The Heart of a Woman
Page 31
"Maya, it's Anna Livia. I had some new X-rays done. They've been developed. I'm at Korle Bu now. The accident was more serious than the other doctors thought. Guy's neck is broken."
The crash, my pale son, his awful clammy skin, my love for him, all rushed into my brain at once.
"In three places. I have ordered him moved. He is going to be put in a body, arm and leg cast. Are you there, Maya?"
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I was nowhere. Certainly nowhere I had ever been before. I said, "Yes, of course."
She explained that she had contacts at a military hospital and when the plaster hardened he would be taken there. He was quite tense, so it was better that I held off my visit until he calmed down.
I said, "I'm on my way."
She meant well, but she didn't know my son. She didn't know the cocky boy who had to live daily with his father's rejection, or the young man who had lived with the certainty of white insolence and the unsureness of moving from school to school, coast to coast, and was made to find his way through another continent and new cultures. A person whose only certitude lay in the knowledge that Mom, effective or not, was never too far away.
"I'm on my way."
I waited in the halls and yard and canteen of the hospital while the plaster hardened, then joined my son in the ambulance for his transfer. The still-damp cast emitted a sour odor, but my sedated son looked like a pale-yellow angel in a long white gown.
20
Accra became a wondrous city as Guy's health improved. The sprawling Makola market drew me into its heaving perfumed bosom, and held me there for hours. Black women, sitting before stalls, offered for sale peanuts, peanut butter, wax-printed cloth, cutlery, Pond's face cream, tinned milk, sandals, men's pants, hot pepper, pepper sauce, tomatoes, plates, palm oil, palm butter and palm wine.
The open-air shopping center, alive with shouted language and blaring music, its odors and running children, its haggling customers and adamant saleswomen, made America's great department stores seem colorless and vacant by contrast.
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I walked around and around Flagstaff House and the Parliament, where black people sat debating the future plans for their own country. I felt heady just being near their power. When Guy was out of danger, I wrote to Mother. I told her of the accident and explained that I had held off writing because there was nothing she could have done except help me to worry.
She sent me a large sum of money and.said if I wanted her to come, she'd be in Africa before I knew it.
Guy would be in the hospital for one month, then he'd have to recover at home for three months. I moved into the YWCA, and wrote to Joe and Banti Williamson. Going to Liberia had to be canceled. I would find a job and stay in Ghana. Anna Livia allowed me to use her kitchen to cook daily meals for Guy. I hitch-hiked, found rides, or took the mammy lorry (a jitney service) to the hospital. My money was leaking away and I had to find work. Guy would be released, and I had to have a home for him to come to.
Julian suggested that I meet Efuah Sutherland, poet, playwright and head of Ghana's theater. She received me cordially. We sat under a fixed awning at her house, drinking coffee and looking out on the grassy slope of her inner compound.
Yes, she had heard of me. And she knew of my son's accident. This was Africa. News traveled.
Efuah was black and her slim body was draped in fine white linen. In respose, her face had the cool beauty found in the bust of Nefertiti, but when she smiled, she looked like a mischievous girl who kept a delicious secret.
I explained my need for work, and listed my credentials. She arranged for me to meet Professor J. H. Nketia, ethnomusicolo-gist and head of the Institute of African Studies. Dr. Nketia called his staff together: Joseph de Graaf, professor of drama, Bertie Okpoku, dance professor, and Grace Nuamah, dance mistress. He introduced me, and said they would talk together and let me know very soon.
Efuah phoned before the week was out. I had a job at the University of Ghana as administrative assistant. Since I had no
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academic degrees, I couldn't be processed through the usual channels. Which meant that I could not expect to receive the salary other foreigners were paid. I would be paid as a Ghanaian, which was a little more than half the foreign wage. (I was later informed that non-Ghanaians received more money because they had to pay twice as much as nationals for everything.)
I tried to speak, but Efuah continued. "An instructor we know is on leave for six months. We have arranged for you to have his house."
I cried out gratefully and Efuah's cool voice brushed my ear. "Sister, I am a mother, too." She hung up.
I collected the trunk which I had left at Walter's, the suitcases I had stowed in the YWCA's storeroom and the bag I had been living out of, and moved into a nicely furnished house on campus.
When I picked up Guy from the hospital, he reminded me of a big tree about to fall. He had grown another inch and put on a few pounds from inactivity. The cast, which covered his head and spread out over his shoulders like a monk's cowl, was grey with dirt, but he had to wear it another three months.
We celebrated his homecoming with roast chicken and dressing, our favorite food. He was in high spirits. He had lived. Anna Livia said he was mending well. He'd made a few friends in the hospital and soon he'd be enrolled in the university. The next day I took his diploma and report cards to the Registrar's office and was told bluntly that my son could not enter the university. He was not qualified. The University of Ghana had been modeled on the British system. Students had to have completed the sixth form —or as Americans call it, junior college. I was dismissed peremptorily.
That was unacceptable. Guy had been through as much as I could handle.
Conor Cruise O'Brien was vice-chancellor of the University, and Nana Kobina Nketsia IV, a paramount chief, was former vice-chancellor. I made an appointment to see Dr. O'Brien, and Efuah introduced me to the Nana.
