The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou by Maya Angelou
I thought of the African gods whom Efua was loath to anger and decided that they must have been bristling with rage for centuries. How else explain the alliance of African greed and European infamy which built a slave stealing-selling industry lasting for over three centuries? Weren’t the African gods showing their anger when they allowed the strongest daughters and sons to be carried beyond the seas’ horizon? How much had they been provoked to permit disease and droughts and malnutrition to lay clouds of misery on the land? I agreed with Efua. I certainly would not like to see the gods of Africa anymore riled up than they were already.
The evening paper reported the family had come from the north to collect the body. Ghanaians breathed more easily, and so did I.
Misery is a faithful company keeper, and Comfort was dissolving under its attention. I watched for three months as her laughter diminished then disappeared along with about thirty pounds of sensuous curves. There was no jollity in her face, nor was there any strength in her hands. When she strung my hair, the movement on my head could have been caused by two sleepy snails going to rest.
“No, Sistah, I am not sick. Just weary.”
We had come to know each other well enough for me to use an admonishing tone. “Sister, you have wearied yourself into bad health. You’re so weak now you can hardly pull the comb through my hair.”
Months before she would have blamed my hair, saying that it had a mind of its own and I should have the impertinence beaten out of it.
She said only, “I am getting weaker each day.” She paused, then said, “It’s the woman. She’s doing it.”
I asked, “What woman? Doing what?”
Even Comfort’s voice was being erased. She said in a whisper, “His old wife is using some bad medicine on me. First she gave permission for us to be friendly, then when she saw how he loves me, she said ‘no.’ ”
“Friendly? Comfort, did she think you would be just friends with her man? Plain friends?”
“She knew we were loving. Why else would my mother speak to her mother? And she agreed. Then … and then she saw that we were more than loving. We were … he liked me. That’s when she promised I would lose. Lose everything. My looks, my weight. I would lose him and my mind. Oh, Sistah, she has power medicine. I might even lose my life.”
“Did she give you something to drink?” I thought of arsenic.
“No, I eat at home. I have a cousin and a servant from my village who look after me. No. I have taken nothing that she has touched.” She pulled a stool and sat beside me. I remarked that she looked like a little girl.
She said, “Sistah, I feel old, but I think she is taking old age from me.”
Had she talked to the woman herself? Maybe if she went to the woman …
Comfort began to shudder and I apologized for the suggestion. She waved a bony hand at me.
“No, Sistah Maya, now you see my trouble?” She shivered and her eyes were filled with despair.
“The woman came to me. To my house. My steward let her in. Sistah, I went in to her. I was surprised. She is old. Once she looked fine, but now … Oh age … I will not live to see what it can do to me.” She was near to tears, so I encouraged her to continue with her story.
“Well, Sistah, you know I was fat and fine as cocoa butter, and the man was loving me. Anyway, when she came to my house I asked her what she wanted … not sweetly, and she said she wanted to ask me two questions. God forgive me, but I was crazy. I didn’t offer her a drink. I wouldn’t even sit down. She is old, Sistah, and I still stood looking down on her.” Comfort shook her head, wanting not to believe her own rudeness. She continued.
“She was wearing an old mourning cloth; she said, ‘My first question is, do you know what love costs?’ And I told her,” Comfort crossed her hands atop her head, “I am not a market woman, so I do not think of everything in money terms. Then she said, ‘My last question is, are you ready to pay anything for love?’ A spell must have been on me then, because I lost all my training. I talked. I raised my voice. I said I wasn’t so old and ugly I had to buy love, and I felt sorry for anybody who had to do so.
“Then I made my biggest mistake, because she stood up and said, ‘You feel sorry for the person who bought love? Is that true?’ She was looking at my mouth, and I laughed and chipsed. Sistah, I sucked my teeth at that woman. Even I can’t believe I did that. The old woman wrapped her mourning cloth tight around her and said, ‘You will lose. You will lose all,’ and then she walked out of my house. Oooh, and Sistah, see me now? The man will not come to me. My flesh is falling away. Do your people have medicine? Power medicine?”
I asked her if she had seen a doctor, and she shook her head, “European doctors have nothing to help my condition. Don’t you Black Americans have medicine?”
Many Black-owned newspapers in the United States carried announcements in the classified sections of magic practitioners.
Get your man back!
High John the Conqueror Roots
No one I knew admitted to using their services.
I had to tell Comfort that my people had no reliable medicine except that they had learned in school.
She said she had been to many African doctors and found no one able to move the terrible curse. She had even spent a week in Larteh, a town which hosts hundreds of practitioners, but had had no success. Her last hope was to travel to another country.
“Sistah, I have heard of a woman in Sierra Leone. She is very very good. I must go and stay two weeks, cleansing myself, and then she will see me. I must pay her in pure gold.”
I said, “I don’t have gold, but let me lend you some money.”
