The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (82 page)

People leaned on the walls or clung together—some even held on to the curtain—trying to keep laughter under control. Rhoda Boggs wiped the tears from her round face; she managed to steal a breath from her spasms and said, “That Ned Wright. Uh uh. That Ned Wright. He’s crazy.”

Someone caught me and pulled me around. It was Martha. She looked at me and I wasn’t sure if her wide grin was meant to be an attempt to apologize. Suddenly she put her hands on her wig and pulled it askew. Then she shoved it back to the correct position.

“Miss Fine Thing didn’t fall. Somebody pushed her.”

I bent low, laughing, and she put her arms around my neck. Neither begged the other’s pardon. We picked up our friendship as if it had not fallen but had only stumbled. A few weeks later she shed the wig. A
Black beautician in Rome curled her newly grown hair in a high and luxuriant coiffure, and we never mentioned the incident again.

Porgy and Bess
was to be the first American opera sung at La Scala. Famous white sopranos, tenors and baritones from the United States had soloed at Milan’s renowned opera house; now an entire cast of Negro singers were nervously rehearsing on the legendary stage.

Photographers and journalists lounged around the stage door and waited in our hotel lobbies.

“Miss Davy, how does it feel to be the star of the first …?”

“I am honored, of course, but then, we all work hard. I am just one of the Besses.”

“Mr. Scott, are you nervous about singing at La Scala?”

“Nervous? No. I am excited, yes, but then, I am excited each time I sing.”

“Miss Flowers, did you ever think you would have the opportunity to sing in Milan? At the world’s most prestigious opera house?”

“Certainly. I do believe in the work ethic. Work hard and be prepared. Naturally, we are all pleased.”

Oh, I was so proud of them. Their hands were knotted with tension and their brows moist with perspiration, but they acted cool.

We were told that La Scala audiences reacted to singers in the same way patrons of the Apollo in Harlem responded to the acts. That warning didn’t need to be spelled out. The Apollo audiences were famous for shouting mediocre performers out of the theater or joining the entertainers on the stage to show them how a dance should be danced and how a song should be sung.

On opening night the backstage silence was unusual and ominous. Dressing-room doors were not only closed but locked. When the five-minute call was given we all went quietly to our places; not even a
whisper floated over the dark stage. The rustling audience was stilled by the gradually darkening lights; they applauded the conductor’s entrance and the overture began. The cast remained apart and I felt a little afraid. Suppose Gloria lost her voice, or Annabelle couldn’t hit her high coloratura note. Just suppose I tripped over someone’s foot on my entrance. I was coiled tight like a spring and realized as the curtain rose that every other member of the cast had also wound themselves up taut for a shattering release.

The moment the curtain opened the singers in concert pulled the elegant first-night audience into the harshness of Black Southern life. When Robbins was killed, the moans were real (didn’t we all know people who, unable to talk back to authority, killed a friend over fifty cents?). The entrance of the white policeman was met with actual fear (wasn’t the law always on the side of the mighty and weren’t the jackals always at our heels?). The love story unfolded with such tenderness that the singers wept visible tears. (Who could deny this story? How many Black men had been crippled by the American oppression and had lost the women they loved and who loved them, because they hadn’t the strength to fight? How often had the women submitted to loveless arrangements for the sake of bare survival?)

The first smiles of the evening were shared during our bows. We had sung gloriously. Although we faced the audience—which was on its feet, yelling and applauding—we bowed to compliment each other. We had performed
Porgy and
Bess
as never before, and if the La Scala patrons loved us, it was only fitting because we certainly performed as if we were in love with one another.

We arrived in Rome on a late spring afternoon. I arranged my bags in the hotel room and went downstairs to find a telephone directory. In Paris, Bernard Hassel had told me to go to Bricktop’s if I ever got to Rome. She was a living legend. He said Bricktop, Josephine Baker and Mabel Mercer had been the high-yellow toasts of Europe in the thirties. They hobnobbed with the rich and the royal, and although Mabel had gone to the United States and Josephine was semiretired, Bricktop still owned the most fashionable night club in Rome.

When night fell I walked down the Via Veneto, past the outdoor tables of Doney’s Restaurant and into the next block where a small simple sign
BRICKTOP’S
hung over the door.

