by Maya Angelou
I knew what I should do, but I could not bring myself to say that I had to leave and go home. We rode streetcars to the largely Mexican area. The aroma wafting from the cantinas and the music of the mariachi bands were calling for us. We danced in the streets. Boys and girls flirted and then ordered more tamales and tacos. We all spoke a little Spanish but we acted as if we spoke more. Someone announced it was one o’clock.
The enormity of my lateness made me dumb. When I found my voice, I said, “I’ve got to get home.”
Alarmed voices joined mine.
“God, how did it get so late?”
“I’m going to get killed.”
“God, what kind of lie can I work up this time?”
We counted our money, but we didn’t have enough for carfare for everyone to get home safely. Along with two other girls and one boy, I walked home from the Mission District to the Fillmore District.
It was a long trek, and although we started it with trepidation, we began to brighten as we neared home. We did begin to see the absurdity of our situation. We were going to get in trouble over some tacos and tamales, which we didn’t need, and that made us laugh. Tamales and tacos had made us break the rules.
I parted with my friends and walked the last block to my house as fast as I could. I was still in a pleasant mood so I ran up the two marble steps to the French doors. When I put my key into the lock and pushed the door, it was pushed back at me with enormous force.
My mother stepped out onto the landing. She held a ring of keys in her fist. She said, “Goddamnit!” and hit me in the face.
As I screamed, she grabbed my coat and pulled me into the house. She was cursing and shouting at me and at the walls and at the windows.
“Where in the hell have you been? Even whores are in bed. My fifteen-year-old daughter is roaming the streets.”
I tasted blood as it slipped into my mouth. Mother continued to rant and I heard doors open and voices.
“Lady, are you all right?”
My stepfather: “What’s going on? I’m on my way.”
Papa Ford came shuffling down the hall in his cotton robe. “What’s happening? What’s going on, Vivian?”
In the critical moment, he stopped being the houseman, the cook, the servant, and became her father, or doting uncle. He asked me, “Where the hell have you been?”
I was crying too hard to answer.
Suddenly Bailey appeared, also in his robe, also in control of himself. He saw my face and heard Mother’s tirade. He said with authority, “Come on, Maya. Come upstairs. I’ll get some towels. Go to your room.”
I followed him up the stairs and went to my room. I was sitting on the bed when he came in bringing a warm, wet soapy towel in one hand and a dry, fluffy towel in the other. He said, “Don’t try to talk. Just calm down and clean your face. I’m going back to my room. Don’t worry about anything. I’ll figure out what we’re going to do.”
I cleaned up and managed to relax because my big brother was in charge. I did not catch the irony that at fifteen, I was six feet tall and Bailey at seventeen was five foot five.
The next morning the image in the bathroom mirror shocked me. My eyes were black and my lips were swollen. I had begun crying again when Bailey appeared with the suitcase.
He said, “You look awful. I’m so sorry, Maya. Come on.” He guided me back from the bathroom to my bedroom.
“Pack two sets of underclothes, two skirts, and two sweaters. We’re leaving this place.”
I found some clothes, folded them, and put them in the suitcase, which he closed.
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know yet, but anywhere away from here.”
I followed him down the steps. At the bottom, my mother stood with her arms akimbo.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
Before Bailey could answer, she looked up the steps and saw me. She screamed and reeled as if she was going to fall.
She said, “My baby, oh, my baby! Come here! I’m so sorry!”
Bailey stared straight at her. “We are leaving your house. Nobody, but nobody, beats up my baby sister.” Bailey took my hand.
Mother said, “Baby, I’m so sorry, so sorry.”
Bailey said, “Maya, let’s go!”
My mother turned to Bailey and said, “Please give me a chance. Please. Come in the kitchen and give me a chance.”
We followed her to the kitchen, where my stepfather and Papa Ford were drinking coffee. Each looked at me, and the shock on their faces was undeniable.
My mother asked, “Would you please go into the dining room or the living room? I have to talk to my children.”
The three of us were left in the warm, aromatic air of the kitchen. My mother took a tea cloth off a rack and put it on the floor. She asked me and Bailey to sit on the kitchen chairs. Vivian Baxter got down on her knees and prayed to God to ask forgiveness, and then in the same quivering voice, she begged me to forgive her.
“I was crazy. I was out of my mind. I remembered what that bastard had done to you when you were seven years old. I couldn’t imagine someone else taking you, abusing you, and maybe even killing you. I had just left your empty room when I came down the stairs and suddenly you were at the door, opening it with a smile on your face. I had the key ring in my hand with at least twenty keys on it and I hit you without thinking.”
She turned to Bailey. “I didn’t mean to hurt your sister. I beg you to forgive me.” Then she began to cry so piteously that Bailey and I left our chairs and joined her on the floor, where we cradled her in our arms.
Mother resisted our attempts to encourage her to stand up, so we went upstairs to our rooms. Bailey said, “She’s a strong woman, a very strong woman.”
“I wish she had knelt down and apologized in front of Daddy Clidell and Papa Ford.”
“No, she couldn’t do that. It would have taken away some of the power she has over them.”
“Well, we took away the power she had over us.”
