The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (133 page)

I said, “Shirley went straight home and called the President and told him he had to see Malcolm. She could have done that a week ago, but no.”

Alice agreed, but Vicki said, “Better late than never. You all ought to be celebrating, I say.”

For me sleep was difficult that night. My bed was lumpy with anger and my pillow a rock of intemperate umbrage.

The next morning we met Malcolm after his visit with President Nkrumah. The bright sunshine, the bougainvillaea and the singing birds around the hotel didn’t brighten my countenance. I claimed to be saddened by Malcolm’s pending departure, but in fact my heart was still hardened to Shirley Du Bois. Rather than inquire about the Nkrumah interview, I stood apart pouting, while Alice snapped photos and Julian put Malcolm’s luggage in the car. A convoy of limousines glided up importantly to the hotel’s porte-cochere. Small flags waved from the hoods of luxury cars, which meant that each car carried an ambassador.

Alice said there must be some diplomatic meeting, and began to pose Malcolm and Julian for a picture. As she finished, the Nigerian High Commissioner approached.

“My people, good morning. Brother Malcolm, morning. A few of us have come to accompany you to the airport.” The gesture was so unexpected that even Malcolm was speechless.

The Nigerian diplomat continued, “The Chinese, Guinea, Yugoslav, Mali, Cuban, Algerian and Egyptian ambassadors are here. Others wanted to come but national matters detained them. We will pull up and onto the road as you will want to ride with your friends. We will follow.”

Julian was the first to speak to Malcolm after the High Commissioner left us.

“Man, we ought to pay you for this visit. You’ve given this poor
group of Black exiles some status. Forty-five minutes with the president and now a convoy of limousines to see you to the airport. Man! We were living here before, but after your visit we have really arrived.”

We were all laughing with pleasure when we heard the familiar sounds of Black American speech. We turned around and saw Muhammad Ali coming out of the hotel with a large retinue of Black men. They were all talking and joking among themselves. One minute after we saw them, they saw Malcolm.

The moment froze, as if caught on a daguerreotype, and the next minutes moved as a slow montage. Muhammad stopped, then turned and spoke to a companion. His friends looked at him. Then they looked back at Malcolm. Malcolm also stopped, but he didn’t speak to us, nor did any of us have the presence of mind to say anything to him. Malcolm had told us that after he severed ties to the Nation of Islam, many of his former friends had become hostile.

Muhammad and his group were the first to turn away. They started walking toward a row of parked cars. Malcolm, with a rush, left us and headed toward the departing men. We followed Malcolm. He shouted, “Brother Muhammad. Brother Muhammad.”

Muhammad and his companions stopped and turned to face Malcolm.

“Brother, I still love you, and you are still the greatest.” Malcolm smiled a sad little smile. Muhammad looked hard at Malcolm, and shook his head.

“You left the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. That was the wrong thing to do, Brother Malcolm.” His face and voice were also sad. Malcolm had been his supporter and hero. Disappointment and hurt lay on Muhammad’s face like dust. Abruptly, he turned and walked away. His coterie followed. After a few steps they began talking again, loudly.

Malcolm’s shoulders sagged and his face was suddenly gloomy. “I’ve lost a lot. A lot. Almost too much.” He led us back to my car. “I want to ride with Maya and Julian. We’ll meet at the airport.” Alice and the other friends rode with Ana Livia and three six-footers
tried to be comfortable in my little Fiat. Even when we saw the diplomat’s limousines following us, the heavy mood seemed destined to stay.

Malcolm broke the silence. “Now, Sister, what do you think of Shirley Du Bois?” The question gave me a chance to articulate my anger, and I let loose. I spoke of her lack of faith, her lack of identity with Black American struggle, her isolation from her people, her pride at sitting in the catbird seat in Ghana. Malcolm let me continue until my tirade wound down.

“Now, Sister, I thought you were smart, but I see you are very childish, dangerously immature.” He had not spoken so harshly before to anyone in Ghana—I was shocked.

