Mom & Me & Mom (13 page)

When she arrived she explained to me that Mrs. Stein was the widow of Leo Stein, who was the brother of Gertrude Stein. They had lived in Paris and collected great art in the early part of the twentieth century. Mr. and Mrs. Stein had come back to San Francisco, where he died.

Her family had taken an apartment for their mother. All the employees hired to look after her were carefully selected and bonded. Mrs. Stein, in her generosity and lack of memory, was apt to give
pieces of art to her employees, who were informed to telephone the estate executor and report the gift. The executor would have the art picked up and put away. But her family let the rest of the art remain with her until she gave it away.

My mother said that was the expression of intelligence and love. Mrs. Stein’s family knew that the art on the walls was more real to her than they themselves. Its presence in the apartment gave her assurance that she existed and that her existence was important.

Winter in Stockholm is hardly bearable. The cold assails the body and the darkness assaults the soul. The sun rises in the winter or attempts to rise at least by 10
A.M
. By three in the afternoon it returns shamefully to the dark, and it rests there until the next morning, around ten, when it tries again to shine.

I was in Stockholm because a screenplay of mine was being shot there. The music I was writing for the screenplay was to be recorded in the Swedish Radio studios.

The stars of the film were well-known American stage actors, and a couple of movie actors were also in the cast.

The play was about an African American nightclub singer who was the toast of Europe. I based her character on the personality of Eartha Kitt. The actress who played the role was not a singer, so I wrote music for her that she could simply speak on pitch,
much as Rex Harrison had spoken his lines in
My Fair Lady
. The actress came to my apartment in New York City to thank me. She thanked me for making it possible for her to take the lead because I had written simple music that she didn’t have to sing. I had also written a character role for the actor Roscoe Lee Browne, but it had to go to another actor because Browne was making a film, starring John Wayne.

I went to Stockholm to meet the director and film crew. I was sitting in my hotel lobby when a young African American man saw me and ran over. He got down on his knees. “Maya Angelou, you are really so great. You really are our Shakespeare, and I thank you for this chance. I am going to do it well and you are going to be proud of me.”

I said to him, “Don’t kneel, please. Sometimes people put people on pedestals so they can see them more clearly and knock them off more easily. Get up.”

“No, I want you to know I think you are our Shakespeare.”

I said, “Oh, please don’t. If you stay on your knees, I will get down there and if you lie out prone, I will lie down on the rug.” Fortunately he believed me and got up.

The cast and crew had gathered. A Swedish director had been chosen. I accompanied him in the
search for locations. The shooting began. The star, as written, was a true glamour queen. Her makeup was professionally applied and the luxuriant wigs she wore floated around her face. As the story progressed, from time to time she would remove the wig. She was quite wonderful to look at. Beneath her wigs, her hair was in braided cornrows, a style often worn by African American women. None of the Swedish beauticians knew how to plait cornrows. I was obliged to go to the set on early mornings to braid the star’s hair. I appreciated the opportunity, since I could see how films were made. I developed a new ambition. I wanted to direct a movie. Every day I went to the location eager to learn more.

By the third week I began to understand about the setting up of lights and I saw how cameras could be switched to cover scenes. In 1972, I didn’t know anyplace in the United States where a forty-year-old black woman could learn filmmaking and I was happy that I had happened upon my chance.

At the beginning of the fourth week, the star told the director that when I was on the set she got nervous. She couldn’t act if she was nervous. Sorry, but she didn’t want me on the set. The director, who, I gathered, had never before even shaken a black person’s hand, must have felt caught between the Mississippi
and the North Sea. He took the easy way out and asked me to come to the set only to braid her hair and then leave.

The next week, the actor who was playing the role I had written for Roscoe Lee Browne decided he had to return to New York. He was going home because he claimed the company had supplied real jewelry for the star and they had only given him zircons. He said he didn’t come to Sweden to be treated like a second-class citizen. I went to his hotel and found him in his suite with a number of Swedish friends. His packed bags were in the hall.

