The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (50 page)

Bailey started staying out all night long, and when he came in, his eyelids were puffy and his movements slow. He walked in pushing before him an odor of unwashed clothes. His eyes were half shut on his secrets. In the afternoons Bobby Wentworth, a former schoolmate now unrecognizable in his thinness and color change, came to the house. He went into Bailey’s bedroom walking like a defeated old man and closed the door.

One morning I stood in his empty room over the unmade bed and wondered how I could save my brother. If L.D. and I married soon, he would get us a house large enough for Bailey to have a room. I would nurse him back to health and buy him books and records. Maybe he’d like to go back to school and study law. With his quick brain and silver tongue, he’d be an ace criminal lawyer.

I thought of Grandmother Henderson, who prayed every tribulation into manageable size. I prayed.

Around noon Bailey came home, the unslept night dragging his shoulders down.

I faced him in the hall. “Bailey, what’s the matter with Little Bobby?”

His tired face tried to shut me out. “Nothing’s the matter with him. Why?”

“He’s about the color of mustard and he’s got so thin.”

“He’s just getting down to his fighting weight. Anyway, when are you going back to Stockton? How long can you take off from your job?”

I wasn’t sure how much I should tell him. “I’ll stay till Mother comes out of the hospital.”

“Why?”

“Well, you … I mean, I want to be with you.”

“I don’t need anything. I have told you I’m not an invalid. You’d better get back to Stockton and take care of your own business.” It was an order.

I wanted to be sure about his future before I left. “Papa Ford says you’re going to quit your job.”

“Not going to. I did.”

“But what will you do? To live?”

“I’ll live.” He wasn’t bragging, just making a statement.

“But, Bailey, it pays well, doesn’t it? I mean, pretty well.”

“You’re not the one to talk to me about slinging hash. You might be a fry cook the rest of your life, if you’re that stupid, but not me.”

I refused to bear the insult. “I’m not cooking now, if you want to know. I’m working in a house on the outskirts of Sacramento.”

“A what?” He sat up and leaned over to me. “Doing what?”

I knew I had gone too far. I was a boulder rolling down a steep hill and couldn’t stop myself.

“What do women do in houses?” The best defense was to be uppity.

“You goddam silly ass. You silly little ass. Turning tricks, huh? My baby goddam sister.”

His new temper was cold and sneering. His rages used to be full of fire and crackling; now his diction sharpened and his neck was stiff and he looked down his nose at me. “Who is the nigger?”

“Bailey, it’s not like you think.”

“Who is the smartass nigger who turned you out?”

“Bailey, he’s in trouble and I’m just helping him for a month.”

“What’s his name?” Although he continued sneering he seemed to thaw a little. “Tell me his name.”

“L.D. Tolbrook. And he’s old.”

“How old?”

“About forty-five.”

“What kind of drugs has he given you?”

“You don’t understand. He’s even stopped me from smoking pot. He’s straight and—”

“No pot? Then it’s a matter of time before he gives you a noseful of cocaine.”

“Bailey.” I couldn’t bear Bailey’s thinking evil about L.D. “He’s a … He’s a gambler and he’s in trouble with the big boys. So I offered to help him for a month, then we’re going to be married.”

He leaned into me and spoke gray steel, “You’re not going to get married.”

“Yes, I am. Yes …”

“I’ll tell you what you’re going to do. You are going to go to Stockton and get your baby. Then you’re going to find L.D. You’re going to tell him he’s not to worry about the big boys any more. That he can start worrying about one little boy. Just one. And tell him how little I am. Also tell him that you are my baby goddam sister. Then you’re going to get back on the bus and come home. Is that clear, Marguerite?”

I knew the old Bailey could be as violent as Mother, and this new one seemed even more lethal.

“Clear?”

“Yes.” That was all I could say. When I arrived in Stockton, I could explain to L.D. that Bailey had misunderstood everything, so for a while I’d go back to San Francisco. When Bailey cooled down, I’d return to him. My absence would make him fonder and I’d have more chance to help my brother pull himself together.

Bailey gave me money for the round trip, and to pay the baby-sitter. I took the afternoon bus to Stockton.

