The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou

by Maya Angelou

  When I entered the apartment, Guy had a wall-size map spread on the floor.

  “Here, Mom, here’s where I want to go.”

  It was the Sahara Desert.

  I thought he was going back to Ghana, where we had friends.

  “No, I’m going to have a photographic safari service from Mauritania back to Morocco.”

  My only child? My beloved son with whom I was now well pleased? My heart fell in my chest, but I said nothing. The red and green lines on the map seemed to be moving.

  “I’ve planned it out with friends. We’re going to meet up in Spain so we can run with the bulls in Pamplona, then we’ll take this road to the Mediterranean and ferry over to Morocco.”

  He looked at me very quickly, as if he had been thinking aloud and suddenly remembered that I was present.

  “Mom, you’re afraid.” It was not a question, he had read fear on my face.

  “Yes. I am.”

  He said, “I understand, but you needn’t be. I am free, and I have you to thank for that.”

  I didn’t dare question; nor did I dare let him see my fear again. I asked him to help me put away the groceries and to second my cooking.

  We fell into a rhythm that we had begun to develop when he was ten, except now he was adept. No onions went scooting across the floor, no fingers had to be washed, kissed and bandaged.

  I admired the man, but I did miss the boy.

  The party was merrily rolling along. Friends who hadn’t seen one another in too long a time were having a reunion. I didn’t know any young girls to invite as company for Guy, but Dolly asked over a new teacher who was on her first job. Guy came to the kitchen. “Mom.” He was displeased. “Mom, Hercules is here.”

  The look on his face shook my memory loose. Of course, all the hosts in and around Cairo had stopped inviting Hercules. Housekeepers’ young daughters were claiming they had been raped or impregnated by him, and since he had taken up drink, his language was often foul.

  I shook my head and said to Guy, “I forgot. I was thinking about you and forgot.”

  He wagged his head and pitied his old doddering mother. I was thirty-nine.

  I listened to the discussion between Jimmy Baldwin and Max Roach. They were talking about South Africa.

  Hercules came up to me. “Sister Maya, thank you for inviting me.”

  I said “Yes” coolly.

  He said, “I brought my girlfriend. Let me introduce her.”

  He introduced me to a woman standing at his side. I admit that my displeasure with myself, and the memory of Hercules’s behavior in Egypt, kept me from acknowledging the guest warmly. I said a perfunctory hello and went to join another small group.

  I was looking for a way to get into the heated discussion among John Killens and Julian Mayfield and Rosa Guy when Hercules’s woman tugged my sleeve.

  “Is it my whiteness that makes you uncomfortable?” She could not have startled me more if she had poured her drink on the rug.

  I collected myself sufficiently. “Of course not. Look around, there are Sam and Connie Sutton, and Roger and Jean Genoud. You are no more white than they, and they are at home here. Please, help yourself to a drink.”

  I moved to a less troublesome area and caught up on the laughter that was loud in the room.

  Later, Dolly, Guy and I laid out the food on the buffet and the dining table. I stood with serving spoons in hand and said in a loud voice, “Grub est servi.”

  The line was taut and furiously fast at first, then, when it slackened, some people who had eaten jumped back in line for seconds.

  I said, “Please, let everybody get served once before seconds are handed out.”

  Hercules’s lady friend, who was back in line, said, “This is not the democratic way. First come, first served. Can you really hold a place in line for someone who is not here?”

  I said, “Yes, I can. Because this is my house. I wouldn’t tell you how to run it at your house.”

  Hercules said, in support of his lady, “She is right. This is not the democratic way.”

  My patience with them and with myself was as brittle as melba toast. I said, “You, who have needed a passbook to move from one district in Johannesburg to another, are to tell me about democracy?”

  She said, “You people, you kill me. You don’t realize that English is not his first language.”

  I was ready to evict her at “you people,” but I was serving a plate. When I finished dishing up food, I said to Hercules, “Take her out of my house. She may be indulged and famous as a rude guest in other people’s home, but she gets put out of mine.”

