The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou

by Maya Angelou

  Thanks to Bea Grimes in particular and a host of friends in general, I was able to turn the clinical-looking apartment into a lush experience. Pale lilac silk drapes at the window, a purple wool sofa, one new pale green Karastan rug from Stern’s, a reputable record player and I was ready to show off my home.

  The Harlem Writers Guild members, along with Sam Floyd, James Baldwin, Connie Sutton and her husband, Sam, and the artist Joan Sandler, came to party. In fact, Jimmy’s whole family came to party.

  When I looked around, there were over fifty people in my suddenly small apartment, and they were having a New York good time. James Baldwin and Julian Mayfield and Paule Marshall were discussing the political responsibilities of writers. John Killens, the founder of the Harlem Writers Workshop, waded in with Alexander Pushkin. Ivan Dixon, the screen actor, on a visit from California, and M.J. Hewitt were sitting on the floor near the piano in deep conversation while Patty Bone, who had been Billie Holiday’s accompanist, played a Thelonious Monk tune.

  Sam Floyd and Helen Baldwin, Jimmy’s sister-in-law, helped me in the kitchen. I used the make-do tip that my mother had taught me: “If more people come than expected, just put a little more water in the soup.” She believed it was all right to turn away people for cocktails but bad luck to turn anyone away from a dinner party.

  The party finally wound down and released its hold on the revelers. The food had been enjoyed and the drink had been served generously, yet there were leftovers sufficient for the next day’s dinner and no one faced the grayness of dawn totally besotted.

  CHAPTER 22

  Jimmy Baldwin was a whirlwind who stirred everything and everybody. He lived at a dizzying pace and I loved spinning with him. Once, after we had spent an afternoon talking and drinking with a group of white writers in a downtown bar, he said he liked that I could hold my liquor and my positions. He was pleased that I could defend Edgar Allan Poe and ask serious questions about Willa Cather.

  The car let us out on Seventy-first Street and Columbus Avenue, but I lived on Ninety-seventh and Central Park West. I said, “I thought you were taking me home.” He said, “I am, to my home.”

  He started calling as he unlocked the front door. “Momma, Paula, Gloria, Momma?”

  “James, stop that hollering. Here I am.” The little lady with an extremely soft voice appeared, smiling. She looked amazingly like Jimmy. He embraced her.

  “Momma. I’m bringing you something you really don’t need, another daughter. This is Maya.”

  Berdis Baldwin had nine children, yet she smiled at me as if she had been eagerly awaiting the tenth.

  “You’re a precious thing, yes you are. Are you hungry? Let Mother fix you something.”

  Jimmy said, “I’ll make us a drink. We won’t be staying long.”

  Mother said, “You never stay long anywhere.”

  Their love for each other was like a throb in the air. Jimmy was her first child, and he and his brothers and sisters kept their mother in an adoring family embrace.

  When we reached the door, I said, “Thank you, Mrs. Baldwin.”

  She asked, “Didn’t you hear your brother? He gave you to me. I am your mother Baldwin.”

  “Yes, Mother Baldwin, thank you.” I had to bend nearly half my height to kiss her cheek.

  CHAPTER 23

  I was job hunting persistently. Gloria, Jimmy Baldwin’s sister, had told me that Andrea Bullard, an editor at Redbook, had learned that a job was going to become available at the Saturday Review and the administrators would be looking for a black woman.

  I applied for a position in editing. Norman Cousins talked to me, and on a Friday afternoon, he asked that I write précis on five major articles taken from international journals and bring them to him on Monday by noon.

  I said I would, but I was so angry that Dolly’s office could hardly hold me.

  “Obviously he doesn’t want me for the job. If in fact there’s a job at all.”

  Dolly said, “But you have had an interview with Cousins. There must have been something.”

  I told her, “Maybe there was something about me he didn’t like. Maybe I was too tall or too colored or too young or old—”

  Dolly interrupted, “Suppose it’s none of those things?”

