The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou by Maya Angelou
“Kwame Nkrumah will see Malcolm at nine o’clock in the morning. Julian is taking him to Flagstaff House.”
Vicki whooped and hollered, “Success! Success!” She grabbed me, then Alice, then me again. Alice was a little stunned and I was furious.
I said, “Shirley went straight home and called the President and told him he had to see Malcolm. She could have done that a week ago, but no.”
Alice agreed, but Vicki said, “Better late than never. You all ought to be celebrating, I say.”
For me sleep was difficult that night. My bed was lumpy with anger and my pillow a rock of intemperate umbrage.
The next morning we met Malcolm after his visit with President Nkrumah. The bright sunshine, the bougainvillaea and the singing birds around the hotel didn’t brighten my countenance. I claimed to be saddened by Malcolm’s pending departure, but in fact my heart was still hardened to Shirley Du Bois. Rather than inquire about the Nkrumah interview, I stood apart pouting, while Alice snapped photos and Julian put Malcolm’s luggage in the car. A convoy of limousines glided up importantly to the hotel’s porte-cochere. Small flags waved from the hoods of luxury cars, which meant that each car carried an ambassador.
Alice said there must be some diplomatic meeting, and began to pose Malcolm and Julian for a picture. As she finished, the Nigerian High Commissioner approached.
“My people, good morning. Brother Malcolm, morning. A few of us have come to accompany you to the airport.” The gesture was so unexpected that even Malcolm was speechless.
The Nigerian diplomat continued, “The Chinese, Guinea, Yugoslav, Mali, Cuban, Algerian and Egyptian ambassadors are here. Others wanted to come but national matters detained them. We will pull up and onto the road as you will want to ride with your friends. We will follow.”
Julian was the first to speak to Malcolm after the High Commissioner left us.
“Man, we ought to pay you for this visit. You’ve given this poor group of Black exiles some status. Forty-five minutes with the president and now a convoy of limousines to see you to the airport. Man! We were living here before, but after your visit we have really arrived.”
We were all laughing with pleasure when we heard the familiar sounds of Black American speech. We turned around and saw Muhammad Ali coming out of the hotel with a large retinue of Black men. They were all talking and joking among themselves. One minute after we saw them, they saw Malcolm.
The moment froze, as if caught on a daguerreotype, and the next minutes moved as a slow montage. Muhammad stopped, then turned and spoke to a companion. His friends looked at him. Then they looked back at Malcolm. Malcolm also stopped, but he didn’t speak to us, nor did any of us have the presence of mind to say anything to him. Malcolm had told us that after he severed ties to the Nation of Islam, many of his former friends had become hostile.
Muhammad and his group were the first to turn away. They started walking toward a row of parked cars. Malcolm, with a rush, left us and headed toward the departing men. We followed Malcolm. He shouted, “Brother Muhammad. Brother Muhammad.”
Muhammad and his companions stopped and turned to face Malcolm.
“Brother, I still love you, and you are still the greatest.” Malcolm smiled a sad little smile. Muhammad looked hard at Malcolm, and shook his head.
“You left the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. That was the wrong thing to do, Brother Malcolm.” His face and voice were also sad. Malcolm had been his supporter and hero. Disappointment and hurt lay on Muhammad’s face like dust. Abruptly, he turned and walked away. His coterie followed. After a few steps they began talking again, loudly.
Malcolm’s shoulders sagged and his face was suddenly gloomy. “I’ve lost a lot. A lot. Almost too much.” He led us back to my car. “I want to ride with Maya and Julian. We’ll meet at the airport.” Alice and the other friends rode with Ana Livia and three six-footers tried to be comfortable in my little Fiat. Even when we saw the diplomat’s limousines following us, the heavy mood seemed destined to stay.
Malcolm broke the silence. “Now, Sister, what do you think of Shirley Du Bois?” The question gave me a chance to articulate my anger, and I let loose. I spoke of her lack of faith, her lack of identity with Black American struggle, her isolation from her people, her pride at sitting in the catbird seat in Ghana. Malcolm let me continue until my tirade wound down.
“Now, Sister, I thought you were smart, but I see you are very childish, dangerously immature.” He had not spoken so harshly before to anyone in Ghana—I was shocked.
“Have you considered that her husband has only been dead a few months? Have you considered that at her age she needs some time to consider that she is walking around wounded, limping for the first time in many years on one leg?”
Tears were bathing my face, not for the sad picture Malcolm was drawing of Shirley, but for myself as the object of his displeasure.
Julian, from his uncomfortable seat in the back of the car, put his hand on my shoulder gently, “Keep your eyes on the road.”
Malcolm said, “Sister, listen and listen carefully. Picture American racism as a mountain. Now slice that mountain from the top to the bottom and open it like a door. Do you see all the lines, the strata?” I could hardly see the road ahead, but I nodded.
“Those are the strata of American life and we are being attacked on each one. We need people on each level to fight our battle. Don’t be in such a hurry to condemn a person because he doesn’t do what you do, or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn’t know what you know today.” His voice had become more explanatory and less accusatory.