I opened the door and found myself standing behind a pudgy broad-shouldered man and a heavily made up woman whose brown hair was frosted blond. A small, very light-skinned, freckled woman with thin red hair stood facing the couple.

“On dit que vous avez bu trop en Cannes
. (They say you’ve been drinking too much in Cannes). ”She frowned and her French accent was as Southern and sweet as pecan pie.

The man said, “Please, Brickie. I promise not to drink tonight. My word of honor.”

Her scowl relaxed when the man’s companion added, “I won’t let him have a thing, Brickie. We’ll just watch the show.”

Bricktop called a waiter. “Come here and take King Farouk to a table.” My ears almost rejected the name. “But don’t give him a drop. Not one
goutte.”

The couple followed the waiter and Bricktop signaled to me. Her face was closed.

“Are you alone?”

I said, “Yes.”

“I’m sorry, miss. But I don’t allow ladies in here unescorted.” She started to turn away.

I said, “Miss Bricktop, I am sorry too. I have been waiting for six months to come here and meet you.” It was flattery, but it was also the truth.

She walked closer to me and stood straight. “What are you doing in Rome?” The question was asked cynically, as if she thought I might be a traveling prostitute, and her eyes said she had heard every version of every lie ever told.

“I’m with
Porgy and Bess
. I am a dancer-singer.”

“Uh-huh.” I could see her defenses relax. “When did you get in?”

“About two hours ago.”

She nodded, appreciating that her place had been my first stop. She turned and lifted her hand. A waiter came scuttling to her.

“Take mademoiselle to a table.” She said to me, “Go and sit down. I’ll be over to talk to you pretty soon.”

The club had thick carpets and heavy chandeliers, and the waiters dressed as handsomely as the customers. Bricktop was a Negro woman away from the United States thirty years, and still her Southern accent was unmistakable. I was even more amazed when she later told me she wasn’t Southern at all, but had come from Chicago.

When she finally came to my table, she asked where I was from.

I said, “San Francisco.”

“How do you feel, being so far from home?”

I said, “There is no place God is not.”

Her face crinkled in a little-girl grin. “Oh, you’re going to be my baby. Did you know that I’ve converted to Catholicism?”

I said I hadn’t heard.

She leaned across the table, her eyes sparkling. “I have friends who ask me why. They found out I go to Mass every day and they’re shocked. I say, ‘Look, for thirty years you saw me running in and out of bars every day and you never tried to stop me and it didn’t shock you. Why do you want to stop me now?’ ” She sat back in the chair and smiled smugly. “Don’t you reckon that stopped them?”

She invited me to the club whenever I wanted to come and promised to cook a dinner of black-eyed peas. “I know where to find them in this town. Fact is I know where to find anything and everyone in Rome.”

I looked around the room at some famous American and European faces, and at the line of people waiting inside the doorway for tables. I didn’t doubt that Brickie had the keys necessary to open the Eternal City.

After a few weeks in Rome I received a disturbing letter from Mother. Wilkie had moved out into his own studio. Lottie was looking for a
housekeeping job because Mr. Hot Dog was losing money. And mother was planning to become a dealer in a Las Vegas Negro casino—which meant there would be no one to take care of Clyde, who missed me more than ever. He had developed a severe rash that resisted every medical treatment. I wrote immediately, saying I would be home in a month. I was obliged by union rules to give two weeks’ notice, but since we were in Europe, it was only fair to allow the company four weeks to find another dancer-singer.

I went to Bob Dustin and explained that I would be leaving in one month and what a pleasure the tour had been. That evening he came to my dressing room, took a seat and looked at me solemnly.

“I am sorry, but I’ve got bad news for you. Since you’re handing in your notice, we do not have to send you home. You’ll have to pay your own way. And you’ll have to pay your replacement’s fare, first class, from wherever we find her.”

The fares could come to over a thousand dollars! I had not seen that amount of cash since the war when I had kept the keys to my mother’s money closet.

Bob left me alone with my tears. I told Martha and Lillian, who sympathized but had no money to lend me. Desperation began to build. I had to go to my son, but how could I find the money to do it?

