sister, Ooh Auntie Maya, if you hadn’t come, I would never receive the ‘Old Man.’ ” African and southern Black American women can exude a charm which acts as a narcotic on their targets. The living room had seemed perfect when I entered, but if Bahnti asked me, I was willing to repaint, hang new wallpaper or simply move the furniture.
We sat on her balcony at sunset with frosty drinks. Bahnti told plain stories with such humorous embellishment that I would choke on laughter. Each time a spasm would shake my body, Bahnti would throw her hands in the air and say, “Oh Sister Maya, oh Auntie, you are the funny one. Old Man say in my country laughter is better than rice. Now Sister, you must listen. Joe has told President Tubman about you, and he has promised that you will sing for him day after tomorrow night.”
I choked again, “What? Sing? Sing what?”
“Oh, but Auntie, you know Old Man studied in the states and he loves the Negro Spirituals. Auntie, you used to sing them to us and the children. So Old Man is expecting to sing ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ with you.”
I drank and considered the request. There was no chance that I would refuse it, but at least I wanted Bahnti to know that what she was asking of me was not a small thing.
Many years had passed since I had sung in night clubs for a living, and although I had had moderate success I never had illusions about my musical or vocal talents. I succeeded because I wore exotic costumes and told interesting stories against a musical background.
I said, “Sister Alzetta.” Calling her by her given name was one way to let her know how seriously I regarded her request. “I hope you have not led the president to think I am a Miriam Makeba. She is a singer, I just sometimes carry the tune.”
My statement must have also tickled the unborn baby, because Bahnti held her stomach as she laughed. “Oh Auntie, Old Man knows how great Miss Makeba is, but he can’t fold up his tongue to sing those click songs. He’s going to sing ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ with you just as he learned it in the South of America. Not in South Africa. Hoo, hoo.”
I explained that I was going to meet Black American friends from Ghana who were attending the conference.
Her laughter still echoed in my mind as I was driven by her chauffeur to the Cairo Hilton. Julian, Alice and I sat in the air-conditioned restaurant ordering hot dogs, hamburgers and french fries. Ana Livia had joined colleagues from her country who formed the Puerto Rican Delegation of Petitioners. Julian, as a member of the Ghana Press Delegation, had sat in on a few of the nonaligned conference meetings, and he was full of news.
As soon as I could break into his speech, I told them of my assignment to sing with President Tubman and how nervous I was. Their laughter rivaled Bahnti’s.
Julian recovered first. “So, Maya Angelou, you’ve made it all the way from Arkansas to Africa so that you can perform for a president? You couldn’t get to the White House so you aimed for the Black House. Okay, I’m proud of you.”
Alice said Liberia had been settled by freed American slaves, and their descendants still formed the elite so maybe I was related to the president. There was no reason to be nervous. I should just consider that maybe I was singing at a family reunion.
I went with them to meet David, who was in his usual state of over-commitment. He worked as a journalist at the Egyptian News Service as well as a stringer for international news services.
After a hearty and genial greeting, we began a garrulous chatter of conversation which sense would hardly penetrate. David spoke glowingly of Malcolm X’s recent visit to Cairo, and wanted to know what we could do to protect him when he returned. Alice announced that she had taken the E.C.A. job in Addis Ababa, and asked who did we know in Ethiopia. I wanted suggestions for my presidential command performance. Julian wanted to hear about the conference, the conferees, and every detail of their plans.
None of us really expected the other to respond to our statements. It was enough to make the pronouncements and ask the questions in a friendly atmosphere. We knew that ultimately, each of us would be obliged to carry out our own assignments and find our own solutions. The brief gathering was nurturing and when the commotion abated we parted quite satisfied.
The Liberian Residency was festooned with flags and garlands. The family and family friends waited impatiently. Servants wearing new clothes and rehearsed into numbness stood at military attention in the foyer, and the children, quieted by the importance of the occasion, formed their own small line inside the salon.
Beyond the open door, along the steps and down the walk to the entry gatehouse, Egyptian and Liberian soldiers, their weapons at the ready, awaited President Tubman. The unnatural and uncomfortable silence was broken by the arrival of cars and the shouted orders of Army officers. Joe left the family rank and descended the stairs to meet a group of beribboned and laughing men.
William V. S. Tubman was surrounded by his court of cabinet ministers, but he was clearly visible, and after the phalanx had climbed the stairs, he entered the building arm in arm with Ambassador Williamson. Although he wore a tuxedo heavily adorned with medals and ribbons, he looked like an ordinary man that one might meet in church or in the Elks Hall or in any Black American community. That impression was short-lived—for after he embraced Bahnti and the other family members, Joe presented me. “Mr. President, this is our friend, the American singer Maya Angelou.” The force of the man was befuddling. I didn’t know whether to bob or curtsy.
