by Maya Angelou
“Maya, your tongue is too sharp, I’ve told you time and time again. You must watch out for your tongue.”
But my tongue was all I had, all I had ever had. He had the stature, the money, his country, his sex, and now he was coming to my country to teach in an “important university” where I had never been. When it came to parrying, he had his armament, but I also had my weapon.
“I shall stay with the second secretary, who has a place near the United Nations, but I’d like to see you. Just for two hours. I’d like to invite some people I’ve not seen since my last visit.” (I doubted that Dolly would be among the group.)
“How many should I prepare for?”
“Few. I think about ten.”
That meant at least twenty.
“I’d be pleased to have them in my place.”
“Then it’s done. My host will bring me, so I suppose that makes us twelve. You can accommodate twelve?”
“Well, of course, when are you planning to come?” I expected to hear him say within the next month or so.
He said, “I’m traveling tomorrow. I’ll spend a day in the U.K. and I’ll be in New York on Friday. Can you see me then?”
“Um, yes. Yes. Of course.” There would be time.
“Around three?”
“Three is fine.”
A smile slowly moved across my face. I hugged myself with delight and telephoned Dolly.
We splurged on a bottle of good Spanish sherry and sat in her living room.
She said, “Of course he would never imagine that we’d meet.”
I told her, “He’s coming with some diplomats. We shall have to be careful.”
She said, “I know you don’t want to embarrass him.”
“I certainly do want to embarrass him, but to himself, not to others.”
Dolly grinned. I said, “I don’t want to put his whole business in the street, but I have to get him back for ‘She is an old American Negro who lets rooms …’ ”
Dolly said, “What about ‘She is very, very old but very intelligent,’ after whispering in my ear that I was very beautiful and that I had the skin of a young country girl?”
“He said that?”
“Many times.”
“Oh, we must make him sweat, if only for a minute. He’s got to sweat.”
Our plans were concluded among peals of laughter and squeals of satisfaction, and for the next few days we had broad smirks on our faces.
Jimmy and Sam Floyd came for drinks.
Jimmy asked, “What’s going on? You are the veritable cat who has lured the canary into its gullet.”
“All I can tell you is it’s not an innocent, hopeless, defenseless canary. If anything, I may be the house cat who plans to swallow down the lion.”
“Be careful, baby. Learn from nature. How many times have you seen or heard of a tabby bearding a lion in its den?”
“I have not heard that, but I have heard of a pussy that dared to look at a queen.”
My answer caught him, and he laughed loudly. “Okay. Okay. I still say be careful, baby, and let me know how it turns out.”
Sam Floyd enjoyed the repartee with Jimmy. He laughed his little-boy coughing laugh and lit another Gauloise.
“That was quick and good, but I’m with Jim. Be careful. A big cat isn’t swallowed down easily, and it can turn awfully fast. It’s known for that.”
I advised Dolly to put her clock in her purse (she never wore a watch) because we had to time her entrance to the minute. Drinks and groceries had to be bought and food had to be prepared.
In African homes and most African-American homes, the host expects, and is expected, to offer food and beverage to guests. The provisions may be as meager as a piece of fruit and a glass of water, but they must be offered.
The sight of him at my door made me lean against the jamb. He was as beautiful as ever and as black as ever. His skin shone as if it had just been polished, and his teeth were as white as long-grain rice.
Seeing me had some effect on him, too, for he rocked back and forth a few times before he entered the apartment.
We embraced but held ourselves in check. There were too many hard words like shields across our chests, and his escort entered close behind him and stood silent as we greeted each other.
I brought out schnapps, and although I expected it, I flinched when the African poured a few drops for the elders onto my Karastan rug.
We spoke of old friends and new woes. He had not gone to Guinea, where President Nkrumah lived in exile. He said lies and gossip and rumors filled the papers and radio reports. There had been an intimation that he supported the rebels who overthrew President Nkrumah.
“Maya, you yourself know that to be a lie. I was in Mexico with Kwesi Brew when the coup took place. And even so, I was always a Nkrumaist. They called me a verandah boy, meaning one who stood on the verandah talking about independence and then worked to kick the colonials out of our country. We were among the group who brought him to power.”
I couldn’t imagine anyone ever calling him a boy, even when he was twelve years old.
The doorbell rang, and in minutes my living room was furnished with people in rich robes and colorful caftans. Different languages sang in the air. I poured drinks, and although I had a pot of chili and rice, the company was satisfied with the fruit and cheese spread on the buffet next to the silver.
At exactly five minutes to four, while the company was engrossed in the African’s conversation, I quietly went to the door and unlocked it. I picked up a glass of wine and went back to my seat.
At one minute to four, I interrupted the African. “Excuse me, but I and the other women here have a burning question I have been meaning to ask. I know you can answer.”
He obligingly turned to me.
“Will you speak of fidelity? Is the African man more faithful than the European man? And what makes him so?”