Big Mary’s house was near the corner of a typical small-town block, and in the late-afternoon sun the clapboard cottages seemed to be dreaming. I concluded that I must have passed the house when I reached the farthest intersection. My mind was busy with other things, so when I turned and didn’t see the house, I decided I was on the wrong street. Another glance at the street names on a sign post assured me that this was the street. Then where was the house? I started
back. Here was the little white railroad house. Here was the house with a fenced yard. Here was … but it couldn’t be Mary’s house. The windows were boarded up and large planks had been nailed in an X across the door.

The two houses flanking Big Mary’s were empty. I might have stopped breathing as I walked up and down the creaking steps and tried to peer into windows. The world had suddenly spun off its familiar axis and the rhythm of life slowed to quarter time. The streets and houses, broken toys that lay in overgrown weeds, were monotone in color like objects in an old sepia photograph.

“Who you looking for?”

I turned to face a woman on a porch across the street. Time was in such strange process that I had the opportunity to examine her in minute point. She was fat and white and wore a flowery loose housecoat. From a distance I made out her friendly countenance and the sweat that already dampened semicircles under her arms.

“My baby.” But the words wouldn’t come. I tried again and the words refused again. I had become paralyzed, literally struck dumb. I stared at the woman in horror.

“Come over here, lady.”

She ordered and I had no resistance.

“I know you’re looking for Big Mary, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

“She moved three days ago. A big truck pulled up and took everything away.”

She must have waited for me to question her. After seconds, she continued, “You’re the mother, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

“There was a big coming and going of the other parents, but I noticed you didn’t come for your little boy. Mary and I haven’t spoken since she called me a meddling bitch three years ago—she used foul language. But I broke the silence and asked where she was taking the boy. She said you had given him to her. Said you were too busy. I asked where she was going and she told me none of my business. But I know she’s got a brother in Bakersfield.”

It was a rattling tale told on a radio and I couldn’t make it have to do with my life.

“If you want to call the police, come in. I’ll give you some lemonade … while you’re waiting for them.”

The word “police” shook me awake. My brain moved sluggishly. Big Mary had left with my baby and lied as well. Then she kidnapped him. If the police came, they’d question me about my job. A whore (well, I had to admit it) wasn’t a fit mother and they’d take him from me and put me in jail.

“I’ll call them for you.” The woman turned and an oblong of perspiration was dripping down the back of her dress.

Before she reached the door, I forced my voice out. “No thank you. I know where he is, everything’s all right.”

“Where is he?” The woman’s suspicion was nasty.

“I’m going there now. It’s over on the south side. By the sloughs.” I waved at her. “Thanks anyway,” I said and marched down the street.

—

L.D.’s car was parked in front of his house. My scheme was to ring his bell and if his wife answered, tell her I was an old friend and had a message for him from a friend. I’d quickly tell him about Big Mary and the baby and he’d decide what to do. I was proud that I hadn’t cried and that I wasn’t afraid of his naggish wife.

A pretty, thirtyish, light-brown-skinned woman opened the door. Her long black hair curled around her shoulders, reminding me of a beige Hedy Lamarr.

“You want to see L.D.? What’s your name?”

She had the same soft slur that made me love to hear L.D. talk.

“My name is Rita.”

“Oh.” Her lips firmed on the edges. “So you’re Rita. Well, just wait a minute, I’ll get Lou.”

She closed the door and I waited on the landing, wondering how we’d find my baby.

“Rita.” L.D. had opened the door and held it just wide enough for me to see half of his body. “What put it in your head to come to my house?”

I whispered, “I told her I was a friend, L.D. My baby’s—”

“Don’t you have better sense than to come to my house?”

“I need some help, L.D. I have to talk to you.”

He stepped out on the porch and pulled the door closed behind him. His face was inches from me and he spoke through uneven teeth.

“Let me pull your coat, you silly little bitch. This is my house. No ’ho goes to a man’s house. You talked to my wife. No ’ho opens her mouth to speak to a man’s wife.” He curled his mouth and snarled, “Clara’s never even met my wife and Clara’s been my woman three years. You’ve been gone a week and you got the nerve … Go to your place. I’ll be there when I get time.”

