by Maya Angelou
“Baby, Guy returned to San Francisco three days ago, and I’ve come for you. He’s in the hospital. He is in serious condition but not a life-threatening one. Get what you need.” Surprise, whether good or bad, can have a profound effect on the body. Some people faint, some cry aloud. Bailey caught me as my knees buckled. He helped me back in the room to a chair.
Rosa asked what happened.
Bailey said, “Guy was sitting in a parked car that was hit by an out-of-control truck. Mother wanted to telephone you and tell you to fly up to San Francisco. I said no, that I would drive down and get you.” He turned to Rosa. “Do you want to come with us, or will you wait till Maya gets back?”
Rosa said she was already packed and could fly home out of San Francisco as easily as out of Los Angeles. She would come with us.
In a few ragged minutes we were walking to Bailey’s car. He handed me his car keys. “You drive.”
“No, you know me. I might fall asleep.”
“I drove all night to get here. Take the keys. You have me and your good friend in the car and you are trying to get to your son. Just remember.”
I took the keys.
My passengers never awakened even when I stopped for gas.
Seven hours later I parked in front of Mother’s house in San Francisco, and they woke up as if by plan.
Mother was waiting.
“He is stable. I’ve been talking to the doctors.” She showed Rosa to a guest room and encouraged her to get some rest, adding that we would return soon. Mother drove her large car to the hospital.
Guy was ashen and looked like a grown man in the hospital bed. He was awake.
“Hello, my son.”
“Hello, Mom.”
He was stiff in our embrace. “I can’t move much. My neck. It’s broken again.”
Suddenly I felt guilty. I had not been in the truck that hit him. In fact, I was not even in the same city where the accident occurred, and yet I felt guilty.
When something goes wrong with offspring, inevitably the parent feels guilty. As if some stone that needed turning had been left unturned. In the case of a physical handicap, the mother feels that when her body was building the infant, it shirked its responsibility somewhere.
I stood looking at my son, wondering where I had failed. I knew I would stay near until he recovered. I also knew that staying around Vivian Baxter would be strengthening.
She had a litany of morale-building sayings. “Keep your eyes on the road, your hand on the plow, your finger in the dike, your shoulder to the wheel, and push like hell.” My mother would issue the statements as if from the godhead, and it was up to the hearer to fathom the meaning.
After a few days, Rosa left San Francisco for New York.
I visited Guy every day and watched as he slowly revived. I was right in my earlier observation. He was a grown-up stranger who reminded me of my son.
He said the University of Ghana had given him all it had to give. No, he wasn’t sorry to leave Ghana, and although he had made some enemies, he had also made some friends he would keep for his lifetime.
As soon as he was well, he’d find work. Of course he would. He had had his first job at thirteen as a stacking boy in a Brooklyn bakery.
He would stay with his grandmother when he was released from the hospital. She would give him a roomful of her aphorisms. “Take care of your own business. Everybody else’s business will not be your business.” “Look to the hills from whence cometh your help.” “You can tell a person by the company he keeps.” “Never let your right hand know what your left hand is doing.” Always adding that “each tub must sit on its own bottom.”
1 left San Francisco when I saw Guy sitting up like a golden prince and being served like a king in my mother’s house.
CHAPTER 16
Leaving Los Angeles was harder than I expected.
Human beings are like some plants. If we pause a few seconds in our journey, we begin setting down roots, tendrils that entangle other people as we ourselves are entangled.
Don Martin and Jimmy Truitt of the Lester Horton Dance School had been especially kind to me. When I took classes with them, they were careful not to let me appear ungainly, although I was fifteen years older than the other students. They deserved the courtesy of a farewell.
I was indebted to the Tee Oh Bee people as well as to Seymour Lazar, a Hollywood lawyer who had been generous with his advice and who gave me a nearly new car when mine refused to run another mile.
M.J. Hewitt had returned copper-colored from her South American trip and was full of stories I longed to hear. My friend Ketty Lester, a nightclub entertainer who sang as if she had a wind chime in her mouth, had to receive a good-bye.
I asked the help of Frances, Nichelle and Beah, and together we gave me a going-away party that spilled out of my house into Beah’s, then into the big backyard where ripe figs from a huge tree made walking messy.
I looked at Los Angeles anew and saw the fun I was having. I thought that leaving the town just as I was beginning to appreciate it might not be the best idea I had ever had. Then I remembered another of Vivian Baxter’s truisms: “Take as much time as you need to make up your mind, but once it is made up, step out on your decision like it’s something you want.”
After I had survived the ugly rebellious years of “What can she possibly know that I don’t?” I had followed my mother’s advice to the letter and had not found her in error even once. I telephoned Guy to ask, “Are you going to be all right?” His tone was sincerely tender. “Mom, stop worrying. I’m your son and I’m a man.”
When I pulled together the money I had been saving, it proved enough to get me to New York and keep me for at least two months. I’d have a job by that time.
