The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (105 page)

Rosa’s voice came to me as we went through the revolving doors. “Be careful, Maya.”

The lobby was busy with police, guards and milling white men. Although my escort was pushing me quickly toward the bank of elevators, I had time to look at the building’s directory. Above the eleventh-floor listing of the Belgian Consulate were the words
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY, 10TH FLOOR.
A flat, florid police officer stepped in front of me and my companion.

“Where are you going?”

The
tsotsi
spoke. “None of your goddam business.”

I poked his side and said sweetly, “I’m going to the American Book Company.”

The cop and the
tsotsi
stared knowingly at each other. Loathing ran between the two men like an electrical current.

“And you. Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m going with her. Every step of the way.”

The cop heard the challenge and narrowed his eyes and I heard the protection and felt like a little girl. The pudgy cop followed us to the elevators and I pushed the tenth-floor button, holding on to the black man’s hand. The ride was tense and quick. We walked out into the hall and turned to watch the officer’s face until the doors closed.

I said, “Let’s find the stairs.”

Around the corner we saw the exit sign.

“Buddy, you go through and let the door close, then see if you can open it again.”

He walked out onto the landing and waited until the door slammed shut. I stepped back as he turned the knob and opened the door from his side.

“Come on. Let’s get up there.”

We raced up the steps to the eleventh floor. He grabbed the knob, but the door wouldn’t open.

“That cracker cop. He beat us to it. Stay here.”

He turned and trotted up another flight. I heard him mutter. “This damn door is locked too.”

He came down the steps heavily.

“What you wanna do now?”

I couldn’t think at the moment. I had only a vague plan to reach the eleventh floor and “see about Carlos.” My mind had not budged beyond the possibility of achieving that feat. I looked stupidly at Buddy, who was waiting for an answer. After a few seconds, my voice surfaced. “I guess there’s nothing else to do but go back to the street. I’m sorry.”

I expected to see disgust or at least derision on my accomplice’s face, but he displayed no emotion.

“All right, sister. Let’s go.”

We walked back down to the tenth floor and I pushed the door, but it resisted. I must have gasped, because he pushed me aside and grabbed the knob. “Let me do it.” He took the knob and leaned his body against the metal panel, but the door wouldn’t give. Panic accelerated my blood. Like an idiot I had given myself to death. The cops could open the door any minute and blow my brains out. No one would see and no one would be able to protect me. I saw an image of my son in his classroom. Who would tell him, and how would he handle the news? My new husband would receive a telegram in India. What would he think of a wife so frivolous as to commit suicide? My poor mother … The man beside me, whom fear had caused me to forget, took my shoulders in his hands.

“Sister. Sister. You ain’t got nothin’ to worry about. I’m here.”

He released me and stood on the landing’s edge. “They’ll have to walk over my dead body to get to you.”

Buddy ran down the steps. I heard him stop on the ninth floor, then his footsteps descended and stopped again and again. In a few seconds he called, “Sister Maya, come on. I got a door. Come on.” I met him on the sixth-floor landing. My heart was fluttering so I could hardly catch my breath. The hallway and the elevator looked to me like Canada must have to escaping slaves. We were in the lobby before my embarrassment returned. My hand on his arm turned him around. “Buddy, I apologize for panicking a while ago. I’m going to tell my husband about you.”

He looked at me, and shook his head. “Sister, in this country a Negro is always about to get killed, so that ain’t nothing. But you tell your husband that a black man was ready to lay down his life for you. That’s all.”

He took my elbow and guided me past the still-waiting police and to the door. I walked right into Rosa’s arms.

“Girl, what happened? Carlos came out just after you went in. A bunch of us were getting ready to go get you.” We hugged tightly. I said, “Rosa, you’ve got to meet this brother,” but when I turned to introduce Buddy, he had disappeared into the thinning crowd.

Rosa continued, “You were in there nearly twenty minutes.” That was astounding news. I had been bold, blatant and audacious. I had been silly, irresponsible and unprepared. My body had been enclosed with panic and my mind immobilized with fear. A stranger had shown the courage of Vivian Baxter and the generosity of Jesus. And all that had happened in twenty minutes.

