Gather Together in My Name - Maya Angelou [21]
I bought a car which was a model of Detroit genius. A pale-green Chrysler, ′39 vintage, convertible. It sported wooden doors and highly polished wooden dashboards. Knobs and buttons were a yellow material like the handles of old-fashioned flatware. I fashioned a sling made out of belts and secured my son, who had begun to walk. We drove around the monotonous streets of San Diego in my beautiful chariot. I had paid cash for it from a dresser drawer of money.
Mother Cleo asked charily, “And where in the world … ?”
I had my answer molded. “My boyfriend gave it to me!”
“What'd he do? Steal it?”
“Oh no. He paid cash.”
“How come he don't come around?”
“He's going to. I invited him.” In fact, I had thought of palming Hank off as the hard-working boyfriend but decided he'd never be able to carry it off.
“Listen here. He ain't a married man, is he?” She began to draw away from me as if I might be a carrier of a loathsome disease.
“No, ma'am. He's not even divorced. I mean, he's never been married.”
She calmed down gradually, then her face hardened. “He ain't a white man, is he? I don't 'low white men.”
I had to laugh. Of all the tricks who came and went in my establishment, I hadn't even seen one. “No, Mother Cleo, he's not even light-skinned.”
Reluctantly she smiled. “One thing I don't hold with is women messing 'round with married mens. The other is messing 'round with white men. First one the Bible don't like, second one the law don't like.”
She could have put her time to greater use concerning herself with my lack of morals rather than with my sexual involvements. Since coming to San Diego I let no attraction penetrate the invisible widow's weeds I had donned. My love was dead, my love was gone, married to some stupid shipfitter and living in the mosquito-ridden swamps of Louisiana. Long die, and stay dead, my love.
CHAPTER 15
During this time when my life hinged melodramatically on intrigue and deceit, I discovered the Russian writers. One title caught my eye. Not because I felt guilty raking in money from the doings of prostitutes but because of the title's perfect balance. Life, as far as I had deduced it, was a series of opposites: black/white, up/down, life/death, rich/poor, love/hate, happy/sad, and no mitigating areas in between. It followed Crime/Punishment.
The heavy opulence of Dostoevsky's world was where I had lived forever. The gloomy, lightless interiors, the complex ratiocinations of the characters, and their burdensome humors, were as familiar to me as loneliness.
I walked the sunny California streets shrouded in Russian mists. I fell in love with the Karamazov brothers and longed to drink from a samovar with the lecherous old father. Then Gorki became my favorite. He was the blackest, most dear, most despairing. The books couldn't last long enough for me. I wished the writers all alive, turning out manuscripts for my addiction. I took to the Chekov plays and Turgenev, but always returned in the late nights, after I had collected my boodle, to the Maxim Gorki and his murky, unjust world.
My dance teacher, who took no personal interest, wore the most outlandish clothes. Her long dark skirt, gathered, fell to just above her ankles. The blouses were of Mexican persuasion and were worn off her thin shoulders. Ropes of colorful beads and thong sandals completed her costume. She looked odd enough for admiration. I copied her clothes, and when not dressed in the white-blouse, black-skirt waitress uniform, I could be seen haunting the libraries, a tall thin black girl in too-long skirts and señorita blouses, which might have been sexy had I had the figure and/or attitude to complement them. Alas, I didn't.
Upon reflection, I marvel that no one saw through me enough to bundle me off to the nearest mental institution. The fact that it didn't happen depended less on my being a good actress than the fact that I was surrounded, as I had been all my life, by strangers. The world of waitress, dreamer, madam and mother might have continued indefinitely, except for another of life's