The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou by Maya Angelou
“I have some talk for you. Why don’t we have a drink?”
I began talking slowly and quietly. “I’ve met a South African. He escaped over the desert. He kept himself alive by eating worms. The whites sent him out to die but he survived. He has come to the United States and he deserves our support.” I looked at Thomas, who had become a terrapin, his large head withdrawn into his shoulders, his eyes steady and unblinking.
I continued my story, saying that the man was inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King and had come to petition the United Nations on behalf of his people. I used small words and short sentences as if I were telling a fairy tale to a child. Thomas was not enthralled.
I said, “A large conference is going to be held in London, where other people who have escaped from South Africa will meet and form a joint freedom-fighting organization.” So far I was telling the truth. But since I didn’t have the courage to tell Thomas I was leaving him, I knew I was building up to a lie.
The man in front of me had turned into a big red rock, and his freckles blotched dark brown on his face.
“Indians from the South Africa Indian Congress and Africans from both South Africa and South-West Africa will take two weeks to work out an accepted charter. As we know, “ ‘In unity there is strength.’ ”
There was no light in Thomas’ eyes.
We sat in dangerous silence.
I balled up my nerve. “They … Anyway, this African I’ve just met has asked me to attend the conference. They want a black American woman who can explain the philosophy of nonviolence.” I was getting there.
Thomas twitched his shoulders, raised his body an inch, then slid deeper into the chair. His eyes still reflected nothing.
“I have decided to accept the invitation and deliver a paper on Martin Luther King.”
The invention came as a wonderful surprise. I had been searching all day and during the preparation of dinner in vain for a way to say what I had to say, and nothing had come to me. Obviously, apprehension had sharpened my imagination.
“I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, but I may go to Africa after that.”
Thomas, in an unexpectedly fast move, sat up straight. He looked at me, his face wise and hard.
“You got another nigger.” He hadn’t raised his voice. “All that shit was to tell me you got yourself another nigger.”
The moment I dreaded and had lied to avoid had arrived.
“Say it. Say it in plain words. Say, ‘Thomas’ ”—he mimicked my speech—“ ‘Thomas, I got myself another nigger.’ Say it.”
He was the interrogator and I was the suspect.
“Well, he’s not a nigger.”
“He’s African, ain’t he? Then, he’s a nigger just like me and just like you. Except you try to act like a goddam ofay girl. But you just as much a nigger as I am. And so is your goddam holy Martin Luther King, another blackass nigger.”
He knew I loathed that word and didn’t allow its use in my home. Now each time he said “nigger” he sharpened it and thrust it, rapier-like, into my body.
“Thomas”—I forced a sweet calm into my voice—“Thomas, there doesn’t seem to be anything more to say.”
He denied that we had come to the end of our conversation and the end of the relationship. I was acting above my station, putting on airs like my siditty friends who were talking about freedom and writing stupid books that nobody read. Thinking I was white, raising my son to use big words and act like a white boy. His sister had told him to watch out for me. I didn’t mean him no good. I thought I was better than his family.
I didn’t move, even to pick up my drink. He spoke, letting the profanity and his dislike of me fill the room.
He would be surprised if that African didn’t leave me stranded in London or in Africa, and I’d come back, dragging my ass, trying to make him feel grateful for a chance to fuck me. Well, don’t think that he’d be around. Forget his phone number. In fact, tomorrow, he would have his phone number changed.
I noted with relief that he was already talking about tomorrow. His shoulders fell and he leaned back against the chair, his energy spent. I still didn’t move.
He rose and walked out of the room and I followed. He was so large, he filled the entry. In a sharp move, he jerked back the curtain which covered the oval window at the door.
“Come here.” I was afraid to refuse, so I wedged myself close to him. “Look at that woman.”
Across the street a lone black woman walked under hazy streetlight carrying two full shopping bags. I didn’t know her. Thomas reached into his jacket and pulled out his gun.
“You know something? I could blow that broad’s head off, and I wouldn’t do a day.”
He put the pistol back into its holster, opened the door and walked down the steps to his car.
I made another drink and thanked God for blessing me yet one more time. I had hurt Thomas’ ego but I had not broken his heart. He wasn’t injured enough to attack me, but he would never want to see me again.
—
Stanley and Jack Murray accepted my news without surprise. They said they had not expected me to stay. They felt that since I was an entertainer, I would leave the organization whenever I was offered a good night-club contract or a part in a Broadway play. That’s why they had brought in other dedicated workers to take over my job. I didn’t bother to tell them how wrong they were.
Grace Killens laughed at me.
“You met him last week at our house, didn’t you? And this week you’re going to marry him. The Wild West Woman.” She laughed and laughed.
John took the news solemnly. Concern tightened his face and squeezed his voice into sharpness.
“He’s serious about the struggle, but what else do we know? Are you going to be a second or third wife? How is he planning to look after you? Don’t forget Guy. You’re putting him under a strange man’s roof and he’s almost a man himself. How does he feel about that?”