  “Dolly, when an employer sets an impossible task for a want-to-be employee, he does it so that he is freed from hiring that particular employee and yet can say he did try. ‘I did … but I couldn’t find anyone capable of doing the work.’ ”

  Dolly said, “You can do it, I know, and I’m going to help. Decide on the five journals and I’ll ask my secretary to help over the weekend. We can’t let this chance get away.” She went on, “He’s going to have to tell you to your face you are not what he wants.” She began to move rapidly around her office, gathering papers.

  I could hardly refute her statement. I knew I should never ask anyone to fight my battles more passionately than I. So I agreed to write the précis.

  “International journals?” She called her secretary. “Mrs. Ford, I need five journals. Miss Angelou is going to do some research and writing tonight and tomorrow. I will also need your help on Sunday.”

  The secretary stood in the room, somber and contained.

  “Intellectual journals from five countries. Thank you.” Mrs. Ford left and returned with her arms filled. I was given The Paris Review, The Bodleian, The Kenyan, an Australian magazine and a German magazine.

  The weekend was a flurry of encyclopedias and yellow pads. I sat on the floor with Roget’s Thesaurus, the King James Bible and several dictionaries.

  On Sunday, Mrs. Ford came to Dolly’s apartment and typed my handwritten summaries. Dolly read them and declared, “This is as good as or better than anything they print in the darn magazine.”

  For Dolly, that was strong talk.

  There are some people who are fastidious about the language they use, possibly because of their upbringing. Dolly and I could be alone in an empty apartment, yet if Dolly said “hell,” she always spelled it.

  Now she was still irate. She said, “If the editor had enough damned nerve to ask you for that much work in two days, you have enough damned nerve to write the pieces and deliver them in person before noon on Monday.”

  On Monday morning I stepped crisply into the office of the Saturday Review.

  “I have an appointment with Mr. Cousins.”

  The receptionist said, hardly looking up, “He’s not here.”

  “But I’m supposed to give him some digests. May I see his secretary?”

  “She’s not here, either. You can just leave them there.”

  She never once really looked at me, but I had the sensation that she had looked and seen right through me. At first glance, I appeared a nice-looking woman in her late thirties, well dressed, carefully coiffed, with more than enough confidence.

  But the receptionist knew that I didn’t belong there and she did. To her I was just another colored girl out of my place. Dangerously, her knowledge almost became my knowledge. I laid the pages on the desk and somehow got to the elevator as quickly as possible.

  CHAPTER 24

  Jimmy Baldwin had visited me the night before and our conversation had turned into a loud row. I was not surprised to hear his voice on the telephone.

  “Hey baby, are you busy?”

  “Not too busy, why?”

  “I’m coming to pick you up. I’ll be in a taxi. I want to talk to you.”

  We didn’t speak in the cab. The argument had been over the Black Panthers in general, of whom I approved, and Eldridge Cleaver in particular, who I thought was an opportunist and a batterer.

  Jimmy had said, “You can’t separate Cleaver from the Panthers. He is their general.”

  I had argued that Huey Newton was the general and Eldridge was a loudmouth foot soldier.

  The Black Panthers had earned respect in the African-American community. They had started a school where the students were given free breakfasts and professional tu
toring. They were courteous to women and addressed one another with kindness. Even the most arch-conservative privately admired their trim Panthers’ uniforms topped by rakishly worn berets. The people were happy to see them stride through the neighborhood like conquering heroes accepting greetings.

  Eldridge had a different air. It was as if he were years older than the others. When I saw him on television, he seemed more inimical and bitter than the other Panthers. They were angry, enraged and determined to do something about the entrenched racism, but he was aloof and chilly.

  Jimmy had said, “Why are you skirting the issue? You don’t like Cleaver because you don’t like what he said about me.”

  “That’s true. But that’s not all.”

  “Yeah?” He had smiled, and his fine hands flew around in the air like dark birds. He knew me very well. “You can’t stand hearing anyone insult or even talk about your friends.”