“Have you considered that her husband has only been dead a few months? Have you considered that at her age she needs some time to consider that she is walking around wounded, limping for the first time in many years on one leg?”

Tears were bathing my face, not for the sad picture Malcolm was drawing of Shirley, but for myself as the object of his displeasure.

Julian, from his uncomfortable seat in the back of the car, put his hand on my shoulder gently, “Keep your eyes on the road.”

Malcolm said, “Sister, listen and listen carefully. Picture American racism as a mountain. Now slice that mountain from the top to the bottom and open it like a door. Do you see all the lines, the strata?” I could hardly see the road ahead, but I nodded.

“Those are the strata of American life and we are being attacked on each one. We need people on each level to fight our battle. Don’t be in such a hurry to condemn a person because he doesn’t do what you do, or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn’t know what you know today.” His voice had become more explanatory and less accusatory.

“When you hear that the Urban League or the NAACP is giving a formal banquet at the Waldorf-Astoria, I know you won’t go, but don’t knock them. They give scholarships to poor Black children. One of those recipients might become a Julian Mayfield, or a Maya Angelou, or a Malcolm X. You understand?”

I would have died rather than say I disagreed. I said, “I will think about that.”

He said, “I can’t ask anymore. I admire all of you. Our people can be proud. Julian will tell you about my meeting with Nkrumah. I wanted to ride with you to encourage you to broaden your thinking. You are too good a woman to think small. You know we, I mean in the United States and elsewhere, are in need of hard thinkers. Serious thinkers, who are not timid. We are called upon to defend ourselves all the time. In every arena.” Malcolm had lost his harshness and seemed to be reflecting rather than addressing either me or Julian.

Julian asked him if Muhammad’s actions at the hotel came as a surprise, and Malcolm did not answer directly. “He is young. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is his prophet and his father, I understand. Be kind to him for his sake, and mine. He has a place in my heart.”

At the airport, the ambassadors and other well-wishers swooped him away. Alice had time to arrange him for one last photo and we all shook his hand and hugged him.

Julian said in a forbidding tone, “Man, I don’t like to see you traveling alone. You know there’s a price on your head.”

Malcolm smiled. “No one can guard anyone’s life. Not even his own. Only Allah can protect. And he has let me slide so far.” He smiled for us all and then was gone.

The letdown affected our speech. There seemed to be no words to describe what we were feeling. We regarded each other with embarrassment. Malcolm’s presence had elevated us, but with his departure, we were what we had been before: a little group of Black folks, looking for a home.

I still found myself grinning when I came unexpectedly upon a clasp of confident Ghanaian children whispering in Ga or Fanti, their little
legs shining and shimmering like oiled eels; my breath still crowded in my throat at the sight of African soldiers, chests thrust forward, stiffened legs and behinds high like peacocks’ tails. The forests had lost none of their mystery and the bush villages were still enchanting. But Ghana was beginning to tug at me and make me uncomfortable, like an ill fitting coat.

The job at the diamond mine had been filled before I was obliged to test my morality or lie about my academic background. Nana had become a close and generous friend who continued seeking a better paying position for me, and I spent good times with his children and friends. I was welcome in many Ghanaian homes and had sufficient male company to satisfy my needs and vanity. My housemates and the other Revolutionist Returnees provided opportunities for strong political debate and laughter, but I had to admit that I had begun to feel that I was not in my right place. Every moment in Ghana called attention to itself and each social affair was self-conscious. When I went dancing, between the beats and during the steps, I thought, “Here I am, Maya Angelou, dancing in Africa. I know I’m having a good time.” Shopping in the crowded streets I thought, “This is me at last, really me, buying peppers in Makola market, aren’t I lucky?” I decided that I was too aware of my location; not just in Accra, or in Adabraka, or Asylum Down.

I needed to get away from Africa and its cache of subtle promises and at least second-hand memories. I blamed the entire continent and history for my malaise when the real reason was more pointedly specific and as personal as a migraine.

Guy was troubling me. I was questioning my worth as a mother, and since I had been a parent over half my life, I thought if I failed in that role, success in any other area would have very little meaning.