Because he was the most important, I had left Guy for the last. Vus had said he wanted to be the first to talk to him and I was happy to accept the much-vaunted masculine camaraderie. Let men talk to men. It was better for a woman, even a mother, to stand back, keep quiet and let the men work out their mannish problems.
Guy was spending the night with Chuck, and Abbey and Max were performing, so Vus and I were given the use of their apartment. He prepared an elaborate dinner of roast beef and sautéed vegetables and poured a delicious wine. I learned that night that he was an expert in extending pleasure.
At the dining table he spread before me the lights and shadows of Africa. Glories stood in thrilling array. Warrior queens, in necklaces of blue and white beads led armies against marauding Europeans. Nubile girls danced in celebrations of the victories of Shaka, the Zulu king. The actual earth of Africa was “black and strong like the girls back home” and glinted with gold and diamonds. African men covered their betrothed with precious stones and specially woven cloth. He asked me to forgive the paucity of the gift he had for me and to understand that when we returned to Mother Africa he would adorn me with riches the likes of which I had never imagined. When he led me into the darkened guest room and placed a string of beads around my neck, all my senses were tantalized. I would have found the prospect of a waterless month in the Sahara not only exciting, acceptable. The amber beads on my nut-brown skin caught fire. I looked into the mirror and saw exactly what I wanted to see, and more importantly what I wanted him to see: a young African virgin, made beautiful for her chief.
The next afternoon I told Guy that the South African we had met at the Killens’ house was coming around for dinner. He took the news so casually I thought that perhaps he had forgotten who Make was. He went to his room and began playing records as I fumbled setting the table.
When the doorbell rang, Guy popped out of the back room like a bottle cork and spun through the kitchen.
“I’ll get it.”
Before I could set the stove burners to safe levels, I heard
I reached the living room just as Vus was beginning to lower himself into Guy’s favorite chair. He stood again and we shook hands. I offered him the so much more comfortable sofa. Guy shook his head and smiled wanly. “This is comfortable, too, Mom.”
Since early childhood, Guy had made certain pieces of furniture his private property. In preschool years and until he was eight or so, each night he would lasso chairs or tables with toy ropes before going off to bed, and he would warn his “horses” to stay in the corral. Although he grew out of the fantasy, his sense of property possession remained and everyone respected it.
Vus sat down in Guy’s chair, and I thought he was getting off to a miserable start.
Guy offered to bring drinks, and the second he left the room Vus said, “There is no reason to be nervous. We are both men. Guy will understand.” I nodded. Vus thought he understood, but I wondered how much of my son’s temperament would really escape him.
I sat primly on the sofa across the room. Guy walked in carrying a napkin-covered tray, ice, glasses and a bottle of Scotch.
“Mom, something smells like its sticking.” He walked to Vus. “How do you like your drink?”
Vus stood and mixed his own drink from the tray in Guy’s hands. The two of them seemed absorbed in an atavistic ritual. I had ceased to be the center of attention.
“Well, I’ll go tend to the dinner.”
Vus looked up over his drink. “Yes. Guy and I must talk.” Guy nodded as if he already knew something.
“Guy, will you please come to the kitchen for a moment?”
He hesitated, reluctant to leave our guest.
“Now, Mom?”
“Yes. Please.”
We stood beside the warm stove and I opened my arms to embrace him. He stepped back, wary.
“Please come. I just want to hug you.”
His eyes darted and he looked young and defenseless. Unwilling, he walked into my embrace.
“I love you. Please know that.” I hadn’t meant to whisper.
He extricated himself and went to the door. His face suddenly sad and old.
“You know, Mom. That sounds just like goodbye.”
The sensuality between parents and children often is so intense that only the age-old control by society prevents the rise of sexuality. When a single parent is of the opposite sex the situation is more strained. How to feel love and demonstrate affection without stirring in the young and innocent mind the idea of sexuality? Many parents, alarmed at the dreadful possibility of raising incestuous thoughts in their children’s minds, withdraw, refusing all physical contact and leaving the children yearning and befuddled with ideas of unworthiness.
Guy and I had spent years skating the thin ice.
During his twelfth summer, we attended a party in Beverly Hills. The children’s party had been catered at one end of an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and I drank Margaritas with the adults at the pool’s other end.
That evening, when we returned to our house in Laurel Canyon, Guy startled me.
“You know, Mom. Everyone talks about Marilyn Monroe’s body. But we were watching today and all the guys said you had a prettier shape than Marilyn Monroe.
After he went to bed, I sat pondering my next move. He was old enough to masturbate. If I began to figure in his sexual fantasies he would be scarred and I would have added one more weight to an already difficult life.
That night I went through my wardrobe separating away the provocative dresses and choosing the staid outfits which were more motherly. The next day I stopped at the Salvation Army with a large package, and never again bought a form-fitting dress or a blouse with a plunging neckline.
I continued preparing the prenuptial feast, assuring myself that Guy would take the news calmly.
When I set the dining table, I consciously deadened my ears and hummed a song out loud. I was getting a husband, and a part of that gift was having someone to share responsibilities and guilt.
They came to the table and I saw from Guy’s face that Vus had not told him of our marriage plans.
We sat to dinner and I ate straw.