Weakness made her old, robust smile gentle, “Sistah, thank you, but my uncle is a goldsmith, and I have plenty of trinkets. What I want is to go and come. I want us to sit out in your compound on a Saturday. I want my strength back so that when I put my hands on your head you will know that Comfort has her hands on your head, and I want you to make me laugh. Oh Sistah, I cannot say how much I want to laugh.”
We embraced when she left and she promised to see me again in two months. Fine, fat and laughing.
Two weeks later a friend of Comfort’s came to my door.
“Sister Maya, I have come with very sad news. Our Sister, Comfort, died in Sierra Leone. She had not been there a week. Sorry to bring this news, but I knew you would want to know. She so loved to laugh with you.”
Malcolm was a prompt and exciting correspondent, using the mails to inform, instruct, and encourage us. His letters were weighty with news and rich in details of his daily life. The United States was on the brink of making great changes, and the time was ripe for the Organization of Afro-American Unity. His family was wonderful and it just might be increasing. Death threats were proliferating in his post box and he changed his telephone number frequently to protect his wife from vulgar and frightening callers.
Some of his letters were plain directives:
A young painter named Tom Feelings is coming to Ghana. Do everything you can for him. I am counting on you.
The U.S. State Department is sending James Farmer to Ghana. The Ambassador will pick out special people for him to see and special places he should go. I want you all to collect him and show him around. Treat him as you treated me. I am counting on you.
There were good people working for the OAAU, full of energy and enthusiasm, but none had the organizational skills to set up and run an efficient office. What they needed was an experienced coordinator.
He didn’t mention that I had worked as Northern Coordinator for Martin Luther King’s SCLC. By omitting the reminder, he forced me to speculate upon my possible value to the organization. I went to Julian for advice. He said, “I suspect we’ll all be home soon. Africa was here when we arrived and it’s not going anywhere. You can always come back.”
Alice’s letter from Ethiopia pushed me closer to my decision. She wrote that Malcolm came through Addis, looking good but harried and still traveling without a companion.
My Ghanaian friends said they would be sorry to see me go, but they understood that my people’s struggle came first.
I thought long and carefully before I came to a final decision.
My son convinced me, and had nearly succeeded in convincing himself, that he was a grown man. He was either doing brilliant work at the university or, when he was distracted, none at all. He was a character in a drama of his own composition, and was living the plot as it unfolded. Even if he forgot his lines, his mannishness wouldn’t allow him to accept prompting.
When I told him I was thinking of returning to the United States, he had smiled broadly.
“Yes, Mom. It is time for you to go back home.”
His only frown came when I said I would pay up his tuition and leave him a solid bank account.
“I’m really sorry I have to take your money, Mother, but someday … someday.” Visions of future affluence danced in his eyes. The little boy and even the rambunctious teenager had strutted upon the stage and exited. This new leading man did not need a mother as supporting actress in his scene. He welcomed having the stage to himself at last.
It seemed that I had gotten all Africa had to give me. I had met people and made friends. Efua, Kwesi Brew, T. D. Bafoo and Nana had woven themselves as important strands into the fabric of my life. I had gotten to know and love the children of Africa, from Baby Joe to the clever Kojo, the bouncing Abena, the grave Ralph and the ladylike Esi Rieter. They had given me their affection and instructed me on the positive power of literally knowing one’s place. Sheikhali had provided African romance, and Comfort’s life and her death had proved the reality of African illusion. Alice and Vicki and Julian and Ana Livia would return to the United States someday and we would stir up our cauldron of old love and old arguments, and not one whit of steam would have been lost during our separation. I had seen the African moon grow red as fire over the black hills at Aburi and listened to African priests implore God in rhythm and voices which carried me back to Calvary Baptist Church in San Francisco.
If the heart of Africa still remained allusive, my search for it had brought me closer to understanding myself and other human beings. The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned. It impels mighty ambitions and dangerous capers. We amass great fortunes at the cost of our souls, or risk our lives in drug dens from London’s Soho, to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury. We shout in Baptist churches, wear yarmulkes and wigs and argue even the tiniest points in the Torah, or worship the sun and refuse to kill cows for the starving. Hoping that by doing these things, home will find us acceptable or failing that, that we will forget our awful yearning for it.
My mind was made up. I would go back to the United States as soon as possible.
Nana Nketsia was traveling to Lagos by car and when he invited me and his two oldest daughters to accompany him as far as the Togo border, I accepted gratefully. Now that I had decided to leave Africa, I realized I had not seen Eastern Ghana.
Araba rode with me and Adae got into her father’s car. Three hours after we left Accra we arrived at the small but busy town of Aflao. Nana beckoned me to follow and led me to a large two-story stone house at the end of a quiet lane.
“We will stay here for the night, and at dawn my driver and I will continue to Lagos. Come inside, I want you to meet our host, the customs officer.” A servant responded to Nana’s knock and his daughters, Nana and I were shown into a daintily furnished sitting room. Before we could choose seats a young girl around Araba’s age entered through a side door. She smiled and extended her hands and made a little curtsy to Nana.
“Nana, welcome. I am Freida, Adadevo’s daughter. He is still at the office. I will make you comfortable.”