  Suddenly the laughter had stopped, and all was quiet. I had not raised my voice, but I knew everyone present had heard me.

  I couldn’t take back a single word, and in that moment I hated myself and the woman. I sounded like a bully, and I truly abhorred bullies.

  “Out.” It was too late. “Out.”

  The woman’s departing statement cut me more deeply than she could have ever imagined. “People think you’re so kind. They should see you as you are. A great bully.”

  I said nothing, and in a few minutes, noise returned and the party pitch reestablished itself.

  Guy left early to see the teacher home. Some friends said, “You showed wonderful restraint. She came out to be trouble.”

  Others didn’t mention the incident. When I was totally alone, I sat down and wondered how else I could have handled that awful situation. I found no answer, so I started to clean the apartment. I emptied ashtrays and washed glasses. I took trash to the garbage chute. Little by little, I cleaned and polished my house till it glistened.

  As I finished, Guy rang the bell. He entered and stood at the door, observing the clean apartment.

  “I meant to be back in time to help you.”

  “Oh no, as you see …”

  “Mom, I’m going to make us both a drink.” I sat down to await the service.

  He brought two filled glasses into the living room. He lifted his to me, I lifted mine to him.

  “Mom, if you ever speak to a woman I bring to your house as you spoke to that woman, I will sever our relationship.”

  I looked at my son sitting aloof like a high-ranking judge on a lofty seat. His words alone constituted a body blow, and his posture added weight to the statement. I thought of carrying him on my hip all over the world, of sleeping in hotel rooms separated by a sheet hanging across the middle of the room to give each of us privacy. I thought of how I had raised him and saw that he was right.

  I said, “Of course, you are absolutely correct. You are obliged to protect anyone you bring out anywhere. If the person is under your umbrella, you are supposed to defend her or him. It would kill me if you severed our relationship. But let me tell you this. If you bring someone to my house that stupid, it is likely that I will speak to her as I spoke to that woman. And severing our relationship will be your next job.”

  He looked at me for a long minute, then got up and came to the sofa to sit beside me.

  He opened his long arms. “I love you, Mom, you’re a gas. I truly love you.”

  CHAPTER 29

  John Patterson was my across-the-hall neighbor, and we shared the same birthday.

  I spent the morning cooking for my party. He was planning to celebrate with his fiancée, a beautiful fawnlike girl half his age.

  When I could safely leave my pots for a few minutes, I went to his apartment for a glass of wine and for our opportunity to congratulate each other.

  I cheered him for his impending marriage, and he saluted me for taking on a thirty-day job that would give me the chance to visit the major American cities. I always added “and churches.”

  I didn’t have my itinerary, but I told John that I thought I had to go to Atlanta first for meetings with Reverend King and the leaders of the SCLC.

  I admitted to Dolly that I had trepidation about the trip, and even some fear over how the ministers in the different churches would take to m
e and to Reverend King’s plans. So much depended upon my doing well.

  Dolly said, “If the Reverend King thinks you can do it, that’s enough for me. And don’t believe that the whole thing depends on you. You’re not the only fish in the sea. He’s got others. Anyway, you will do wonderfully.”

  A sister always knows how to set you down, and a true sister lets you down easily.

  My apartment smelled like I was readying for a Christmas feast. I was really putting on the dog. Stepping out. All the Harlem Writers Guild members were coming. I invited Jerry Purcell and his partner, Paul Robinson, and some of the regulars from Terry’s Pub, the local bar.

  I cooked Texas chili without the beans, baked ham and candied yams, rice and peas for the West Indian palate, macaroni and cheese and a pineapple upside-down cake.

  I looked the apartment over and was proud. The food was prepared, ice buckets were filled, glasses were sparkling and the daffodils were as perky as their name.

  The telephone ring surprised me.

