A Song Flung Up to Heaven - Maya Angelou [42]
“Out.” It was too late. “Out.”
The woman’s departing statement cut me more deeply than she could have ever imagined. “People think you’re so kind. They should see you as you are. A great bully.”
I said nothing, and in a few minutes, noise returned and the party pitch reestablished itself.
Guy left early to see the teacher home. Some friends said, “You showed wonderful restraint. She came out to be trouble.”
Others didn’t mention the incident. When I was totally alone, I sat down and wondered how else I could have handled that awful situation. I found no answer, so I started to clean the apartment. I emptied ashtrays and washed glasses. I took trash to the garbage chute. Little by little, I cleaned and polished my house till it glistened.
As I finished, Guy rang the bell. He entered and stood at the door, observing the clean apartment.
“I meant to be back in time to help you.”
“Oh no, as you see...”
“Mom, I’m going to make us both a drink.” I sat down to await the service.
He brought two filled glasses into the living room. He lifted his to me, I lifted mine to him.
“Mom, if you ever speak to a woman I bring to your house as you spoke to that woman, I will sever our relationship.”
I looked at my son sitting aloof like a high-ranking judge on a lofty seat. His words alone constituted a body blow, and his posture added weight to the statement. I thought of carrying him on my hip all over the world, of sleeping in hotel rooms separated by a sheet hanging across the middle of the room to give each of us privacy. I thought of how I had raised him and saw that he was right.
I said, “Of course, you are absolutely correct. You are obliged to protect anyone you bring out anywhere. If the person is under your umbrella, you are supposed to defend her or him. It would kill me if you severed our relationship. But let me tell you this. If you bring someone to my house that stupid, it is likely that I will speak to her as I spoke to that woman. And severing our relationship will be your next job.”
He looked at me for a long minute, then got up and came to the sofa to sit beside me.
He opened his long arms. “I love you, Mom, you’re a gas. I truly love you.”
Twenty-nine
John Patterson was my across-the-hall neighbor, and we shared the same birthday.
I spent the morning cooking for my party. He was planning to celebrate with his fiancée, a beautiful fawnlike girl half his age.
When I could safely leave my pots for a few minutes, I went to his apartment for a glass of wine and for our opportunity to congratulate each other.
I cheered him for his impending marriage, and he saluted me for taking on a thirty-day job that would give me the chance to visit the major American cities. I always added “and churches.”
I didn’t have my itinerary, but I told John that I thought I had to go to Atlanta first for meetings with Reverend King and the leaders of the SCLC.
I admitted to Dolly that I had trepidation about the trip, and even some fear over how the ministers in the different churches would take to me and to Reverend King’s plans. So much depended upon my doing well.
Dolly said, “If the Reverend King thinks you can do it, that’s enough for me. And don’t believe that the whole thing depends on you. You’re not the only fish in the sea. He’s got others. Anyway, you will do wonderfully.”
A sister always knows how to set you down, and a true sister lets you down easily.
My apartment smelled like I was readying for a Christmas feast. I was really putting on the dog. Stepping out. All the Harlem Writers Guild members were coming. I invited Jerry Purcell and his partner, Paul Robinson, and some of the regulars from Terry’s Pub, the local bar.
I cooked Texas chili without the beans, baked ham and candied yams, rice and peas for the West Indian palate, macaroni and cheese and a pineapple upside-down cake.
I looked the apartment over and was proud. The food was prepared, ice buckets were filled, glasses were sparkling and the daffodils were as perky as their name.
The telephone