The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (111 page)

We waited at the intersection of Fulton and Gough for the lights to change. Suddenly, a car lurched into the passenger side of the truck. I was thrown forward, my forehead struck the windshield and my teeth crunched against the top of the cab’s dashboard. When I regained
consciousness, Tosh was blowing his breath in my face and murmuring. I asked about Guy and Tosh said that as the car hit, I grabbed for Guy and folded him in my arms. Now he was standing on the corner unhurt.

I got out of the truck and walked over to my son, who was being consoled by strangers. When I bent down at his side, he took one glance at my battered face and instead of coming into my arms, he began to scream, strike out at me and back away.

Tosh had to come to talk him into the taxi. For days, he moped around the house avoiding my gaze. Each time I turned quickly enough to catch him looking at me, I shivered at the hateful accusation in his eyes.

We had not caused the accident. Tosh had been the driver, and I was the most injured person. But I was the mother, the most powerful person in his world who could make everything better. Why had I made them worse? I could have prevented the accident. I should not have allowed our truck to be at that place at that time. If I hadn’t been so neglectful, my face would not have been cut, my teeth would not be broken and he would not have been scared out of his wits.

Now, eight years later, Guy was asking himself why had I, by neglecting my duty, why had I put his pride in jeopardy? Had I thought that being married removed my responsibility to keep the world on its axis and the universe in order?

Guy stood flexing and tightening his fists, as if he were squeezing and releasing, then squeezing the questions again. I remained quiet, relishing a small but savory knot of satisfaction. He had shifted his loyalty to Vus, leaving me only the leftovers of attention. Now in the crisis, I became the important person again.

When he realized that I was not going to speak, he sat down on the sofa beside me. Suddenly I didn’t know what to say. If, when he reentered the room, I had given an explanation or posed a few alternatives, our lives would have continued in the same rhythms indefinitely. But I had waited too long to speak.

I watched my son. When he slid on the sofa, opened his long arms
to embrace me and said, “It’ll be okay, Mom. We’ll live through this one, too,” I began to cry. My teenager was growing up.

Vus returned after nightfall. He had arranged for the sale of our furniture, and a mover would arrive the next morning to take our personal belongings to a hotel where he had rented and paid for a furnished apartment. He had also started the ball rolling for us to go to Egypt. He delivered the news to me but winked at Guy and cocked his head. Guy looked back at Vus with a blank stare and said, “That’s great, Dad,” and walked into his room.

For three weeks, in the musty hotel off Central Park West, we lived a life alien to everything I had known. Retired people, sick and discarded, shuffled along the hallways, whispering passionately to themselves. At all hours they inched frail feet along the lobby’s worn carpet. They never looked up, or spoke to anyone, just continued traveling, staying close to the walls, their heads down, pushing the dank air.

Guy began to speak in a lower register and Vus and I whispered even in the bedroom. Our comings and goings were furtive and quiet. Only Rosa visited me during those weeks. I didn’t want anyone else to know that we had moved underground and joined a pack of tragic moles.

I kept telling myself it was only for three weeks. A person could stay on a torture rack, or fast, for three weeks. It was just as well that we left New York with no fanfare, and no sad farewells. Vus went to Egypt to prepare a place for us while Guy and I traveled to San Francisco. I needed to see my mother. I needed to be told just one more time that life was what you make it, and that every tub ought to sit on its own bottom. I had to hear her say, “They spell my name W-O-M-A-N, ’cause the difference between a female and a woman is the difference between shit and shinola.”

At the airport she looked worn, although she was wearing too much nut-brown powder and the lipstick was so thick that when we kissed hello, our lips made a sucking sound. Her happiness at seeing us was brief.

On the way home she confirmed the suspicions which arose the
moment I had seen her. She drove her big car poorly and talked about trifling matters. Vivian Baxter was very upset.

She settled Guy into his old room on the downstairs floor of the big Victorian house, and asked me to join her in the kitchen. She began to talk, over tall and strong drinks.

She had sent me a photograph of her new husband. He was a dark-brown good-looking man, and she had raved about him in her letters to me. They had sailed together and played on the beaches of Tahiti and Fiji and in the bars of Sydney, Australia. Their marriage sounded like a frolic: Two lovers in a boat put out on a calm sea. But as she talked, seated at her kitchen table, I saw that the relationship was floundering, and she was straining every muscle to keep it afloat.

