A Song Flung Up to Heaven - Maya Angelou [23]
“Oh?”
“Yes, he’ll want to come home when he finishes. But he’s out of money.”
“Mom, I left him enough to live on, so if he’s squandered—”
She said, “He’s my grandson. I won’t see him needy.”
“That’s between you and your grandson, but when he is ready to come home, I’ll give you the money for his fare. Just don’t let him know.”
Mother said, “I understand,” and she did.
The African arrived and filled my little studio apartment with his loud voice and his maleness. His sexuality was so evident that I thought everyone could perceive it.
He charmed my landlady and my neighbor. When he told them that he had come to take me back to Africa, they both offered to help me pack.
My body was in a state of utter bliss, but I could not mask my displeasure that he wanted to be waited upon as if he were an invalid: “Get this.” “Fetch that.” “Make food for me.”
I knew English was not his first language; still, I had to tell him that “fetch” was an old-fashioned word used during slavery and I would not respond favorably to it.
On some evenings I wondered what I would do without him. On some evenings we talked about my concerns and he listened. On some evenings he held me and let me cry about Malcolm.
I would moan and say, “Black men shot him, what’s the matter with us?”
“You are human. That is a historic problem. Remember, Cain killed Abel. His brother.”
“But what will our people do? It took a long time to make Malcolm.”
“You’ve got a long time. Some say that the American Negro represents the best the African can hope for.”
He looked at my surprise.
“I agree in part. Sold by your people, brought here as slaves. Slavery lasted nearly three hundred years, and ten, twenty years after it was abolished, you had schools. Colleges. Fisk, Howard, Tuskegee. And even today, look at you, you are everywhere in this country. You will be all right.” He patted me and hugged me.
When he was good, he was very very good. Ah. But when he was bad...
I went to my friend the actress Nichelle Nichols. We had become friends ten years earlier, during the filming of Porgy and Bess.
She was beautiful even when scowling. “Girl, tell him he is in America now, and we believe in one person, one vote. Anyway, bring him over for dinner. I’ll have a little bee for his bonnet.”
After fifteen minutes, I saw that dinner at Nichelle’s was a bad idea. He spoke of Mother Africa and her children everywhere, and Nichelle was spellbound.
As we left, she whispered to me, “You’re so lucky.”
Thirteen
Los Angeles, seen through my lover’s eyes, was more colorful than I had realized, more variegated. He saw Watts as a community of great interest. After he observed many black families trying to restore their neat neighborhoods, he said, “But these people are fastidious.”
I was surprised at his surprise. He explained, “Until recently in Africa all we saw of American Negroes was Rochester with Jack Benny, and Stepnfetchit, and athletes like Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson. I haven’t seen it, but I understand Harlem is a hellhole.”
“Harlem is beautiful.”
In every conversation with him, I put on my armor of defense, whether I needed it or not, and whether or not my point of view was defensible.
“There are a few ugly places,” I admitted, “but there are many ugly places in Africa.”
We visited black-owned bookstores that featured books by blacks and about blacks.
He bought out entire shelves’ worth and asked me to pay. The money was his, but he asked me to carry it, saying that he could not understand paper money without a black man’s face on it.
I sidestepped a full-out argument by not reminding him that the Ghanaian pound, with Kwame Nkrumah’s face on it, was only ten years old.
I was in a labyrinth, going somewhere without knowing my destination or even when I might arrive. I still loved him and wanted him, but there were parts of his life I could not even begin to fathom.
Sometimes, when I answered my telephone, a woman’s voice would ask for him. She was calling