I pleaded and talked, moaned and whined, said I wasn't asking
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for a scholarship or any financial aid. I would pay tuition and for his books. After weeks of haunting the offices, collaring the men in halls, catching up with them on the campus paths, I was finally told that they had decided it was not fair to penalize students coming from American schools.
They had arranged a three-part test. Guy would be expected to take the examination on Monday at nine o'clock.
I took Guy the news, and since I hadn't told him of the trouble, he took itcasually. "O.K., Mom. I'll be ready."
Monday morning my desk felt like sponge and the papers on it were unintelligible. I looked at my watch every five minutes. Efuah passed and stopped to chat, but I was too distracted to keep up my end of the conversation.
At last, Guy came loping across the campus, his cast helmet looking almost white under the noonday sun. I forced myself to remain seated. He entered my tiny office, taking up its spare room.
"Finished." His complexion looked healthy, and his eyes were free of worry.
"How did you do?"
"Great. I won't get the results for a couple of days. But I did great. Mom, do you know that Conor Cruise O'Brien is the same man who headed the U.N. Congo project?"
I knew.
"Well, one of my questions was 'What role has the European in African development?' " He chuckled with pleasure. "Well, I'll tell you. I ate Dr. O'Brien up in little pieces. I read his book To Katanga and Back in Cairo."
He leaned over and kissed my cheek. "I'm going to meet some guys in the Junior Common Room."
Speechless, I watched him bound away. I had tommed, mewled and begged to get him registered, and in an attempt to show how manly he was, the smartass had bungled everything. I allowed myself to relish the fury.
After an hour, when I could walk without my knees wobbling
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and speak without yelling, I crossed the campus and found Dr. O'Brien in the Senior Common Room. I grinned for him and was pre
pared to shuffle and scratch. My people had written the book on dealing with white men.
I spoke out of a mealy mouth. "Dr. O'Brien, Guy told me how he answered one of those questions. You haven't had a chance to see his exam yet . . ."
"Oh, but I have, Miss Angelou. His answers are fine. His registration papers will be sent to your office. We want minds like that in the university."
I grinned again and backed away.
Sooner or later, I was going to have to admit that I didn't understand black men or black boys and certainly not all white men.
Guy was moving into Mensa Sarba Hall. I had seen his room in the dormitory and it looked too small and too dark, but he loved it. For the first time in his life, he was going to live alone, away from my persistent commands. Responsible to himself and for himself. My reaction was in direct contrast with liis excitement. I was going to be alone, also, for the first time. I was in my mother's house at his birth, and we had been together ever since. Sometimes we lived with others or they lived with us, but he had always been the powerful axle of my life.
He dragged the old trunk toward the door, but I stopped him.
"Don't lift heavy things like that. You could hurt yourself. I want you to be careful. Remember your neck."
He put the trunk down and turned. "Mom, I know I'm your only child and you love me." His face was quiet and his voice calm. "But there's something for you to remember. It is my neck and my life. I will live it whole or not at all."
He pulled me to him and wrapped his arms around me. "I love you, Mom. Maybe now you'll have a chance to grow up."
A car horn honked outside. Guy opened the door and called. "Come on in. I'm ready." Two Ghanaian young men leaped on
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the porch, shouting, and blustered into the room. When they saw me, they composed themselves.
I offered them a drink, a beer, some food. I wanted to delay the departure. All refused. They had to return the car to their uncle, and Guy had to begin his new life.
They shared Guy's possessions, trundling the boxes, grips and trunk into a new Mercedes Benz. Guy gave me one more squeeze, then they piled into the car and drove away.
I closed the door and held my breath. Waiting for the wave of emotion to surge over me, knock me down, take my breath away. Nothing happened. I didn't feel bereft or desolate. I didn't feel lonely or abandoned.
I sat down, still waiting. The first thought that came to me, perfectly formed and promising, was "At last, I'll be able to eat the whole breast of a roast chicken by myself."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maya Angelou, author of the best selling / Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Gather Together in My Name, has also written four collections of poetry -.Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie, Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well, And Still I Rise, and I Shall Not Be Moved. In theater, she produced, directed and starred in Cabaret for Freedom, in collaboration with Godfrey Cambridge, at New York's Village Gate, starred in Genet's The Blacks at the St. Mark's Playhouse, adapted Sophocles' Ajax, which premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 1974 and wrote the lyrics for the musical King: Drum Major for Love. In film and television, Maya Angelou wrote the original screenplay and musical score for the film Georgia, Georgia, wrote and produced a ten-part TV series on African traditions in American life and participated as a guest interviewer for the Public Broadcasting System program Assignment America. In the sixties, at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., she became the Northern Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and in 1975 Maya Angelou received the Ladies' Home Journal "Woman of the Year Award" in Communications. She has received numerous honorary degrees. She was also appointed by President Carter to the Commission of International Women's Year and is on the Board of Trustees of the American Film Institute. One of the few women members of the Directors Guild, Maya Angelou is author of the television screenplays / Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and The Sisters. Currently Reynolds Professor at Wake Forest University, she resides in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
MAYA — ANGELOU1
I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS
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MAYA ANGELOU: POEMS
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