“He means well, baby, and he tries to do well, but it’s the drink. He just doesn’t know how to control it.”

Her face was sad and her voice trembled as she put fresh ice and Scotch in our glasses. Her husband was away on a long trip and she was finding it hard to manage her loneliness.

The next few weeks brought a change in our relationship which I never expected: We reversed roles. Vivian Baxter began to lean on me, to look to me for support and wisdom, and I, automatically, without thinking about it, started to perform as the shrewd authority, the judicious one, the mother. Guy was disconcerted by the new positions in the family. He became rigidly courteous, smiled less and assumed a sober stateliness which sat awkwardly on the shoulders of a teenage boy.

Vus called from Cairo to say that our tickets were waiting at a local travel agency, and it was impossible to hide my relief.

When I told Mother that we would be leaving soon, she came out of her doldrums for a few hours of celebration. She was thankful, she said, not only for my support but that she had raised a woman who could stand up to a crisis. She reminded me that there were too many old females and not nearly enough women. She was proud of me and that was my going-away gift.

We left San Francisco with her assurance that she would work out the difficulties in her own life and we were not to worry. Her last bidding
was not easily carried out. I sat through the entire journey, from San Francisco to Los Angeles to London to Rome, with the concern for my mother riding in my lap. Only when we left Rome’s Fiumicino Airport did I start to think about Egypt, Vus and the life my son and I were beginning.

Whether our new start was going to end in success or failure didn’t cross my mind. What I did know, and know consciously, was that it was already exciting.

Our plane landed at Cairo on a clear afternoon, and just beyond the windows, the Sahara was a rippling beige sea which had no shore. Guy and I went through customs, each peering through a frosted glass for a sight of Vus.

Barefoot men in long soiled nightdresses walked beside us, talking Arabic, asking questions. When we shook our heads and shrugged our shoulders, gesturing our lack of understanding, they fell about laughing, slapping their sides and doubling over. Laughter in a strange language has an unsettling effect. Guy and I walked close together, shoulders touching, into the main terminal.

The room was cavernous, and nearly empty, and Vus was not there. A porter asked in his version of English if we wanted a taxi. I shook my head. I had money, nearly a thousand dollars in travelers’ checks, but I wasn’t about to get into a taxi in an unknown country. Then I realized with a numbing shock that I had no address. I couldn’t take a taxi if I wanted it.

I thought about Guy and caught the gasp before it could surface.

“Mom, what are we going to do? You gave Dad the arrival time, didn’t you?”

“Of course. We’ll just go over there and sit down.” I didn’t comment on the accusation in his voice, but I recorded it. We had lugged our
baggage through a group of laughing porters and janitors when two black men in neat Western suits approached.

“Sister Maya? Sister Make?”

I nodded, too relieved to speak.

“Welcome to Cairo. And Guy? Welcome.”

We shook hands and they mentioned their multisyllabic names. Vus was in a meeting with a high official and would join us as soon as possible. He had asked them to pick us up and bring us to his office.

They helped us into a ramshackle Mercedes Benz as if they were placing royalty in a state carriage. My son and I rose to the occasion. Neither of us said a word when, on the outskirts of Cairo, the driver neatly swerved to avoid hitting a camel, although I did push my elbow into Guy’s side as we passed the beautiful white villas of Heliopolis. The shiny European cars, large horned cows, careening taxis and the throngs of pedestrians, goats, mules, camels, the occasional limousine and the incredible scatter of children made the streets a visual and a tonal symphony of chaos.

When we entered the center of Cairo, the avenues burst wide open with such a force of color, people, action and smells I was stripped of cool composure.

I touched the man in the front passenger seat and shouted at him, “What’s going on? Is today a holiday?”

He looked out the open windows, and turned back to me shaking his head.

“The crowd? You mean the crowd?”

I nodded.

“No.” He smiled. “This is just everyday Cairo.”

Guy was so happy, he laughed aloud. I looked at the scene and wondered how we were going to enjoy living in a year-long Mardi Gras.