CHAPTER 17
Rosa’s Upper West Side apartment was luxurious. The rooms were large and the ceilings so high that the place reminded me of the Victorian houses of San Francisco. The furniture was comfortable and the kitchen extraordinary, with the huge pots and outsize pans of a serious cook who was also a dedicated party giver.
People loved Rosa’s parties for the food and her ability to make each person feel that with her or his arrival, the party could begin.
We quickly agreed that I would share expenses and cooking as long as I was there but that I would be looking with focused attention for my own apartment.
I had been in New York less than a week when Rosa decided to give a party. I asked if I could invite Dolly McPherson. Since she was an elderly woman, I wanted to ask her for around seven-thirty.
“Your friends won’t be coming till around nine or ten. We’ll have a drink and then she can get home before it’s too late.”
Rosa said that was all right with her.
African friends from the United Nations kept Rosa’s liquor cabinet filled with a full complement of the most desired spirits, but she always insisted on buying her own wines. I was assisting with the cooking of banquet dishes when the doorbell rang.
I said to Rosa, “That must be Miss McPherson.”
I had only to open the door to see how wrong I was. A beautiful young dark-brown-skinned woman wearing a lime-green dress stood before me.
Maybe one of Rosa’s early guests. I said, “Good evening.”
She said, “I am here to see Miss Angelou.”
I said, “I am Miss Angelou.”
She said, “You can’t be. I mean, I am here to see the older Miss Angelou, maybe your mother.”
I said, “I am the only Miss Angelou here.”
We stared at each other for a few seconds.
I asked, “Are you Miss McPherson?”
She nodded, and we started to laugh at the same time.
She said, “The old goat.”
We were still laughing when we sat down in the living room.
She asked, “What did he tell you about me?” I told her that the African had said she was an old but very intelligent woman who had been helpful to him.
“He could ri
ghtly say that. He courted me seriously and spent quite a few nights at my apartment.”
It was my turn to say, “The old goat. And what did he tell you about me?”
“That you were very old and that you owned a house where you let rooms. He said you were one of those African-Americans who felt they had found something in Ghana, and you always had a soft spot for Africans in general and Ghanaians in particular.”
Now I wanted to use a word more descriptive of the African than “goat,” but the situation seemed so funny to me, and to Dolly as well, that even over drinks and throughout the party, whenever I caught her eye, we were both rendered speechless by laughter. We were both intelligent women who had been had by the same man. In more ways than one.
CHAPTER 18
I knew there would be no peace for me until I visited the Audubon Ballroom. Until I let the grisly scene play out in front of me.
The dance hall and theater had been famous for decades. When I had gone visiting in the fifties, I often imagined Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps and Zora Neale Hurston dancing the Charleston to the big-band music of Jimmy Lunceford, Count Basie and Duke Ellington.
Time passed and took away the popularity of orchestra music, the big bands and public dancing. When I went on my nostalgic walk to the ballroom in 1967, New York City had begun the process of condemning the Audubon. Its meager reserve was realized from renting the premises to organizations, conventions, councils and committees.
On February 21, 1965, the Organization of African-American Unity had rented the ballroom for a fund-raiser. Malcolm X had been the speaker.
I approached the building slowly. The windows were dusty and the doors barred. As I tried to peer into the vast emptiness, the questions that crouched just beyond my conscious mind came full force.
Had I stayed in New York when I returned from Ghana, would I have been sitting with Betty Shabazz and her children?
Would I have heard the final words of Malcolm X?
Would I have heard the shots puncture the air?
Would I have seen the killers’ faces and had them etched in my mind eternally?
I could see no shadow inside; no chimera arose and danced.
I walked away.
CHAPTER 19
I had sung in Jerry Purcell’s swank supper club once, and although I was not looking for nightclub work, I telephoned him. He invited me for dinner. We had been good friends, and I thought he might have some idea where I could find work. We met at his Italian restaurant, the Paparazzi.
He was still a big, movie-star-handsome man who walked as if he were heavier from his waist down than from his waist up. We greeted each other as old friends. I told him I was staying with a friend and that I was still writing poetry, but I longed to write plays and my money was disappearing faster than I had expected.
At that moment Jerry began to grow angel’s wings. He said, “I’m in management now, and I am doing well.”
He rose often from the table to greet customers and to speak to his staff, but he always returned, smiling. He was more affable than I remembered.
I said good-bye after lunch, and he handed me an envelope, saying that his office number and the name of his personal secretary were enclosed. He said I should find my own apartment and that if I needed anything, I should phone his secretary. He said, “Bring your friends here. Whenever. Just take the bill, add your tip and sign it.”
He sent a waiter with me to hail a taxi. I sat back in the seat and opened the envelope. The number and the secretary’s name were there, along with a large amount of cash.
For the next two years Purcell treated me like a valued employee. Save for the odd temporary office job and the money I made writing radio spots for Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, I depended upon his largesse. He didn’t once ask anything and seemed totally satisfied with a simple thanks. I did write a ballad based on Portnoy’s Complaint for a singer Jerry managed. And I wrote twelve astrological liner notes for a series of long-playing albums he was planning to release.
