The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou by Maya Angelou
When I heard the dire story, I again surprised myself. I felt as if I had just been told a beloved relative was dying. Tears came to my eyes and threatened to run down my face. I dreaded the possibility of crying before strangers, but even more awful was the prospect of allowing Nana’s daughters to see me out of control. The motto of their family was “royalty does not weep in the street,” and I had spent a great effort showing them that although I was born from slaves, I was descended from kings.
I took a handkerchief and faked a cough.
Araba leaned foward, “Auntie, are you all right?”
I told her I thought I was reacting to the dust, and she was satisfied.
Adae, asserting her intelligence and explaining me to her new friend, said “Auntie is very sensitive. She has allergies.” I was grateful for their presence, for without them I might have bent over my lap and let the emotion of loss drain out of me in rivers of tears. I swallowed the knots in my throat over and over and wondered if I was losing my mind. What did that bridge and the sea’s encroachment on Keta have to do with me?
Adadevo was still talking as the car turned through the narrow streets of the old town. Although we could not see the ocean, suddenly I knew or felt that the next turn would give us a panoramic view of the surf. I held onto myself and hoped that the presentiment would prove false.
Mr. Adadevo said, “Now here is the sea. You call it the Atlantic Ocean. We have another name for it in Ewe.”
The driver parked at the side of Keta’s market and Mr. Adadevo asked me to come and meet his sister, who had a stall on the market’s periphery. We walked in file with Freida and the driver carrying large empty straw baskets.
Mr. Adadevo’s sister was tall and thin and resembled Efua. When we were introduced, I found that she spoke very scanty English and I expected that she would speak French.
The Ewe tribe which occupied Togo and the eastern area of Ghana had been a German colony in the nineteenth century, but after Germany’s loss of World War I, the allied victors took away Germany’s mandate and gave the area to France. French became the province’s official language in 1920, so I offered to speak French with my host’s sister, but her French was only a little better than her English. We smiled at each other and shook our heads in exasperation. She spoke rapid Ewe with her brother and niece, while Araba and Adae looked on.
I waved good-bye, anxious to climb into the raised market which was issuing sounds of trade and merriment.
The narrow stairs were bounded by wooden walls, making the entrance dim. I was looking down, making certain of my footfall, when a voice above me drew my attention. I looked up to see an older woman, unusually tall, blotting out the light behind her. She spoke again and in a voice somewhat similar to my own, but I was unable to understand her.
I smiled and, using Fanti, said regretfully, “I am sorry, Auntie, but I don’t speak Ewe.” She put her hands on her wide hips, reared back and let loose into the dim close air around us a tirade of angry words. When she stopped, I offered, in French and in a self-deprecating tone, “I am sorry, Auntie, but I don’t speak Ewe.”
She clapped her hands close enough to my face for me to feel the rush of air, then she raised her voice. My ignorance of the meaning of her words did not prevent me from knowing that I was being denounced in the strongest possible language.
When I could wedge myself into her explosion, I spoke in English nearly whining, “Auntie, I am sorry, but I do not speak Ewe.”
It seemed the walls would collapse. The big woman took a step down to me, and I backed down two steps. There was no room on the stairs for me to pass her, and I wouldn’t have had the nerve to try to force my way beyond that now enraged giant frame. Her invective was coming faster and louder. I knew that my luck had to have totally deserted me to allow me to meet a mad woman on darkened stairs who I could neither placate nor threaten.
Mr. Adadevo spoke behind me, and I turned only slightly, afraid to leave my back unprotected.
“Mr. Adadevo, would you please talk to this Auntie. I can’t make her understand.”
The woman fired another salvo, and Mr. Adadevo stepped up and placed himself between me and my assailant. He spoke softly in Ewe. I heard the word “American” while I was watching the woman’s face. She shook her head in denial. My protector spoke again, still softly. I heard “American Negro.” Still the woman’s face showed disbelief.
Mr. Adadevo looked at me and said, “Sister, she thinks you are someone else. Do you have your American passport with you?”
I hadn’t seen my passport in two years, but I remembered having an old California driver’s license, which had its identifying photograph. I took the wrinkled, but still slick paper from my wallet and gave it to Mr. Adadevo. He handed the document to the woman who strained to see in the darkness. She turned and walked up the stairs into the light. Mr. Adadevo followed and I followed him.
There, the woman, who was over six feet tall, stood peering at the flimsy piece of paper in her dark hand. When she raised her head, I nearly fell back down the steps: she had the wide face and slanted eyes of my grandmother. Her lips were large and beautifully shaped like my grandmother’s, and her cheek bones were high like those of my grandmother. The woman solemnly returned the license to Mr. Adadevo who gave it back to me, then the woman reached out and touched my shoulder hesitantly. She softly patted my cheek a few times. Her face had changed. Outrage had given way to melancholia. After a few seconds of studying me, the woman lifted both arms and lacing her fingers together clasped her hands and put them on the top of her head. She rocked a little from side to side and issued a pitiful little moan.