  “Maya?” It was Dolly.

  “Yes?”

  “Have you listened to the radio or television?” I said no.

  “Maya, please don’t turn either of them on. And don’t answer the phone. Give me your word.”

  “I give you my word.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  I made a drink and sat down, trying to guess what could have happened that could cause her such alarm.

  Dolly stood at my door, her face ghastly with news.

  I said, “Come in. Nothing could be that bad.”

  It was that bad and worse.

  She said, “Martin Luther King was shot. Maya, he’s dead.”

  Some words are spoken and not heard. Because the ears cannot accept them, the eye seems to see them. I saw the letters DEAD. Who was dead? Who was dead now? Not Malcolm again. Not my grandmother again. Not my favorite uncle Tommy. Not again.

  I didn’t realize I was talking, but Dolly grabbed me and held me.

  “Maya, it’s Martin King. Reverend King.”

  “Stop talking nonsense. Stop it.” When I really heard her, the world capsized. If King was dead, who was alive? Where would we go? What was next? Suddenly I had to get out.

  I didn’t take my purse or keys or turn off the stove or the lights or tell Dolly where I was going.

  John was locking his door. We looked at each other.

  He asked, “Where are you going?”

  I said, “Harlem.”

  He said, “Me, too.”

  He didn’t speak as we walked to Harlem. I turned my thoughts over as one turns pages in a book. In the silence I spoke to myself, using the time to comprehend the emptiness.

  That great mind, which considered adversity and said, This too shall pass away, had itself passed away.

  That mellifluous voice, which sang out of radios and televisions and over altars and pulpits, which intoned from picket lines and marches and through prison bars, was stilled. Forever stilled.

  That strong heart which did beat with the insistence of a kettle drum was silent. Silenced.

  —

  Waves of noise of every kind flooded down 125th Street. There was an undulation of raw screams, followed by thuds like the sound of buffaloes running into each other at rutting time. I never discovered what or who caused that particular dissonance, but the sheer jangle of glass breaking was obvious.

  When John ran into friends and they fell into a sobbing embrace, I walked on alone.

  There were noticeable differences between this current turmoil and the Watts uprising. In Los Angeles, rage had ruled. There, the people acted out of a pent-up anger over past slights and historic cruelties. On the evening of April 4, 1968, a lamentation would rise and hold tremulously in the air, then slowly fall out of hearing range just as another would ascend.

  Strangers stopped in front of strangers and asked, “Why? Why?”

  “You know? You know.”

  Then strangers hugged strangers and cried.

  A television in the window of an appliance store played tapes of Martin King speaking. No sound accompanied the pictures, but people stood silent, five deep in front of the shop window, as the uproar swirled unnoticed around them. I joined the watchers for a few moments and heard the moan behind me.

  Rosa Guy emerged from the crowd. We stood looking at each other. We embraced and said nothing. When we released each other, we continued our separate ways.

  A man, naked to the waist, walked out of a building with a conga drum strapped to his body. He waddled toward me, the head of the drum protruding from under his arm. He passed me shouting, not singing, unintelligible words.

  I went into a lighted diner and sat at the far end of the counter. Only one other customer was in the place. He was leaning over so far his head was on the counter.

  I waited for a few minutes for a waitress, and when none appeared, I called out, “Can I get some service?”

  The man raised his head. “If all you want is coffee, you can get it yourself.”

  I went behind the counter and lifted the coffeepot and looked at the man. “May I help you?”

  “No, baby, nobody can help me. Nobody can help nobody. You know this is all about Malcolm.”

  “What?”

  I expected to hear the awful despair at Martin Luther King’s death. Malcolm’s name shocked me.

  “Malcolm?”

  “See, they killed him not far from here, and we didn’t do anything. Lot of people loved Malcolm, but we didn’t show it, and now even people who didn’t agree with Reverend King, they out here, just to show we do know how to care for somebody. Half of this is for Malcolm X, a half for Martin King and a half for a whole lot of others.”

