Gather Together in My Name - Maya Angelou [17]
“You like grifa?”
“Yes. I smoke.” The truth was I had smoked cigarettes for over a year, but never marijuana. But since I had the unmitigated gall to sit up cross-legged in a lesbian apartment sipping wine, I felt I had the stamina to smoke a little grifa. Anyway, I was prepared to refuse anything else they offered me, so I didn't feel I could very well refuse the pot.
Beatrice laid down a Prince Albert can on the table with cigarette papers.
“Do you want to roll it?” Johnnie Mae was being gracious.
“No thanks. I don't roll very well.” I hadn't seen loose tobacco and cigarette papers since I'd left the South, five years earlier. My brother and I used to roll lumpy cigarettes for my uncle on a small hand-cranking machine when he'd run out of ready rolls.
She took the papers and deftly began to sift marijuana. I tried not to appear too curious as the grains of tobacco fell into the cupped paper.
“I'd like to use your bathroom.”
“Sure. You know where it is.”
I talked to the bathroom mirror. “You have nothing to be nervous about. You'll get out of this. Don't you always get out of everything? Marijuana is not habit-forming. Thousands of people have smoked it. The Indians and Mexicans and it didn't send them mad. Just wash your hands”—which were damp—“and go back to the living room. Keep your cool. Cool.”
I inhaled the smoke as casually as if the small brown cigarette I held were the conventional commercial kind.
“No. No. Don't waste the grifa. Hand it here.” She dragged the cigarette and made the sound of folks slurping tea from a saucer.
“But I like it my way.” Stubborn to the end.
“Well, try it like this.” Again the rattling sound.
“All right. I will.” I opened my throat and kept my tongue flat so that the smoke found no obstacle in its passage from my lips to my throat. It tore the lining off my tonsils, made my nasal passages burn like red pepper and choked me. While I coughed, gagging, those silly bitches laughed. They would be sitting there with those vapid wrinkles on their faces while I choked to death. Wouldn't they do anything for me? No. Beatrice rescued the joint and sucked in the smoke, puffing out her already fat cheeks to bursting, while her lady love was busily engaged in rolling another stick of tearing fire.
Before the cough stopped shaking me, I had decided I would get even with them. They were lesbians, which was sinful enough, but they were also inconsiderate, stupid bitches. I reached again for the marijuana.
The food was the best I'd ever tasted. Every morsel was an experience of sheer delight. I lost myself in a haze of sensual pleasure, enjoying not only the tastes but the feel of the food in my mouth, the smells, and the sound of my jaws chewing.
“She's got a buzz. That's her third helping.”
I looked up to see the two women looking at me and laughing. Their faces seemed to be mostly teeth. White teeth staggering inside dark lips. They were embarrassingly ugly, and yet there was something funny about it. They had no idea that they were so strange-looking I laughed at their ignorance, and they, probably thinking themselves to be laughing at mine, joined me. When I remembered how they were ready to let me choke to death and how I vowed to get them, the tears rolled down my cheeks. That was really funny. They didn't know what I was thinking and I didn't know what form my revenge would take.
“Let's have some sounds.” Beatrice got up from the table. We were by magic back in the murky living room. Johnnie Mae stood putting records on the player. She turned to me as the first record began to play. “You said you're studying how to dance. Do us a dance.” Lil Green's voice whined out the sadful lyrics:
“In the dark, in the dark, I get such a thrill
when you press your fingertips upon my lils.”
I couldn't explain that I didn't do dancing alone to music like that. At the studio I did stretches, extensions, pliés and relevés to Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky.
It was considered normal in gatherings