He cleared his throat and spoke. “Yes, that is a lady’s question, but having said that, it still deserves being answered.” I might have kicked him had I not tasted the promised revenge on my tongue.
“The African man is more faithful than the European, not because he loves his woman more than the European loves his woman but because he loves himself more than the European man loves himself.”
Dolly walked in the door. Only a few heads turned.
“You see, the African man is supposed to know where he is at all times. If he is in the wrong place, he knows that, and he has to leave …”
Dolly walked up to his chair and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Hello there.”
He turned and looked up. It took him a second to register her face and another to remember where he was. He looked at me. The first question was, Did I see her, too? The second was, Did I know who she was? Really? The third was, How did she get here?
Dolly said coyly, “Won’t you stand for me?”
He bounded out of his chair like a man half his age.
“Miss McPherson? Of course it’s Miss McPherson.”
Dolly said, “You can still call me Dolly.”
“Of course, Dolly.” Although her appearance benumbed him, he was able to operate in the familiar. He made small, small talk until he could recover.
“How have you been? Of course you’ve heard about what is going on in my country.”
The joke had gone on long enough. From Dolly’s face, I learned that she, too, had lost her taste for it.
I said, “Dolly, come to the kitchen, please.” To the African, I said, “If you will rejoin the guests, we’ll be right back.”
In the kitchen, Dolly laughed and said, “He didn’t know what to do.”
I said, “Or who to do it to.” We both laughed.
She asked, “Do you think anyone had any idea?”
“Certainly not. You were a pretty woman greeting a handsome man you had known somewhere else.” I added, “Known in the biblical sense.”
She laughed. “Girl, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
We had given the African at least five moments of unease, which satisfied our appetites, and no one but he had been the wiser.
“He’s lucky you’re not mean,” Dolly said.
“I think I’m lucky he found you and not some easy lady in the local bucket of blood.”
She asked, “Who’s to say he didn’t find her, too?”
“Girl, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
Back in the living room, the African had finished regaling his subjects with stories of current goings-on in Africa. He was standing.
“Maya, I must be going. My host needs to go to an appointment, and I shall accompany him. Tomorrow I shall continue my journey to Connecticut. Thank you for this brief respite at your place. Miss McPherson, oh, Dolly, you must tell me how you met. I’ll come back to New York if Miss Angelou invites me.”
He pointed to my bedroom and said to me, “I shall need just a second of your time. May we go in here?”
We walked in and I closed the door.
“Maya, you are in danger.”
“What?”
“You have become someone else in New York. Someone I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did I ever try to make you a laughingstock in my country?”
“No, but most of the time you treated me as if I were an empty-headed flunky.”
“I may have been wrong, but at least I was being myself. This setup here is beneath you. You have tried to belittle me. That is beneath the Maya I know and still love.”
He turned and walked back into the living room, saying, just loud enough for me to hear, “Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar.”
I had told him once that if I ever became so angry with him that I wouldn’t speak, he could whisper that line of poetry written by Laurence Hope and I would melt into the palm of his hand.
In the living room he spoke in Fanti to the people: “Let us leave these ladies and go attend to our business.”
He turned to me and said in English, “I am going now, Maya, God bless you.”
I saw hurt and embarrassment in his face. I had meant to prick him, not to pierce him.
I responded with the Fanti departure phrase, “Ko ne bra,” which means “Go and come,” but I knew he would never come back again.
I looked at Dolly, who was looking as crestfallen as I felt.
“Well, sister, we couldn’t swallow the big cat easily. He seems to have stuck in our throats.”
She said, “Yes, I know.”
CHAPTER 27
It was 1968, and the site was Carnegie Hall. Ossie Davis was to be master of ceremonies, Pete Seeger would sing, James Baldwin would spear up the audience and Martin Luther King, Jr., would conclude the evening. The concert was planned to recognize the hundredth anniversary of the birth of W. E. B. DuBois. The historian had died in Ghana five years earlier at the age of ninety-five.
Jimmy had taken a box for family and friends, so Sam Floyd and Dolly and I joined the Baldwins and the baritone Brock Peters and his wife, Deedee.
The occasion was serious, but the people were lighthearted as they glittered in the lobby of Carnegie Hall.
When Ossie Davis appeared onstage in a sleek tuxedo that fitted him everywhere, the audience was eager for him. Ossie glowed with grace and pleased the patrons with his easy wit. Next, Pete Seeger, the well-known folksinger, arched his long, lean body around his guitar and sang:
“Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing …”
The crowd showed their appreciation by asking for an encore.
James Baldwin flew onto the stage, talking before he even reached the microphone. The audience expected his machine-gun ack-ack way of speaking. There were shouts of approval at the end of each sentence. He flailed at this country that he loved, explaining that it could do better and had better do better or he could prophesy with a sign, water now but fire next time. He spoke to and for the people as if they were his family and they loved him. His rashness tickled them and his eloquence stroked them.
Everyone in the hall waited out a long moment before Ossie reappeared. As if by an agreed-upon signal, we all held our breath.
