The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (150 page)

On Sunday, Mrs. Ford came to Dolly’s apartment and typed my handwritten summaries. Dolly read them and declared, “This is as good as or better than anything they print in the darn magazine.”

For Dolly, that was strong talk.

There are some people who are fastidious about the language they use, possibly because of their upbringing. Dolly and I could be alone in an empty apartment, yet if Dolly said “hell,” she always spelled it.

Now she was still irate. She said, “If the editor had enough damned nerve to ask you for that much work in two days, you have enough damned nerve to write the pieces and deliver them in person before noon on Monday.”

On Monday morning I stepped crisply into the office of the
Saturday Review
.

“I have an appointment with Mr. Cousins.”

The receptionist said, hardly looking up, “He’s not here.”

“But I’m supposed to give him some digests. May I see his secretary?”

“She’s not here, either. You can just leave them there.”

She never once really looked at me, but I had the sensation that she had looked and seen right through me. At first glance, I appeared a nice-looking woman in her late thirties, well dressed, carefully coiffed, with more than enough confidence.

But the receptionist knew that I didn’t belong there and she did. To her I was just another colored girl out of my place. Dangerously, her knowledge almost became my knowledge. I laid the pages on the desk and somehow got to the elevator as quickly as possible.

Jimmy Baldwin had visited me the night before and our conversation had turned into a loud row. I was not surprised to hear his voice on the telephone.

“Hey baby, are you busy?”

“Not too busy, why?”

“I’m coming to pick you up. I’ll be in a taxi. I want to talk to you.”

We didn’t speak in the cab. The argument had been over the Black Panthers in general, of whom I approved, and Eldridge Cleaver in particular, who I thought was an opportunist and a batterer.

Jimmy had said, “You can’t separate Cleaver from the Panthers. He is their general.”

I had argued that Huey Newton was the general and Eldridge was a loudmouth foot soldier.

The Black Panthers had earned respect in the African-American community. They had started a school where the students were given free breakfasts and professional tutoring. They were courteous to women and addressed one another with kindness. Even the most arch-conservative privately admired their trim Panthers’ uniforms topped by rakishly worn berets. The people were happy to see them stride through the neighborhood like conquering heroes accepting greetings.

Eldridge had a different air. It was as if he were years older than the
others. When I saw him on television, he seemed more inimical and bitter than the other Panthers. They were angry, enraged and determined to do something about the entrenched racism, but he was aloof and chilly.

Jimmy had said, “Why are you skirting the issue? You don’t like Cleaver because you don’t like what he said about me.”

“That’s true. But that’s not all.”

“Yeah?” He had smiled, and his fine hands flew around in the air like dark birds. He knew me very well. “You can’t stand hearing anyone insult or even talk about your friends.”

I had not responded. Not only was it true, I thought, but it was a good way to be.

When the cab stopped now on Forty-fourth Street, off Broadway, I asked, “We had to come to a transient hotel?”

He paid the driver. “It’s sleazy, I know that, but I used to hang out here years ago. I come here a lot of times when I want to think.” I was pleased that he would want me around while he thought.

It was early afternoon outside, but the dim bar and the reek of spilled beer and urine made me think of midnight in a low-down and dusty dive during prohibition.

Jimmy’s eyes had no more time than mine to grow accustomed to the gloom, but he led me directly to the bar. Obviously he was familiar with the place.

He pulled out a stool. “Baby, you order drinks, I’ve got to make a phone call.”

I ordered two Scotches and thought about the mind’s whimsy. James Baldwin, whose writing challenged the most powerful country in the world, who had sat down with the president and who spoke French as if he had grown up on the streets on Montmartre, came to this dank dive to think.

I was absorbed in thought myself when a person moved too close to me.

“Hello. My name is Buck. Let me buy you a drink.”

I looked up to see a huge man standing about an inch away from me.

I pulled back and said, “Thank you, but I’m with someone.”

He grunted. “Well, he’s not your husband.”

“Oh really, how did you come to that conclusion?” I flinched a second after I asked the question. I really didn’t want him to answer, in case his response would be too telling.