I spoke to him. “Please, what are you doing? You realize we have shot four weeks. This is the first time that any black woman has ever had a screenplay done by a major company. We can’t afford to send for another actor to come for that role. You said you wanted to do it.”

“Who in the hell do you think you are, Shakespeare?”

I lowered my voice. “May I speak to you in your bedroom?”

He lifted his eyes, screwed up his face, mugging for his friends, and then agreed to come into the bedroom. As soon as I closed the door I knelt. “I am doing something very dangerous. I have gotten on
my knees to you.” I said, “Please, I beg you to consider.” He told me what I could do to myself, which was a sexual impossibility.

I stood up and became Vivian Baxter. I said, “Thank you for that, you silly ass! Now I will stay up all night and all day, and I will rewrite the rest of your role out of the script. I will have you run over by a Swedish bus. I promise you I will make the audience applaud when you die.”

He sobered quickly. “Listen, I didn’t mean that, Maya. I just wanted to see how serious you were about wanting me.” He went out into the hall and got his bags and brought them back in.

I went back to my hotel and called my mother. I didn’t use “Lady” or “Mother.” “Mom, I need mothering. If you have ever done any, I need it now. I am sending you a check, and as soon as you get it please book a flight and come to Stockholm.”

She said, “Baby, if any plane is leaving San Francisco today for Sweden, I will be on it. You pick me up tomorrow morning at the Stockholm airport.”

I knew that if she said she was coming, she was coming. At eleven o’clock I asked Jack Jordan, one of the film’s producers, to accompany me to the Stockholm airport. We went to the airport bar and while we waited, we drank and drank, until finally Jack had to be sent back to his hotel.

I sat at the airport waiting for my mother to mother me. The plane arrived at last and I went to the area where I could see my little mother come down the steps, tipping in her high-heeled shoes. She was in her typical Vivian Baxter dress, carrying her sable stole, and her sparkling diamonds were flashing. I waved at her and she waved back with a little military salute. As soon as she was through security, we embraced.

“Let me get your bags.”

“No. Have somebody pick them up and keep them for us. You take me to the bar. I see you know where it is.” So, of course, I took her to the bar. My mother said to the bartender, “Give my daughter a Scotch and water, whether she needs it or not. I will also have a Scotch and water. You have whatever you like, and give everybody in this place a drink.”

My smart, glamorous, sophisticated mother sat back in her stool. As usual she was in charge. She turned around and faced me directly. “Baby, let me tell you something: A horse needs a tail more than one season.” What on earth did that mean? I sent for her because I needed her desperately and she arrived with this completely befuddling wisdom. I asked, “Please say that again.”

“A horse needs a tail more than one season. You see, a horse that thinks once summer is over it can get
rid of the appendage stuck on the back of its butt, which it doesn’t even have to look at, is a damned fool. If the horse lives, spring will come and the flies will be back, and the flies will begin worrying the horse. When the flies aggravate the horse’s eyes and the ears, the horse would give anything for just a minute’s peace.

“Baby, now they are treating you as if you are a horse’s ass. Let me tell you something. All you have to do is get your work done. If these people live, they will come back to you. They may have forgotten how badly they treated you, or they may pretend that they have forgotten. But watch: They will come back to you. In the meantime, Mother is here. I will look after you and I will look after anybody you say needs to be looked after, any way you say. I am here. I brought my whole self to you. I am your mother.”

I sublet an apartment so that we could be comfortable. My mother stayed with me for the entire shooting of the movie.

Each morning I went to the location to braid the star’s hair. And each morning, until I finished, the crew would hold up action. They would not hang lights nor arrange cameras. The director and the actors stood together in silence until I left. For the first few days after Mother’s arrival, I used all my control to hold back the tears. Slowly, I allowed my mother’s
presence to strengthen me. And as I crossed the little lawn adjacent to our building, I would see my mother standing in the window with a cup in her hand and a big smile on her face. I would take the glass elevator up to her floor, and my mother would greet me with a steaming hot cup of coffee.