One evening, a Ghanaian friend had come bringing gin and a terrible piece of gossip. He opened the fresh bottle, poured a few drops on the ground for the spirits, then we seated ourselves and drank comfortably.

“Sister, I have bad news about your son.” My first thought was that he had been in another accident. As soon as that idea came it vanished; I would have been telephoned.

“What news, Brother?” I stayed seated in a fake serenity.

“It is said that he has a girlfriend.”

I laughed, “Well, I hope so.”

“Don’t laugh, Sister. This certain friend is thirty-six years old and is an American and works for the American Embassy.”

As I was asking, “What?” thoughts tumbled over themselves in my mind.

The woman was a year older than I. Couldn’t she find any lover older than my nineteen-year-old son? An American government employee? Ghanaians were still a little suspicious of all Americans, especially Black diplomats and employees in the embassy. I had just been made a member of the Ghana Press Club. Undoubtedly, suspicion would fall on me if the gossip was true.

“Brother, I thank you for the information. I will see to my son. Shall we freshen our drinks?”

I would not allow my informant to warn me that young men in love are like elephants in rutting time, difficult to dissuade. I knew that I could always talk to Guy.

The next day I took a break from a play in production after a student told me that my son was outside. Guy and I stood on the lawn in front of the National Theatre.

He appeared two inches taller than he had been the week before, and I had not noticed that he had grown a moustache.

“I am told that you have a girlfriend.”

He had the nerve to be annoyed with me and, worse, to show his annoyance. “Mother, did you actually call me into town to talk about that?”

“I am told that she is thirty-six years old, and works for the American Embassy.”

“Yes?” When a nineteen-year-old decides to clothe himself in dignity, nothing but pity or abject fear can penetrate his armor. I was too angry to ask for sympathy and obviously Guy had moved beyond fear of my disapproval.

“Is it true?”

“Oh, Mother, really. Don’t you think it’s time I had a life of my own?”

How could his life be separate from my life? I had been a mother of a child so long I had no preparation for life on any other level. As usual, anger, my enemy, betrayed me. I looked up at the young golden brown giant towering above my head.

“I will knock you down, Guy. Right here in front of God and everybody. Knock you down, do you hear?” I hadn’t struck him since he was seven years old and had told me that I was too big to hit a small child.

“I will knock you down and I mean it.”

His smile came from his new grown-up and distant place, and cut my heart to shreds.

He patted my head, “Yes, little mother. I’m sure you will.” Then he turned and walked away.

When he closed up and left me no entry, a sense of loss rendered me momentarily unstable.

His existence had defined my own. As a child his sense of humor, attraction for puns and affection for me had lightened the single parent burden. He learned to read early because I loved to read, and I taught him to recite the poetry I had memorized in my own youth. When my seven-year-old son stood before me, beating the bones of his young chest, disclaiming, “It matters not how dark the night, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul,” I saw myself, as if thrown upon a screen, clearly brave, clearly sure, sculpting a good life from resistant stone.

As my mother had done for me, I told him jokes and encouraged him to laugh at life and at himself. The Black child must learn early to allow laughter to fill his mouth or the million small cruelties he encounters will congeal and clog his throat.

Guy had been a good student, but did not develop into excellence because of our brief stays in cities where we lived. When he graduated from high school at the American College in Cairo, he told me he had gone to nineteen schools in eleven years. I was sorry to think that I
hadn’t noticed, but realized at the time I couldn’t have changed our movements or destinations.

I had begun dancing or singing for a living when he was seven, and contracts took me from San Francisco to New York, and all the cities between the coasts. My family and even school administrators disapproved of what they thought was my vagabond life, but I was unable to live their ideals. I had no formal education, and no training other than in dance.

Once I was called to a Los Angeles school by the child psychologist. She was a White woman, in a white smock, in a white office.

“Miss Angelou, Guy is not doing well in school because he is hyperactive. I believe that comes from being moved around so frequently.”

I sat still, looking at her, knowing that nothing she could say would influence the lives my son and I would lead.