“No, we didn’t take it, honey, she gave it to us.”
12
Bailey knocked on my door. I saw his face and knew that Armageddon had arrived. “What is it?” I asked.
He pushed me aside and entered my room. “I’m leaving. I’m going to join the army or navy.” He had been crying. “I’m of age: I’m seventeen.”
“Why? You’re supposed to graduate next month! Why?”
“I’m not going to wait that long.”
“Is it something Lady did?”
He said, “I should have gone back with Grandmother. She needs me.”
I said, “Lady needs you. She adores you. You ought to see the way she looks at you.”
“She’s got Daddy Clidell, and Papa Ford, and you, and … and … you know that guy named Buddy?”
Buddy was a frequent visitor, often taking over the conversation, telling jokes and making fun of the local politicians. Lady and Daddy Clidell both were amused by Buddy.
“What about Buddy … What?”
Bailey asked, “Did you ever see how she looked at him?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, I did, and I’d be surprised if they weren’t off doing it in some motel.”
I said, “Bailey, you ought to be ashamed. Do you think our mother is committing adultery?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her. She gave us away, right? She abandoned her own children. Why wouldn’t she commit adultery?”
“Bailey, tell me straight: Did you see anything that could make you sure?”
“No, not really, except the way she looks at him.”
“Well, I don’t believe it. I’m just starting to really like her and I don’t think she would betray Daddy Clidell.”
He opened my door and turned to look at me, almost sneering.
“You’d have to be a man to understand that, and you’re just a girl.” He went out and slammed my door.
I didn’t know what to do. Obviously I could not tattl
e on my brother. All I could do was try to talk him out of his decision to join the service. I went to his room but he wouldn’t answer the door. He avoided me for about a month. Then one evening at the dinner table he said, “I have an announcement to make!”
He put some papers on the table.
“I’ve joined the merchant marine. I’ve passed the exams and the physical tests. I’ll ship out soon.”
Mother reached for the papers but he snatched them back.
She said, “You can’t. I won’t let you.”
“I’ve done it already. I am of age. It’s too late anyway. I’ve already sworn in.”
Mother fell back in her chair. “Why? You’re supposed to graduate in a few weeks. I’ve just bought new clothes I was going to wear.”
Bailey said, “As usual, you think it’s only about you.”
Mother said, “But why? Why? Maya, did you know?”
Bailey looked at me and said, “My didn’t know about this. It’s only for me to know and you to wonder, or maybe you can mention me to Buddy.”
Vivian was surprised. “You’re angry with me? Why? What have I done to you? What does Buddy have to do with you joining the service?”
Bailey looked at Mother scornfully. I felt sorry for her, and for him.
Weeks later Bailey was gone. Mother and I both missed him badly, but it was too painful to talk about his absence, and so we never mentioned it.
She began to pack bags for a couple of months’ journey. She had to go back to Alaska to see about the gambling joints she and Daddy Clidell owned in Nome.
13
I was distressed because I didn’t develop like other girls. I didn’t have breasts, really plump breasts. I had little nubs on my chest, but nothing substantial. My buttocks were flat; my legs were too thin and too long. My voice was deep. To add to my woes, I thought that I might grow up to be a lesbian. I had read a book called The Well, purportedly written by a lesbian. She was grossly unhappy, and her friends who were also lesbians were miserable as well. My slow physical developments made me wonder if just possibly I would grow up to become a lesbian and be unhappy. I certainly didn’t want that.
Still, not all the boys were after only pretty girls. Some let me know that they would like to make love to me, or at least have sex with me. They were only teenagers, and it was easy to ignore them. But there was Babe, who lived up the block from me. He was nineteen years old and very handsome. I developed a dizzying infatuation for him. For weeks I imagined how it would be to rest in his arms. His usual approach to me was “Hey Maya, when you gonna give me some of that long, tall goodie?”
One day as I was passing by him, I stopped spontaneously and before he could speak I said, “Hi, Babe. Do you still want some of this long, tall goodie?” He almost dropped the toothpick out of his mouth.
But he quickly recovered. “Yes, let’s go.” He had a friend who had a room he could use. He didn’t ask why I was willing to go with him. In fact, we were silent as we walked the few blocks to a large, typical San Francisco house. He used a key and opened the door. In the bedroom there was no kissing or foreplay. No coddling and whispering; none of that. Just “get your pants down” and then sex.
I had been raped when I was seven and I had seen the rapist’s privates. My brother was too careful to let me see him naked so I really had never seen any man nude except the rapist. That evening I caught a glimpse of Babe’s privates and it embarrassed me. I was sorry I had been so bold.
I knew I was going to tell Bailey eventually—and I knew he was going to tell me I had again done something stupid.
Babe made a loud sound and then lay still. That’s when I knew we had finished having sex. He started to get up and I asked him, “Is this all it is?”
He said, “Yeah.”
I dressed, really disappointed that having sex had not assured me that I was normal and not a lesbian. We left the house. I wanted to discuss the incident with my brother, but he was in the merchant marine and was not due to return to San Francisco for months.