Bricktop answered the private phone number she had given me. “Well, now, stop crying and tell me what’s the matter.”

I told her how I had left my son and that my family was down on its luck and that I needed to have another job to earn my fare home.

“That’s nothing to cry about. I’ve heard of dancers crying because they were worked too hard, but never because they weren’t worked enough. Put your faith in God and come down here this afternoon to rehearse with my pianist. You can start tonight.”

For the next two months I not only danced in the opera and sang at Bricktop’s but also found daytime employment. Some dancers at the Rome Opera House asked me to give them classes in African movement. I charged them as much as they could afford and watched each penny carefully, so that my bankroll grew. Bricktop fed me often, and once when I was so depressed I could hardly speak she asked me to her
house. When I entered the large foyer she lifted her skirt and showed me her knees. The light skin was bruised and scratched.

“I went up the holy stairs on my knees for your son. And I’ve been lighting a candle and praying to the Holy Mother for him every day. Now, will you please have faith and know that he is all right?”

I counted the money unbelievingly; every penny I needed was there. I made reservations on the
Cristoforo Colombo
. Martha and Ethel, Lillian, Barbara, Bey, Ned, the Joes (Attles and James) gave me a lavish farewell party.

Martha said, “Miss Thing, why don’t you fly home? The way you’re going it’ll take you two weeks to reach California.”

I was afraid. If the plane crashed my son would say all his life that his mother died on a tour in Europe, never knowing that I had taken the flight because I was nearly crazy to be with him.

Lillian made a face at Martha. “Let her alone, Miss Fine Thing. She gets these hunches and sometimes they work. Let us not forget about the Cairo and the
défrisage.”
We all laughed at the good times in the past which were good enough when they happened but were much better upon reflection.

The nine-day trip from Naples to New York threatened to last forever. I seemed to have spent a month going to bed in the tiny cabin where sleep was an infrequent visitor. Uncomfortable thoughts kept me awake. I had left my son to go gallivanting in strange countries and had enjoyed every minute except the times when I thought about him. I had sent a letter saying I was coming two months before and had felt too guilty to write and explain my delay.

A barely adequate band played music in the second-class salon, and after the third restless night I started singing with them.

A very thin and delicate-looking man from first class introduced himself and sat every evening until the last song had been played and the musicians had covered their instruments. Without the band and his company the trip would have been totally unbearable.

My friend was a chronic insomniac, so we played gin rummy and talked until sunrise. He told me he was a friend of Tennessee
Williams, and we discussed the future of drama. I recited some of my poetry, which he said was promising.

We exchanged addresses at the dock and I took a taxi to the train station. The three-day trip in a coach deposited me tired, frazzled, but happy at the Third and Townsend Station of the Southern Pacific in San Francisco.

Lottie answered the doorbell and gave a shout of welcome. In seconds the family closed around, kissing, stroking and hugging me. They guided me to the sofa, talking and asking questions that they didn’t expect to be answered. When I sat down, Clyde jumped into my lap and snuggled his head under my chin. Every minute he would pull away to look at my face, then nestle again against my neck. Mother patted my hair and my cheek and laughed, wiping her eyes. Lottie said, “She needs a cup of coffee.”

“The prodigal daughter,” Mother said, “That’s who you are. The prodigal daughter returns home.”

Lottie, in the kitchen, said, “Oh, baby. We’ve missed you.”

“If we lived on a farm,” Mother said, “I’d kill the fatted calf. Oh, yes, baby.” She turned to my son. “That’s what the mother does when the prodigal daughter returns.”

Clyde’s arms were wound around my neck.

“Clyde,” Mother said.

He murmured into my collar, “Yes, Grandmother?”

“You’re too big to sit in your mother’s lap. You’re a little man. Come on, get up and go find a fat calf. We’ll kill it and cook it.”

His arms tightened.

I said, “Mother, let him sit here awhile. It’s O.K.”

The first day was spent dispensing gifts and telling each other
snatches of stories. I talked about the company and some of the cities we visited. Mother and Lottie told me about losing the restaurant lease and how Clyde had missed me and how they had taken him to a dermatologist who recommended an expensive allergist, but nothing seemed to help.