She said the same thing every morning, “Hi, baby, come in. Here’s some coffee and a kiss for you.” Having her there kissing me, offering me coffee, made me feel like a little girl, like allowing me to sit in her lap. She stroked my shoulders and stroked my back and murmured to me. I stopped feeling sorry for myself.

Mother learned where the shops were. Sometimes she would ask me to accompany her. She found her way around the area. She asked if there were any likable cast members. When I said yes, she said I could invite them.

My mother made fried chicken, mashed potatoes, greens, cabbage, or kale. She would always buy a dessert. The bar was always stocked. She was a raconteur and would entertain my friends as if they were her friends. My mother was irresistible (when she wanted to be) and everyone fell in love with her when she wanted them to.

I noticed after a while, on the set, people started treating me differently. At first it was a little off-putting.
The star began to smile more frequently at me when I was braiding her hair. The man who had threatened to run away, to leave us in a lurch, was back saying what a great writer I was and how honored he was. I began to wonder what made them change. I had not done anything unusual for them. Their salaries had not been increased, and the time they owed to the shooting of the film had not been decreased.

One morning as I was leaving, the director said I didn’t have to leave the set anymore. What happened? Why did they change their ways of treating me? I came to the realization that it was because I had a mother. My mother spoke highly of me, and to me. But more important, whether they met her or simply heard about her, she was there with me. She had my back, supported me. This is the role of the mother, and in that visit I really saw clearly, and for the first time, why a mother is really important. Not just because she feeds and also loves and cuddles and even mollycoddles a child, but because in an interesting and maybe an eerie and unworldly way, she stands in the gap. She stands between the unknown and the known. In Stockholm, my mother shed her protective love down around me and without knowing why people sensed that I had value.

I never stayed at the shoot after I finished braiding the star’s hair. I counted on luck giving me another chance to learn moviemaking.

Mother understood. She said, “You’re my daughter. Don’t take tea for the fever. You are your own woman.”

After we wrapped the music, I began to think about my mother as a seaman. She had shipped from San Francisco to Hawaii to Tahiti, to Bora-Bora and on to New Zealand. She knew the Pacific but she had no knowledge of Europe. I asked her if she would come with me to Paris and then to London, and maybe sail the Atlantic back to New York City. She said she would be delighted. The thought of taking my mother to Europe somehow liberated me from my fear of flying.

I found a flight that left Stockholm for Paris and came with a one-week stay at a modest hotel. We would spend a few days in Paris and go on to London, then sail back to New York. From there Mother would continue on to California.

We said our farewells to friends in Stockholm and boarded the plane. We were both smokers at the time, so we sat in that section. The doors closed and the
plane took off. I noticed that no one said, “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. We are now closing the doors.” I thought, Maybe this is how Swedish airlines do things. We were aloft when screens dropped from the ceiling. They informed passengers, “Smoking,” “No Smoking,” but still no one spoke.

We had been aloft about ten minutes when two cabin attendants came bowing down the aisle. When the signboards receded into the ceiling and the attendants began to speak in sign language, my mother and I looked at each other and at the same moment realized that we had gotten onto a plane full of deaf people. We were amazed and started laughing.

When the attendants came by, my mother said, “Excuse me.”

Shocked, the cabin attendant said, “You’re talking!”

Mother said, “Oh yes, and I’m listening, too.”

The attendant hurried away without finding out what my mother wanted. She told the other cabin attendants that two of us were talkers. I supposed she alerted them so they would not be too shocked.

My mother and I ordered drinks and had a very nice time laughing and smoking, enjoying each other. When we arrived in Paris, we disembarked from the plane and a uniformed attendant began communicating
in sign language to the other passengers. Neither Mother nor I could understand. I went up to the attendant and said, “Good afternoon. My mother and I don’t speak the language.”