He walked back in the house and slammed the door.

I wanted desperately to cry.

I had been stupid, again. And stupidity had led me into a trap where I had lost my baby. I tried to erase L.D. Tolbrook from my mind. Obviously he wasn’t very bright. He had had a good woman who would have done anything to help him. And he was too dumb to even have the courtesy to listen to my troubles. And he had lied to me by not telling me that Clara was his woman.

Pity. That he thought outsmarting a young girl, living off the wages of women was honorable. He obviously had been doing it for years. He probably started in the South with white women, thinking that by taking their bodies and their money, he was getting revenge on the white men, who were free to insult him, ignore him and keep him at the bottom of the heap.

Clara must have wriggled her nose off in laughing at my stupidity with her “daddy.” And L.D.’s wife probably bought the white piqué dress she wore with money I had made. I detested him for being a liar and a pimp, but more, I hated him for being such an idiot that he couldn’t value my sterling attributes enough to keep me for himself alone.

There was no thought of the greed which coerced me to agree with L.D.’s plans in the hope that I’d win, in the end, a life of ease and romance. Like most young women, I wanted a man, any man, to give me a June Allyson screen-role life with sunken living room, and
cashmere-sweater sets, and I, for one, obviously would have done anything to get that life.

I couldn’t telephone Bailey or Mother. Even if they had been in the best of shape, I couldn’t admit to them that out of ignorance I’d lost the baby.

As I walked, my rage at L.D. diminished and I regained some steadying peripheral vision. Had I melted down on the pavement in tears of frustration, the action would not have changed the fact that my baby was still missing. Or the fact that with this latest loss, I was shatteringly lonely for my baby and his arms hugging my neck. The weight was on me.

I decided to sleep the night in my old room and leave the next morning for Bakersfield. The idea that Big Mary might have taken him on to Oklahoma was squashed over and over in my mind like a buzzing fly.

—

The small Southern California town on those midnight rides with L.D. had seemed fanciful and unreal; now from the bus windows it was drab and seemed overpopulated with mean-faced whites straight out of my Arkansas past.

A black man gave me a ride to Cottonwood Road.

“If her brother is farming, he got to be living around here somewhere. And you say you don’t know his name?”

“No, but I’ll find him.”

He stopped his old car in front of a café that claimed “Home Cooking.”

“Well, I wish you Godspeed. Try in there. But be careful. These is some rough folks.”

I thanked him and he drove away.

The young waitress shouted over the noisy jukebox and talk, “Anybody here know Mary Dawson?”

Conversation dimmed but no one answered.

She went on, “This woman’s looking for her baby.”

The faces became friendlier, but still there were no answers.

“Nobody knows her, honey. Try down at Buckets.” She directed me to a dirt-floor joint a couple of blocks away.

Old-timey blues whined in the artificial darkness, and one stout bartender walked up and down behind the bar setting up and taking away beer bottles. Every stool was taken by men and women who laughed and talked with the easy familiarity of regulars.

“Mary Dawson? Mary Dawson.” The bartender digested the name as he filed my face in his memory bank. “Naw, baby, I don’t know no Mary Dawson.”

“They call her Big Mary.”

“Big Mary. Naw, I don’t know no Big Mary.”

“She’s got my baby. Took him away from Stockton.” I felt as if I were blowing my breath against a tornado.

His face softened as suspicion left it. “What she look like?”

“She’s as tall as I. As me”—“as I” sounded too dickty—“but bigger, and she has a brother who farms around here. They’re from Oklahoma.”

A little light winked in his eyes. “Does she drink?”

“Not often, but they say she drinks a lot when she does.”

“In a coffee cup?” The smile was abundant.

“Yes.” I wanted to hug him.

“That’s old John Peterson’s sister. Yeah, baby. He lives bout three miles from here.”

In the past, whenever I had slipped free of Fate’s pressing heel, I gave thanks. This time I promised God a regular church attendance.

“Can you direct me?”

“Aw, you can’t walk it. Wait a minute.”

He called to a man over at the jukebox. “Buddy.”

The man turned and came over to the bar.

“Little lady, Buddy runs a cab service … Buddy, you know where John Peterson’s place is?”