  I had not responded. Not only was it true, I thought, but it was a good way to be.

  When the cab stopped now on Forty-fourth Street, off Broadway, I asked, “We had to come to a transient hotel?”

  He paid the driver. “It’s sleazy, I know that, but I used to hang out here years ago. I come here a lot of times when I want to think.” I was pleased that he would want me around while he thought.

  It was early afternoon outside, but the dim bar and the reek of spilled beer and urine made me think of midnight in a low-down and dusty dive during prohibition.

  Jimmy’s eyes had no more time than mine to grow accustomed to the gloom, but he led me directly to the bar. Obviously he was familiar with the place.

  He pulled out a stool. “Baby, you order drinks, I’ve got to make a phone call.”

  I ordered two Scotches and thought about the mind’s whimsy. James Baldwin, whose writing challenged the most powerful country in the world, who had sat down with the president and who spoke French as if he had grown up on the streets on Montmartre, came to this dank dive to think.

  I was absorbed in thought myself when a person moved too close to me.

  “Hello. My name is Buck. Let me buy you a drink.”

  I looked up to see a huge man standing about an inch away from me.

  I pulled back and said, “Thank you, but I’m with someone.”

  He grunted. “Well, he’s not your husband.”

  “Oh really, how did you come to that conclusion?” I flinched a second after I asked the question. I really didn’t want him to answer, in case his response would be too telling.

  He stuck out his arm and shook his hand on a limp wrist. “He’s one of those, you know.”

  “What I do know is that I am with him. So you’d better go to your seat before he comes back.”

  Jimmy did walk and gesture with feminine grace, but I couldn’t allow the intruder to get away with his insinuations.

  Buck was still talking when Jimmy returned. My eyes had grown used to the light given off by neon signs behind the bar. Jimmy saw the man, sized up the situation and neatly stepped between the offender and me.

  He looked up into the intruder’s face. “You’ve been looking after her for me, haven’t you?”

  Before Buck could answer, Jimmy said, “Thank you, you son of a bitch. Now you are dismissed.”

  Jimmy’s ferocity shocked me, and my jaw dropped. It dropped farther when the man turned, unspeaking, and walked away.

  Jimmy sipped his drink. “Well, baby, I’m going to California. I’ve decided that I should help Eldridge Cleaver.”

  Hearing his plans kept me speechless.

  “I know you say you hate him, but he is a thinking black man, and he is in trouble because he is thinking and is talking about what he thinks. He needs our help.”

  I said, “Well, I thought about it, and what he wrote about your homosexuality in his stupid book was so vulgar that I’d rather hang him than help him.”

  “Soul on Ice is a very important book, and you have to remember, the son always kills the father.”

  The statement was intriguing. I mulled it over as Jimmy gathered his thoughts.

  “I met Richard Wright in Paris and got to know him sufficiently,” he said. “Everything about Wright that I disliked I wrote about in my essay ‘Alas, Poor Richard.’ Many Wright devotees were as angry with me then as you are now with Eldridge.”

  “I’m not a devotee.” I hastened to put myself in a clearer light. “I love you, true, but I’m not a damned devotee. I am a careful reader, and I know the difference between your critical evaluation of Wright’s post-Black Boy work and the hatchet job Cleaver did on you. Not on your work but on you, on your character.”

  “Maybe he couldn’t find enough about my work to attack. Sometimes people assail the homosexual because they think that by flailing the gay boy, they can reduce that same tendency they suspect in themselves. It’s difficult being different.”

  “Well, do you suppose if I know that, it will make it easier for me to see you go to California to help Cleaver?”

  “Baby, understand when I say I am going to help Eldridge, and I hope I do, that I am really going for myself. Because it is the right thing for me to do. Understand?”

  My own obstinacy would not allow me to concede quickly and admit that I did understand, and that I even hoped that if I found myself in the same or a similar circumstance, I would behave as wisely.

