by Maya Angelou
“You cannot turn down that chance to see Europe. Aunt Lottie and I will take care of Guy.”
But I was afraid Guy would think I had gone off and left him.
She said that sooner or later I would have to leave him and that I could not keep him on my hip forever. At least this time he would be left in good care.
I sat Guy down in the kitchen and explained I would be away for a few months but he would stay with his Grandma and Aunt Lottie, and I would send money every week so that he could have everything he needed. I told him he had to be grown-up like the little man he was.
“She was a raconteur and would entertain my friends as if they were her friends.”
(Vivian Baxter, Julio Finn [a writer of jazz and blues], Maya Angelou, Dolly McPherson [a very close sister-friend, and an English professor at Wake Forest], 1985)
A few weeks later, we both held back our tears as I gave my luggage to the taxi driver. I hugged Guy at the door. He then began to cry because he was already missing his mother.
I boarded the plane to New York with my luggage filled with my best clothes and enough guilt to last me a year.
Porgy and Bess boasted a cast with the top African American operatic voices. Leontyne Price, William Warfield, and Cab Calloway had already been featured in the company when I joined. The friends I made in the cast taught me more about music in six months than I had learned during my whole life. I became adept in French and Spanish and I sang every evening in European nightclubs after the opera curtain fell. I taught dance during the day in Paris, at the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv, Israel, and at the Rome Opera House in Italy.
I enjoyed myself but I also bruised my psyche with self-flagellation. On one hand I had earned a secure place in the theater world, but on the other hand, when I telephoned Guy in San Francisco, we would end our calls weeping and sobbing.
I knew that if I missed Guy as much as I did, he must be missing me more. I was old enough to know that I would be seeing him soon, but I knew he had to be thinking sometimes that he would never see his mother again. The years I had spent in Arkansas without my mother made me know how lost a child feels when a parent is missing.
Although I had flown over to join Porgy and Bess, guilt made me afraid to fly back. I thought how if the plane fell, my son would grow up saying, “I never knew my mother. She was an entertainer.”
I took a ship from Naples to New York (nine days), and a train from New York to San Francisco (three days and three nights), before I finally arrived at Fulton Street. The reunion was greater than the drama in Russian novels. I wrapped my arms around Guy and he sobbed on my chest.
“I swear to you, I’ll never leave you again. If I go, when I go, wherever I go, you’ll go with me or I won’t go.”
He fell asleep in my arms. I picked him up and lowered him into his own bed.
22
After one week of living in the uppermost floor of my mother’s big house, anxiety gripped me again. I became convinced it would be difficult if not impossible to raise a happy black boy in a racist society. One afternoon I was lying on the sofa in the upstairs living room when Guy walked through. “Hello, Mom.” I looked at him and had the impulse to pick him up, open the window, and jump. I raised my voice and said, “Get out. Get out now. Get out of the house this minute. Go out in the front yard and don’t come back, even if I call you.”
I telephoned for a taxi, walked down the steps, and looked at Guy. I said, “Now you may go in and please stay until I return.” I told the cabdriver to take me to Langley Porter Psychiatric Clinic. When I walked into the office, the receptionist asked if I had an appointment. I said, “No.” She explained with a sad face, “We cannot see you unless you have an appointment.” I said, “I must see someone. I am about to hurt myself and maybe someone else.”
The receptionist spoke quickly on the telephone. She said to me, “Please go see Dr. Salsey, down the hall on the right, Room C.” I opened the door of Room C and my hopes fell. There was a young white man behind a desk. He wore a Brooks Brothers suit and a button-down shirt and his face was calm with confidence. He welcomed me to a chair in front of his desk. I sat down and looked at him again and began to cry. How could this privileged young white man understand the heart of a black woman, who was sick with guilt because she left her little black son for others to raise? Each time I looked up at him the tears flooded my face. Each time he asked what was the matter and “How can I help you?” I was maddened by the helplessness of my situation. Finally I was able to compose myself enough to stand up, thank him, and leave. I thanked the receptionist and asked her if she could call me a taxi.
I went straight to my voice teacher, who was my mentor and the only person other than Bailey to whom I could speak openly. As I went up the stairs to Frederick Wilkerson’s studio, I heard a student doing vocal exercise. Wilkie, as he was called, told me to go into the bedroom. “I am going to make you a drink.” Leaving his student, he brought in a glass of Scotch, which I drank, although at the time I was not a drinker. The liquor put me to sleep. When I awakened and heard no voices from the studio I went in there.
Wilkie asked me, “What’s wrong?”
I told him I was going crazy.
He asked again, “What’s really wrong?” Upset that he had not heard me, I said, “I thought about killing myself today and killing Guy. I’m telling you I’m going crazy.”
Wilkie said, “Sit down right at this table. Here is a yellow pad and a ballpoint pen. I want you to write down your blessings.”
I said, “Wilkie, I don’t want to talk about that. I’m telling you I am going crazy.”
He said, “First write down that you heard me say ‘write’ and think of the millions of people all over the world who cannot hear a choir, or a symphony, or their own babies crying. Write down, ‘I can hear—Thank God.’ Then write down that you can see this yellow pad, and think of the millions of people around the world who cannot see a waterfall, or flowers blooming, or their lover’s face. Write, ‘I can see—Thank God.’ Then write down that you can read. Think of the millions of people around the world who cannot read the news of the day, or a letter from home, a stop sign on a busy street, or …”
I followed Wilkie’s orders and when I reached the last line on the first page of the yellow pad, the agent of madness was routed.
I picked up the pen and began.
I can hear.
I can speak.
I have a son.
I have a mother.
I have a brother.
I can dance.
I can sing.
I can cook.
I can read.
I can write.
When I reached the end of the page I began to feel silly. I was alive and healthy. What on earth did I have to complain about? For two months in Rome I had said that all I wanted was to be with my son. And now I could hug and kiss him anytime the need arose. What the hell was I whining about?
Wilkie said, “Now write, ‘I am blessed. And I am grateful.’ ”
After that exercise, the ship of my life might or might not be sailing on calm seas. The challenging days of my existence might or might not be bright and promising. From that encounter on, whether my days are stormy or sunny and if my nights are glorious or lonely, I maintain an attitude of gratitude. If pessimism insists on occupying my thoughts, I remember there is always tomorrow. Today I am blessed.
“I will put my foot in their door up to my hip until every woman can get in that union, and can get aboard a ship and go to sea.”
(Auckland, New Zealand, 1975)
23
In Los Angeles, I began singing in the nightclub Cosmos Alley. I met the great poet Langston Hughes, and John Killens the novelist. I told them I was a poet and wanted to write. “Why don’t you come to New York?” John Killens asked. He added, “Come find out if you really are a writer.”
I considered the invitation seriously.
I thought, My son is sixteen. We could just move to New York. Tha
t would be good, and I would become a writer. I was young enough and silly enough to think that if I had said so, it would be so.
I called my mother. “I am going to go to New York and I would love you to meet me in Bakersfield or Fresno. I just want to be with you a little bit before I leave the West Coast.”
She said, “Oh baby, I want to see you, too, because I’m going to sea.”
“To see what?”
“I’m going to become a seaman.”
I asked, “Why, Mother?” She had a real estate license, she had been a nurse, and she owned a gambling house and a hotel. “Why do you want to go to sea?”
“Because they told me they wouldn’t let any woman in their union. They suggested that the union certainly would not accept a Negro woman. I told them, ‘You want to bet?’ I will put my foot in their door up to my hip until every woman can get in that union, and can get aboard a ship and go to sea.”
I didn’t question that she would do exactly what she said she would do. We met a few days later in Fresno, California, at a newly integrated hotel. She and I pulled into the parking lot at almost the same time. I brought my suitcase and Mother said, “Put it down, beside my car. Put it down. Now come on.”
We went inside the lobby. Even in this newly integrated hotel people were literally amazed to see two black women walking in. My mother asked, “Where’s the bellcap?” Someone stepped up to her. She said, “My daughter’s bag and my bags are outside beside the black Dodge. Bring them in, please.” I followed as she walked to the desk and said to the clerk, “I am Mrs. Jackson and this is my daughter, Miss Johnson, and we have reserved rooms.”
The clerk stared at us as if we were wild things from the forest. He looked at his book and found that we did indeed have reservations. My mother took the keys he offered and followed the bellman with the bags to the elevator.
Upstairs we stopped in front of a door and she said, “You can leave my baggage here with my baby’s.” She tipped the man.
She opened her bag and lying on top of her clothes was a .38 revolver. She said, “If they were not ready for integration, I was ready to show it to them. Baby, you try to be ready for every situation you run into. Don’t do anything that you think is wrong. Just do what you think is right, and then be ready to back it up even with your life. Make sure that everything you say is two-time talk. That means say it in the closet and be prepared to say it on the city hall steps, and give anybody twenty minutes to draw a crowd. Don’t do it to make news. Do it to make it known that your name is your bond, and you are always ready to back up your name. Not every negative situation can be solved with a threat of violence. Trust your brain to suggest a solution, then have the courage to follow through.”
The implied challenge in the saying “If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere” did not intimidate me or my son. However, we did move to Brooklyn, not Manhattan. I found a two-bedroom house in Brooklyn and Guy went to the high school nearby. I sang in a nightclub in Manhattan and Guy got an after-school job in a bakery in Brooklyn. He gave me a portion of his salary and a portion of the baked goods he was given and we were living high on the hog. I began writing songs with Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach and joined the Harlem Writers Guild.
Escorts were plentiful and satisfying. To keep Guy’s respect, however, I never allowed anyone to stay overnight. If I stayed overnight with a friend, I always managed to be home before daybreak. I was learning to write, thanks to the encouragement and guidance of the members of the Harlem Writers Guild.
After I had lived in Brooklyn for a year I felt that I was up to facing New York City head-on. When an apartment became available on Central Park West, I rented it. Guy and I and some friends piled our furniture up on a moving van and transferred into the heart of the city that never sleeps. Once I was settled in New York, my mother came to visit. I gave a dinner for her. She approved of my apartment and my friends. She went to Guy’s school and met the principal and was satisfied that he was in the right place at the right time.
After I had been a guest on Bill Moyers’s television program, I, along with Rosa Guy and my mother, was invited to a party at his home in Long Island. My mother and I got into the limo that pulled up outside my apartment. We introduced ourselves to the passenger who was already in the car. He was an employee of Moyers’s station. The limo took us to Rosa Guy’s building on Riverside Drive. The apartment house had known elegance in its younger days, but drug sellers and buyers occupied the apartment house across the street from Rosa’s building, and the finery that had been in her lobby had disappeared. The rugs and the sofas had been stolen and the mailbox vandalized.
When the limo pulled up in front of the building, Mother asked, “What is Rosa’s apartment number? I’ll go to get her.” She told our seat partner to come with her.
I said, “No, Mother, I will go. You stay here.”
She said firmly, “No, no, I will go. I said I will go in.” To the man in the seat beside me she said again, “You come with me.”
I think he was more afraid of Mother than the ominous apartment building in Harlem. They entered the shabby lobby and found the elevator. When they boarded the elevator, Mother pushed the button for the sixth floor but the elevator went to the basement. The door opened and a man entered the elevator and looked at the little black woman and little white man and asked, “How far are you going?”
My mother patted her purse and said, “I’m going all the way. I came here to go all the way. How far are you going?”
The man got off the elevator on the first floor.
24
Porgy and Bess was going to be made into a movie with Diahann Carroll as Bess and Sidney Poitier as Porgy.
Otto Preminger was the director, and when he saw that I was six feet tall and Sammy Davis Jr., who was playing Sportin’ Life, was about five three or four, he asked Hermes Pan, the choreographer, to create a dance for us.
During the shooting of the film in California I made friends with Nichelle Nichols, the actress who was later to become Lt. Uhura on Star Trek. Her gentleman friend and my gentleman friend were buddies and since we had a long weekend, and we were near San Francisco, I invited them to come down to San Francisco, where I had grown up, and to allow me to show off my city. They accepted my invitation.
I telephoned Mother and said I wanted to bring three people down to introduce them to her and that we were going to “do” San Francisco.
“Oh baby, do honey, do come. Come home first. Come.”
We arrived at my mother’s house on Fulton Street. After all the introductions, she gave us drinks. As we went out to have a good time my mom said, “Come back around two thirty, no later than, and I will make you some omelets or crepe suzettes. Just come back and tell me all the fun you had.”
We had a big wonderful San Francisco time and we did come back to Mother, who had her omelet pans out and a cold bottle of champagne. We had an after-theater dinner with her. My mother showed Nichelle and her gent where they could stay and she told my fella where he could stay, then she asked me, “Baby, will you stay with me?”
I said, “Of course.”
“I have run you a bath.”
I enjoyed the bath, and when I got to her bedroom she was already in her nightgown. I joined her in the bed and she said to me, “Baby, telephone this number and ask for Mr. Thomas, and say it’s long distance. Ask for Mr. Cliff Thomas.”
I dialed the number and a woman’s voice said, “Yes?”
I said, “Good morning, this is long distance for Mr. Cliff Thomas.”
The voice began yelling. “Bitch you know this is not long distance!” I hung up the telephone. “Mother, the woman said …” I repeated the woman’s statement.
“That son of a bitch, he’s over there with his wife.”
“Where else should he be?”
“No, they have been separated three years, and he and I have been together at least two years. Now I know he is trying to get back with her. I have asked him,
‘Do you want to go back with her? Don’t lie to me; do you want to go back?’ He said, ‘No, no.’ Yesterday I drove by her house and his car was parked in her driveway. I want to know what he is doing over there and why he is lying to me.”
I said, “Oh Mom. Come, Mom, don’t worry.” I put my arms around her and stroked her shoulders. “You know it’s all right. I know you will work it out. Calm down.” I kept murmuring to her and I put myself to sleep.
A man’s deep voice awakened me. “Thank you, Miss Myra. Oooh, thank you, Miss Myra, oohhhh.” The man was crying, “Oooohhh, thank you, Miss Myra.”
I sat up in the bed and there was a huge man kneeling at the foot of the bed and my mother standing there with her hand in a paper sack. The man was crying. He had urinated all over himself and probably even gone further, judging by the stench in the room.
“Mister get up. Get up and leave. Go.”
“Oohhhhhh, thank you, Miss Myra.” He stood up and rushed to the door. I took the paper sack.
Mother had her German Luger pistol in it. “Mother, what are you doing?”
“Oh baby, you don’t know how they treat me.”
“Well, they don’t treat you that way very long, obviously.”
“You know, he was over there, just as I suspected, with his wife.”
“But Mother, how did you get him to come here?”
“Well, after you went to sleep, I got up and I took another bath and lotioned myself and I put on some clothes. And then I didn’t have anything else to do, so I got my keys and got in my car and drove to her house. I rang the bell. And when his wife opened the door I put my pistol on her and I said, ‘I’m here for your husband.’