“Oh, Miss Angelou, I have been looking forward to this evening. To have some of A. B.’s good Liberian chop and some Negro spirituals. Welcome.” He and his energy passed me and I felt as if a light had been turned off. He was a president with a royal aura.
People born into democracies and who have learned to repeat, if not to practice, the statement that all men are created equal think themselves immune to the power of monarchies. They are pridefully certain that they would never tug their forelocks nor would their knees ever bend to a lord, laird or feudal master. But most have never had those beliefs put to test. Being physically close to extreme power causes one to experience a giddiness, an intoxication.
At that moment, I wanted to be close to President Tubman’s aura, encompassed by, warmed, and held forever in its rich embrace.
At formal dinner, I was seated far away from the important officials, but close enough to observe them entertaining their leader. Each person had a story, told in the unique Liberian accen
t, and as each story concluded, President Tubman approved the telling by adding an appropriate proverb for each tale. The cabinet ministers and diplomats beamed with pride and laughed easily with and for their “Old Man.”
When dinner was finished, Joe led the guests into the decorated salon. As President Tubman sat in a thronelike chair flanked by his suddenly serious attendants, Bahnti looked at me and raised her eyebrows. Joe introduced me, saying although I was a singer and writer, much more important I was the auntie of his children, a daughter of Africa and his chosen sister.
“Mr. President, excuse me.” I was standing in the center of the salon. “I have never sung for a president. In fact, I’ve never met a president before.”
William Tubman laughed and rolled his giant cigar between his fingers. “My child,” he chuckled and his retinue chuckled, “My child, I am just a common garden variety president. Sing!” I began a traditional blues in a comfortable tempo. The president snapped his fingers and the guests slowly followed his example. When I finished the song the applause was loud and long.
“Now, my child, sing ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.’ ”
I began the old song, softly. “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, Coming for to carry me home.” The president’s baritone joined. “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, Coming for to carry me home.”
Other voices picked a harmonic path into the song, and I heard Bahnti’s high soprano waver, “If you get there before I do, Coming for to carry me home, Tell all my friends I’m coming too, Coming for to carry me home.” They sounded neither like Whites nor like Black Americans, but they sang with such emotion that tears filled my eyes. Save for a few Egyptian government officials and me, all the singers were African. I knew from the dinner conversation that not one of them was fired with religious zeal, so for what chariot were they calling and what home could they possibly miss? I dropped my voice and gave them the song.
They were Americo-Liberians. Possibly five generations before, an ancestor—an American slave—had immigrated to Africa to marry into one of the local tribes. Now, after a century of intermarriage, they sat in beribboned tuxedos in this formal salon, drinking French champagne, models of the international diplomatic community. In their own land they owned rubber plantations and rice and coffee farms, and in their homes they spoke Bassa and Kru and Mandinke and Vai as easily as they spoke English.
Still, their faces glowed as they picked up the melody.
See that host all dressed in red,
Coming for to carry me home.
It looks like a band that Moses led,
Coming for to carry me home.
They were earnest and their voices were in tune, but they could not duplicate the haunting melody of our singing. While it is true that not all Black Americans can sing or dance, those who do create tones so unique that they are immediately identifiable. Of all Africans I had heard, only the Zulus, Xhosas, and Shonas of South Africa produced the velvet and wistful sounds which were capable of reaching the ear and heart with an undeniable message of pain.
Did it mean that only the African, and only the African living in total despair, pressed down by fate, refused, rejected and abandoned could develop and sing this kind of music?
The strains faded away and beautiful smiles accompanied the audience’s applause. In the absence of my creative ancestors who picked that melody out of cotton sacks, I humbly bowed my head.
When Guy met me at the airport with chocolates (expensive) and a lovely piece of African cloth which he himself had chosen at the market, I was quick to think that my absence had made his heart grow fonder. His face was young with trust again, and he was laughing again—hearty, open laughter. I concluded that my decision to stay as long as possible with Bahnti and Joe had been wise, for my son had come back from that adolescent region where the barriers were so dense and high, they kept ont prying eyes and even light.
He carried my bags into the house and the aroma of fried chicken met me at the door. I knew that dish was beyond Otu’s talent and since Alice and Vicki were gone … I looked questioningly at Guy.
He smiled and hugged me. “I cooked it, Mom. I know you hate airplane food.”
The tears on my face surprised me and distressed Guy.
We had not used weeping to manipulate each other. I apologized and Guy said, “Maybe this is not the time to talk to you.”