He stuck out his arm and shook his hand on a limp wrist. “He’s one of those, you know.”

“What I do know is that I am with him. So you’d better go to your seat before he comes back.”

Jimmy did walk and gesture with feminine grace, but I couldn’t allow the intruder to get away with his insinuations.

Buck was still talking when Jimmy returned. My eyes had grown used to the light given off by neon signs behind the bar. Jimmy saw the man, sized up the situation and neatly stepped between the offender and me.

He looked up into the intruder’s face. “You’ve been looking after her for me, haven’t you?”

Before Buck could answer, Jimmy said, “Thank you, you son of a bitch. Now you are dismissed.”

Jimmy’s ferocity shocked me, and my jaw dropped. It dropped farther when the man turned, unspeaking, and walked away.

Jimmy sipped his drink. “Well, baby, I’m going to California. I’ve decided that I should help Eldridge Cleaver.”

Hearing his plans kept me speechless.

“I know you say you hate him, but he is a thinking black man, and he is in trouble because he is thinking and is talking about what he thinks. He needs our help.”

I said, “Well, I thought about it, and what he wrote about your homosexuality in his stupid book was so vulgar that I’d rather hang him than help him.”

“Soul on Ice
is a very important book, and you have to remember, the son always kills the father.”

The statement was intriguing. I mulled it over as Jimmy gathered his thoughts.

“I met Richard Wright in Paris and got to know him sufficiently,”
he said. “Everything about Wright that I disliked I wrote about in my essay ‘Alas, Poor Richard.’ Many Wright devotees were as angry with me then as you are now with Eldridge.”

“I’m not a devotee.” I hastened to put myself in a clearer light. “I love you, true, but I’m not a damned devotee. I am a careful reader, and I know the difference between your critical evaluation of Wright’s
post-Black Boy
work and the hatchet job Cleaver did on you. Not on your work but on you, on your character.”

“Maybe he couldn’t find enough about my work to attack. Sometimes people assail the homosexual because they think that by flailing the gay boy, they can reduce that same tendency they suspect in themselves. It’s difficult being different.”

“Well, do you suppose if I know that, it will make it easier for me to see you go to California to help Cleaver?”

“Baby, understand when I say I am going to help Eldridge, and I hope I do, that I am really going for myself. Because it is the right thing for me to do. Understand?”

My own obstinacy would not allow me to concede quickly and admit that I did understand, and that I even hoped that if I found myself in the same or a similar circumstance, I would behave as wisely.

“Understand?”

More at that moment than ever before, he reminded me of Bailey. They were two small black men who were my big brothers.

I said, “I’m just afraid for you out there with those roughnecks.”

“I am a roughneck, too. Grow up. Being black and my size on the streets of Harlem will make a choirboy a roughneck. But do you understand why I’m going?”

I said, “Yes.”

Jerry Purcell’s East Side apartment was the epitome of elegance. I was invited to dinner, and I took Rosa with me. She marveled at the luxury and whispered, “And he’s a bachelor?”

I told her, “Yes.” Years earlier he had fallen for and married a movie starlet, but the marriage didn’t last.

Jerry’s partner, Paul Robinson, who was always at his side, was great company and could have been a professional comedian. Because he reproduced so accurately any accents relevant to his hilarious stories, he was irresistible.

I was pleased that Jerry was there to meet my friend and even more pleased that they seemed to like each other.

Jerry had sent out for food, and his housekeeper served us in the dining room.

Rosa came back from a trip to the bathroom. She whispered to me, “Girl, the faucets are gold.”

I said, “Probably gold plate.”

She lifted her shoulders and asked, “So?”

I saw her point. Anybody wealthy enough to have gold-plated bathroom fixtures was
wealthy
.

Jerry had asked me to bring some poems.

After I read them and received compliments, we played backgammon with much merriment. Jerry nodded at me. “Let me speak to you.”

I followed him into a small sitting room.