  I laid my own head on the counter weighted with new realization.

  A man lived. A man loved.

  A man tried, and a man died.

  And that was not all there was to that. And it never was.

  CHAPTER 30

  Death of a beloved flattens and dulls everything. Mountains and skyscrapers and grand ideas are brought down to eye level or below. Great loves and large hates no longer cast such huge shadows or span so broad a distance. Connections do not adhere so closely, and important events lose some of their glow.

  Everywhere I turned, life was repeating itself. The photograph of Coretta Scott King, veiled and standing with her children, reminded me of the picture of Jacqueline Kennedy with her children. Both women were under the probing, curious and often sympathetic eye of the world. Yet each stood as if she and her children and her memories lived together in an unknowable dimension.

  On radio and in newspapers, Martin King’s name was linked again and again with the name Malcolm X. As if the life and death of one confirmed the life and death of the other.

  Depression wound itself around me so securely I could barely walk, and didn’t want to talk.

  I went to Dolly’s apartment. I didn’t want my absence to alarm her.

  “I’m going to hibernate for a few weeks.”

  She asked, “What do you mean?”

  “I’m going to stay alone. I will not be seeing anyone. I just need to seek balance.”

  Dolly said, “I understand. But listen, I’m going to bring you some food. And you’re going to have to talk to me once a day. I don’t care what you say, just don’t stop talking. Okay?”

  Jerry Purcell sent an employee who knocked on my door loudly and repeatedly. When I opened it, he handed me a package wrapped in tinfoil.

  “Jerry said that you would get a plate every other day. If you’re not here, I’ll leave it by the door.”

  Jimmy Baldwin pried me loose from my despair. “You have to get out of here. Get dressed. I’m taking you somewhere.”

  Exactly what Bailey had said and done when Malcolm was killed.

  “Put on something that makes you feel pretty.” I remembered the old saying, which was a favorite of my Arkansas grandmother. “It’s hard to make the prettiest clothes fit a miserable m
an.”

  Jimmy said, “Some friends have invited me to dinner, you will enjoy them. They are both funny, and you need to laugh.” We were in front of the building before Jimmy said, “This is Jules Feiffer’s apartment.”

  Judy opened the door and welcomed us. Although I had not formed a picture of the Feiffers, I was unprepared for her beauty. She could have been a movie actress. Jules also surprised me. He looked more like a young, intense college professor than one of the nation’s funniest, most biting cartoonists.

  They both hugged Jimmy, and the three of them laughed aloud as if they had heard a funny story when they last parted and had not had time to finish their laughter.

  The Feiffers’ pretty ten-year-old daughter joined us in the living room. When Jimmy embraced her and asked after her school, she answered easily, showing the poise of a person twice her age.

  We adults finished our drinks and moved into the dining room. We told and heard great stories over a delicious dinner. Jimmy talked about being a preacher in Harlem at fourteen years old. He may have lost some of his evangelical drama, but it returned that night in force. He preached a little and sang in a remarkably beautiful voice. His story was funny and touching. When we laughed, it was always with him and with the people he spoke of, never at them.

  Jules talked about school and his college mates. His tale was told with wit so dry that when we laughed, we thought we breathed in dust.

  Judy kept the glasses filled and added the appropriate response whenever it was needed. She said, “Nothing funny ever happened to me until I met Jules.”

  When my time came, I thought of the saying “You have to fight for the right to play it good.” I described Stamps, Arkansas. Although there is nothing amusing about racial discrimination, the oppressed find funny things to say about it.

  “The white folks are so prejudiced in my town, a colored person is not allowed to eat vanilla ice cream.

  “And when a white man heard a black man singing ‘My Blue Heaven,’ he called the KKK. They visited the offender and told him that the Molly in the lyric was a white woman, and they wanted to hear how he would sing the song now that he had new information.”

  I sang what the black man supposedly sang: