Gather Together in My Name - Maya Angelou [35]
Natural restraint and the conceit of sophistication kept me from rushing down immediately to sign the loyalty oath. I was able to keep myself away for two days before I surrendered.
I stood in front of the flag, one hand on the Bible, the other clasped to my breast, and swore I would defend this land from her enemies, etc., etc. The deep motives, the noble intent so moved me that with the least encouragement I would have dissolved in a flood of patriotic tears.
Mother was happy but not surprised at my success story. When I told Bailey that I would soon be going into the Army, he turned a cold stare on me and asked without relishing curiosity, “What the shit for? Men are trying like hell to get out and my sister is dying to get in. You dumb bunny.” The air between Bailey and me had coarsened with our growing up and thickened with his cynicism. He could no longer see me clearly and I could not distinguish his black male disappointment in life.
It could not be said that Bailey was living at home, but more accurately that he was based there. He worked as a waiter on the Southern Pacific trains running from San Francisco to Chicago or Los Angeles or Houston.
Few black families are without ties to the U.S. railroads. The early-twentieth-century Negro aristocrats were the families of ministers, morticians, teachers and railroad men. Passes to ride the trains were traded in Southern black areas as easily as legitimate money. And many poor black families ate their beans and greens from good china and used heavy silver from the Union Pacific, Southern Pacific and New York Central.
Bailey was still the plum pretty black color and his teeth shone white like promises. His hair was glossy and his small hands delicate and graceful. But all the gentle reminders of his love for me through our childhood stopped at his eyes. It seemed some confrontation, which he had kept secret, dulled their shine and left them flat and unseeing.
His fast speech, which used to stumble into a stutter with excitement, had slowed, and a songless monotone rasped out his meanings. When he was home from a trip, he never sat around with Mother and me, playing pinochle or coon can, as we used to do, but hurriedly put down his gear and left the house for some mysterious destination. He successfully blocked my prying by saying, “Take care of yourself and your baby and your own business and that'll take all your time.”
When I tried to involve Mother in discussion of his whereabouts and how abouts, she said nearly the same thing but generally added, “He's a man. He's got a job and his health and strength. Some people have to make it through life with less.” And that was that.
Papa Ford, who had been brought to the new house, sat bowed over his coffee in the warm kitchen.
I asked him, “Papa, what's Bailey doing? Why is he changing so?”
He lifted his head and relished a toothless mouth. Smack. Smack.
“Uh. Uh, girl. Uh, uh.” He lowered his head, loving the doom he hinted.
“Papa, what does that mean? Say something.”
The passage of years had ground away his emotional-transition apparatus. He would often shift in a moment from a dozing indifference to a fighting fury He did so then.
“Don't ask so many goddam questions. Keep your goddam big eyes open. You're no shitty-ass baby.” A slurp from his mug and he was nearly asleep again.
CHAPTER 20
I had to make arrangements for my personal belongings. I told mother that when I got out of the Army I would dress in suits, and my cashmere-sweater sets would match kick-pleated Scotch-plaid skirts. I wouldn't be needing the old clothes. Mother had decided they were good enough to be given to charity. I remembered the large St. Vincent de Paul's trucks, backing down our driveway once a year during my teens, collecting Mother's unwanted items. After a brief but pointed sermon when Mother spoke of “those less fortunate than you,” I chose the Salvation Army as my beneficiary. Those fresh clean faces in their absurd regalia playing their uninspired