I insisted that the time to talk was when one had something to say. I sat, still in my traveling clothes, while Guy spoke as carefully as if he was reading a prepared treatise.
He declared his gratitude for all I had ever done. He announced that I was an excellent mother. He said no parent could have been more patient, more generous or more loving. I began to contract, to tighten my muscles and my mind for the blow which I knew was coming. Because it was not a wallop, it slipped up on and into me like a whisper.
“Mom,” he looked like the sweet boy I had such joy raising. “Mom, I’ve thought about this seriously and continuously since you left. You have finished mothering a child. You did a very good job. Now, I am a man. Your life is your own, and mine belongs to me. I am not rejecting you, I’m just explaining that our relationship has changed.…”
He was not pulling at the apron strings, he was carefully and methodically untying the knots and raveling the very thread.
“I have not decided just what I want to do. Whether I shall stay in Ghana and finish at the university, or go to another country to finish my education. In any case, I shall apply for scholarship so you can be free of the burden of my tuition.”
Now the entire apron was a pile of lint and I was speechless. He talked, beckoning me into his thoughts, but I was unable to follow him. I didn’t know the road.
At the end of his speech, he hugged me again and thanked me again, and saying he had plans for dinner, went out the door.
I walked around the empty house trying to make sense of the sentences which tumbled over themselves in my brain.
“He’s gone. My lovely little boy is gone and will never return. That big confident strange man has done away with my little boy, and he has the gall to say he loves me. How can he love me? He doesn’t know me, and I sure as hell don’t know him.”
Efua appeared at my door, drawn, her usual healthy skin the color of gun metal. When she entered the house I saw her trembling hands. I knew better than to ask any questions. At the proper time she would say why she had come to me.
When I returned from the kitchen with cool beer, she was more composed but she was still standing in the middle of the living room.
“Sister, have you seen it? Have you seen the paper?” I said no, and wondered if the president had been assassinated. I implored her to sit, but she shook her head.
“Today’s paper. Second page.”
A presidential assassination would have claimed front page.
“Sister Efua, please come, and sit and let me pour you beer.”
She remained erect, but shaking, oblivious to my entreaties.
“No one has claimed him. No one has come. Oh my Africa! What is happening to you? Oh my Africa.”
The dramatic cries overwhelmed my suddenly very small living room. She could have filled a Greek theatre stage.
“Oh my Africa! Where are you going?”
I poured a glass of beer for her and placed it on a table beside a chair. I took mine to another seat and waited.
“Oh. Oh. My country. My people.”
The moans began to fade and Efua finally came aware of her location. She gave me a wan smile. “Sister, excuse me, but I suppose you might not understand. A man, an Ashanti, a Ghanaian died two days ago. His body was lain in the morgue. No one has come for him.”
She had her gaze on me, but the vacant eyes were staring and I was not being recorded in her vision.
“Do you know what that means?”
I shook my head.
“Africa is breaking. That body in the morgue is a stone from Africa’s mountain. He belongs someplace. The day he was given a name he
was also given a place which no one but he himself can fill. And after his death, that place remains his, although he has gone to the country of the dead. His family and clan will honor his possession of that place and cherish him. Never in Ghana has a body lain unclaimed for two days. That is why the newspaper has reported it. It should have been on the front page. Headlines. Africans must be shocked into realizing what is happening to them. To us.”
She shook her head and gathering her cloth around her shoulders, walked through the doorway. I followed. She stood on my porch, turning her head slowly, looking from left to right to left at the houses and cars in my street. When she spoke her voice was low, nearly a moan. “Everybody in these cities should be made to go live in his native village for one year, barefoot and in rags. We have begun to think like Europeans. Sister, mind you, our gods will become angry. I would be afraid to anger Jesus Christ, but I confess, the thought of angering African gods absolutely terrifies me.”
She leaned to kiss me farewell and walked down to her car where the chauffeur stood holding the door for her.
The visit muddled me. Efua, the model of containment, had been weeping not over the death of a stranger, but because other people who were also strangers had not come for his remains. As usual, as if I had been sent to the continent on assignment, I placed the African and Black American cultures side by side for examination. In Ghana, one unclaimed corpse merited principal news coverage, and Efua’s emotional response, while in America, Black bodies still quick with life demanded no such concern. Too often among ourselves, since lives were cheap, dying was cheaper. Since the end of slavery, Black Americans running or walking, hitchhiking or hoboing from untenable place to unsupportable place, had died in fields, in prisons, hospitals, on battlegrounds, in beds and barns, and if pain accompanied their births, only the dying knew of their deaths. They had come and gone unrecorded save in symbolic lore, and unclaimed save by the soil which turned them into earth again.