Television and radio reporters were walking among the remaining protesters seeking interviews.

One woman spoke into a microphone. “Yes, we’re mad. You people pick us off like we’re jack rabbits. You dad-gummed right, we’re mad.” A man walking behind her added, “Lumumba was in the Congo. The Congo is in Africa and we’re Africans. You get that?”

CAWAH members had agreed to make no public statements, so we turned our faces when the journalists approached. The line of marchers was exhausted. People had begun to peel away. Their shoulders sagged and they walked heavily. They knew that their latest protest had done no good. They had been Joshua’s band, shouting and screaming, singing and yelling at the walls, but Jericho had remained upright, unchanged.

That night I went to Rosa’s for dinner and to watch the evening news. The cameras caught black bodies hurtling out of the U.N. doors, and marchers chanting along 46th Street.

Angry faces in profile glided across the screen, shouting accusations. When an unknown, well-dressed man came into view, and
speaking pompously, said that he took full responsibility for the demonstration, Jean responded by calling him a sap sucker and turning off the television.

The echo of the day’s excitement and the wonder of CAWAH’s power to bring all those people from Harlem kept us quiet for a few minutes. When conversation did return we talked about our next moves. The day had proven that Harlem was in commotion and the rage was beyond the control of the NAACP, the SCLC or the Urban League. The fury would turn on itself if it was not outwardly directed. There would be an increase of stabbings and shootings as black people assaulted each other, discharging tension, and blindly looking for a surcease of pained lives.

Rosa and I said, “the Black Muslims” and grinned, because we thought alike and at the same time. Of course, the Muslims, with their exquisite discipline and their absolute stand on black-white relations, would know how to control and use the ferment in Harlem. We should go straight to Malcolm X and lay the situation in his lap. It would be interesting to see what he would do. And it would be a relief to shift the responsibility.

The next day, Guy jumped with excitement. “Mom, you’re great. Really great. I wish I had been there. Boy, I wish I could have seen Stevenson’s face. Boy, that’s fantastic.”

John Killens phoned. “Why didn’t you let me know you people were going to have a riot? I’m always ready for a riot. You know that, angel.”

When I explained that we had only expected a few people, he grunted and said we had fallen into the same trick bag whites are in. We underestimated the black community.

Two days later, Rosa and I walked into the Muslim Restaurant. Making the appointment had been the easiest part. I simply telephoned the Mosque and asked if Mr. Malcolm X could spare a half-hour for two black ladies. After a brief pause I was given a time and a place. Putting my thoughts in respectable order was more difficult, because after I knew Malcolm would see us I became appalled at our presumption.

We told a waitress that we had come to see Mr. Malcolm X. She nodded and walked away, disappearing through a door at the end of the long counter. We stood nervously in the center of the room. In a moment Malcolm appeared at the rear door. His aura was too bright and his masculine force affected me physically. A hot desert storm eddied around him and rushed to me, making my skin contract, and my pores slam shut. He approached, and all my brain would do for me was record his coming. I had never been so affected by a human presence.

Watching Malcolm X on television or even listening to him speak on a podium had been no preparation for meeting him face to face.

“Ladies,
Salaam aleikum.”
His voice was black baritone and musical. Rosa shook hands, and I was able to nod dumbly. Up close he was a great red arch through which one could pass to eternity. His hair was the color of burning embers and his eyes pierced. He offered us a chair at a table and asked a nervous waitress for tea, which she brought in trembling cups.

Rosa was more contained than I, so she began explaining our mission. The sound of her voice helped me to shake loose the constriction of muteness. I joined the telling, and we distributed our story equally, like the patter of a long-time vaudeville duo.

“We—CAWAH …”

“Cultural Association of Women of African Heritage.”

“Wanted to protest the murder of Lumumba so we—”

“Planned a small demonstration. We didn’t expect—”

“More than fifty people—”

“And thousands came.”

“That told us that the people of Harlem are angry and that they are more for Africa and Africans”

“than they ever let on …”

Malcolm was leaning back in his chair, his chin tilted down, his attention totally ours. He straightened abruptly.

“We know of the demonstration, but Muslims were not involved. New York
Times
reporters telephoned me and I told them, ‘Muslims do not demonstrate.’ And I’ll tell you this, you were wrong.”