“When you hear that the Urban League or the NAACP is giving a formal banquet at the Waldorf-Astoria, I know you won’t go, but don’t knock them. They give scholarships to poor Black children. One of those recipients might become a Julian Mayfield, or a Maya Angelou, or a Malcolm X. You understand?”
I would have died rather than say I disagreed. I said, “I will think about that.”
He said, “I can’t ask anymore. I admire all of you. Our people can be proud. Julian will tell you about my meeting with Nkrumah. I wanted to ride with you to encourage you to broaden your thinking. You are too good a woman to think small. You know we, I mean in the United States and elsewhere, are in need of hard thinkers. Serious thinkers, who are not timid. We are called upon to defend ourselves all the time. In every arena.” Malcolm had lost his harshness and seemed to be reflecting rather than addressing either me or Julian.
Julian asked him if Muhammad’s actions at the hotel came as a surprise, and Malcolm did not answer directly. “He is young. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is his prophet and his father, I understand. Be kind to him for his sake, and mine. He has a place in my heart.”
At the airport, the ambassadors and other well-wishers swooped him away. Alice had time to arrange him for one last photo and we all shook his hand and hugged him.
Julian said in a forbidding tone, “Man, I don’t like to see you traveling alone. You know there’s a price on your head.”
Malcolm smiled. “No one can guard anyone’s life. Not even his own. Only Allah can protect. And he has let me slide so far.” He smiled for us all and then was gone.
The letdown affected our speech. There seemed to be no words to describe what we were feeling. We regarded each other with embarrassment. Malcolm’s presence had elevated us, but with his departure, we were what we had been before: a little group of Black folks, looking for a home.
I still found myself grinning when I came unexpectedly upon a clasp of confident Ghanaian children whispering in Ga or Fanti, their little legs shining and shimmering like oiled eels; my breath still crowded in my throat at the sight of African soldiers, chests thrust forward, stiffened legs and behinds high like peacocks’ tails. The forests had lost none of their mystery and the bush villages were still enchanting. But Ghana was beginning to tug at me and make me uncomfortable, like an ill fitting coat.
The job at the diamond
I needed to get away from Africa and its cache of subtle promises and at least second-hand memories. I blamed the entire continent and history for my malaise when the real reason was more pointedly specific and as personal as a migraine.
Guy was troubling me. I was questioning my worth as a mother, and since I had been a parent over half my life, I thought if I failed in that role, success in any other area would have very little meaning.
One evening, a Ghanaian friend had come bringing gin and a terrible piece of gossip. He opened the fresh bottle, poured a few drops on the ground for the spirits, then we seated ourselves and drank comfortably.
“Sister, I have bad news about your son.” My first thought was that he had been in another accident. As soon as that idea came it vanished; I would have been telephoned.
“What news, Brother?” I stayed seated in a fake serenity.
“It is said that he has a girlfriend.”
I laughed, “Well, I hope so.”
“Don’t laugh, Sister. This certain friend is thirty-six years old and is an American and works for the American Embassy.”
As I was asking, “What?” thoughts tumbled over themselves in my mind.
The woman was a year older than I. Couldn’t she find any lover older than my nineteen-year-old son? An American government employee? Ghanaians were still a little suspicious of all Americans, especially Black diplomats and employees in the embassy. I had just been made a member of the Ghana Press Club. Undoubtedly, suspicion would fall on me if the gossip was true.
“Brother, I thank you for the information. I will see to my son. Shall we freshen our drinks?”
I would not allow my informant to warn me that young men in love are like elephants in rutting time, difficult to dissuade. I knew that I could always talk to Guy.
The next day I took a break from a play in production after a student told me that my son was outside. Guy and I stood on the lawn in front of the National Theatre.
He appeared two inches taller than he had been the week before, and I had not noticed that he had grown a moustache.
“I am told that you have a girlfriend.”
He had the nerve to be annoyed with me and, worse, to show his annoyance. “Mother, did you actually call me into town to talk about that?”
“I am told that she is thirty-six years old, and works for the American Embassy.”
“Yes?” When a nineteen-year-old decides to clothe himself in dignity, nothing but pity or abject fear can penetrate his armor. I was too angry to ask for sympathy and obviously Guy had moved beyond fear of my disapproval.
“Is it true?”
“Oh, Mother, really. Don’t you think it’s time I had a life of my own?”
How could his life be separate from my life? I had been a mother of a child so long I had no preparation for life on any other level. As usual, anger, my enemy, betrayed me. I looked up at the young golden brown giant towering above my head.
“I will knock you down, Guy. Right here in front of God and everybody. Knock you down, do you hear?” I hadn’t struck him since he was seven years old and had told me that I was too big to hit a small child.
“I will knock you down and I mean it.”
His smile came from his new grown-up and distant place, and cut my heart to shreds.
He patted my head, “Yes, little mother. I’m sure you will.” Then he turned and walked away.
When he closed up and left me no entry, a sense of loss rendered me momentarily unstable.