  “Understand?”

  More at that moment than ever before, he reminded me of Bailey. They were two small black men who were my big brothers.

  I said, “I’m just afraid for you out there with those roughnecks.”

  “I am a roughneck, too. Grow up. Being black and my size on the streets of Harlem will make a choirboy a roughneck. But do you understand why I’m going?”

  I said, “Yes.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Jerry Purcell’s East Side apartment was the epitome of elegance. I was invited to dinner, and I took Rosa with me. She marveled at the luxury and whispered, “And he’s a bachelor?”

  I told her, “Yes.” Years earlier he had fallen for and married a movie starlet, but the marriage didn’t last.

  Jerry’s partner, Paul Robinson, who was always at his side, was great company and could have been a professional comedian. Because he reproduced so accurately any accents relevant to his hilarious stories, he was irresistible.

  I was pleased that Jerry was there to meet my friend and even more pleased that they seemed to like each other.

  Jerry had sent out for food, and his housekeeper served us in the dining room.

  Rosa came back from a trip to the bathroom. She whispered to me, “Girl, the faucets are gold.”

  I said, “Probably gold plate.”

  She lifted her shoulders and asked, “So?”

  I saw her point. Anybody wealthy enough to have gold-plated bathroom fixtures was wealthy.

  Jerry had asked me to bring some poems.

  After I read them and received compliments, we played backgammon with much merriment. Jerry nodded at me. “Let me speak to you.”

  I followed him into a small sitting room.

  “You’re a good poet, and you might become great. You could become bigger than you imagine. Don’t sell out, if I ever hear of you selling out …”

  “How could I sell out? To whom would I sell out and what would I sell?”

  “I mean, don’t be stupid and use drugs.”

  I was flabbergasted. The night, which had been one of laughter and teasing, had turned into a drug-counseling session.

  “There is no chance that I will ever use anything. I’ve learned a painful lesson from my brother.”

  “Okay. I had to say that. I’ve made a decision. I’m going to give you a monthly allowance. Continue working on your play and writing poetry.”

  He patted me on the back, and we returned to the living room. Amazement showed on my face.

  Rosa asked, “Are you all right?”

  I nodded. “It’s probably time for us to go home.”

>   Jerry turned to Paul. “Paul, will you drop Maya off when you go? Rosa’s going to stay here a while. That’s all right, Maya? If Paul takes you home?”

  I looked at Rosa, who looked at Jerry, then back at me. She said, “I’ll go with Maya,” but the regret in her voice was palpable.

  I couldn’t get out of the apartment soon enough.

  Paul Robinson said to Rosa, “He really fell for you. And you seemed to find him interesting.”

  Rosa said, “He’s a nice man. I like him.”

  I asked, “But when did you know you liked him? I hardly heard you say two words to each other.”

  Rosa said, “I could be wrong, but I think I like him. No, I know I do.”

  There is a language learned in the womb that never needs interpreters. It is a frictional electricity that runs between people. It carries the pertinent information without words.

  Its meanings are “I find you are incredibly attractive. I can hardly keep my hands off your body.

  “And I am crazy to touch you, to kiss your mouth, your eyes.”

  The couple may have been introduced in a cathedral or a temple, but these are among the luscious thoughts each body sends to the other.

  Some folks are born with more of that idiom than others. My body has always been slow-witted when it comes to that language. It neither speaks it fluently nor comprehends it clearly.

  CHAPTER 26

  The African was back. He telephoned from Ghana.

  “I am not coming for you this time. You had your chances. Many chances. Now I am convinced that you do not love Africa. You do not love Ghana. I am not coming for you. I am coming to teach at one of your important universities. But I will bring you something. You are so American now. Would you like a car?”

  His voice was so loud, he hardly needed a telephone.

  I asked, “Why would you bring a car from Ghana? I’m living in New York. That is just down the street from Detroit. That’s where they make cars.”