In Arkansas, when I was a child, if my brother or I put our hands on our heads as the woman before me was doing, my grandmother would stop in her work and come to remove our hands and warn us that the gesture brought bad luck.
Mr. Adadevo spoke to me quietly, “That’s the way we mourn.”
The woman let her arms fall and stepping up to me, spoke and took my hand, pulling me gently away. Mr. Adadevo said, “She wants you to go with her. We will follow.” The girls and the driver had climbed the stairs and we entered the crowded market. I allowed myself to be tugged forward by the big woman who was a little taller than I and twice my size.
She stopped at the first stall and addressed a woman who must have been the proprietor. In the spate of words, I heard “American Negro.” The woman looked at me disbelieving and came around the corner of her counter to have a better look. She shook her head and, lifting her arms, placed her hands on her head, rocking from side to side.
My companions were standing just behind me as the vendor leaned over the shelf where tomatoes, onions, and peppers were arranged in an artistic display. She began speaking, and raking the produce toward the edge.
Mr. Adadevo said something to the driver who came forward and placed each vegetable carefully into his basket. My host said, “She is giving this to you. She says she has more if you want it.”
I went to the woman to thank her, but as I approached she looked at me and groaned, and cried, and put her hands on her head. The big woman was crying too. Their distress was contagious, and my lack of understanding made it especially so. I wanted to apologize, but I didn’t know what I would ask pardon for.
I turned to Mr. Adadevo and asked if they thought I looked like someone who had died.
He answered and his voice was sad, “The first woman thought you were the daughter of a friend. But now you remind them of someone, but not anyone they knew personally.”
My guide now pulled me through a press of bodies until we came to a stall where the owner sold yams, cassava and other tubers. Her wares were stacked on the ground in front of the stall and rose in piles around the stool she occupied. My escort began her litany to the saleswoman. Somewhere in the ritual she said “American Negro” and the woman repeated the first stall owner’s behavior. Freida began putting yams and cocoa yams and cassava into her basket. The two women were rocking and
I said, “Mr. Adadevo, you must tell me what’s happening.”
He said, “This is a very sad story and I can’t tell it all or tell it well.” I waited while he looked around. He began again, “During the slavery period Keta was a good sized village. It was hit very hard by the slave trade. Very hard. In fact, at one point every inhabitant was either killed or taken. The only escapees were children who ran away and hid in the bush. Many of them watched from their hiding places as their parents were beaten and put into chains. They saw the slaves set fire to the village. They saw mothers and fathers take infants by their feet and bash their heads against tree trunks rather than see them sold into slavery. What they saw they remembered and all that they remembered they told over and over.
“The children were taken in by nearby villagers and grew to maturity. They married and had children and rebuilt Keta. They told the tale to their offspring. These women are the descendants of those orphaned children. They have heard the stories often, and the deeds are still as fresh as if they happened during their lifetimes. And you, Sister, you look so much like them, even the tone of your voice is like theirs. They are sure you are descended from those stolen mothers and fathers. That is why they mourn. Not for you but for their lost people.”
A sadness descended on me, simultaneously somber and wonderful. I had not consciously come to Ghana to find the roots of my beginnings, but I had continually and accidentally tripped over them or fallen upon them in my everyday life. Once I had been taken for Bambara, and cared for by other Africans as they would care for a Bambara woman. Nana’s family of Ahantas claimed me, crediting my resemblance to a relative as proof of my Ahanta background. And here in my last days in Africa, descendants of a pillaged past saw their history in my face and heard their ancestors speak through my voice.
The first woman continued leading me from stall to stall, introducing me. Each time the merchant would disbelieve the statement that I was an American Negro, and each time she would gasp and mourn, moan and offer me her goods.
The women wept and I wept. I too cried for the lost people, their ancestors and mine. But I was also weeping with a curious joy. Despite the murders, rapes and suicides, we had survived. The middle passage and the auction block had not erased us. Not humiliations nor lynchings, individual cruelties nor collective oppression had been able to eradicate us from the earth. We had come through despite our own ignorance and gullibility, and the ignorance and rapacious greed of our assailants.
There was much to cry for, much to mourn, but in my heart I felt exalted knowing there was much to celebrate. Although separated from our languages, our families and customs, we had dared to continue to live. We had crossed the unknowable oceans in chains and had written its mystery into “Deep River, my home is over Jordan.” Through the centuries of despair and dislocation, we had been creative, because we faced down death by daring to hope.
A few days later at Accra’s airport I was surrounded by family and friends. Guy stood, looking like a young lord of summer, straight, sure among his Ghanaian companions. Kwesi Brew, T. D. Bafoo and their wives were there to bid me farewell. Efua and her children, Nana’s brood of six, Grace Nuamah and other colleagues from Legon, Sheikhali and Mamali, and some Nigerian acquaintances milled through the crowd. Julian hugged me, “Be strong, girl. Be very strong.” Nana’s car appeared on the tarmac, and coming through a private door he joined the well-wishers. I drank with each party, and gave and received generous embraces, but I was not sad departing Ghana.
