A Song Flung Up to Heaven - Maya Angelou [27]
Fifteen
I sensed my friend Nichelle pulling away from me. I knew I was tenderhearted and a little paranoid, but I felt that she disapproved of me for sending the African away. I thought that she believed I was too hasty in letting go of the man who seemed to her to have been so desirable for me. He had status, intelligence, money and charisma. I might not do better than that anywhere.
Beah Richards was my neighbor, and we were friendly but never close friends. Professor M. J. Hewitt, a beautiful green-eyed friend with whom I was close, had found a great love and gone off to South America with him.
I noted the signs and determined that the time had come for me to be moving on.
My deliberations were focused on where to go. San Francisco didn’t beckon, Hawaii held nothing for me. I began to look at New York.
I telephoned Bailey, who had moved back from Hawaii to San Francisco. “Of course, go to New York. As long as you don’t get involved in the politics.”
Mother came to the phone and said, “That’s all right. But don’t forget you can always come home.”
A letter from the African’s elderly lady friend in New York helped me decide definitely that I should head back East. Dolly McPherson wrote:
Dear Miss Angelou,
I am going into the hospital for surgery. I’ll probably take a month to completely recover, but if you want to come to New York, I’ll try to help you get settled. Possibly I can help you find employment if you need it.
Our African friend told me so much about you I can hardly wait to get to know you. If you’d like to send me your resume, I’ll be glad to look it over and see how I might be of help.
Yours,
Dolly McPherson
The friendliness in the letter made me bless the sweetness of old black women. I began to look forward to meeting her. I was sure she would invite me to her church. And of course I’d be glad to go.
I had started packing and deciding to whom I would give away household goods when Rosa Guy telephoned me from New York. She was my friend from the Harlem Writers Guild, and she had finished her book Bird at My Window. She wanted to come to California and promote it. I told her that if she could come soon, I would arrange a book signing and introduce her to bookstore owners. One week later Rosa arrived in Los Angeles wearing her New York air as casually as a well-worn cape that fitted her perfectly. She told me how all our New York City friends were faring, and the conversation made me think more about that hard and demanding and most glamorous city in the world.
Her novel of a dysfunctional relationship between a mother and son was gripping and sold well at the black-owned Aquarian bookstore. She could take a California success story back to New York.
Rosa was delighted when I told her that I was planning to return to New York. “Certainly, come to New York, you can stay with me. I have a big apartment uptown.”
Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach had moved from Columbus Avenue to Central Park West. Their new apartment had an extra room. Abbey offered it to me over the telephone. Now I had two places I could stay.
Couples rarely know how much their togetherness shuts others out, and even if they did, there would be nothing they could do, save make everyone painfully self-conscious.
Rosa always had a string of devoted gentlemen friends, but since I had known her, she had not been the other half in a double arrangement—which seemed to say “We are together and you, third person, are invisible most of the time.”
I accepted Rosa’s offer and continued packing.
Everything said about the capricious nature of life and the best-laid plans is patently true. Just as I chose a departure date, my doorbell rang. When I opened the