Rosa and I looked at each other. Malcolm X, as the most radical
leader in the country, was our only hope, and if he didn’t approve of our action then maybe we had misunderstood everything.

“You were wrong in your direction.” He continued speaking and looking straight into our eyes. “The people of Harlem are angry. And they have reason to be angry. But going to the United Nations, shouting and carrying placards will not win freedom for anyone, nor will it keep the white devils from killing another African leader. Or a black American leader.”

“But”—Rosa was getting angry—“what were we supposed to do? Nothing? I don’t agree with that.” She had more nerve than I.

“The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that integration is a trick. A trick to lull the black man to sleep. We must separate ourselves from the white man, this immoral white man and his white religion. It is a hypocrisy practiced by Christian hypocrites.”

He continued. White Christians were guilty. Portuguese Catholic priests had sprinkled holy water on slave ships, entreating God to give safe passage to the crews and cargoes on journeys across the Atlantic. American slave owners had used the Bible to prove that God wanted slavery, and even Jesus Christ had admonished slaves to “render unto their masters” obedience. As long as the black man looked to the white man’s God for his freedom, the black man would remain enslaved.

I tried not to show my disappointment.

“Thank you. Thank you for your time. Mr. X—oh, I don’t know your last name. I mean, how should you be addressed?”

“I am Minister Malcolm. My last name is Shabazz. But just call me Minister Malcolm.”

Rosa had stood, irritation on her face.

Malcolm said, “I know you’re disappointed.” His voice had softened and for a time the Islamic preacher disappeared. “I’ll tell you this. By twelve o’clock, some Negro leaders are going to be like Peter in your Christian Bible. They will deny you. There will be statements given to the press, not only refuting what you did, but they will add that you are dangerous and probably Communists. Those Negroes”—he said the word sarcastically—“think they’re different from you and that the white man loves them for their difference. They will sell you
again and again into slavery. Now, here’s what we, the Nation of Islam, will not do. We will not ask the people of Harlem to march anywhere at any time. We will not send black men and black women and black children before armed and crazy white devils, and we will not deny you. We will do two things. We will offer them the religion of Islam the Prophet Muhammad and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. And we will make a statement to the press. I will say that yesterday’s demonstration is symbolic of the anger in this country. That black people were saying they will not always say ‘yessir’ and ‘please, sir.’ And they will not always allow whites to spit on them at lunch counters in order to eat hot dogs and drink Coca-Colas.” He stood; our audience was over. Suddenly he was aloof and cool, his energy withdrawn. He said,
“Salaam aleikum” and
turned to join a few men who had been waiting for him at the counter.

We left the restaurant in a fog of defeat. Black despair was still real, the murders would continue and we had just used up our last resource. When Rosa and I embraced at the subway there was no elation in our parting.

That evening the radio, television and newspapers bore out Malcolm’s predictions.

Conservative black leaders spoke out against us. “That ugly demonstration was carried out by an irresponsible element and does not reflect the mood of the larger black community.”

“No good can come from yesterday’s blatant disrespect at the U.N.” “It was undignified and unnecessary.”

Malcolm X was as good as his word. He said, “Black people are letting white Americans know that the time is coming for ballots or bullets. They know it is useless to ask their enemy for justice. And surely whites are the enemies of blacks, otherwise how did we get to this country in the first place?”

Vus was back in New York, a little heavier and more distracted. He said the Indian curries had been irresistible and his meetings succeeded but raised new questions which he had to handle at once. He was out of the house early and came home long after dark. Guy was engaged in the mysteries which surround fifteen-year-old boys: The cunning way girls were made. The delicious agony of watching them walk. The painful knowledge that not one of the beauteous creatures would allow herself to be held and touched. Except for the refrigerator, the telephone was his only important link to life. One morning I realized that weeks had passed since I had participated in a conversation with anyone. When Max invited me over to read a script with Abbey, I accepted gladly. He had composed the music for Jean Genet’s play,
The Blacks
, which was to open Off-Broadway in the late spring. When I walked into their apartment, a small group of musicians was tuning up beside the piano. I was introduced to the production team.