“You’re a good poet, and you might become great. You could become bigger than you imagine. Don’t sell out, if I ever hear of you selling out …”

“How could I sell out? To whom would I sell out and what would I sell?”

“I mean, don’t be stupid and use drugs.”

I was flabbergasted. The night, which had been one of laughter and teasing, had turned into a drug-counseling session.

“There is no chance that I will ever use anything. I’ve learned a painful lesson from my brother.”

“Okay. I had to say that. I’ve made a decision. I’m going to give you a monthly allowance. Continue working on your play and writing poetry.”

He patted me on the back, and we returned to the living room. Amazement showed on my face.

Rosa asked, “Are you all right?”

I nodded. “It’s probably time for us to go home.”

Jerry turned to Paul. “Paul, will you drop Maya off when you go? Rosa’s going to stay here a while. That’s all right, Maya? If Paul takes you home?”

I looked at Rosa, who looked at Jerry, then back at me. She said, “I’ll go with Maya,” but the regret in her voice was palpable.

I couldn’t get out of the apartment soon enough.

Paul Robinson said to Rosa, “He really fell for you. And you seemed to find him interesting.”

Rosa said, “He’s a nice man. I like him.”

I asked, “But when did you know you liked him? I hardly heard you say two words to each other.”

Rosa said, “I could be wrong, but I think I like him. No, I know I do.”

There is a language learned in the womb that never needs interpreters. It is a frictional electricity that runs between people. It carries the pertinent information without words.

Its meanings are “I find you are incredibly attractive. I can hardly keep my hands off your body.

“And I am crazy to touch you, to kiss your mouth, your eyes.”

The couple may have been introduced in a cathedral or a temple, but these are among the luscious thoughts each body sends to the other.

Some folks are born with more of that idiom than others. My body has always been slow-witted when it comes to that language. It neither speaks it fluently nor comprehends it clearly.

The African was back. He telephoned from Ghana.

“I am not coming for you this time. You had your chances. Many chances. Now I am convinced that you do not love Africa. You do not love Ghana. I am not coming for you. I am coming to teach at one of your important universities. But I will bring you something. You are so American now. Would you like a car?”

His voice was so loud, he hardly needed a telephone.

I asked, “Why would you bring a car from Ghana? I’m living in New York. That is just down the street from Detroit. That’s where they make cars.”

“Maya, your tongue is too sharp, I’ve told you time and time again. You must watch out for your tongue.”

But my tongue was all I had, all I had ever had. He had the stature, the money, his country, his sex, and now he was coming to my country to teach in an “important university” where I had never been. When it came to parrying, he had his armament, but I also had my weapon.

“I shall stay with the second secretary, who has a place near the United Nations, but I’d like to see you. Just for two hours. I’d like to invite some people I’ve not seen since my last visit.” (I doubted that Dolly would be among the group.)

“How many should I prepare for?”

“Few. I think about ten.”

That meant at least twenty.

“I’d be pleased to have them in my place.”

“Then it’s done. My host will bring me, so I suppose that makes us twelve. You can accommodate twelve?”

“Well, of course, when are you planning to come?” I expected to hear him say within the next month or so.

He said, “I’m traveling tomorrow. I’ll spend a day in the U.K. and I’ll be in New York on Friday. Can you see me then?”

“Um, yes. Yes. Of course.” There would be time.

“Around three?”

“Three is fine.”

A smile slowly moved across my face. I hugged myself with delight and telephoned Dolly.

We splurged on a bottle of good Spanish sherry and sat in her living room.

She said, “Of course he would never imagine that we’d meet.”

I told her, “He’s coming with some diplomats. We shall have to be careful.”

She said, “I know you don’t want to embarrass him.”

“I certainly do want to embarrass him, but to himself, not to others.”

Dolly grinned. I said, “I don’t want to put his whole business in the street, but I have to get him back for ‘She is an old American Negro who lets rooms …’ ”

Dolly said, “What about ‘She is very, very old but very intelligent,’ after whispering in my ear that I was very beautiful and that I had the skin of a young country girl?”

“He said that?”