The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (102 page)

The Harlem Writers Guild members and Abbey listened attentively to my description of Africans in London. They nodded, appreciating the freedom fighters’ dedication. They smiled at me, proud that I had been so close to the motherland.

Before Vus returned, I painted the kitchen and put brightly colored wallpaper in the bathroom. The apartment was crisp and elegant.

Vus came home like a soldier returning from a conquered battlefield. His sagas of Cairo were heroic. He had drunk coffee with President Nasser and talked privately with his assistant. Egyptian officials supported the African struggle for freedom, and soon he would take Guy and me to live in Cairo. Excitement shook away Guy’s just-forming adult postures. He jumped up, wiggling.

“We’re going to Egypt? I’ll see the pyramids? Boy, I’m going to be riding camels and everything.”

Vus chuckled, happy to be the cause of such elation. Guy finally took his thrills to bed and I rushed into Vus’s waiting arms.

—

The next morning my interior decorating met with stony disapproval. The old sofa was wrong for a man in my husband’s position and the secondhand-store bedroom set definitely had to go.

“I am an African. Even a man sleeping in the bush will lay fresh leaves on the ground. I will not sleep on a bed other men have used.”

I didn’t ask him what he did in hotels. Certainly he didn’t call the manager and say, “I want a brand-new mattress. I am an African.”

I said, “But if we’re going to Egypt we shouldn’t buy new furniture.”

He answered, “The things we buy will be of such quality they will have a high resale value. And anyway, we’re not moving immediately.”

I followed him meekly around a furniture store where he selected an expensive bed, a teak coffee table and a giant brown leather sofa.

He paid in cash, pulling bills from a large roll of money. The source of Vus’s money was a mystery. He evaded my questions with the agility of an impala. There was nothing for me to do but relax and accept
that he knew what he was doing. My son and I were in his care and he looked after us well. He was an attentive father, making solo visits to Guy’s school and sitting with him late evenings over textbooks. They laughed often and affectionately together. When other Africans visited, Vus would insist that Guy sit in on the unending debates over violence and nonviolence, the role of religion in Africa, the place and the strength of women in the struggle. I tried to overhear their interesting conversations, but generally I was too busy with household chores to take the time.

It seemed to me that I washed, scrubbed, mopped, dusted and waxed thoroughly every other day. Vus was particular. He checked on my progress. Sometimes he would pull the sofa away from the wall to see if possibly I had missed a layer of dust. If he found his suspicions confirmed, his response could wither me. He would drop his eyes and shake his head, his face saddened with disappointment. I wiped down the walls, because dirty fingerprints could spoil his day, and ironed his starched shirts (he had his shoes polished professionally).

Each meal at home was a culinary creation. Chicken Kiev and feijoda, Eggs Benedict and Turkey Tetrazzini.

A good woman put ironed sheets on the beds and matched the toilet paper to the color of the bathroom tile.

I was unemployed but I had never worked so hard in all my life. Monday nights at the Harlem Writers Guild challenged my control. Heavy lids closed my eyes and the best reading of the best writing could not hold my exhausted attention.

“A bride, you know.” Everyone would laugh, except Rosa, who knew how hard I was trying to be a good housewife.

“That African’s got her jumping.” Hands clapped at the humor of it all. But they were speaking more truth then they knew. When I wasn’t home tired I was as tight as a fist balled up in anger. My nerves were like soldiers on dress parade, sharp, erect and at attention.

We were living luxuriously but I didn’t know how much cash we had, nor could I be sure that the bills were paid. Since I had been sixteen, except for three married years between, I had made and spent my own money.

Now I was given a liberal food and house allowance and a little cash for personal expenditure (taxis and Tampax). Vus collected and paid the bills. The novelty was not amusing and my heart was not at peace.

Members of the South Africa United Front were invited to India to meet Krishna Menon. When Vus left I fumbled around the house for a few days, seeing no one but Guy, trying to accommodate an uncomfortable sense of uselessness. When every window was polished and every closet as orderly as department-store racks, I decided to go to Abbey’s house. The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear.