Many years earlier I, or rather someone very like me and certainly related to me, had been taken from Africa by force. This second leave-taking would not be so onerous, for now I knew my people had never completely left Africa. We had sung it in our blues, shouted it in our gospel and danced the continent in our breakdowns. As we carried it to Philadelphia, Boston and Birmingham we had changed its color, modified its rhythms, yet it was Africa which rode in the bulges of our high calves, shook in our protruding behinds and crackled in our wide open laughter.
I could nearly hear the old ones chuckling.
A SONG FLUNG UP TO HEAVEN
Dedicated to
Caylin Nicole Johnson
Brandon Bailey Johnson
and to my entire family
wherever and whoever
you are
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank seven of my living teachers:
The Reverends
Frederick Buechner
Eric Butterworth
Serenus T. Churn, Sr.
H. Beecher Hicks
Barbara King
Cecil Williams
Andrew Young
CHAPTER 1
The old ark’s a-movering
a-movering
a-movering
the old ark’s a-movering
and I’m going home.
—Nineteenth-century American spiritual
The old ark was a Pan Am jet and I was returning to the United States. The airplane had originated in Johannesburg and stopped in Accra, Ghana, to pick up passengers.
I boarded, wearing traditional West African dress, and sensed myself immediately, and for the first time in years, out of place. A presentiment of unease enveloped me before I could find my seat at the rear of the plane. For the first few minutes I busied myself arranging bags, souvenirs, presents. When I finally settled into my narrow seat, I looked around and became at once aware of the source of my discomfort. I was among more white people than I had seen in four years. During that period I had not once thought of not seeing white people; there were European, Canadian and white American faculty at the university where I worked. Roger and Jean Genoud, who were Swiss United Nations personnel, had become my close friends and in fact helped me to raise—or better, corral—my teenage son. So my upset did not come from seeing the white complexion, but rather, from seeing so much of it at one time.
For the next seven hours, I considered the life I was leaving and the circumstances to which I was returning. I thought of the difference between the faces I had just embraced in farewell and those on the plane who looked at me and other blacks who also boarded in Accra with distaste, if not outright disgust. I thought of my rambunctious nineteen-year-old son, whom I was leaving with a family of Ghanaian friends. I also left him under the watchful eye and, I hoped, tender care of God, who seemed to be the only force capable of controlling him.
My thoughts included the political climate I was leaving. It was a known fact that antigovernment forces were aligning themselves at that very moment to bring down the regime of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s controversial, much adored but also much hated president. The atmosphere was thick with accusations, threats, fear, guilt, greed and capriciousness. Yet at least all the visible participants in that crowded ambience were black, in contrast to the population in the environment to which I was returning. I knew that the air in the United States was no less turbulent than that in Ghana. If my mail and the world newspapers were to be believed, the country was clamoring with riots and pandemonium. The cry of “burn, baby, burn” was loud in the land, and black people had gone from the earlier mode of “sit-in” to “set fire,” and from “march-in” to “break-in.”
Malcolm X, on his last visit to Accra, had announced a desire to create a foundation he called the Organization of African-American Unity. His proposal included taking the plight of the African-Americans to the United Nations and asking the world council to intercede on the part of beleaguered blacks. The idea was so stimulating to the community of African-American residents that I persuaded myself I should return to the States to help establish the organization. Alice Windom and Vickie Garvin, Sylvia Boone and Julian Mayfield, African-Americans who lived and worked in Ghana, were also immediate supporters. When I informed them that I had started making plans to go back to America to work with Malcolm, they—my friends, buddies, pals—began to treat me as if I had suddenly become special. They didn’t speak quite so loudly around me, they didn’t
We all read Malcolm’s last letter to me.
Dear Maya,
I was shocked and surprised when your letter arrived but I was also pleased because I only had to wait two months for this one whereas previously I had to wait almost a year. You see I haven’t lost my wit. (smile)
Your analysis of our people’s tendency to talk over the head of the masses in a language that is too far above and beyond them is certainly true. You can communicate because you have plenty of (soul) and you always keep your feet firmly rooted on the ground.
I am enclosing some articles that will give you somewhat of an idea of my daily experiences here and you will then be better able to understand why it sometimes takes me a long time to write. I was most pleased to learn that you might be hitting in this direction this year. You are a beautiful writer and a beautiful woman. You know that I will always do my utmost to be helpful to you in any way possible so don’t hesitate.
Signed
Your brother Malcolm
I looked around the plane at the South African faces and thought of Vus Make, my latest husband, from whom I had separated. He and members of the Pan-African Congress and Oliver Tambo, second in command of the African National Congress, really believed they would be able to change the hearts and thereby the actions of the apartheid-loving Boers. In the early sixties I called them Nation Dreamers. When I thought of Robert Sobukwe, leader of the Pan-African Congress who had languished for years in prison, and Nelson Mandela, who had recently been arrested, I was sure that they would spend their lives sealed away from the world. I had thought that, despite their passion and the rightness of their cause, the two men would become footnotes on the pages of history.