Ossie’s voice was filled with joy and respect. He said simply, “Ladies and gentlemen, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King.”
And he was there, smiling, nodding, waving a hand, an average-size, average-looking, average black man upon whom hung the dreams of millions.
He waited a while as the throng quieted, and then his voice filled the hall, filled our ears, filled our hearts.
When he began, his passion slowly wound his audience into a nearly unbearable tautness. A dramatic orator, King lured us back to the nineteenth century and into the mind of a young man who had been born black only a few years after the abolition of the slave trade, yet whose exquisite intelligence and courage allowed him to become the first African-American to earn a doctorate from Harvard University in 1895.
Martin King could have been describing a contemporary, or a relative, he spoke so knowingly of W. E. B. DuBois. We listeners bonded resolutely, because King showed us how we were all related to one another and that we shared the same demons and the same divines. He cemented the bonding by telling us that DuBois had included all of us, no matter our color, status or age, into his dream of a fair and workable future.
The melody in Martin King’s speech changed subtly. Those familiar with the oratorical style of black preachers knew he had begun his finale.
Mother Baldwin stretched out her legs, feeling for her shoes. Brock got up, as did Jimmy Baldwin and his brother David. I looked down on the main floor and was reminded of a black Baptist church on a Sunday morning when the preacher has told the parishioners the old story in a new way. Each time I looked, more people had risen, so that by the time Reverend King said his last word, everyone was standing.
The spontaneous response was tumultuous and the mood even more joyous than it had been in the early evening. Martin Luther King, Jr., never disappointed. The people had enjoyed the grace of Ossie Davis, the music of Pete Seeger, the excitement of James Baldwin. Then Martin King had held high his rainbow of good wishes for all the people, everywhere.
The Baldwin party was walking down the corridor from the box when Reverend King appeared.
Everyone complimented him. Mother Baldwin received a hug and praise for her son.
“I know you’re proud of this fellow, aren’t you, Mother?”
Berdis Baldwin blushed as if we were at Jimmy’s christening and the preacher had declared her son to be the most wonderful child he had ever seen.
Martin King said to me, “And you, Maya. I wanted to talk to you. What are you doing now?”
I said I was writing a play.
“Can you put a bookmark on a page and give me one month of your time? This poor people’s march we are girding up for is not a black march or a white march. This is the poor people’s march. I want us to stay in Washington, D.C, until legislation is passed that will reduce the poverty in our rich country. We may have to build tent cities, and if so, I want to be able to do that.”
“But what can I …”
More people had joined our group of Baldwins and friends.
“I need someone to travel this country and talk to black preachers. I’d like each big church to donate one Sunday’s collection to the poor people’s march. I need you, Maya. Not too many black preachers can resist a good-looking woman with a good idea.”
Mother Baldwin said, “That’s the truth.”
Martin went on, “Also, when anyone accuses me of just being nonviolent, I can say, ‘Well, I don’t know. I’ve got Maya Angelou back with me.’ ”
Jimmy said, “Yes. Of course she will do it.”
I saw, or thought I saw, how Reverend King was planning to expand the reach and influence of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
He asked for only one month. I said, “Yes, but only after my birthday. I have to give a party to expl
ain to these hard-nosed New Yorkers why I’m going back to the SCLC. They think I’m much more of an activist, a real radical.”
“What I’m planning is really radical. When is your birthday?”
I said, “April fourth.”
We both nodded.
CHAPTER 28
Guy had been Western Airlines’ first black junior executive. He had declared he would keep the job for a specified time then go to Europe. His eighteen-month stay in the U.S. was up. He had bought a used Land Rover and was headed to London to pick it up. He had set aside one day to visit me in New York.
I decided to give a party and invite all the men who had advised and/or cautioned me when Guy was a rambunctious teenager. Since I was a single woman raising a black boy in the United States, I had asked a group of male friends to tell me when they thought I was treating Guy in a way that might endanger his sense of himself.
Many times after gatherings, I would receive phone calls. “Hey, Maya, Guy was playing chess and you made him leave the game. That wasn’t hip.”
“But it was just a game, and we had someplace to go.”
“When a boy is playing a man, it’s never just a game. It is about his manhood. He’s always testing it.”
Or: “You made Guy get up and give his seat to a woman. That wasn’t hip.”
“But it was courteous. I have to teach him courtesy.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t give him a chance to do the right thing on his own. You have to trust his upbringing.”
I had listened and learned, and despite the past three or four rocky years, Guy had grown into a very nice young man. I wanted to show him off to my friends.
Coming from the supermarket I met Hercules, a freedom fighter from Rhodesia whom Guy and I had known in Cairo.
My mind was so filled with Guy’s arrival that I didn’t remember that in Cairo Hercules had tried to be Guy’s buddy, and although I was married, he had attempted to seduce me.
Hercules asked how I was and how Guy was.
I told him Guy was in New York for just one day and that I was giving a party for him that night. I gave Hercules the address and told him he would be welcome.