Two months passed and I found that I was pregnant. I called Babe and invited him over to my house. When I told him that I was pregnant, he acted as if he were about four years old. He whined, “I’m not the father. Don’t tell that lie. Don’t lie on me.”
So I said, “You may leave.” I could be very highhanded when I was young. “You may go out. Go out the back door.”
When my mother returned to San Francisco and then went back to Alaska, I did not tell her about my pregnancy. I was afraid she would take me out of school. But when Bailey came home on merchant marine leave, I told him I was pregnant. He warned me, “Don’t tell Mother. She’ll take you out of school. You must finish high school now. If you don’t, you might never go back. You get that diploma.”
Mother made repeated trips to Alaska to tend to their affairs, so she missed watching me blossom into a soon-to-be mother.
My stepfather was around and noticed a difference but didn’t know what he was seeing. He said, “You’re growing up, beginning to look like a young woman.”
I thought, I should: I’m over eight months pregnant.
And Papa Ford, who cleaned the house and cooked, didn’t notice me at all.
I went to school unsteadily all summer—sometimes nausea forced me off the streetcars—but I finished my senior year at Mission High’s summer school.
Daddy Clidell’s birthday and V-Day coincided with my graduation. My dad took me out to a congratulatory dinner and told me how proud he was to have a daughter who had graduated from high school. He reminded me that he had gotten only to third grade. We came back home and I went upstairs to my room and wrote a letter.
“Dear Dad, I am sorry I have brought disrespect and scandal on the family, but I am pregnant.” I put the page on his pillow.
It was impossible to find sleep. I waited to hear his footsteps. What would he do? He might curse me out. No, he never cursed. At about four o’clock in the morning he came home. I thought surely he would read that note and come stomping up the steps. Nothing. I took a bath, then I gave up trying to sleep and sat on the side of the bed. At nine o’clock that morning, he called from downstairs.
“Maya, come on down. Come down and have coffee with me. I got your letter.” I was dressed and nervous. He was sitting at the kitchen table and said, in his regular voice, “Now baby, I got your note. Now, um, how far are you gone?”
I caught my breath, then told him I had about three weeks before the baby would be born.
“All right, I’ll call your mother. She will take care of this, don’t worry. Now, I don’t think you are supposed to do much jumping around in your condition. I see you did not get much sleep. Go back to bed.”
Surprised and relieved, I went back to my room.
The next day my mother flew in from Nome. I had no idea what she was going to do. I thought of how she would look at me. I was six feet tall and very pregnant, as well as guilty and scared. She was about five feet, four and a half inches tall and very beautiful. She came in and looked at me and she said, “Oh, you’re more than any three weeks pregnant.”
I said, “Yes, ma’am, it is three weeks before I have the baby.”
She said Daddy Clidell had misunderstood and told her on the phone that I was three weeks pregnant and she’d better come home. I looked at her and could not think of a word to say.
“All right now, baby, go run me a bath.” In our family, for some unknown reason, we consider it an honor to run a bath, to put in bubbles and good scents for another person.
So I ran the bath, then, after she got in, she called to me and said, “Come and sit in here with me.”
I sat on a stool in the bathroom.
“Do you smoke?”
“Yes, ma’am, but I don’t have any.”
She said, “Well, what do you smoke?”
“Pall Malls.”
She said, “All right. I smoke Lucky Strikes, but you can have one of mine.” So I had a cigarette and then she as
ked me, “Do you know who the father is?”
“Yes, ma’am, it was only one time.”
“Do you love him?”
I said, “No.”
“Does he love you?”
I said, “No.”
“Well then, that’s that. We will not ruin three lives. We—you and I—and this family are going to have a wonderful baby. That’s all there is to that. Thank you, baby. Go on.”
I left the bathroom, tears of relief bathing my face. She didn’t hate me or cause me to hate myself. She gave me the same respect she had always shown. She cared for me and for my child. She talked to me.
Mother stayed in the house for the three weeks, talking to me, telling family stories about babies and pregnancies and delivering babies. She recounted the night I was born. She described how long she had been in labor and how she stuffed her mouth with towels so no one would hear her cries.
When the contractions began, I got my hospital suitcase, which she had packed, and knocked on her door. When I announced I was ready to go she laughed and said, “Not yet, baby, you have a few hours. They will come slowly at first and they will get faster. Don’t worry. I promise to get you to the hospital on time.”
She invited me into her bedroom and gave me a bath. She put me on her bed and she shaved me in preparation for delivery.
Vivian Baxter was, among other things, a registered nurse. In the three weeks she had been home, she had taken me twice to see Dr. Rubinstein, her doctor. He had calculated the delivery date. My mother called him, left a message, and took me to the hospital.
When we arrived we could see two nurses through the glass in the door. My mother said, “Now this large one is going to be very jovial and the little one is going to be sour as a lemon. I’ll bet you fifty cents.”
The two women opened the door and the fat woman said, “Oh welcome! We’re waiting for her. Bring her in here.”
The little one said with a sour voice, “We thought you’d be here sooner.” It was just as if my mother had known them before.
She told them she was a nurse, and told them the hospital where she had worked. She took me into the delivery room. The contractions came faster but the doctor didn’t arrive.