“He doesn’t want me to work, but I don’t know what’s going on and it’s making me feel crazy.”

Abbey brushed the nap of her long-haired sofa. “You wanted a man, Maya Angelou. You’ve got one.” She just didn’t know how seriously upset I was.

“But, Ab, I didn’t give over my entire life. You know that’s not right.”

She locked her jaws and stared at me for a long time. When she spoke, her voice was hard and angry. “A man’s supposed to be in charge. That’s the order of nature.” She was raising an argument which we had debated for years.

My position had always been that no one was responsible for my life except me. I was responsible for Guy only until he reached maturity, and then he had to take control of his own existence. Of course, no man had ever tried to persuade me differently by offering the security of his protection. “Well, then, I must be outside of nature. ’Cause I can’t stand not knowing where my air is coming from.”

Abbey made a clucking sound with her tongue, and said, “The worst injury of slavery was that the white man took away the black man’s chance to be in charge of himself, his wife and his family. Vus is teaching you that you’re not a man, no matter how strong you are. He’s going to make you into an African woman. Just watch it.” She dismissed the discussion and me. But she didn’t know the African women I had met in London or the legendary women in the African stories. I
wanted to be a wife and to create a beautiful home to make my man happy, but there was more to life than being a diligent maid with a permanent pussy.

The Cultural Association for Women of African Heritage had its second meeting at Abbey’s luxury penthouse apartment on Columbus Avenue. Several weeks before, we had agreed on a charter, a policy statement and a name: CAWAH. It sounded exotic. We agreed. The newly founded organization included dancers, teachers, singers, writers and musicians. Our intention was to support all black civil rights groups. The charter, as drawn up by Sarah Wright and signed unanimously by the membership, stated that since the entire power of the United States was arrayed in fury against the very existence of the Afro-Americans, we, members of CAWAH, would offer ourselves to raise money for, promote and publicize any gathering sincerely engaged in developing a just society. It further stated that our members, multitalented, would agree, after an assenting vote, to perform dance concerts, song fests, fashion shows and general protest marches.

Abbey’s living room filled with strident voices. Should we or should we not insist that every member show her commitment to being black by wearing unstraightened hair. Abbey, Rosa and I already wore the short-cut natural, but it was the other women, with tresses hanging down like horse’s manes, who argued that the naturals should be compulsory.

“I’ve made an appointment for next Friday. I’m having all this shit cut off because I believe that I should let the world know that I’m proud to be black.” The woman placed her hands on the back of her neck and lifted years of hair growth.

I said, “I don’t agree.” I would miss seeing her long black pageboy.

Abbey said, “I don’t agree either. Hair is a part of woman’s glory.
She ought to wear it any way she wants to. You don’t get out of one trick bag by jumping into another. I wear my hair like this because I like it and Max likes it. But I’d dye it green if I thought it would look better.”

We all laughed and put that discussion aside, addressing ourselves to plans for an immense fashion show based on an African theme and showing African designs. Abbey said, “In Harlem, I’m sick of black folks meeting in white hotels to talk about how rotten white folks are.” So Rosa and I were assigned to find a suitable auditorium for the affair.

Rosa and I met on 125th Street and the first thing she said was “Lumumba is dead.” She continued in a horror-constricted voice, saying that she had learned of the assassination from Congolese diplomats, but that there would be no announcement until the coming Friday when Adlai Stevenson, the United States delegate to the United Nations, would break the news.

I said nothing. I knew no words which would match the emptiness of the moment. Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah and Sékou Touré were the Holy African Triumvirate which radical black Americans held dear, and we needed our leaders desperately. We had been abused, and so long abused, that the loss of one hero was a setback of such proportion it could dishearten us and weaken the struggle.

We were walking aimlessly, in a fog, when the sound of people talking, moving, shouting, broke into our stupor. We allowed ourselves to be drawn to the corner where the Nation of Islam was holding a mass meeting.

