A Song Flung Up to Heaven - Maya Angelou [28]
“Baby, Guy returned to San Francisco three days ago, and I’ve come for you. He’s in the hospital. He is in serious condition but not a life-threatening one. Get what you need.” Surprise, whether good or bad, can have a profound effect on the body. Some people faint, some cry aloud. Bailey caught me as my knees buckled. He helped me back in the room to a chair.
Rosa asked what happened.
Bailey said, “Guy was sitting in a parked car that was hit by an out-of-control truck. Mother wanted to telephone you and tell you to fly up to San Francisco. I said no, that I would drive down and get you.” He turned to Rosa. “Do you want to come with us, or will you wait till Maya gets back?”
Rosa said she was already packed and could fly home out of San Francisco as easily as out of Los Angeles. She would come with us.
In a few ragged minutes we were walking to Bailey’s car. He handed me his car keys. “You drive.”
“No, you know me. I might fall asleep.”
“I drove all night to get here. Take the keys. You have me and your good friend in the car and you are trying to get to your son. Just remember.”
I took the keys.
My passengers never awakened even when I stopped for gas.
Seven hours later I parked in front of Mother’s house in San Francisco, and they woke up as if by plan.
Mother was waiting.
“He is stable. I’ve been talking to the doctors.” She showed Rosa to a guest room and encouraged her to get some rest, adding that we would return soon. Mother drove her large car to the hospital.
Guy was ashen and looked like a grown man in the hospital bed. He was awake.
“Hello, my son.”
“Hello, Mom.”
He was stiff in our embrace. “I can’t move much. My neck. It’s broken again.”
Suddenly I felt guilty. I had not been in the truck that hit him. In fact, I was not even in the same city where the accident occurred, and yet I felt guilty.
When something goes wrong with offspring, inevitably the parent feels guilty. As if some stone that needed turning had been left unturned. In the case of a physical handicap, the mother feels that when her body was building the infant, it shirked its responsibility somewhere.
I stood looking at my son, wondering where I had failed. I knew I would stay near until he recovered. I also knew that staying around Vivian Baxter would be strengthening.
She had a litany of morale-building sayings. “Keep your eyes on the road, your hand on the plow, your finger in the dike, your shoulder to the wheel, and push like hell.” My mother would issue the statements as if from the godhead, and it was up to the hearer to fathom the meaning.
After a few days, Rosa left San Francisco for New York.
I visited Guy every day and watched as he slowly revived. I was right in my earlier observation. He was a grown-up stranger who reminded me of my son.
He said the University of Ghana had given him all it had to give. No, he wasn’t sorry to leave Ghana, and although he had made some enemies, he had also made some friends he would keep for his lifetime.
As soon as he was well, he’d find work. Of course he would. He had had his first job at thirteen as a stacking boy in a Brooklyn bakery.
He would stay with his grandmother when he was released from the hospital. She would give him a roomful of her aphorisms. “Take care of your own business. Everybody else’s business will not be your business.” “Look to the hills from whence cometh your help.” “You can tell a person by the company he keeps.” “Never let your right hand know what your left hand is doing.” Always adding that “each tub must sit on its own bottom.”
I left San Francisco when I saw Guy sitting up like a golden prince and being served like a king in my mother’s house.
Sixteen
Leaving Los Angeles was harder than I expected.
Human beings are like some plants. If we pause a few seconds in our journey, we begin setting down roots, tendrils that entangle other people as we ourselves are entangled.
Don Martin and Jimmy Truitt of the Lester Horton Dance School had been especially kind to me. When I took classes