When I tried to explain how his generosity afforded me the opportunity to improve my writing skills, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “I manage artists who make more in one night than you have ever made in a year. Yet I know no one more talented than you.”
His patronage was a gift as welcome as found money bearing no type of identification.
CHAPTER 20
New York was vigorous, and its inhabitants moved quickly. Everyone was always going somewhere determinedly. There seemed to be no question or doubt about their destination. New Yorkers knew they were going to arrive, and no one had better get in the way.
In order to join New York’s ebb and flow, I had to spend some time listening to the sounds, watching the streams of people coursing east and west and north and south. When I thought I had my balance, I dared to look for an apartment.
There are only so many times in life when our good fortunes and bad fortunes intersect. At such junctions, it is wise to pray, and failing that, keep the passport up-to-date and have some cash available.
The first few days, the city seemed an ice rink, and I was a novice wobbling on weak ankles. I continued going out each day to follow up on tips and hunt down newspaper listings.
I had wanted a flat in a brownstone, or at least a large apartment in one of the older buildings on Riverside Drive. Life offered me a one-bedroom apartment in a brand-new building on Central Park West. It was painted white, and its best feature was a long living room with big windows and a view of the park.
The place was clinical and so different from what I wanted that I thought bad fortune had caught me and I would be forced to live, at least for a while, in a cold and sterile environment. But life proved itself right and me wrong. Friends began giving me fine things for the apartment.
I was having dinner in a Harlem restaurant when a good-looking amber-colored man introduced himself. That is how I met the handsome Sam Floyd, who had the airs of a meticulous fop and the mind of an analytical scientist. He was one of James Baldwin’s closest friends and, after a few months, became a close friend to me. His quick but never cruel wit lifted my spirits on many lean and mean days. I invited him to my empty apartment. He said, “People think New Yorkers are cold, but that is only when they are prevented from helping people who really don’t need help. I have a small rug for you.” We laughed. After we discovered that we really liked each other, we spent time together at least once a week.
Sam was only partially right. As soon as it became known that I had an empty apartment, I began to receive good and even great furniture. A desk came from Sylvia Boone, who had just returned from Ghana. The composer Irving Burgee, who had written calypso songs for Harry Belafonte, was the most financially successful member of the Harlem Writers Guild, and when he heard that I had a new apartment, he gave me a sleek table and an upholstered chair.
CHAPTER 21
Dolly McPherson and I were becoming good friends. Obviously we never revealed to anyone how we met. Either or both of us could have taken umbrage, and perhaps we did privately. But there was no reason to be angry with each other. Dolly had no way of knowing that when the man was with me, he acted as if he were my husband. And I couldn’t know that when he wasn’t with me, I aged about forty years and became an old black American lady who let rooms.
Dolly and I liked each other’s ability to laugh at a circumstance that neither of us could undo. I met her family. Dolly’s youngest brother, Stephen, looked so much like Bailey that I could hardly speak when we met.
Stephen was my brother’s height and skin color, and was a brilliant research scientist. Like Bailey, Stephen had the wit to make me laugh at the most inane jokes and even at inappropriate times.
I wrote to Mother, “You didn’t give me a sister but I found one for myself. As soon as possible I want you to come to New York and meet her.”
Dolly and I started spending time in an antique shop on the Upper West Side.
Bea Grimes had the only black-owned
secondhand store on Broadway. I liked that she was a big country woman with a colorful vocabulary and her own business. She thought of me as being a lot like her, except I had a little more learning and owned practically nothing.
She and Dolly and I often sat talking in the musty crowded back of her shop. She found out that I hardly knew the difference between a Meissen cup and a Mason jar, but she did, and sitting in the gloom, often with a drink in a paper cup, she schooled me on what to look for in ceramics, china, and silver.
“What kind of silver you got?”
I told her that I had no silver.
“No silver? No silver?”
“My mother has silver. I’ll be forty on my next birthday. It’s too early for me.”
Bea clucked her tongue and shook her head. “You ought to have bought yourself something silver on your thirtieth birthday. Even a silver spoon. You can’t be a lady with no silver.” She asked, “What you got sitting on your buffet?”
I hesitated.
Dolly said, “Oh, Bea, she doesn’t have a buffet.”
“Child, I’d better come around and see your place. I’m going to get you set up. You need some help.”
Bea sold me an Eames chair for thirty dollars and a nineteenth-century Empire sofa for a hundred.
Bea needed to be needed and in fact liked the needing. She sat in that miasmic atmosphere surrounded by goods that had belonged to someone else who must have found pleasure in preserving them, might have even doted on them. Now they were abandoned to the often careless fingers of customers whose greatest interest was in haggling with the store owner to get a bargain price.
“These young white kids nearly give away their parents’ and grandparents’ things. You want to see something? Someday I’ll take you to an estate sale. The heirs act like they don’t care how much money they get. Main thing to them is get rid of this old stuff. Make you think seriously about dying, don’t it?”