Gather Together in My Name - Maya Angelou [11]
I was hurt because none of this would come true. But only in part. I was also proud of them. I congratulated myself on having absolutely the meanest, coldest, craziest family in the world.
Uncle Charlie, Aunt Leah's husband, never talked much, and on the way back to that station he broke the silence only a few times.
“You sure got yourself a cute baby.”
“Thank you.”
“Going on to San Diego, huh?”
I guessed so.
“Well, your father's down there. You won't be by yourself.”
My father, who spent his time drinking tequila in Mexico and putting on high-toned airs in San Diego, would give me a colder reception than the one I'd just received.
I would be by myself. I thought how nice it would be.
I decided that one day I would be included in the family legend. Someday, as they sat around in the closed circle recounting the fights and feuds, the prides and prejudices of the Baxters, my name would be among the most illustrious. I would become a hermit. I would seal myself off from the world, just my son and I.
I had written a juicy melodrama in which I was to be the star. Pathetic, poignant, isolated. I planned to drift out of the wings, a little girl martyr. It just so happened that life took my script away and upstaged me.
CHAPTER 9
“Are you in the life?”
The big black woman could have been speaking Russian. She sat with her back to the window and the sunlight slid over her shoulders, making a pool in her lap.
“I beg pardon?”
“The life. You turn tricks?”
The maid at the hotel had given me the woman's address and said she took care of children. “Just ask for Mother Cleo.”
She hadn't asked me to sit, so I just stood in the center of the cluttered room, the baby resting on my shoulder.
“No. I do not.” How could she ask me such a question?
“Well, you surely look like a trickster. Your face and everything.”
“Well, I assure you, I'm not a whore. I have worked as a chef.” How the lowly have become mighty. Ole Creole Kitchen would hitch up its shoulders to know that it once had had a chef—not just a garden-variety cook.
“Well.” She looked at me as if she'd soon be able to tell if I was lying.
“How come you got so much powder and lipstick?” That morning I had bought a complete cosmetic kit and spent over an hour pasting my face into a mask with Max Factor's Pancake No. 31. I didn't really feel I had to explain to Mother Cleo, but on the other hand I couldn't very well be rude. I did need a baby-sitter.
“Maybe I put on too much.”
“Where do you work?”
It was an interrogation. She had her nerve. Did she think that being called Mother Cleo gave her maternal privileges?
“The Hi Hat Club needs a waitress. I'm going to apply.” The make-up was supposed to make me look older. Maybe it only succeeded in making me look cheap.
“That's a good job. Tips can make it a real good job. Let me see the baby.”
She got up with more ease than I had expected. When she stretched out her hands a cloud of talcum powder was released. She took the baby and adjusted him down in the crook of her arm. “He's pretty. Still sleeping, huh?”
Mother Cleo metamorphosed in front of me. She was no longer the ugly fat ogre who threatened from her deep chair. Looking down on the infant, she had become the prototype of mother. Her face softened and her voice blurred. She ran stubbly fat fingers around his cap and slid it off.
“I don't usually take them this young. Too much trouble. But he's cute as can be, ain't he?”
“Well, you know—”
“Don't do for you to say so, but still it's true. And you're almost too young to have a baby. I guess your folks put you out, huh?”
She had noticed I wore no wedding ring. I decided to let her think I was homeless. Then I thought, “Let her think nothing. I was homeless.”
“Well, I'm going to give you a hand. I'll keep him and I'm going to charge you less than the white ones.” I was shocked that she kept white babies. “Lots of white women trust their babies with me rather than they own