His existence had defined my own. As a child his sense of humor, attraction for puns and affection for me had lightened the single parent burden. He learned to read early because I loved to read, and I taught him to recite the poetry I had memorized in my own youth. When my seven-year-old son stood before me, beating the bones of his young chest, disclaiming, “It matters not how dark the night, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul,” I saw myself, as if thrown upon a screen, clearly brave, clearly sure, sculpting a good life from resistant stone.
As my mother had done for me, I told him jokes and encouraged him to laugh at life and at himself. The Black child must learn early to allow laughter to fill his mouth or the million small cruelties he encounters will congeal and clog his throat.
Guy had been a good student, but did not develop into excellence because of our brief stays in cities where we lived. When he graduated from high school at the American College in Cairo, he told me he had gone to nineteen schools in eleven years. I was sorry to think that I hadn’t noticed, but realized at the time I couldn’t have changed our movements or destinations.
I had begun dancing or singing for a living when he was seven, and contracts took me from San Francisco to New York, and all the cities between the coasts. My family and even school administrators disapproved of what they thought was my vagabond life, but I was unable to live their ideals. I had no formal education, and no training other than in dance.
Once I was called to a Los Angeles school by the child psychologist. She was a White woman, in a white smock, in a white office.
“Miss Angelou, Guy is not doing well in school because he is hyperactive. I believe that comes from being moved around so frequently.”
I sat still, looking at her, knowing that nothing she could say would influence the lives my son and I would lead.
She leaned back and pronounced, “He needs to stay put. He needs an established home life. I know that you are an entertainer and have to travel in your work, but maybe you could leave him with someone in your family. Your mother would look after him, perhaps?”
My mother, whom I loved dearly, had left me with my paternal grandmother from the time I was three until my thirteenth year. She had matured since then and become my reliable friend and a doting mother, but Guy was my responsibility and my joy.
I said nothing. The psychologist became uncomfortable as I sat silent. “He needs security, Miss Angelou. Stability will give him that security.”
I stood and spoke. “Thank you for your concern and your time, Doctor, but I am his security. Wherever we go, we go together. Wherever he is he knows that that six-foot-tall Black woman is not too far away. What I don’t furnish in stability, I make up in love. Good day.”
We left a few weeks later for Chicago, another apartment hotel and another school.
His teens had not been easy for either of us. As he grew older, he began to withdraw, and because I didn’t understand that an avalanche of sexuality had fallen upon him, I felt betrayed at his withdrawal. In our worst moments however, we had been saved by love and laughter.
But now, here in Ghana where neither of us was threatened by racial hate, where we both had separate and reasonably good lives, where it seemed we could both be happy, he had moved beyond my reach and into the arms of a cradle robber. Speaking to the woman would be a mistake. If she agreed to end the relationship, Guy would hate me for taking away his play pretty, and if she refused, we would have a fist fight.
I needed to get away from him and myself and the situation
The cable from New York City shook the blues away. It read: “Berlin Volksopera wants original company Blacks, four days, stop. Venice Biennale, three days, stop. Ticket paid, plus salary. Can you come?” It was signed: Sidney Bernstein. Three years earlier, I had been a member of a cast which successfully presented Jean Genet’s scathing play in New York City. At first, I gave little thought to either the play or the other actors. I was ecstatic with the thought of separating myself from Guy and his brand new grown-up ways.
I rushed to talk to Alice, who was brimming with her own excitement. She had accepted the job in Ethiopia and had decided to stop in Egypt on her way to Addis Ababa. A conference of nonaligned countries would be meeting in Cairo. By adding a little money to my prepaid ticket I could meet her there after I left Venice. The prospect of seeing Joe and Bahnti Williamson again was exhilarating. The Liberian couple had been brother and sister to me during my stay in Egypt. David Du Bois, the son of Shirley Graham and stepson of Dr. Du Bois, also lived in Cairo and we had been very close friends. A visit to Cairo sounded like the real answer to the malaise which had descended around me. When I learned that Julian and Ana Livia were also going to attend the Cairo conference, it was clear that I would accept Bernstein’s offer and rearrange my ticket to stop in Egypt on my return to Ghana.
I took delight from the flicker of worry which crossed Guy’s face. I had told him that I was leaving for Germany and Italy and Egypt. He recovered too soon to please me.
“Have a wonderful time, Mom. A wonderful time.”
Since the Ghanaian pound could not be exchanged on the international market, I swapped my cash with a friend for his Nigerian pounds and packed my new flamboyant African clothes and my gifts of gold jewelry. I was going to meet a group of sophisticated New York actors, some of whom were my friends, and I meant to strut.
I became nervous only when I thought of the years since I had been on the stage. (Playing Mother Courage in Ghana’s National Theatre didn’t really count.) The other actors, all brilliant and ferociously ambitious, had moved around New York City’s theatres, competing with professionals and growing with each role. Their names and work had become known and lauded. I decided to spend two days in Frankfurt, boning up on the play, or those actors would run me off the stage.