The conversation swirled around me, making no contact: Soccer was as violent a sport as American football. Sugar Ray Robinson was a gentleman, but Ezzard Charles was of the people. Malcolm X had the right ideas but Martin Luther King was using tactics which had only been effective in India. Africa was the real “Old World” and America was aptly described by George Bernard Shaw, who said that it was “the only country which had gone from barbarism to decadence without once passing through civilization.”
Guy was relaxed and entered into the exchange with his own young wit. They made each other laugh and my stomach churn.
I gathered the dishes, and when Guy rose to help clear the table, Vus stopped him.
“No, Guy, I must speak to you about our future. And I shall speak now. May we go into your room?”
A shadow of panic rushed into Guy’s eyes. He turned to me peering, quickly trying to scan my thoughts. In a second he collected himself.
“Of course. Please. Come this way.”
He led the big man into his bedroom; after they entered, the door slammed.
I made a clatter of dishes and a rattle of pans, slamming them together and jingling the flatware into cacophonous harmonies, trying to drown out my own thoughts and any sounds which might slide under Guy’s door and slither across the kitchen floor and float up to my ears.
Suppose Guy rejected the man and our plans. He could refuse. Because the white world demonstrated in every possible way that he, a black boy, had to live within the murdering boundaries of racial restrictions, I had raised him to believe that he had a say in the living of his life, and that barring accidents, he should have a say in the dying of his death. And now, so armed, he was able to shape not only his future, but mine as well.
The kitchen was clean, every glass dried and the dishes put away. I sat with a cup of coffee at the kitchen table, controlling the opposing urges to walk without knocking into Guy’s room or grab my purse and haul out the front door, running to Ray’s and a triple Scotch on the rocks.
Laughter from behind the door brought me back to reality. Guy had accepted Vus, which meant I was as good as married and on my way to live in Africa.
They emerged from the room, broad grins stretched their faces. Guy’s high-yellow color was reddened with excitement and Vus looked satisfied.
“Congratulations, Mom.” This time Guy opened his arms offering me safe sanctuary. “I hope this will make you very happy.”
I stood in Guy’s arms and Vus laughed. “Now you’ll have two strong men to take care of. We three will be the only invaders Mother Africa will willingly take to her breast.”
The evening filled with laughter and plans. When Vus left for Manhattan, Guy spoke candidly.
“You would never have been happy with Mr. Allen.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
“Yes, but how? Because he’s a bail bondsman?”
“No, because he didn’t love you.”
“And Mr. Make does?”
“He respects you. And maybe for an African, that’s better than love.”
“You know a lot, huh?” I didn’t try to conceal my pride.
“Yeah. I’m a man.”
—
The next few days glittered, as friends, recovered from shock at my hasty decision, strung out a Mardi Gras of parties. Rosa threw a Caribbean fete, where her African, black American and white liberal friends argued and laughed over plates of her famous rice and beans. Connie and Sam Sutton, an unpretentious intellectual couple, invited academic colleagues to a quiet dinner, which in time turned into a boisterous gathering. All over New York City strangers hugged me, patted my cheeks and praised my courage. Old friends told me I was crazy while struggling to control their admiration and envy.
At the end of the string of parties, Vus and I lef
We sat on the plane holding hands, kissing, seeing our future as a realm of struggle and eternal victory. Vus said we would marry in Oxford, such a pretty little town.
I explained that I wanted to have my mother and son present at my wedding and asked if we could wait. He patted my cheek and said, “Of course. In London we will say we married in America. When we return to New York we will say we married in England. We will have our wedding according to your wishes and whenever you say. I am marrying you this minute. Will you say yes?”
I said yes.
“Then we are married.”
We never mentioned the word marriage again.
CHAPTER 10
London air was damp, its stone buildings old and grey. Colorfully dressed African women on the streets reminded me of tropical birds appearing suddenly in a forest of black trees. Vus and I moved into a one-room apartment which the PAC kept near Finsbury Park.
For the first few days, I was happy to stay in bed after Vus left for the conference. I read, rested and gloated over how well fortune was finally treating me. I had a brilliant and satisfying man, and I was living the high life in London, a mighty long way from Harlem or San Francisco’s Fillmore District. Evenings, Vus entertained me with a concert of stories. His musical accent, his persuasive hands and the musk of his aftershave lotion, hypnotized me into believing I lived beside the Nile and its waters sang my evensong. I stood with Masai shepherds in the Ngorongoro crater, shooing lions away from my sheep with a wave of an elephant hair whisk. Morning love-making and evening recitals lost none of their magic, but the time between the two events began to lengthen. When I told Vus that I was not used to having so much time on my hands, he said he would arrange for me to meet some of the other wives of freedom fighters attending the conference.
Mrs. Oliver Tambo, the wife of the head of the African National Congress, invited me to lunch. The house in Maida Vale was neat and bright, but the sensation of impermanence in the large rooms was so strong that even the cut flowers might have been rented. She welcomed me and the other guests cordially but with only a part of her attention. I didn’t know then that all wives of freedom fighters lived their lives on the edge of screaming desperation.