Nana introduced Araba, Adae and me, and Freida bobbed prettily, accepting the introduction. She supposed we would be weary after such a long journey and offered to show us to our rooms. Nana was put on the ground floor, and I was given a second floor guest room. Araba and Adae were to share a room near Freida.
Although I was used to the dignity of African girls, I was taken aback by Freida’s grown-up composure at sixteen. She was a practiced hostess. I surmised that she was an only child of a single parent and circumstances had forced her to grow up quickly and very well. Nana carried his shortwave radio to his quarters and I retired to my room.
For the next hours as the girls giggled down the hall, I thought of my impending departure and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. There had been no mention of salary or responsibilities. I knew that I would be paid the minimal wage and would be asked to raise money, organize files, recruit members, stuff envelopes, draft news releases, type, file and answer the telephone. Those were the usual chores that go begging in understaffed and underfinanced civil rights organizations.
It would be good to see my family and old friends. Suddenly I was excited at the prospect of being back in New York City, and back in the fray.
Araba broke into my thoughts. “Auntie Maya, Mr. Adadevo is here, and dinner is served.” I prepared myself and joined the group in the dining room.
Mr. Adadevo was a tall, dark brown man of pleasing appearance, and when he spoke his voice sang with the melodic Ewe accent. The girls sat together at dinner, using English to talk across their language barrier while Nana and Mr. Adadevo spoke of portentous matters of State. The hours of assessment in the guest room had drained my energy, and I was glad there was no general conversation which could command my participation.
At an early hour, I asked to be excused, honestly claiming exhaustion.
The bed, sleep and I met together and I rose at dawn to go downstairs and bid Nana a safe journey. He promised that he would return to Ghana before my departure.
When Mr. Adadevo entered the kitchen the day was bright and I was having yet another cup of instant coffee. He ate quartered oranges and asked me why I was only then visiting this area. I made a courteous reply, then he asked if I would like to see the nearby town of Keta only thirty miles away. Without any real interest I again answered courteously.
“That would be nice. We should start back to Accra by early afternoon.” He assured me that we would have plenty of time and left to rouse the still sleeping girls.
It was decided that we would take his large car. Araba, Adae and Freida sat in the back, and Mr. Adadevo, his driver and I occupied the front seat.
The countryside was beautiful, but not unusually so. My eyes had become accustomed to coconut trees and palms, and bougainvillaea growing freely on country roads and city streets. A quiet murmur reached me from the back seat and since neither Mr. Adadevo nor his driver spoke, I was lulled by the car motor and the moist warm air into a near torpor.
Suddenly, I jerked alert and looked ahead. We were approaching a sturdy and graceful bridge. My heart began to race and I was struggling for breath. I gasped, “Stop, stop the car. Stop the car.” The driver consented. I was sitting next to the window, so I opened the door and quickly stepped to the ground. I spoke through the back window.
“Get out, girls. Come. You, too, Freida. We are going to walk across this bridge.” Although they were stunned by my behavior, they obeyed, and I said to the startled Adadevo, “We will join the car on the other side.” I walked briskly apart from my charges who were unsettled by my actions and tittering nervously. My pretended concern over the waterscape and the overgrown river banks caused me to turn my head often, as if looking for a particular object or view. In fact, I was more jittery than the teenagers. I could not explain my behavior. I only knew that the possibility of riding across that bridge so terrified me that had the driver refused to stop, I would have jumped from the still moving car.
Mr. Adadevo was standing at the end of the bridge, and after he saw the passengers safely in the back seat, he took my arm and drew me aside.
“Why were you
“Have you ever heard of the Keta bridge?” I shook my head again. I had never heard the area mentioned. “The old bridge, I should say bridges,” his face was solemn, “were infamous for being so poorly constructed that in any flood they would crumble and wash away. People in conveyances of any kind lost their lives, so a century ago passengers in palanquins used to stop and get down in order to walk across. In a crisis, only people on foot could hope to reach the other side.” I felt a quick chill. He asked, “Are you sure someone didn’t tell you that story?” I said, “I must have read it somewhere.” I apologized for startling him and knew without question that I had no inkling of the bridge’s history.
After my inexplicable outburst, there was a new tension in the car. No sounds came from the back seat, but Mr. Adadevo began speaking immediately after the bridge episode and didn’t stop until we reached Keta.
He talked about Accra, of Ghana’s growth, of the wisdom of Kwame Nkrumah. He said he admired the American Negro athletes and Dr. Martin Luther King. He spoke of his region, describing it in detail, its fishing and copra industries, its markets and major towns, and its religion.
I half heard his crooned chant as I was more engrossed in examining my actions at the bridge.
“There is a lagoon behind Keta and of course the ocean before it, and that has caused the people of the town a great problem. For after the work of enlarging the ports of Tema and Sekondi-Takowadi, the ocean has reacted by backing up onto Keta. They have already lost over two miles of the town. The people are being squeezed by two forces of water. The town will disappear in time and the people have nowhere to go.”