A Song Flung Up to Heaven - Maya Angelou [44]
I laid my own head on the counter weighted with new realization.
A man lived. A man loved.
A man tried, and a man died.
And that was not all there was to that. And it never was.
Thirty
Death of a beloved flattens and dulls everything. Mountains and skyscrapers and grand ideas are brought down to eye level or below. Great loves and large hates no longer cast such huge shadows or span so broad a distance. Connections do not adhere so closely, and important events lose some of their glow.
Everywhere I turned, life was repeating itself. The photograph of Coretta Scott King, veiled and standing with her children, reminded me of the picture of Jacqueline Kennedy with her children. Both women were under the probing, curious and often sympathetic eye of the world. Yet each stood as if she and her children and her memories lived together in an unknowable dimension.
On radio and in newspapers, Martin King’s name was linked again and again with the name Malcolm X. As if the life and death of one confirmed the life and death of the other.
Depression wound itself around me so securely I could barely walk, and didn’t want to talk.
I went to Dolly’s apartment. I didn’t want my absence to alarm her.
“I’m going to hibernate for a few weeks.”
She asked, “What do you mean?”
“I’m going to stay alone. I will not be seeing anyone. I just need to seek balance.”
Dolly said, “I understand. But listen, I’m going to bring you some food. And you’re going to have to talk to me once a day. I don’t care what you say, just don’t stop talking. Okay?”
Jerry Purcell sent an employee who knocked on my door loudly and repeatedly. When I opened it, he handed me a package wrapped in tinfoil.
“Jerry said that you would get a plate every other day. If you’re not here, I’ll leave it by the door.”
Jimmy Baldwin pried me loose from my despair. “You have to get out of here. Get dressed. I’m taking you somewhere.”
Exactly what Bailey had said and done when Malcolm was killed.
“Put on something that makes you feel pretty.” I remembered the old saying, which was a favorite of my Arkansas grandmother. “It’s hard to make the prettiest clothes fit a miserable man.”
Jimmy said, “Some friends have invited me to dinner, you will enjoy them. They are both funny, and you need to laugh.” We were in front of the building before Jimmy said, “This is Jules Feiffer’s apartment.”
Judy opened the door and welcomed us. Although I had not formed a picture of the Feiffers, I was unprepared for her beauty. She could have been a movie actress. Jules also surprised me. He looked more like a young, intense college professor than one of the nation’s funniest, most biting cartoonists.
They both hugged Jimmy, and the three of them laughed aloud as if they had heard a funny story when they last parted and had not had time to finish their laughter.
The Feiffers’ pretty ten-year-old daughter joined us in the living room. When Jimmy embraced her and asked after her school, she answered easily, showing the poise of a person twice her age.
We adults finished our drinks and moved into the dining room. We told and heard great stories over a delicious dinner. Jimmy talked about being a preacher in Harlem at fourteen years old. He may have lost some of his evangelical drama, but it returned that night in force. He preached a little and sang in a remarkably beautiful voice. His story was funny and touching. When we laughed, it was always with him and with the people he spoke of, never at them.
Jules talked about school and his college mates. His tale was told with wit so dry that when we laughed, we thought we breathed in dust.
Judy kept the glasses filled and added the appropriate response whenever it was needed. She said, “Nothing funny ever happened