Gather Together in My Name - Maya Angelou [30]
Mr. Williams served me a cold drink. “What you trying to do? Fry your brains?”
“I'm on my way to the General Merchandise Store. To pick up an order.”
His smile was a two-line checkerboard of white and gold. “Be careful they don't pick you up. This sun ain't playing.”
Arrogance and stupidity nudged me out of the little café and back on the white hot clay. I drifted under the shade trees, my face a mask of indifference. The skin of my thighs scudded like wet rubber as I walked deliberately by the alien white houses and on to my destination.
In the store the air lay heavily on the blades of two sluggish overhead fans, and a sweet, thick odor enveloped me at the cosmetic counter. Still, I was prepared to wander the aisles until the sun forgave our sins and withdrew its vengeance.
A tall saleswoman wearing a clerk's smock confronted me. I tried to make room for her in the narrow corridor. I moved to my left, she moved to her right. I right, she left, we jockeyed a moment's embarrassment and I smiled. Her long face answered with a smile. “You stand still and I'll pass you.” It was not a request for cooperation. The hard mountain voice gave me an order.
To whom did she think she was speaking? Couldn't she see from my still-white though dusty gloves, my starched clothes, that I wasn't a servant to be ordered around? I had walked nearly three miles under a sun on fire and was neither gasping nor panting, but standing with the cool decorum of a great lady in the tacky, putrid store. She should have considered that.
“No, you stand still and I'll pass around you,” I commanded.
The amazement which leaped upon her face was quickly pushed aside by anger. “What's your name? Where you from?”
A repetition of “You stand still and I'll pass around you” was ready on my tongue, when the pale woman who had taken my order slack-butted down the aisle toward us. The familiar face brought back the sympathy I had felt for her and I explained the tall woman into limbo with “Excuse me, here comes my salesgirl.”
The dark-haired woman turned quickly and saw her colleague approach. She put herself between us, and her voice rasped out in the quiet store: “Who is this?”
Her head jerked back to indicate me. “Is this that sassy Ruby Lee you was telling me about?”
The clerk lifted her chin and glanced at me, then swirled to the older woman. “Naw, this ain't her.” She flipped the pages of a pad in her hand and continued, “This one's Margaret or Marjorie or something like that.”
Her head eased up again and she looked across centuries at me. “How do you pronounce your name, gal? Speak up.”
In that moment I became rootless, nameless, pastless. The two white blurs buoyed before me.
“Speak up,” she said. “What's your name?”
I clenched my reason and forced their faces into focus. “My name”—here I drew myself up through the unrevenged slavery—“is Miss Johnson. If you have occasion to use my name, which I seriously doubt, I advise you to address me as Miss Johnson. For if I need to allude to your pitiful selves, I shall call you Miss Idiot, Miss Stupid, Miss Fool or whatever name a luckless fate has dumped upon you.”
The women became remote even as I watched them. They seemed actually to float away from me down the aisle; and from watching their distant faces, I knew they were having trouble believing in the fact of me.
“And where I'm from is no concern of yours, but rather where you're going. I'll slap you into the middle of next week if you even dare to open your mouths again. Now, take that filthy pattern and stick it you-know-where.”
As I strode between the two women I was sheathed in satisfaction. There had been so few critical times when my actions met my approval that now I congratulated myself. I had got them told and told correctly. I pictured the two women's mouths still open in amazement. The road was less rocky and the sun's strength was weakened by my pleasure. Congratulations were in order.
There was no need to stop at Mr. Williams' for a refreshing drink. I was as cool as a fountain inside as