Emaciated men in long tattered robes flailed and ranted at heavily burdened mules. Sleek limousines rode through the droppings of camels that waved their wide behinds casually as they sashayed in the shadow of skyscrapers. Well-dressed women in pairs, or accompanied by men, took no notice of their sisters, covered from head to toe in voluminous heavy black wraps. Children ran everywhere, shouting
under the wheels of rickety carts, dodging the tires of careening taxis. Street vendors held up their wares, beckoning to passers-by. Young boys offered fresh-fruit drinks, and on street corners, men stooped over food cooking on open grills. Scents of spices, manure, gasoline exhaust, flowers and body sweat made the air in the car nearly visible. After what seemed to be hours, we drove into a quiet, by comparison, neighborhood. Our escorts parked the car, then led us through a carefully tended front garden and into a whitewashed office building. They placed our luggage by the door of the lobby, then shook hands with Guy and me, and assuring us that Vus would arrive soon, left us in the lobby.

Africans came and went, nodding to us in passing. Just as exhaustion began to claim my body, Vus entered through the open doors. He shouted when he saw us, and came rushing to hold me and Guy in his arms. He grinned freely, and he looked about ten years old. I had no doubt, for the moment, that we were going to make each other frivolously happy. Cairo was going to be the setting for two contemporary lovers.

Vus released me and hugged Guy, chuckling all the while. He was a sexy brown-skin Santa Claus, whose love and largesse were for us alone.

“Come, let’s go home. We live across the street.” I spoke to Guy and pointed to the luggage. Vus shook his head and said, “They will be brought to us.” We walked through the garden, arms linked, and headed for number 5 Ahmet Hishmat.

Vus led us up the stairs of the large marble-fronted building. On the steps, a black man dressed in dirty clothes grinned and bowed: “Welcome, Mr. Make.” Vus put some coins in the man’s outstretched hand and spoke to him in Arabic. As we walked into the building’s cool dark corridor, Vus told us the man was Abu, the
boabab
or doorman, and he would deliver our bags. At the end of the corridor, he unlocked a carved door and we entered a luxurious living room. A gold-and-red-striped satin sofa was the first object which caught and held my attention.

A muted tapestry hung on the wall above another rich-looking sofa.
In the middle of the room a low table of exquisite parquetry rested on an antique Oriental rug.

Vus wondered aloud if I liked the room and Guy made approving sounds, but I couldn’t imagine how a landlord could leave such important and expensive pieces in a rented apartment.

Guy shouted from a distance. “You should see this, Mom.”

Vus took my elbow and directed me into the next room, where a Louis XVI brocaded sofa and chairs rested on another rich rug. The dining room was filled with French antique furniture. The large bedrooms held outsize beds, armoires, dressing tables and more Oriental rugs.

I grinned because I didn’t know what else to do. When we reached the empty kitchen, a little sense returned to me.

A soot-encrusted lamp sat on a ledge with stacked plates, a pile of cheap cutlery and thick glasses.

Vus coughed, embarrassed. “They use this”—indicating the lamp—“to cook on. It’s a Sterno stove. Uh … I didn’t get around to fixing up the kitchen yet. Anyway, regular stoves are very, very expensive. I thought I’d wait until you arrived.”

“You mean, we own all that crap?” I must have shouted because Guy, who was crowded into the small room with us, frowned at me, and Vus gave me a haughty, angry look.

“I have tried to make a beautiful house for you, even to the point of ignoring my own work. Yes, I’ve postponed important PAC affairs to decorate this apartment, and you call it crap?” He turned and walked through the door. Guy shook his head, disgusted with my lack of gratitude and grace, and followed Vus out of the kitchen. Their silent departure succeeded in humbling me. Vus was a generous man. Indeed, I had only seen that kind of furniture in slick magazine advertisements, or in the homes of white movie stars. My husband was lifting me and my son into a rarified atmosphere, and instead of thanking him for the elevation, I had been sour and unappreciative.

A profound sense of worthlessness had made me pull away from owning good things, expensive furniture, rare rugs. That was exactly how white folks wanted me to feel. I was black, so obviously I didn’t
deserve to have armoires, shiny with good French veneer, or tapestries, where mounted warriors waged their ancient battles in silk thread. No, I decided to crush that feeling of unworthiness. I deserved everything beautiful and I merited putting my long black feet on Oriental carpets as much as Lady Astor. If Vus thought he wanted his wife to live beautifully, he was no less a man (and I had to get that under the layers of inferiority in my brain) than a Rockefeller or a Kennedy.