The street corner wriggled with movement as white policemen nervously guarded the intersection. A rapt crowd had pushed as close as possible to the platform where Malcolm X stood flanked by a cadre of well-dressed solemn men. Television crews on flatbed trucks angled their cameras at the crowded dais.

Malcolm stood at the microphone.

“Every person under the sound of my voice is a soldier. You are either fighting for your freedom or betraying the fight for freedom or enlisted in the army to deny somebody else’s freedom.”

His voice, deep and textured, reached through the crowd, across the street to the tenement windows where listeners leaned half their bodies out into the spring air.

“The black man has been programmed to die. To die either by his own hand, the hand of his brother or at the hand of a blue-eyed devil trained to do one thing: take the black man’s life.”

The crowd agreed noisily. Malcolm waited for quiet. “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad offers the only possible out for the black man. Accept Allah as the creator, Muhammad as His Messenger and the White American as the devil. If you don’t believe he’s a devil, look how he’s made your life a hell.”

Black people yelled and swayed. Policemen patted their unbuttoned holsters.

Rosa and I nodded at each other. The Muslim tirade was just what we needed to hear. Malcolm thrilled us with his love and understanding of black folks and his loathing of whites and their cruelty.

Unable to get close to the platform, we pushed ourselves into Mr. Micheaux’s bookshop and watched and listened in the doorway.

“Talk, Malcolm.”

Malcolm roared back, his face a golden-yellow in the sun, his hair rusty-red.

“If you want to live at any cost, say nothing but ‘yes, sir’ and do nothing except bow and scrape and bend your knees to the devil. But if you want your freedom, you’d better study the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and start respecting your women. Straighten out your home affairs and stop cheating on your wives. You know who you’re really cheating?”

Female voices shot up like arrows over the crowd. “Tell these fools, brother Malcolm.” “Tell them to stop acting like little boys.” “Explain it. Explain it on down.” “Break it down.”

Malcolm took a breath and leaned toward the microphone. “You are cheating your fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers and-you-are-cheating-Allah.”

A man on the platform lifted his hands, showing copper palms, and chanted in Arabic.

After a burst of applause, Malcolm paused and looked solemnly at the crowd. People stopped moving; the air became still. When he spoke again his tone was soft and sweet.

“Some of you think there are good whites, don’t you? Some good white folks you’ve worked for, or worked with or went to school with or even married. Don’t you?”

The listeners exchanged a grumble of denial.

Malcolm continued speaking low, nearly whispering. “There are whites who give money to the SCLC, the NAACP and the Urban League. Some even go so far as to march with you in the streets. But let me tell you who they are. Any white American who says he’s your friend is either weak”—he waited for the word to have its effect and when he spoke again his voice growled—“or he’s an infiltrator. Either he’ll be too scared to help you when you need help or he’s getting close to you so he can find out your plans and deliver you back in chains to his brothers.”

The street corner exploded with sound as anger and recognition collided. When Malcolm finished speaking the crowd yelled their approval of the fire-hot leader. Rosa and I waited in the bookstore until most of the people left the corner.

We walked without speaking to Frank’s Restaurant. Again there was no need to talk. Malcolm’s words were harsh, but too close to the bitter truth to argue. Our people were alone. As always, alone. We could not expect protection from whites even if they happened to be our relatives. Slave-owning fathers had sold black sons and daughters. White sisters had put their black sisters in slave coffles for a price.

Rosa and I drank at the bar, not looking at each other.

“What can we do?”

“What do you think?” Rosa turned to me sadly as if I had failed her. She had been counting on me to be intelligent. She continued, frowning, “What the shit do you think? We’ve got to move. We’ve got to let the Congolese and all the other Africans know that we are with them. Whether we come from New York City or the South or from the West Indies, that black people are a people and we are equally oppressed.”

I ordered another drink.

The only possible action that occurred to me was to call the members of CAWAH and throw the idea out for open discussion. Among us we would find something to do. Something large enough to awaken the black American community in New York.