A Song Flung Up to Heaven - Maya Angelou [30]
Now I wanted to use a word more descriptive of the African than “goat,” but the situation seemed so funny to me, and to Dolly as well, that even over drinks and throughout the party, whenever I caught her eye, we were both rendered speechless by laughter. We were both intelligent women who had been had by the same man. In more ways than one.
Eighteen
I knew there would be no peace for me until I visited the Audubon Ballroom. Until I let the grisly scene play out in front of me.
The dance hall and theater had been famous for decades. When I had gone visiting in the fifties, I often imagined Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps and Zora Neale Hurston dancing the Charleston to the big-band music of Jimmy Lunceford, Count Basie and Duke Ellington.
Time passed and took away the popularity of orchestra music, the big bands and public dancing. When I went on my nostalgic walk to the ballroom in 1967, New York City had begun the process of condemning the Audubon. Its meager reserve was realized from renting the premises to organizations, conventions, councils and committees.
On February 21, 1965, the Organization of African-American Unity had rented the ballroom for a fund-raiser. Malcolm X had been the speaker.
I approached the building slowly. The windows were dusty and the doors barred. As I tried to peer into the vast emptiness, the questions that crouched just beyond my conscious mind came full force.
Had I stayed in New York when I returned from Ghana, would I have been sitting with Betty Shabazz and her children?
Would I have heard the final words of Malcolm X?
Would I have heard the shots puncture the air?
Would I have seen the killers’ faces and had them etched in my mind eternally?
I could see no shadow inside; no chimera arose and danced.
I walked away.
Nineteen
I had sung in Jerry Purcell’s swank supper club once, and although I was not looking for nightclub work, I telephoned him. He invited me for dinner. We had been good friends, and I thought he might have some idea where I could find work. We met at his Italian restaurant, the Paparazzi.
He was still a big, movie-star-handsome man who walked as if he were heavier from his waist down than from his waist up. We greeted each other as old friends. I told him I was staying with a friend and that I was still writing poetry, but I longed to write plays and my money was disappearing faster than I had expected.
At that moment Jerry began to grow angel’s wings. He said, “I’m in management now, and I am doing well.”
He rose often from the table to greet customers and to speak to his staff, but he always returned, smiling. He was more affable than I remembered.
I said good-bye after lunch, and he handed me an envelope, saying that his office number and the name of his personal secretary were enclosed. He said I should find my own apartment and that if I needed anything, I should phone his secretary. He said, “Bring your friends here. Whenever. Just take the bill, add your tip and sign it.”
He sent a waiter with me to hail a taxi. I sat back in the seat and opened the envelope. The number and the secretary’s name were there, along with a large amount of cash.
For the next two years Purcell treated me like a valued employee. Save for the odd temporary office job and the money I made writing radio spots for Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, I depended upon his largesse. He didn’t once ask anything and seemed totally satisfied with a simple thanks. I did write a ballad based on Portnoy’s Complaint for a singer Jerry managed. And I wrote twelve astrological liner notes for a series of long-playing albums he was planning to release.
When I tried to explain how his generosity afforded me the opportunity to improve my writing skills, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “I manage artists who make more in one night than you have ever made in a year. Yet I know no one more talented than you.”
His patronage was a gift as welcome as found money bearing no type of identification.
Twenty
New York